II. THE CAPTURE

BY ORLANDO B. WILLCOX


When it was known at Indianapolis that General Morgan, with a large
force, had crossed the Ohio, the city was panic-stricken. The State had
been literally depleted of troops to assist Kentucky, and everybody knew
it. The very worst was apprehended--that railways would be cut up,
passenger and freight trains robbed, bridges and depots burned, our
arsenal pillaged, two thousand Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton
liberated, and Jeffersonville, with all its Government stores, and
possibly Indianapolis itself, destroyed.

Nor was this all. It had been reported, and partly believed, as
afterward indeed proved to be the fact, that the State was literally
undermined with rebel sympathizers banded together in secret
organizations. The coming of Morgan had been looked for, and his
progress through Kentucky watched with considerable anxiety. It was
gloomily predicted that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of "Knights of the
Golden Circle" and of "Sons of Liberty" would flock to his standard and
endeavor to carry the State over to the Confederacy.

Morgan probably had fair reason to believe that his ranks would be at
least largely recruited in the southern counties of Indiana. The
governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, went to work with all his
tremendous energy and indomitable will, in the face of the greatest
opposition that had been encountered in any Northern State, amounting,
just before, almost to open rebellion. He proclaimed martial law, though