Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1913 — RED SHIRT WITH A HISTORY [ARTICLE]

RED SHIRT WITH A HISTORY

Garment Was Worn During Civil War by Edward Smith of Los Angeles—Now on Exhibition. An old red calico shirt that waa worn in the Civil war by Major Edward D. G. Smith, a brother of Dr. S. L. S. Smith of San Angelo, is on exhibition in the window of the Pioneer drug store. The shirt has a history, and it has been carefully preserved by Dr. Smith, says the San Angelo Weekly Standard. Major Smith was wearing it when, as superintendent of Confederate transportation on Red river, in 1963, he was captured by the federate at Fort De Rusey, La., with a garrison of 230 Confederate soldiers. He had it with him in federal prisons in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Major Bmkh's career as a Confederate prior to his capture, including service in the battle of Shiloh, Miss., and Perryville, Ky., among other encounters with the federate. At Perryville a bullet wound in his chest proved fatal years afterward, although he was out of the hospital in Just a few weeks’ time and received another bullet in his body at Nashville. In a letter from Memphis to Dr. Smith In San Angelo, in 1886, the major describes the *battle of Shiloh and discredits the story that the Confederates did not surprise Grant at that place.