USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 2 > Part 32
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engaged the forces below, first by a charge of three regiments and a battalion of cavalry, by the capture of a battery and the repulse of its infantry support, which fell back under a wooded hill, where neither party could see the position of the other. Then placing his infantry regiments and artillery in position for an advance movement, he moved forward, alone, through dense woods and underbrush. Riding forward to discover the position of the enemy, he was fired upon by a company of sharp-shooters and shot through the heart and instantly killed. So dense was the brush that he was seen to fall by but two persons, Gen. James McIntosh, the next in command, and Lieutenant Samuel Hyams of Louisiana. Gen. McIntosh at once assumed command and while gallantly leading the charge, not more than fifteen minutes after the fall of Mc- Culloch, was also shot through the heart. Almost at the same time, Col. Louis Hebert of the Third Louisiana regiment, the next officer in rank, was captured by the enemy. No one knew who the next ranking officer was-the forward movement. was checked and, while every one was confident of victory, the absence of a commanding officer soon caused confusion, and so the day passed away. During the night Gen. Van Dorn ordered the troops to move around the mountain to Price's position. It is enough to say - omitting further details, the army retired southeasterly towards the Arkansas River, leaving in a house in the field, mortally wounded, the heroic General Wm. Y. Slack of Missouri, besides others, killed, wounded or prisoners. The retreating forces, without further engagements, reached the Arkansas River. The wagon trains, separated from the army by the Federals, under the leadership of Gen. Martin Green of Missouri and Col. B. Warren Stone of Texas, successfully retreated on a more westerly road. The Texas troops participating in the battle of Elkhorn, were the regiments of Col. Elkanah Greer, Lieut-Col. Walter P. Lane, Col. B. Warren Stone, Lieut- Col. John S. Griffith and Major L. S. Ross, Col. Wm. C.
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Young, (sick and Lieut .- Col. J. J. Diamond commanding). Col. Simms (arm broken), Whitfield's battalion and the battery of Capt. John J. Good of Dallas.1 1
1 There are so many Missourians in Texas; the position of that State in the war was so peculiar and the author of this work, which is devoted to Texian history, having come into being on its soil, the following explana- tory points are stated, viz. : Claiborne F. Jackson, as a " Douglas Demo- crat," was elected governor in 1860. He became a secessionist after the ·election of Mr. Lincoln. A State convention was called of which Gen. Sterling Price was president. That body, with certain provisos, refused to secede, but by a small majority. Gov. Jackson bluntly refused to furnish a man or a gun, in obedience to President Lincoln's call, to coerce the States. The United States military power was invoked and troops started to capture the capitol and the Governor of Missouri. The Governor appointed, under a new law of the State, Sterling Price major-general of the militia and a brigadier-general for each of the eight districts into which the State was divided. On the approach of the Federals the Governor retired from the capitol and joined Gen. Price. A small battle was fought near Boonville, the Missourians retiring. Trouble also arose in St. Louis and elsewhere. Gov. Jackson and Gen. Price, with a few followers, retired to southwest Missouri and were soon joined by many others. Gov- ernor Jackson, by proclamation, called the legislature to meet in extraordi- nary session at Neosho, which it did on the return of Price from Lexington, but it lacked two of a quorum. It then adjourned to meet at Cassville a few days later, when a quorum appeared and it passed an act seceding from the Union, and elected senators and representatives to the Confederate Con- gress. Gov. Jackson died in Arkansas a year later and Lieutenant-Governor Thomas C. Reynolds, who was in the army in that State, assumed the func- tions until the war closed. The Federal authorities commissioned Hamilton R. Gamble of St. Louis, a man of southern birth and high character, adher- ing to the Union, as Governor, declaring the office vacated by Jackson. Thus Missouri had a resident and a non-resident Governor. The State was divided in sentiment and furnished 109,111 troops to the Union cause, while her thousands of Confederate troops won renown on scores of battlefields on both sides of the Mississippi. Her valiant leaders: Weightman at Oak Hills, Slack at Elk Horn, Green at Vicksburg, Little at Iuka, Cols. A. E. Steen, Chappell, Emmett McDonald, Wm. Riley, Joseph Porter, Frizbie Mccullough, John Wyman, - Senteny, and scores of others gave up their lives for the cause they believed to be the cause of liberty.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Texas troops - Battle of Shiloh - Surrender of Arkansas Post - Gens. Homes, Kirby Smith, Texian Officers - Death of Gen. Houston.
