I must admit, I have done a lot of things but never just forgot to load and kept trying to get it to fire.

Although!!! you did the right thing.. you realized that something was wrong, you attempted to check for the problem, unfortunately misread the information the ramrod was giving you, but actually did the right thing necessary had you dry balled the rifle.

So stop beating yourself up. You operated in a safe manner, you did what you felt necessary to solve the problem and then when you found out you were really off the mark on what was going on, gave me a heck of a good laugh. Life is good...