[4V50 Gary]

Like buying a car, don't get taken. Take your time, shop & compare.

NASHVILLE DAILY UNION, May 15, 1862, p. 2, c. 4

Fast Horse Swapping.

A physician of Wilson county informs us that while riding along the road some ten miles from Lebanon, on the morning when Morgan's gang was cut to pieces, he met a rebel soldier galloping along on a horse half-dead with fatigue. The rebel drew his pistol on the physician and ordered him to swap horses immediately. Which urgent demand our friend readily complied with, thus getting a very poor in exchange for a very fine horse. The physician mounted and jogged along on his new steed for near half a mile, when he met another guerrilla, also riding as though the devil was close after him. Rebel number two also presented his little hostile arrangement, and requested an immediate transaction in horse flesh. The doctor again complied, and got on his second horse. He trudged slowly along the road on his worn-out and panting Rosinante for nearly a mile when a third guerrilla came plunging towards him, who also, like his predecessors, made an exhibition of belligerent machinery, accompanied with a proposition to swap horses, and a request to be d----d quick about it. The doctor had by this time got so used to such sudden commercial transactions, and losing any foolish attachment for his horse, just in proportion to the rapidity of his exchanges, that he smilingly got down a fourth time, and then, like John Gilpin, "got up again." Long before he reached his home he repeated this horse swapping, or rather had it repeated for him, no less than six times, he being rather passive in the business. The last horse he got was a very fine one, and better than the first. We have heard of places being so hot that "there was no time for swapping knives," but it appears that the hotter a place gets the better it is for swapping horses! This is the way in which these guerrillas get horses. Whenever a horse gets fatigued the first rider or team is topped and a trade is forced.