About the first of August we were ordered to be ready to march at a minute’s notice, and in a few days the orders came for us to fall in line. The band struck up the tune, “Going back to Dixie;” the men cheered, and some shed tears of joy. The army concentrated at Danville, Ky., and General Burnside took command of the 23d Army Corps. We remained there a few days, and then took up our march in fact for East Tennessee. We had a pretty hard time getting across the mountains, as the roads were very bad, and the horses and mules were not used to traveling; a great many of them gave out, and a large number died. We reached East Tennessee, below Knoxville, about the last of August, 1863, and marched in the direction of that city, passing between it and Bean Station. We skirmished with the rebels on our way, and then camped at Bull’s Gap for a few days. While at Bull’s Gap, I asked Col. Reeve for a detail of six men to go across the country about eighteen miles, to visit my home and find out if any rebels were lurking around in the neighborhood. When we got within a mile of Parrottsville, Cocke County, near where I lived, we sent a Union woman to the town, requesting her to see an old colored man by the name of Dave Rodman, who we knew had been living there all his life, and to tell him to come out to a piece of woodland just above the town. About ten o’clock in the night we heard the old man coming in our direction. We met him and he informed us that Henry Kilgore (the man who conscripted me), Tillman Faubion and Cass Turner were in the town; that Kilgore was at his home, and the other two men were across the street at Faubion’s house. We went into the town, and George Freshour, who was a Sergeant in my company, and one other man and myself surrounded the Kilgore house, while the other three men went across the street to the Faubion house and captured Faubion and Cass Turner. Their horses were hitched to the fence, ready to mount and make their way to North Carolina. It was raining, and the night was very dark. Freshour went to the front door and knocked; some one came to the door, and he asked if Kilgore was at home. They said that he had gone. As I was at the back kitchen door and the other man at the south door, we knew he had not passed out. Freshour insisted that Kilgore was in the house, and demanded that the door be opened. Finally they let him in. There was no light in the house. Freshour searched under the beds and every place that he thought a man could hide in, but failed to find his man. He then went into the kitchen and found Kilgore crouched behind some old barrels. We brought him out and took him across the street where the other two prisoners were. We then started down Clear Creek, which ran through the Knobs, and we had to cross it ten or fifteen times on foot logs that were narrow, smooth and slippery.