A month after the battle of Elkhorn, that of Shiloh in Ten- nessee was fought on the 5th and 6th of April, where the Confederate cause met with an irreparable loss in the death of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, and, while the Confederates held the ground, it soon became evident that, by successive re-inforcements, the Federals would soon be in a position to reverse this state of affairs. To meet the anticipated emer- gency, Gen. Van Dorn was ordered to transfer the army of Elkhorn, through Memphis, to Corinth. The Texas reg- iments under him were embraced in this movement, and thereafter nearly all of them until the close of the struggle, served on the east side of the Mississippi, as did also the exchanged Texians who some months later were captured at Arkansas Post. At Corinth some of the Texas regiments
were reorganized. Thus Lieut .- Col. Walter P. Lane for a time succeeded Col. Greer and Major L. S. Ross succeeded Col. Stone and afterwards became brigadier and was suc- ceeded by his brother, Peter Ross, as colonel. Major Whit- field became colonel and soon afterwards brigadier-general, and a number of other changes of like character took place.
In 1861 three regiments of Texians repaired to Virginia and remained in that army until the close of the war. They were the 1st, 4th and 5th Texas Infantry, and won imperish- able fame as Hood's Texas brigade. The first colonels were Archer (afterwards killed as a brigadier), John B. Hood, who became a lieutenant-general and Louis T. Wizfall, who became a brigadier and resigned to serve in the senate.
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In the successive changes and promotions, John Marshall of Austin, became colonel of the 4th and was killed at Gaines Mill ; Jerome B. Robertson became colonel, then brigadier- general and was wounded so as to compel his retirement; Ben F. Carter became a colonel and was mortally wounded at Gettysburg ; John Gregg became a brigadier-general, and was killed around Richmond; Hugh McLeod died a colonel, at Dumfries, Virginia ; John P. Bayne of Seguin, became a colonel, as did R. M. Powell of Montgomery; Clinton M. Winkler of Corsicana also became a colonel.
One of the most distinguished of Texian regiments was the 8th Texas, better known as Terry's Texas Rangers. Its first colonel, Benjamin F. Terry, was killed at Woodsonville, near Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the fall of 1861. Its second colonel, Thomas S. Lubbock, died in Tennessee, in the follow- ing winter. (These two men won the highest praise for chival- ric daring as volunteer staff officers and are believed to have been the only Texians in the first battle of Manassas - July 21st, 1861. They hurried home and raised the regiment now spoken of, and repaired to the seat of war east of the Mississippi. ) The succeeding colonels of the regiment were John A. Wharton, who became a major-general; Thomas Harrison, who became a brigadier-general. The regiment was subsequently commanded by two or more different colonels.
In the battle of Shiloh, Texas was represented by the 2d Regiment of Infantry, commanded by Colonel John C. Moore and Lieut .- Col. Ashbel Smith, who was severely wounded; Captain Clark L. Owen, of Texana, was among the killed, and Sam Houston Jr., was captured by the Federals. There soon arrived a regiment, commanded by Colonel Samuel B. Maxey, who became a major-general, succeeded by Col. Camp. There was also a Texas regiment at Fort Donnelson, in the winter of 1861-2, commanded by Col. G. H. Granbury of Waco, who became a brigadier-general and was killed at Franklin,
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Tennessee. Capt. John W. Nowlin of Waco, and other Texians fell at Fort Donnelson.
In the summer of 1862, Henry E. McCulloch, recently ap- pointed brigadier-general, with temporary headquarters at Tyler, assumed command of the northeastern district of Texas, and until September, superintended the forwarding of troops, organized and being organized, to Little Rock and North Arkansas. Included in this number were the regiments com- manded by Colonels O. M. Roberts and R. B. Hubbard, of Tyler, Garland from Victoria, Overton Young of Brazoria,. J. W. Speight of Waco, T. C. Bass of Navarro, Edward Clark, Wm. B. Ochiltree and Horace Randall of Marshall, George Flournoy of Austin, J. R. Burnet of Crockett, those of Burnet and Bass being the only mounted regiments.
