e trains. He was
disappointed, the news got around and none came. Twenty or thirty wagons
which were coming from Scottsville, under a small guard, were also
turned back--the escort getting the alarm after he had made all his
preparations to capture them--so that his expedition was more barren of
the spoils of war than he had hoped. But his main object--to persuade
the enemy that they could never safely count upon his being "gone"--was
perfectly accomplished. While his men on the south side of the river
were waiting for him, six transports, loaded with troops from
Monticello, passed down toward Nashville. The men on the boats did not
know who the cavalry were, and our men were afraid to fire upon them,
lest they might endanger Captain Morgan and their comrades with him, on
the other side. Immediately after his return to Murfreesboro', he set
out to rejoin the army, and met at Shelbyville that portion of his
command which had been encamped on the Shelbyville and Nashville road,
and which, in obedience to his orders, had also repaired to the former
place.

Here we remained for two or three days and then marched on in the track
of the army. While at Shelbyville, the first and only causeless stampede
of our pickets and false alarm to the camps which occurred during our
squadron organization, took place. Ten or fifteen men were posted on
picket some eight miles from the town toward Nashville, near a small
bridge, at the southern end of which the extreme outpost vidette stood.
From tales told by the citizens, these pickets had conceived the idea
that the enemy contemplated an attack to surprise and capture them, and
(perhaps for the very reason that they had so often played the same game
themselves) they became very nervous about it. Late in the night, two
men came down the road from toward Nashville in a buggy, and drove
rapidly upon the bridge without heeding the vidette's challenge--he,
taking them to be the enemy, shot both barrels of his gun at them and
fled to alarm the other videttes and his comrades at the base. The whole
party became so alarmed by his representation of the immense number and
headlong advance of the enemy, that, without stopping to fight or
reconnoiter, they all came in a hand-gallop to camp. The officer in
charge sent the vidette who had given the alarm, in advance, to report
to me. I immediately got the command under arms and then questioned him.
He stated that the enemy's cavalry came on, at the cha