1862.] JOHN MORGAN. 181 "He! he! he!" laughed the youngster; "well, hurrah for yer own side, and I'll holler for mine!" The officer could not repress a smile while his companions laughed aloud at his discomfiture, and the boy slipped through the crowd crying, "Here's the Nashville Patriot, only five cents." A few days after the evacuation of Nashville, the Confederates, seeing that Columbus was liable to fall in the same way with Donelson, abandoned that place, spiking many of their guns and burning their buildings. General Polk, with the greater part of his force, fell back to Corinth, leaving about five thousand men to defend Island No. Ten and the batteries on the river bank opposite it. Thus Kentucky was lost to the Confederates, as well as a large part of Tennessee, while the more Southern States were laid open to the advance of the victorious Union armies. JOHN HUNT MORGAN. Shortly after the fall of Nashville, Captain John Morgan, who was scouting in the rear of Johnston's army, began to be prominent. John Hunt Morgan, though born in Alabama, had lived many years in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was noted when young as the leader in almost all the boyish pranks in town. As he grew up, tall, strong, agile, and handsome, he became a general favorite and had great influence among his associates. When nineteen years old he served in Humphrey Marshall's cavalry in the Mexican war and fought at Buena Vista. He was about thirty-five years old when the Civil War broke out, and like many other Kentuckians joined the cause of the Confederacy. In the army he showed himself to be a splendid horseman, a fine shot, and an excellent officer, and he soon gathered around him a body of men who, as daring as himself, were willing to follow him on any perilous enterprise. He became one of the most successful of the Southern guerrilla leaders-that is, leaders of small independent bands that roamed around the country, attacking army trains, destroying bridges, and picking up stragglers from the enemy. But he kept a very strict discipline in his company, so that his men were always well under command. A story is told of him that once when one of his troopers refused to obey an order on the field of battle, he turned his keen eyes upon him and said, "Do you understand my order?" "Yes, Captain; but I cannot obey," was the answer. "Then good-by," said Morgan, and raising his pistol he shot him dead. "Such be the fate of every man who disobeys orders in the face of an enemy." It is said that after that no man ever waited for a second order from him. Morgan was a great friend of General Buckner's, and after the general's capture at Fort Donelson he tried hard to capture a Union general to exchange for him. With this object in view he used to prowl round the Union camps in Tennessee, hoping that good luck would throw an officer in his way. He came very near catching General Nelson one day, by lying in ambush with some of his men in a cedar thicket near a tollgate. Shortly afterward the General and his staff came riding along the road, but they were stopped and turned back by the gate-keeper, who told them about the trap set for them. General Nelson escaped, but the next day the poor gate-keeper was found in the creek, with his hands tied and a large stone fastened to his neck. Soon after Nashville was taken by the Union forces Morgan went into the city dressed as a farmer, with a load of corn-meal. He drove up to the commissary's quarters and said he had brought the meal as a gift, adding that there were some Union men around where he lived, but they had to be very careful on account of the rebel cavalry. He then went to dine at the St. Cloud Hotel, and sat at table next to General McCook. The General, hearing from others that he was the generous Union farmer who had brought the meal for the soldiers, persuaded him to take the value of it in gold. Morgan then told McCook, with a great show of secrecy, that the notorious guerrilla John Morgan was encamped with a small body of men not far from his house, and that if he would send one or two hundred horse 1862.] I AM CAPTAIN MORGAN. 