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or bundle of fodder from his barn; leaving his family to starve, or live on the charity of neighbors, frequently but little better off than themselves.
Randolph County furnished nearly five hundred men who actually took up arms in the service of the United States, enlisting in whatever organization they found convenient, as they made their escape from the rebel conscripting officers into our lines. They were to be found in regiments from Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio - in fact, in every command that I visited in a pretty extended range during the war, I found some of my friends and neighbors from Randolph County. Very many of these men never came back. They went out to fight. In every battle they felt that they were fighting, not only for the cause of their country, but directly for their homes and their families; for wives and children left in [[strikethrough]]of[[/strikethrough]] the hands of relentless enemies; for homes which they may never see again, but which, if they ever did repossess them, they would hold under the protection of the Union, and the General Government. They were not men to skulk from danger. Their graves on every battle-field attest to their bravery,