this beginning john porter's career with john hunt morgan. it goes all the way through until june 1863 when he is captured with -- in a company with tom hines, tom hines isn't captured, but john porter is. and union patrol catches up with hines' company and this company is on an advanced scout from morgan. morgan's whole division is coming into kentucky in advance of crossing the ohio river and entering indiana and ohio where morgan is ultimately captured. but tom hines is captured there in near barge town, kentucky. and from there, he is sent to johnson island a prisoner of war depot at sandusky bay. he stays there for 19 months. 19 months that broke him down terribly. john porter was born in 1839, he'll die in 1844. the exposure to ice, snow, cold on lake erie and the privation probably broke him down to such a degree that he died young. and you see that a lot among prisoners of war. in all wars and but particularly in the civil war. there's another great story that porter speaks of. and this is a story that you don't find in any other memoi

how he fund john hunt morgan. he didn't and award and he never knew about john hunt morgan until the confederate army retreated toward mississippi in february of 1862. he heard about morgan who was only commanded a squadron of confederate cavalry mostly from lexington and they serve as the rear guard for the confederate army and retreated out of nashville for decatur, alabama. he wanted very much to join this command. so after the fighting at shiloh he and his cousin, who also -- they set about to find john hunt morgan. morgan, by july of 1862 was entering kentucky in the first great raid into kentucky to destroy rail heads and supply depots for the union army. so he and andy set out partly on horseback and partly on foot from decatur, alabama to escambia, alabama all the way to clark county, kentucky which is a neighboring county where we are right now. he goes to clark county because they hear that morgan will come in to kentucky on this raid and maybe they can find him. and they go to clark county because one of

tom hines would be captured in ohio with john hunt morgan and both be incarcerated in the ohio penitentiary and would be tom hines who would mastermind of the estate of john hunt morgan and six of his men out of the ohio penitentiary in 1863 to in canada he was the architect of what became the northwest conspiracy, an attempt by the consider it department to cause an uprising in the illinois and indiana to free all the confederate prisoners of war come kim douglas in chicago and more ten in indianapolis and then hopefully take over the government, and because there's a lot of copperheads strike of their people opposed to lincoln, and so that conspiracy collapsed. but tom hines became known as the most dangerous man in the confederacy as a result of the exploits, and after the war jon porter and tom hines would be law partners and boeing greenup kentucky and john porter would be elected the commonwealth attorney briefly out of the county and tom hines, his partner, was elected a circuit judge, and then a judge on the kentucky court of appeals which was the highest appellate court in the stat

and he ultimately became a lieutenant in the ninth kentucky cavalry that rode with john hunt morgan. and, um, he was probably prouder of having ridden through the war with john hunt morgan than he was almost anything he ever did in life. and he penned this memoir for his daughter whose name was minnie belle. he married shortly after the war was over, and his wife died after giving birth to minnie belle. and so he raised this child along with his two sisters and a brother in bowling green, kentucky, a county, warren county, it's a neighboring county to butler, and bowling green is the county seat, so a rather large community in southern kentucky. and so he raised minnie belle, and he wanted minnie belle to understand what he did during the war. and so in 1872 he set about writing these memoirs. and they were titled then "memoirs of my experience in the war for southern independence." and they were really meant, as he says in his little preface to these memoirs, that they were meant for her. and, um, he bemoaned repeatedly in the his memoirs how he had ancestors who were in the revoluti