This Yankee was probably out stealing and pillaging under the uphemism of "Raiding".
Posted on 11/20/2001 5:28:55 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Escape From Confederate Captors
Union captain bribes guards
First-person accounts of captures and escapes among Tippecanoe County soldiers in the Civil War are few. But one that has survived is Capt. Lawson Kilborn's adventure in Tennessee and Alabama.
Although born in Canada, Kilborn considered both Lafayette and Linden as his home during the war. A teacher and school principal in civilian life, he accepted a commission as first lieutenant of Company E in the 72nd Indiana Infantry Regiment on Aug. 14, 1862. He earned promotion to captain on Dec. 15, 1862, and major on Nov. 24, 1864.
In the summer of 1864, Kilborn participated in a Union Army raid along the Mobile & Ohio Railroad between West Point and Columbus, Miss. Then on Aug. 16 in Tennessee, a horse-drawn supply wagon became stuck in mud along the base of the Cumberland Mountains. Kilborn stopped to help pull it out and fell behind the main body of moving troops. Confederate guerrillas swooped in and captured Kilborn and three of his men in Company E.
"I was [moving along] under the friendly admonition of an old negress, who said, 'You'd bettah git out o' heah, lots o' bushwhackas 'round,' when I found one of my wagons containing two saddles and several Spencer rifles abandoned in the mud," Kilborn recalled years later in a history of the 72nd Regiment.
"There were myself, a sergeant of the 98th Illinois, one private, my colored servant named Alec, and the colored teamster. It was raining quite hard, and the men had their rubber ponchos on and their guns carefully covered to keep them dry. We had passed but a short distance when eight rebels, three in front and five in rear, each with a cocked pistol in hand, dashed into the road and demanded our surrender. I took in the situation at a glance. They had 48 shots, we had 20. Their weapons were in their hands, ours under our ponchos. "Gloomy visions of Andersonville [notorious prison camp in Georgia] flitted through my mind, and I resolved to lose no opportunity to escape."
Attempts
The captors marched their prisoners from Salem to Decherd, Tenn. Kilborn tried once to escape but failed. When forced to trade his horse for a "poor rack-o'-bones" ridden by his Confederate guard, he considered himself lucky.
"We were taken to a house in Hurricane Valley, treated kindly and given a good supper, but closely guarded," he said. "During the evening, a young man brought in one of our captured Spencer rifles containing its seven charges. After trying all around to load it he said, 'Perhaps, the captain will show us how to use it.'
"Just as I reached my hand out to take it, my guard sprang forward, caught the rifle, exclaiming, 'Not by a damned sight. We don't want none of his showin'.' Thus was lost what I had hoped would be my second chance for escape.
"We were put in a room and guarded for the night. In the morning ... my men were turned loose, and all returned safely to the command. Then under the charge of two youthful rebels, I started to cross the Tennessee River and go to Andersonville. The guards were only boys -- one seventeen and the other fourteen. Both had run away from home to enter the rebel service. The young one was the son of a wealthy secessionist in Louisville, Kentucky."
When Kilborn gave one of the armed juvenile escorts his coat and the other a $10 Waltham watch, they turned him loose along a railroad leading back to Stevenson, Ala., 45 miles away. About 10 p.m., Kilborn hiked up to flood-swollen Paint Rock Creek where he found that the railroad bridge had been burned.
Crossing the stream
During lightning flashes Kilborn could see the bent and drooping rails fastened to chains extending across a gap of some 20 feet over the stream. On either side of this gap the half-burned sleepers (on which crossties rest) extended out 10 to 15 feet from the part of the bridge unburned. Here and there a partially burned tie still hung, sometimes to one, sometimes to both rails. Kilborn judged the creek to be 20 feet deep and in fast current.
He climbed across Paint Rock Creek by clinging at times to just one rain-slickened rail and reached Stevenson on Aug. 18, two days after his capture. There he reported to Gen. Joseph Hooker's friendly forces. Late in 1864, as a major, Kilborn served with Gen. James H. Wilson on raids prior to the captures of Selma and Montgomery in Alabama, and of Columbus and Macon in Georgia.
After the war, Kilborn moved to a farm in Shelby County, Ill., and he devoted the postwar years to a career in education and Prohibition Party politics.
This Yankee was probably out stealing and pillaging under the uphemism of "Raiding".
Sometimes encounters with democRATS are good!
See, I had you up to here. I thought it was a true story until I read this. By everything we know about the north, there weren't any slave owners because the war was fought over slavery < /sarcasm>LOL
I also like the part about Southern hospitality - they treated the yanks just fine and fed them, too.
Yeah to hear the chimporamuses tell it the dyanks were lilly-white pillars of morality.
Maybe their chimp-like intellects will, when they are old and fading, lead them to read The Secret Six and they will then see what their exalted pillars really were.
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