Hood's Texas Brigade

The Soldiers and Families of the Confederacy's Most Celebrated Unit

Susannah J. Ural

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807167618
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

One of the most effective units to fight on either side of the Civil War, the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia served under Robert E. Lee from the Seven Days Battles in 1862 to the surrender at Appomattox in 1865. In Hood's Texas Brigade, Susannah J. Ural presents a nontraditional unit history that traces the experiences of these soldiers and their families to gauge the war's effect on them and to understand their role in the white South's struggle for independence.According to Ural, several factors contributed to the Texas Brigade's extraordinary success: the unit's strong self-identity as Confederates; the mutual respect among the junior officers and their men; a constant desire to maintain their reputation not just as Texans but as the top soldiers in Robert E. Lee's army; and the fact that their families matched the men's determination to fight and win. Using the letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper accounts, official reports, and military records of nearly 600 brigade members, Ural argues that the average Texas Brigade volunteer possessed an unusually strong devotion to southern independence: whereas most Texans and Arkansans fought in the West or Trans- Mississippi West, members of the Texas Brigade volunteered for a unit that moved them over a thousand miles from home, believing that they would exert the greatest influence on the war's outcome by fighting near the Confederate capital in Richmond. These volunteers also took pride in their place in, or connections to, the slave-holding class that they hoped would secure their financial futures. While Confederate ranks declined from desertion and fractured morale in the last years of the war, this belief in a better life—albeit one built through slave labor— kept the Texas Brigade more intact than other units. Hood's Texas Brigade challenges key historical arguments about soldier motivation, volunteerism and desertion, home-front morale, and veterans' postwar adjustment. It provides an intimate picture of one of the war's most effective brigades and sheds new light on the rationales that kept Confederate soldiers fighting throughout the most deadly conflict in U.S. history.

1

TO ARMS IN TEXAS

Mobilizing the First Thousand Texans for Virginia

The men who became Hood’s Texas Brigade sprinted toward war in 1861. While the average military-age male, North and South, enlisted with enthusiasm, only a select few rushed, at their own expense or that of their communities, to their nation’s capital. Significantly, this early willingness to live, fight, and possibly die more than a thousand miles from home to secure Confederate independence did not diminish in the years that followed secession. An appreciation for the depth of this dedication to Confederate victory is key to understanding the Texas Brigade’s development as an elite unit in the American Civil War. One of the best, and worst, representations of that nationalistic fervor was a South Carolinian by birth and Texan by choice named Louis Trezevant Wigfall. He would become the original commander of the Texas Brigade, and his political star was rising in the year of Abraham Lincoln’s election.

The Texas senator had made an impression from the moment he entered Washington City. He always made an impression. He was known for his duels, his temper, and his drinking, but Wigfall usually landed on his feet, largely due to his gift for politics. He was a physically imposing man whose dark, wavy hair fell to a grizzled beard that complemented his bear-like reputation. He had a raw but effective debate style, punctuated by “blows like those of a sledge-hammer,” a friend explained. “He was bitter in his words, his delivery was careless and slovenly to affection, but some of his sentences were models of classic force, and as clear-cut as the diamond.”¹

It was with a mix of dread and excitement that senators watched Wigfall rise to speak on March 22, 1860. He had grown weary of his colleagues’ warnings against secession. “It is all twaddle and nonsense to talk about fighting and bloodshed in the event of dissolution of the Union,” Wigfall grumbled. “What would the effect [be] . . . ? Their spindles would cease to turn; their looms would cease to move. Their ships would be laid up at their wharves,” he fairly shouted, glaring at the northern senators who represented the “their” in his speech. “You going to conquer us! Where are you going to get the money? The Union being dissolved, and your ships knocked out of the carrying trade, we can put our cotton, our rice, our tobacco, our sugar, and our molasses, upon any bottoms that will carry them the cheapest.” Leaning forward, Wigfall stared at James Simmons, the senator from Rhode Island: “I would like to know what he is going to do with his calico. Who is going to buy it? We would not. Your only market is in the South. What are you going to ship abroad? Cotton is king. We have our cotton and England is obliged to buy it.”²

Wigfall made secessionists look like moderates that election year, and he outraged the Southern Unionists struggling to find solutions to the tensions that were tearing the country apart. This included Texas governor Sam Houston, who described Wigfall as “beyond the pale of national Democracy,” a man who reflected his roots in “the South Carolina nursery of disunion.”³ Try as they might, though, moderates could not silence Wigfall, whose complaints resonated with many Texans. In 1859, they had elected Unionist Sam Houston as their governor, but as the next presidential election loomed, a race that would include a Republican candidate, Texans grew wary.

