our track only by following it
closely. General Morgan, if anxious to escape Hobson, and actuated by no
other motive, would have turned at Bardstown, and gone out of Kentucky
through the western part of the State, where he would have encountered
no hostile force that he could not have easily repulsed. It was not too
late to pursue the same general route when we were at Garnettsville.
Roads, traversable by artillery and excellent for cavalry, ran thence in
every direction. Hobson would have had as little chance to intercept us,
as a single hunter has to corner a wild horse in an open prairie. To
rush across the Ohio river, as a means of escape, would have been the
choice of an idiot, and yet such conduct has been ascribed to the
shrewdest, most wide-awake, most far-seeing Captain (in his own chosen
method of warfare), the greatest master of "cavalry strategy," that ever
lived. That military men in the North should have entertained this
opinion, proves, only, that in armies so vast, as that which the United
States put into the field, there must necessarily be many men of very
small capacity. General Morgan certainly believed that he could, with
energy and care, preserve his command from capture after crossing the
Ohio, but he no more believed that it would be safer, after having
gained the Northern side of the river, than he believed that it was
safer in Kentucky than south of the Cumberland.

The division marched from Garnettsville, shortly after midnight, and by
9 or 10 A.M. we were in Brandenburg, upon the banks of the river. Here
we found Captains Samuel Taylor and Clay Merriwether, awaiting our
arrival. They had succeeded in capturing two fine steamers; one had been
taken at the wharf, and, manning her strongly, they cruised about the
river until they found and caught the other. We were rejoined here by
another officer, whose course had been somewhat eccentric, and his
adventure very romantic. This was Captain Thomas Hines, of the Ninth
Kentucky, then enjoying a high reputation in our command for skill,
shrewdness, and exceeding gallantry, but destined to become much more
widely celebrated. While the division was lying along the Cumberland in
May, Captain Hines had been sent to Clinton county, with the men of the
Ninth Kentucky, whose horses were especially unserviceable, to place
them where, with good feeding, rest and attention, the stock might be
recruited--to establish, in other words, what was technically known