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[101] were readjusted and the command bivouacked for the night with skirmishers a quarter of a mile in advance.

In this attack a part of Deshler's brigade fell back in some confusion on Smith's brigade, and when General Smith urged them forward, says Gen. A. J. Vaughan in his report, instead of going to the front they obliqued to the left. In the darkness it was not observed that Smith's two right regiments were uncovered, and at a halt in his immediate front, General Smith rode forward for an explanation of the delay, accosting a line in front, which proved to be that of the enemy. He was fired upon, and with his aide, Capt. Thomas H. King, was killed. At the same time Gen. A. J. Vaughan, then colonel of the Thirteenth, was fired upon under similar circumstances, and the shot intended for him killed the gallant Capt. John Donelson, acting assistant adjutantgen-eral. Colonel Vaughn ordered the Thirteenth to fire, and the slayer of Donelson paid the penalty with his own life. In his official report, General Cheatham said: ‘In this night attack Brig.-Gen. Preston Smith, of Tennessee, received a mortal wound, from which he died in fifty minutes. At the head of his noble brigade, of which he had been the commander as colonel and brigadier-general for two years and a half, he fell in the performance of what he himself with his expiring breath said was his duty. Active, energetic and brave, with a rare fitness for command, full of honorable ambition in harmony with the most elevated patriotism, the State of Tennessee will mourn his fall and do honor to his memory.’

Colonel Vaughan, commanding the brigade after Smith's fall, reported the capture of 300 prisoners and the colors of the Seventy-seventh Pennsylvania regiment, sent back to the division commander by Capt. I. B. Carthel, Forty-seventh Tennessee. Under a misapprehension General Cleburne reported the capture of the colors by his own command.

During the battle of the day and night Cheatham lost

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