Ohio people were becoming every moment madder and
more mischievous. At first they only cut down trees to check Morgan's
march after he got by, but they soon began to obstruct the roads in
front of him; and though they burned one bridge over a river that
he could easily ford, it was not long before they learned to destroy
bridges where the streams were otherwise impassable.

By the time he reached Portland the militia were closing in around him,
and the next morning two detachments of United States cavalry struck
him, while the gunboats which had been watching for him on the river,
opened fire on him. In a few minutes the fight was over. Morgan left
seven hundred of his men prisoners behind him, and with twelve hundred
others fled north and east to seek a new way out of Ohio. The fight at
Buffington Island took place on the 18th, five days after Morgan crossed
the Ohio line into Hamilton County, and on the 26th he surrendered
with the constantly lessening remnant of his force seven miles from New
Lisbon in Columbiana County.

The prisoners were all sent for safe keeping to the penitentiary at
Columbus, but on the night of November 7th, Morgan and six of his
comrades made their escape, by digging into an air-space under the floor
of his cell with their table-knives, passing through this to the prison
walls, and letting themselves down with ropes made of their bed-clothes.
At the station where they were to take the train for Cincinnati, Morgan
was dismayed to realize that he had no money to buy a ticket; but one
of his officers had been supplied by a young lady who sent him some
bank notes concealed in a book. They rode all night in great fear and
anxiety, and just before the train drew into Cincinnati they put on the
brakes and slowed it enough to drop from it with safety. Then they lost
no time in making for the Ohio River, where they hired a boy to set them
over to Kentucky in his boat. Morgan had not found the Ohio people too
plodding for him, as Aaron Burr had, but he was quite as glad to leave
their state, which he never revisited, for he was killed the next year
in Tennessee. He left behind him in Ohio by no means a wholly evil
name, and some stories are told of him that more than hint at a generous
nature. A Union soldier whom his men had taken tried to break his musket
across a stone, and one of the Confederate officers drew his pistol to
shoot him. Morgan forbade it. "Never harm a man who has surrendered," he
s