The letter in question was written by Morgan on 25 August 1863 from the Ohio State Penitentiary at Columbus. where he was then imprisoned. Morgan arrived at the penitentiary, a longstanding (and presumably secure) facility with individual cells, on 1 August 1863. He was one of some 68 Confederate officers captured on the raid to be held there; among his fellow prisoners were John Hunt Morgan himself, two additional Morgan brothers, and a brother-in-law, Col. Basil W. Duke. Precisely why Morgan and his command were sent to the Ohio state pen rather than to a military prison has been the cause of some speculation. It was certainly an unusual measure, and provoked more than a little outrage both among the prisoners and across the South, since it suggested that the Confederates were being held as common felons, ineligible for the process of parole and exchange that had been agreed on by the combatants. Initially, the Confederate government was told that the men were being held "in close confinement" as hostages for a group of Union officers (led by Col. Abel D. Streight) captured during a cavalry raid in Alabama and now in Richmond's Libby Prison (OR, Series II, Volume 6, p. 160). But it seems likely that this was something of a smokescreen, and that Union General-in-Chief H. W. Halleck was determined that Morgan remain in custody for the duration of the war, and so be denied the possibility of returning to Confederate service, either by exchange or escape. The fact that Morgan's command had looted liberally from the citizens of Ohio during the raid provided another premise for civil incarceration in that state. Much of this was rendered moot when, on the night of 27-28 November 1863, John Morgan and six others succeeded in tunneling out of their cell block and escaping over the penitentiary wall. The remaining prisoners at Columbus, including Dick Morgan, were sent to the military prison at Fort Delaware in March 1864.