at they adopted a practice of withdrawing their
pickets at night, from the points where they stood during the day, some
miles to the rear. Captain Morgan after making this discovery, resolved
to anticipate them at the place where they made their picket base at
night. He remained with a few men demonstrating all day in sight of the
outpost pickets, and just before nightfall made a circuit which carried
him far to their rear, previously to their withdrawal. He reached the
place (where he learned that a party of twenty-five or thirty stood
nightly), about the time that it was fairly dark.

It was a small house, in a yard some eighty or ninety feet square,
surrounded by a picket fence of cedar. He had with him nine men, of
these he detailed five to hold horses, and with the other four; all
armed with shot guns loaded with buck-shot, he lay down behind the low
fence. The horses were sent back some distance into the bushes. Captain
Morgan instructed his party to hold their fire until he gave the signal.
It was his intention to permit the party, which was expected, to pass
and then fire upon the rear--hoping thus to drive it down the road
toward his own camp and, following rapidly, capture it. When it arrived,
however, about twenty-five strong, the officer in command halted it
before it reached the point where we lay, but at a distance of not more
than thirty feet from us, so that we could distinctly hear every word
which was uttered. The officer in command talked with his guide for some
minutes, sending men to reconnoiter upon each side of the road in the
meantime. At length the officer ordered his men to enter the little
yard, and they came right up to the fence, and just upon the opposite
side from our position. Captain Morgan shouted the word "Now," and each
man arose and fired one barrel of his gun. The roar and the flash so
near, must have been terrible to men taken completely by surprise. The
officer fell immediately, and his party, panic stricken, filed toward
their camp. Another volley was delivered upon them as they ran. A chain
picket was established between the point where this happened and the
camp at the asylum; and we could hear shots fired at rapid intervals,
for minutes, as the fleeing party passed the men on post. Several
wounded men fell in the road, after they had fled a short distance.

A short time before he left La Vergne, Captain Morgan selected fifteen
men for an expedition to Nashville. Avoiding the h