Independent of these the regiment of Colonel Matthew F. Locke, was already on the march direct for Memphis ; besides two or three regiments under command of Col. M. T. John- son, some of which had done service in northeast Arkansas. The mounted regiment of Col. Wm. Fitzhugh, of Collin County, was already in northeast Arkansas, and that officer had been severely wounded in the battle of Cotton Plant. The spy company of Capt. Alfred Johnson, of Collin, was also in that part of Arkansas. The mounted regiment of Col. Wm. H. Parsons was also already in that section, and those of Col. Geo. W. Carter, C. C. Gillespie and F. C. Wilkes, under Carter as senior officer, moved in a body for the same destination ; and, with Parsons, occupied the country between the Mississippi and White River. The infantry regiment of Col. Allison Nelson had already arrived and taken position at Austin, twenty-five miles from Little Rock, where, in Novem- ber, almost simultaneously with his promotion as brigadier- general, Colonel Nelson died 1 and was succeeded by Lieuten- ant-Colonel Roger Q. Mills. The mounted regiments of Col.
1 Hence this position became known as Camp Nelson.
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Nicholas H. Darnell, of Dallas, and Col. George H. Sweet, of San Antonio, had also arrived in that section. In Sep- tember General McCulloch arrived at Camp Nelson, and in a short time all the regiments first named, including the bat- teries of Captains Edgar, Horace Halderman and others reached the same destination, including five Arkansas regi- ments under Colonel Dandridge McRea as senior officer. There were about 20,000 men in and around this encampment, under the temporary command of General McCulloch, while Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes, with headquarters at Little Rock, was commander of the entire trans-Mississippi depart- ment. On the arrival of Major-General John G. Walker, he took command of the entire Texas division, and General Mc- Culloch of a brigade. Three or four regiments, under Col- onels Churchhill, Mills and others, occupied the old aban- doned place on the Arkansas River, known as Arkansas Post, considered by those most competent to judge as a trap from which escape, if overpowered, was next to impossible. Gen. Wm. T. Sherman of the United States army, with a large fleet of gun-boats, artillery and an overwhelming force of infantry, sailed up the river, attacked the place and after a severe battle, in which many heroic acts were performed, captured it with most of its defenders, who were imprisoned in Illinois for several months.
Briefly it may be said that, in 1863, Gen. E. Kirby Smith succeeded Gen. Holmes as commander of the department ; that on the approach of the Federals under Gen. Steele the Confederates abandoned Little Rock, and fell back to south- ern Arkansas, in which region a series of engagements took place. Maj .- Gen. Price, with a portion of the Missourians, having recrossed the Mississippi, was in this movement. Col. Maxey, having become a major-general, was also there. Brigadier-General Richard M. Gano, with a new brigade from Texas, also arrived. At a place called Poisoned Springs, Gen. Maxey in command, the Confederates gained a signal
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victory, capturing an immense wagon train, many prisoners, and killing about four hundred men; a majority of whom were negro troops. Gen. Gano was wounded and disabled. Gen. Cabell of Arkansas was a prominent actor in this en- gagement ; Walker's division had been sent into Louisiana. Gen. McCulloch commanding one of his brigades, had an engagement with Federal gunboats at Perkins' Landing on the Mississippi, without decisive results and a severe one at Milliken's Bend, in which the regiments of Flournoy, Allen and Waterhouse took part. The troops gallantly charged up to, and over the levee, but they were powerless against the gunboats, and, after some loss, retired in good order.
Gen. Smith, on the abandonment of Little Rock, established his headquarters at Shreveport, where they remained until the surrender in 1865.
Galveston, having been recaptured in the previous January, from this time onward the chief military operations in the trans-Mississippi department were confined to Louisiana, Southern Arkansas and the Indian Territory. Price's famous march into Missouri supported by Generals Marmaduke, Cabell, Shelby and others, closing with their retreat through Southwest Missouri into Texas.
THE INDIAN TERRITORY.
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The operations in the Indian Territory were numerous and deeply interesting, in which Texas was represented first by the regiments of Colonels Peter Hardeman and N. W. Battle. Lee's battery (Colonel Roswell W. Lee), Col. T. C. Bass and others; and later, by Gen. R. M. Gano, Cols. James Duff, Charles De Morse, Daniel Showalter, James Bourland, and Major Joseph A. Carroll ; and many Texians under Gen- eral Cooper of the Indian department and others.
. In addition to these the Federal navy, with transports, bearing troops, made such demonstrations on the coast of
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Texas as to cause several thousand troops to be stationed in the counties of Brazoria and Matagorda. They disembarked a sufficient force in Matagorda Bay to capture and for two weeks hold, Saluria, Indianola and La Vaca ; but they aban- doned those places and re-embarked. The operations at the mouth of the Rio Grande against Brownsville were too numer- ous to mention in detail.
