Their dislike to travel night and day by wretched roads, over mountains and unbridged rivers, and their sensitiveness to ridicule for imputed cowardice, are not strong enough to overcome their love of personal liberty and life. Many or all of them who received the Provost Marshal General’s message--some of whom were of less note but still liable to violent treatment if they were captured--speedily took their leave of home and its comforts and were conducted by Capt. A. J. Ricks, eight miles to the picket lines. Among the refugees were John Baxter, William G. Brownlow, Samuel R. Rodgers, Thos. A. R. Nelson, O. P. Temple, John M. Fleming, Samuel Morrow and M. M. Miller of Knoxville, and John Netherland and Absalom A. Kyle of Rogersville. It was after nightfall and raining heavily when they started, and their transit on horseback through the darkness upon a road shortly before traveled and reduced to mire by 6,000 or 7,000 hogs that had been brought in to supply the army, could not fail to attract attention from people of the country through which they passed.[37] Despite all perils and difficulties the journey was at length safely accomplished. The company thus delivered from impending harm, might have been joined at the start by some other citizens of less prominence, had they been included in the message and given an opportunity to depart. One of that description had been informed in succession by his personal friends of both parties, that it was intended, if the town fell into the hands of Longstreet, to seize and hold him as hostage for a contumacious enemy of the United States whom Gen. Burnside had found it necessary to send to Camp Chase. He gave no heed to the warning, because he rested in his strong impression of the town’s security from enemies, but this mental persuasion was disturbed on the afternoon preceding the exodus of noted public men, as just related. Passing along the street in utter ignorance of events then transpiring between the hostile armies not far from Loudon, he met a fellow-citizen of capricious loyalty, who had been known as a “Southern man” during the Confederate _regime_, but was understood to have publicly thanked the Lord upon the advent of Gen. Burnside’s army, for “bringing in our friends.” In the conversation that ensued on the street, the person of versatile opinions indulged in such fault-finding with the United States Government, its policy, &c., as to suggest a strong suspicion that he was adapting his sails to a contrary wind. Acting upon this conjecture, the citizen who had been forewarned of his danger if the town should change its masters, went immediately to the house of Gen. Carter, and found his staff in a state of unusual excitement. In reply to his question, “What is the matter?” the visitor was told, “Longstreet is marching upon Knoxville with, it is said, 20,000 men. Burnside is retreating from Loudon, fighting as he comes. We do not know what is going to happen.” Said