9
Raleigh, Wake County, N.C.
April 12, 1865
On April 12, 1865, the 9th Michigan Cavalry Regiment was noted as being in Raleigh, Wake County (Turner 3-4). Depending on the route taken, the distance between Raleigh and the regiment’s last noted movement near the Raleigh and Smithfield Railroad is 27+ miles (Google Maps).
When applying the regiment’s timeline to the information available on George Moses Horton, April 12, 1865 seems to be the earliest possibility of Horton’s freedom. Therefore, the poems written about events before April 12, 1865 were either written without insights Horton would have gained while traveling with the regiment or were reflective pieces informed by soldiers' retellings.
"Having no other hopes of freedom, our author was doomed to remain in slavery - to toil without rest, under the unrelenting eye of his master, till the occupation of Raleigh by our troops, when he escaped to our lines for protection, and is now with the writer bard at work both night and day composing poems for his book, and writing acrostics for the boys on their sweethearts’ names, in which he takes great delight."
- Captain William H.S. Banks of the 9th Michigan Cavalry Volunteers in the Introduction to Horton’s third novel revised and compiled by Banks, Naked Genius
State Capitol with former Governor David S. Reid in top hat, center. [1861] Photograph. Retrieved from the North Carolina State Archives.
References
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Google Maps, Google, www.google.com/maps/.
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Turner, Assistant Adjutant General, Col.George H., editor. “Ninth Cavalry.” Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War (1861-1865), vol. 39, Senate and House of Representatives of the Michigan Legislature, https://michiganology.org/uncategorized/IO_e7cddf59-87fb-4fd7-bf14-aa02dcb254e7.