Porter was admitted to the practice of law in Morgan- town, the county seat of Butler County, in 1868, and he began practicing there. Two years later he moved to Bowling Green and entered into a partnership with none other than his wartime comrade and kinsman Thomas Henry Hines. That partnership was probably initiated by Hines in an effort to aid his ailing and grieving cousin. In Bowling Green, though, lived Porter's two sisters, Martha Cullie Porter McKay and her family and Elizabeth Margaret Alice Porter, a spinster, as well as his young unmarried brother, Nathaniel Anthony Porter. Porter's sisters and brother must have also encouraged his move. In due time, Thomas Henry Hines and his wife, the former Nancy Sproule of Woodbury, would have two children, a daughter, Alice, and a son, William.12
Porter was elected commonwealth's attorney for Warren County and briefly served in that capacity. Hines was elected to the Kentucky Court of Appeals, then Kentucky's highest court, in 1878 and served as chiefjustice from 1884 to 1886.13
John M. Porter died on June 26, 1884; he was only forty- five years of age. Although there is no record of the circumstances surrounding Porter's death, one has to suspect that his nineteen-month incarceration at Johnson's Island Prisoner of War Depot and his exposure to the frigid and crowded conditions there were contributing factors. Porter was buried in the McKay family plot in Fairview Cemetery in Bowling Green. Fourteen years later, on January 23, 1898, Thomas Henry Hines died. He, too, was buried in Fairview Cemetery, just across the narrow lane from Porter. In death, as in life, the two were inseparable.14
Porter wrote his war reminiscences, entitled “A Brief Account of What I Saw and Experienced During the War for Southern Independence,” in, probably, 1872, while he was living in Bowling Green and practicing law with Thomas Henry Hines. That his family's history had been lost and his own service during the Civil War would be lost if he did not write his memoirs were of great concern to him. “To address this defect as to my own military service, so far as I can, is one motive behind this memoir,” Porter wrote in the preface to his war reminiscences. Thus, so future generations of his own family would know what he did during the war, Porter penned these memoirs. That they are published here for a twenty-first-century world to read would probably be beyond Porter's wildest dreams.
Although Porter appears to have been a very humble and modest man, he does extol the prowess and virtues of his fellow Confederates, and of the men in Morgan's command in particular. Even though his war reminiscences were not written to be published, Porter, nevertheless, frequently interjects in them his belief in the justness and rightness of the cause for which he fought. He clearly wanted his descendants to understand that his motives to fight for the Confederacy were just.
Porter paints the Civil War as a conflict between right (his cause) and wrong, freedom (for which he fought) and tyranny. In that sense, Porter wrote like so many other Confederate veterans who penned reminiscences; he wrote them to uphold what he believed were the virtues of the Confederacy and those who fought for it and to rebut the writings of the victors, which hailed the Civil War as a victory over the wrongs of slavery. These reminiscences may thus be understood by some to be Porter's small, very private contribution to what David W. Blight refers to as the “literary wars” of memory that marked memoirs written by veterans of both sides of the conflict in post-Civil War America.15
Porter's war reminiscences are positively authentic. The copy provided to me by Steve Carson of Lexington, Kentucky, a collateral descendant of Porter, is one of four that I know to exist. One copy is owned by Porter's collateral kin Cora Jane Spiller of Bowling Green, Kentucky, another is in the collections of Western Kentucky University, while a fourth is in the collection of the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville.
The authenticity of Porter's war reminiscences can be found in the text itself. Every individual named by Porter—and there are many—was found. If the person was in the army, he was located in the correct military unit as related in the story. If he or she was a civilian, the location of his or her residence mentioned by Porter matches the records. Porter's kinship to many of the individuals mentioned by him was ultimately confirmed in every instance. Porter's reminiscences of his travels during his military operations are readily traceable by the use of modern-day Kentucky county roadmaps. Where Porter identifies dates for specific military operations, they are correct. Frankly, I found Porter's memory of names, dates, and the details of his military exploits to be absolutely remarkable.
John Marion Porter's war reminiscences form a remarkable record of the Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee. Apart from that, they represent one of the very few war reminiscences extant that were penned by members of Morgan's command. That and the stirring events about which Porter writes make his memoirs so extraordinarily valuable and compelling.
PREFACE
I propose to place upon record a narrative of events, commencing during the year 1861, continuing through the sanguinary years of 1861-1865, embracing the period of the War for Southern Independence, and closing with the final surrender of the Confederate Armies to the forces of the United States. I propose to present how, in a few brief months, the whole country was roused to arms; how, in a short time, the citizens of every hill and valley, every plain and mountain, every city and town in Kentucky, from the Big Sandy to the mouth of the Tennessee River, from Kentucky's mountain gaps to her lowlands, were driven to almost frantic excitement by the near approach to her borders of hostile armies. I propose to present how her citizens, deluded by the cry of “neutrality,” deemed that they were secure from the Confederate army upon the one side and from the armies of the United States upon the other, until, bound too securely, they found her borders trod at almost the same moment by troops in Southern and Northern uniforms, in whose bosoms rankled the bitterest hate towards each other.
And, while I shall give an account of many things which shall be personal to myself and concerning those who were and are still dear to me by reason of an association of four long and eventful years, I trust that the charge of egotism will not be made or inferred from the manner in which I write, and from the frequent use of the first person. To make this record what I desire it to be necessitates the style of composition I adopt. Julius Caesar, in giving to his countrymen—and through them to the world and to us—his excellent and incomparable history of the Gallic Wars speaks always of himself in the third person and thus avoids any idea of egotism. If that course is not adopted here it is because it cannot be done so as to render this record all that I wish it to be.
It should be the desire of every one to preserve for his family everything of importance which has occurred and which is occurring. I have often regretted that I know so little of the family, or, I should rather say, of the ancestry whose name I bear. Farther back than the war of the Revolution in 1776, my knowledge is meager and vague indeed. That some of my ancestors, not more than one generation removed, were participants in that war is undoubtedly true. But, beyond this, the information in my possession is limited, except that they were of Scotch-Irish descent and emigrated at an early day to the Colony of Virginia, and settled in the vicinity of the Staunton River and Appomattox River. This want of information exists because there has been no record kept, so far as I know, by any member of a very numerous and now widely dispersed family.
To supply this defect, so far as I can, is one motive to this attempt. If those who come after me are in any wise gratified with this record, or if they are by this means made familiar with the stirring events which occurred while I served in the Confederate States Army, and if they take an interest in reading what I have here written, all my desires will be satisfied.
I dedicate these pages to those whom I love tenderly and of whom I am proud, feeling confident that their charity as a mantle will cover all its defects, and that their interest in it will prompt them to preserve it and hand it down as an heirloom, as it were, to those who come after them.
John M. Porter