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In Carroll County Morgan himself called for dinner at the house of a lady whose maiden name was Morgan, and at table they fell into such kindly chat about their cousinship, that she ended by giving him a clean shirt, which he needed badly, and gratefully wore away.

A farmer in Morgan County took refuge in his pigpen, where one of the raiders found him trying to hide behind a fat mother of a family, who was suckling her farrow. The raider grinned: “Hello! How did you get here? Did you all come in the same litter?” A stuttering hero who had been bragging of what he would do to the enemy if he got at them, was surprised by Morgan’s men with a demand for his surrender. He flung up his hands instantly. “I s-s-surrendered f-f-f-five minutes ago!”

One of the greatest jokes of all was played upon a friend of the South in Hamilton County. My younger readers may not suppose that there could be any friends of the South in Ohio, at that time; but in truth there were a great many, and far more than there were at the outbreak of the war. Then most of us believed that it would be quickly fought to an end; but after it had dragged on for two years, when its drain on the blood and the money of the nation was severest, and the end seemed as far off as at the beginning, those who had never loved the cause of freedom could easily blow the smoldering fires of discontent into a wide and far-raging flame. It must not be imagined that the Northern enemies of the North were all bad men; they were sometimes men of conscience, and sincerely opposed to the war against the South as unjust and hopeless. But they were called copperheads, because for a long time they lurked silently among the people, like that deadly snake which used to haunt the grass of the backwoods, and bite without warning. They were still called copperheads when they lifted their heads and struck boldly at the Union cause, under the lead of a very able man, Clement L. Vallandigham, whom we shall presently learn more of; and it was an old copperhead who followed Morgan’s rear guard with the best horse the hard-riders had left him, and who tried to get speech with the officer in command. He explained that he was a follower of Vallandigham and against the war, and he pleaded that on this ground he ought to have his horses back. The Morgan colonel said they could not stop to listen, but they would hear him if he would drive along with them. He added that as some of his soldiers were worn out, the copperhead had better give them his wagon; and when the copperhead said that he could not ride, the colonel answered that he should be allowed to walk. After walking awhile, he complained that his boots hurt him, and the colonel ordered them taken off. The copperhead was obliged to follow in his stockings till the raiders camped. Then, to amuse their leisure, they taught him a Morgan song, and obliged him to dance, fat and fagged as he was, to his own music, while they applauded him with shouts of “Go it, old Yank! Louder!” till their commanding officer ordered them to harness a worn-out crow bait to his wagon, and bring him three wretched jades for the horses he wanted to recover, and let him go.

It is not known whether this behavior of his friends turned the copperheads against them or not But in spite of the Morgan raid, and in spite of all the reasons and victories of a North, the largest vote that the Democratic party had ever polled, up to that time, was cast in favor of a man who had been bitterest against the war, and who was then in exile from his native country because of his treasonable words and practices. Even three thousand soldiers in the field voted for him, and this is far more surprising than that forty thousand voted against him. As we look back through the perspective of history, our state seems to have been solid for the Union and for freedom; but this is an appearance only, and it is better that we should realize the truth. It will do no harm even to realize that the man who embodied the copperhead feeling was by no means a malignant man, however mistaken.