The fort at Sabine Pass had a garrison of about forty men under command of Captain Richard Dowling from Houston and Patrick Hennessy as lieutenant. On the 6th of Septem- ber, 1863, a Federal fleet of 23 vessels and several gunboats anchored off the coast. A number of vessels with two gun- boats entered the harbor and opened fire upon the fort. The garrison withheld their fire until the vessels were in good range of their guns, when they opened upon them. They soon disabled the two gunboats, which they captured with all on board. The other vessels left the harbor. It was a skill- fully planned and bravely executed achievement. There was but little time for planning and but few minutes for executing it, yet no achievement was of better service to Texas. This company of forty-two men defeated the entrance of 23,000 Federal soldiers, through a vulnerable point into Texas. The Federal fleet returned to New Orleans and Texas. From mountain to sea-board saluted Dick Dowling as one of the grandest heroes of modern times.
In July, 1863, General E. Kirbey Smith placed General Henry E. McCulloch in command of the northern district of Texas, with headquarters at Bonham, where he remained until the close of the war, performing varied and important services, involving an oversight over the supply department of the army ; including the erection of workshops, the for- warding of troops and supplies to the Indian Territory, Ar- kansas and Louisiana, besides the dispatch of State troops to the coast at Velasco. He also had oversight of the Indian frontier along which the regiment of Colonel James Bour-
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land was stationed in various camps ; the Indians being at that time restless and audacious, making frequent raids, the most important of which was into Cooke County in the winter of 1863-64, in which a considerable number of inhabitants - men, women and children - were murdered. McCulloch dispatched Col. Showalter, with several companies, to the scene of carnage, but the Indians had already rapidly retreated and, though pursued by Colonel Bourland as soon as he could collect a sufficient force, including the command of Major Diamond, they succeeded in making their escape.
It was one of the coldest periods known in that country, and the men, poorly clad, suffered greatly.
Gen. McCulloch was also confronted with the collection in Journegan thicket, of five or six hundred men, composed of deserters from several regiments and a much larger number of those who refused to enter the service. Being without an adequate force to compel their submission, the General re- sorted to diplomacy, and finally induced the great mass of them to enter the service, while a small number escaped across Red River and reached the Federal lines on the Arkansas. The position of Gen. McCulloch was an unenviable one, in- volving grave responsibilities, in which the public mind was greatly agitated and great apprehensions were felt, a portion of the time, of incendiarism making its appearance; but he so managed affairs as to avoid that and other apprehended calamities.
50 DEATH OF GEN. HOUSTON.
The year 1863 is also memorable by an event that spread sorrow over the country. On the 26th of July, at his home in Huntsville, Gen. Sam Houston peacefully closed his event- ful life. Born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, March 2d, 1793, he was seventy years, four months and twenty-four days old. On his forty-third birthday he signed the Declara- tion of Texian Independence at Washington, on the Brazos.
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Nine days later he assumed command of the undisciplined volunteers collecting at Gonzales,- forty-one days later he fought and won the battle of San Jacinto. On the 22nd of October following, he was inaugurated the first constitutional President of the Republic, serving two years. He next served two terms in the Congress of Texas, and in 1841 again became President for a term of three years. By the first legislature in February, 1846, he was elected to the senate of the United States and re-elected till the close of his term in 1859. In 1859 he was elected Governor of the State and served until March, 1861, when, as has been stated, he re- tired from that position. Without referring to his prior career, as a youthful soldier under Jackson in the Creek war,- his four years' service in Congress from Tennessee, succeeded by two elections as Governor of the State, and his first service in Texas as a member of the convention of 1833 and the Con- sultation in 1835 with his dual election, first by that body, and secondly, by the Convention of Independence, as Major- General and Commander-in-Chief of the armies in Texas, the verdict of history is, and must ever be, that he was her most illustrious citizen,
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EX .- GOV. PENDLETON MURRAH
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Murrah elected Governor in 1863 - Capture of Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Indianola and Lavaca - Banks' march up Red River - His defeat at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill - Death of Col. Buchel, Gen. Tom Green and others - Battle of Yellow Bayou - Pursuit of Gen. Steele - Death of Gens. Scurry and Randall - Price's unsuccessful raid into Mis- souri.
