Knoxville. Had he been allowed to go they might have avoided the ambush into which they fell the next day. They were sent back to prison, not, however, to Andersonville, for Sherman was already on his march to the sea, but they were sent to Columbia, and afterwards with other prisoners transferred from place to place until the final surrender at Appomattox.
The first years of the war the lines were kept open along the Shenandoah, through Maryland, through West Virginia, along the mountains in Tennessee, and wherever Union prisoners needed guides, but later in the war the raids of Stoneman, Sheridan and others had picked up and appropriated the most intelligent guides. Yet the time never came during the war when prisoners trying to escape were not safe for the time being in trusting themselves to the guidance of negroes.
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