John R. Kelso’s Civil Wars:
A Graphic History - Episode 6

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Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 92-103.  On another occasion, Kelso encountered “a large and active-looking young man” headed in the same direction down an obscure country road.  As they walked along together, Kelso tried to engage the man in conversation, but he was “reticent and non-committal.”  Kelso decided “to break the ice at once by letting him know that I was a southern man . . . .  Without exhibiting the least expression of surprise or pleasure, he gave me a strange look that I did not like, and simply replied, ‘That’s my ticket.’”  Kelso still felt the man’s unfriendly suspicion, and John Russell became a more virulent secessionist, pouring out “a tirade of abuse against the abolition Yankee government.” Yet as he talked and the two walked down the lonely road cutting through a dense forest, the man’s “keen black eyes” only darkened.  As Kelso’s anxiety heightened, John Russell’s denunciations of the Union intensified.

Suddenly, the man had heard enough.  “All at once, with remarkable dexterity, he whipped out his revolver and held it cocked uncomfortably close to my head, exclaiming: ‘I’ll let you know that I’m a Union man.  Now what have you got to say?’”  Kelso knew it was too late to tell the truth.  He could only plead that he was just expressing his political opinions.  “‘Well,’ said he, ‘you might express your honest sentiments without so much uncalled for abuse, and without so many damned lies.’”  The cocked revolver remained at Kelso’s forehead.  Kelso could not draw his own gun, could not do anything but look the fellow steadily in the eye and, finally, keep quiet.  The man hesitated, then dropped his gun, though he still kept it cocked and in his hand, and began walking onward.  Kelso walked on too, silently.  When they came to a fork in the road, the dark-eyed man—perhaps a Union spy too?--went left, Kelso went right, and they parted without a word.