183 men out there he would show him how to capture him. McCook sent the men as directed, and Morgan took them all prisoners. Not long afterward Morgan suddenly rode into Gallatin, about twenty-six miles north-east of Nashville, with forty men, and after catching and shutting up all the Union men he could find dressed himself in a Union uniform and went to the telegraph office, at the railway station, a little way out of the town. "Good-morning," said he to the telegraph operator. "What news have you?" "Nothing, sir," replied the operator, who was a blustering kind of fellow, "except that it is reported that that dirty rebel, John Morgan, is this side of the Cumberland with some of his cavalry. I wish I could get sight of the rascal; I'd make a hole through him larger than he would find pleasant." While speaking, the operator flourished a fine navy revolver around his head as if to add strength to his words. "Do you know who I am?" quietly asked Morgan. At these words the operator turned pale, and he sank into a chair almost paralyzed with fear. When he had sufficiently recovered himself, Morgan made him telegraph some messages to Louisville, and then gave him to his men a prisoner. He stayed in Gallatin two days, hoping to capture some trains, but news of his coming had got abroad and none came in. He took, however, several Union officers who rode into town, and, after destroying a few cars and one locomotive, carried his prisoners safely to the Confederate camp. CHAPTER XV. ROANOKE.-NEW BERNE.-PULA SKI. EXPEDITION AGAINST ROANOKE ISLAND.-A GUNBOAT FIGHT.-FORT BARTOW.-A GALLANT ATTACK.-Zov! Zov! Zou!-Capture OF ROANOKE ISLAND.-ELIZABETH CITY.-GALLANT JOHN DAVIS.--ATTACK ON NEW BERNE.-NEWS FROM MANASSAS.-FALL OF NEW BERNE.— THE DAILY PROGRESS.-DE ROTTEN BALLS.-The Child of the REGIMENT.-BOMBARDMENT OF FORT MACON.--A PATCHED FLAG.-BATTLE OF SOUTH MILLS.-SIEGE OF FORT PULASKI. -MORTARS AND HOW TO FIRE THEM.-ALL'S WELL!-A REGIMENT OF WHITTLERS.-PULASKI SURRENDERS.-FORT CLINCH.-AN OLD NEWSPAPER.-HOLD ON, MARS' YANKEE! ON Sunday, January 12, 1862, another land and naval expe dition, still more powerful than that which had been so successful against Port Royal, sailed southward from Hampton Roads. More than a hundred steam and sailing vessels, some of them men-of-war and some transports for carrying troops, composed this fleet, the command of which was given to Commodore Louis M. Goldsborough. The land force, consisting of sixteen thousand soldiers, under the general command of MajorGeneral Ambrose E. Burnside, was in three divisions, under Generals John G. Foster, Jesse L. Reno, and John G. Parke. This fleet met with a great storm off Hatteras, as severe as the one which had scattered Dupont's ships, but it finally reached its destination, Hatteras Inlet, with the loss of four transports, a gunboat, and a floating-battery, and entered the quiet waters of Pamlico Sound. The object of the expedition was Roanoke Island, which, as told before, separates Pamlico Sound from Albemarle Sound, the two divisions of that inland sea of North Carolina, cut off from the main ocean by the narrow tongue of sand of which Cape Hatteras is the most easterly point. The island, which is ten to twelve miles long by three wide, had been strongly fortified by the Confederates, in hope of keeping command of Albemarle Sound, into which flow the Roanoke and Chowan rivers. Albemarle Sound can be reached from the sea only in this way, for there is no opening from it directly into the Atlantic. Batteries mounting heavy guns had been built to command the channel, which had been filled with sunken vessels fastened together by piles driven into the mud, and at the narrowest 1862.] ROANOKE ISLAND. 185 part of the island was an intrenched camp defended by about three thousand men. There was also a fleet of eight small gunboats, under command of Commodore W. F. Lynch, a former officer of the United States navy, stationed behind the line of piles. The department was in command of General Benjamin Huger, whose headquarters were at Norfolk, but the defences were in charge of General Wise, of Virginia, who had in all about six thousand men. On the morning of Friday, February 7, 1862, the Union gunboats opened fire on Fort Bartow, the strongest of the Confederate works, and soon all the forts and the fleet of Commodore Lynch were replying with shot and shell. The Curlew, the largest of the Confederate gunboats, was disabled in a few minutes and, beginning to sink, was run ashore under the guns of Fort Forrest, on the mainland. The rest of the vessels got out of reach of shot as soon as possible, and the guns of the Union fleet were then BENJAMIN HUGER. all turned upon Fort Bartow, whose barracks were set on fire by the shells. In the evening the transports containing the troops arrived, and at midnight about eleven thousand men, under General Foster, were landed at Ashby's Harbor, about two miles from Fort Bartow. The water was so shallow that the boats could not get near the shore, and the men were obliged to wade quite a distance, often sinking up to their waists. A cold rain was falling, too, at the time, and, as there was no shelter, all became wet and chilled. At dawn (Feb. 8) they moved forward to attack the Confederate battery at the narrow part of the island. Only a single roadway led to this, with deep cypress swamps on each side which the enemy thought were impassable. As soon as the Union troops appeared the Confederates opened a |