At the election in September, 1863, Pendleton Murrah of Harrison County was elected Governor and Fletcher S. Stock- dale of Calhoun, Lieutenant-Governor, who were inaugurated in November. Governor Lubbock after two years faithful and satisfactory service, repaired to Richmond, Virginia, to join the army. He was placed on the staff of President Jefferson Davis, with the rank of colonel, and so remained, as a member of his military family, until they, together with Postmaster-General John H. Reagan of Texas, were captured together, after the fall of the Confederacy. After quite a lengthy imprisonment in Federal prisons both Reagan and. Lubblock were released and returned home and have lived to receive repeated marks of public confidence.
Governor Murrah's administration covered the last sixteen months of the Confederacy, when the clouds of disaster were lowering over the country. Suffering from consumption (of . which he died in Monterey, in 1865), and impoverished as the country was, it was not in his power or that of any human agency, to meet and fulfill the desires of the public mind.
The declaration of martial law by Hebert in 1862 produced loud complaints throughout the country and called forth ex- pressions from Gen. Houston, in his retirement, to Governor Lubbock, characterizing the order as " the most extraordinary document I have ever seen ; and, I venture to say, ever seen in (423)
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any country unless it was where despotic sway was the only rule of law." In thus stating the case Gen. Houston only gave expression to the general feeling.
On the 8th of November, 1863, Gen. Banks, in command of a land and naval force, took possession of Brownsville, Gen. Bee, as heretofore stated, retiring successfully with the mili- tary supplies at that place. In rapid succession Gen. Banks took possession of Corpus Christi, Aransas and Matagorda Pass, Indianola and, on the 26th of December, of Lavaca. It was supposed that his intention was to move up the coast and capture Galveston ; but he evacuated the coast on the 13th of March, 1864, sailed for New Orleans and thence, at the head of an immense army, up the Mississippi and Red River, seizing Alexandria, on the latter stream, on the 23d. Just prior to this Gens. Mouton of Louisiana, and Tom Green of Texas, headed an expedition aimed at Donaldsonville on the Mississippi River, a strongly fortified point. The attack proved unsuccessful. Then followed a march down the Atchafalaya Bayou, on its east side, under General Majors in command of three regiments, while Green and Mouton moved down on the west side, their ultimate destination being Ber- wick, where there was a large Federal force. They captured a considerable force at Thibodeauxville. At Bayou Bœuf they captured a fort and considerable garrison, where they were joined by Green and Mouton, who had captured Berwick. They next made a night attack on the fort at Donaldsonville, which, aided by a gunboat fleet, caused them to retire. On the bayou, six miles distant, they were attacked by the enemy, who, after an hour's severe fighting, were driven back under protection of their gunboats. In this Texas lost a gallant officer in the person of Major A. D. Burns, of Lane's regiment. These troops were soon called upon by Gen. Smith to repair to the region of Mansfield, West Louisiana, as were the troops from the coast of Texas. At this time General Richard Taylor commanded the troops between Al-
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exandria and Shrevesport, and Major-Gen. John G. Walker was in command of a Texas division.
Banks began his advance up Red River, Gen. Taylor retiring before him. By the 7th of April a fine army had concentrated in that locality, to co-operate with Taylor. Among the Texian generals were: Generals H. P. Bee, Wm. P. Harde- man, De Bray, Maj. Generals Tom Green, and John A. Wharton, and Colonels Walter P. Lane and P. N. Luckett, with an array of regimental officers of tried experience and acknowledged courage, some of whom speedily yielded up their lives for their country. At Mansfield on the 8th of April, and at Pleasant Hill on the 9th, bloody battles were fought, in which fell the lamented Colonel August Buchel, Capts. Aleck. H. Chalmers, Chauncey B. Shepard, Bird Holland, Col. Gilbert. McKay, Col. Giles S. Boggers, Maj. Clinton, Locke and a number of the most valiant sons of Texas. The result of the two days' fighting was a signal defeat of Gen. Banks' army, which retreated down Red River seeking, wherever practicable, the protection of their gun- boats. On the 14th of April, a severe battle was fought at Blair's Landing, strongly defended by gunboats. In the attack made upon the Federals, led by Major-General Tom Green that grand soldier (who won his first laurels at San Jacinto twenty-eight years before, in the same month, and had added to their brilliancy on the Texas frontier, in the Mexican war, and in this war of the Confederacy ) was killed by a cannon ball from one of the boats.
In all the contests' connected with this invasion, Generals Walker, Wharton, Bee, DeBray and the various general officers already mentioned, won distinction. Among the colonels were Roberts, Hubbard, Allen, Flournoy, Burford, Terrell, Burnett and others.
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