In January, the right wing of Johnston’s hungry hawk had been broken in the Cumberland Mountains.  Early in February, Johnston had withdrawn it from Kentucky before Buell’s hosts, with its beak always to the foe.  By the middle of the month, Grant had won the Western border States to the Union, with the capture of Fort Donelson.  In April, the sun of Shiloh rose and set on the failure of the first Confederate aggressive campaign at the West; and in that fight Dan saw his first real battle, and Captain Hunt was wounded.  In May, Buell had pushed the Confederate lines south and east toward Chattanooga.  To retain a hold on the Mississippi valley, the Confederates must make another push for Kentucky, and it was this great Southern need that soon put John Morgan’s name on the lips of every rebel and Yankee in the middle South.  In June, provost-marshals were appointed in every county in Kentucky; the dogs of war began to be turned locals on the “secesh sympathizers” throughout the State, and Jerome Conners, overseer, began to render sly service to the Union cause.

For it was in June that Morgan paid his first memorable little visit to the Bluegrass, and Daniel Dean wrote his brother Harry the short tale of the raid.

“We left Dixie with nine hundred men,” the letter ran, “and got back in twenty-four days with twelve hundred.  Travelled over one thousand miles, captured seventeen towns, destroyed all Government supplies and arms in them, scattered fifteen hundred Home Guards, and paroled twelve hundred regular troops.  Lost of the original nine hundred, in killed, wounded, and missing, about ninety men.  How’s that?  We kept twenty thousand men busy guarding Government posts or chasing us, and we’re going back often.  Oh Harry, I am glad that you are with Grant.”

But Harry was not with Grant—­not now.  While Morgan was marching up from Dixie to help Kirby Smith in the last great effort that the Confederacy was about to make to win Kentucky—­down from the yellow river marched the Fourth Ohio Cavalry to go into camp at Lexington; and with it marched Chadwick Buford and Harry Dean who, too, were veterans now—­who, too, were going home.  Both lads wore a second lieutenant’s empty shoulder-straps, which both yet meant to fill with bars, but Chad’s promotion had not come as swiftly as Harry had predicted; the Captain, whose displeasure he had incurred, prevented that.  It had come, in time, however, and with one leap he had landed, after Shiloh, at Harry’s side.  In the beginning, young Dean had wanted to go to the Army of the Potomac, as did Chad, but one quiet word from the taciturn colonel with the stubbly reddish-brown beard and the perpetual black cigar kept both where they were.

“Though,” said Grant to Chad, as his eye ran over beautiful Dixie from tip of nose to tip of tail, and came back to Chad, slightly twinkling, “I’ve a great notion to put you in the infantry just to get hold of that horse.”