In the midst of these concerns, a massive fire swept through the growing town of Dallas, Texas, while others broke out in nearby Denton and Pilot Point. Many locals concluded that it was due to the relentless heat—temperatures had reached 110 degrees the day of the fire in Dallas—combined with the shipment of new, highly unstable phosphorous matches that had arrived in stores across the state. But Dallas Herald editor Charles R. Pryor was not so sure. He contacted Austin State Gazette editor John F. Marshall and warned that “certain negroes” had been questioned and had admitted that the fires were actually part of an abolitionist scheme “to devastate, with fire and assassination, the whole of Northern Texas.” “I write in haste,” Pryor added; “we sleep on our arms, and the whole country is deeply excited.”⁴ He shared this news with newspaper editors in Bonham and Houston as well, and soon reports of the slave conspiracy had the entire state in arms, with vigilante groups executing dozens of suspected poor whites and blacks, seeing the radicals Wigfall had warned them about at every turn. As they watched the presidential election that November, Abraham Lincoln’s victory symbolized the culmination of their worst fears.

Texans organized a secession convention and voted on February 1, 1861, to leave the Union. Delegates who opposed the vote, and even some who favored it, insisted that this decision had to be ratified by popular vote. Unionists hoped that areas like Galveston County, where merchants had close trading ties with the North and abroad, might insist upon staying in the Union. They looked for the same in Travis County, which included Austin, the state capital. Travis and the counties to its west marked the edge of the settled portions of the state. Their security was tied to the protection that the U.S. Army provided. But the statewide February election revealed that Texans favored secession three to one, and Texas left the Union. Families in the eastern counties that provided the core of the Texas Brigade rushed to organize for war.⁵

By May 22, though, news surfaced that the Confederate government was rejecting all volunteers from Texas. This war would be a short one, they explained, and the Texans might be needed for frontier defenses. In Round Rock, just north of Austin, John Walker would have applauded the Confederate Congress’s decision. It would have been the only thing he praised about the new Confederacy. He had watched the rush to war with concern, worried that it ignored the safety of thousands of Texans left at home. In late April he grumbled that “Govner Clark has ishued his proclamation ordering of the melitia of texas to be enrolled forth with & ready for Cervis for the Confederacy under Jef Davis the Dictator of the South.” Nowhere, though, could Walker find information, “not one word” on who would “protect the women & children of Texas from the Comanches or mexicans.” Apparently, the women and children of Texas, Walker continued, were to be abandoned “for the perpos of protecting South Carolina in her nulifying course.” Walker did not favor Lincoln any more than he did the Palmetto State. He was “mutch opposed to old Abe Lincoln and Black Republicanism[.] [A]ny sain man aught to be.” But, in the end, “Charity always begins at home,” and that is where Walker thought Texans belonged. And clearly they had sufficient threats in Texas with Indians and Mexicans in the West and a governor in Austin whose decisions surpassed the tyranny of “any King or Emperrer Dictator [or] Poetentate in the aniels of history.”⁶

Back east in Navarro County, however, other Texans remained determined to find some way to serve in the coming war. Corsicana newspaper editor and lawyer James Rodgers Loughridge watched the secession movement quietly. He was known for his objectivity and reason, captured in the policy of his newspaper, the Prairie Blade, to “keep the people always advised as to the position and basis of every party, and leave the mind of the reader (unprejudiced by any private notions of our own,) to decide for itself.” It was an unusual stance in a day when papers typically served as the voice of one particular party. The Blade promised to “ever be ready to strike for the liberties of the people, or arouse them to action, when the enemy is at hand—apprising them that ‘in the time of peace they should prepare for war’—that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance!’”⁷

Loughridge was a South Carolina native who had traveled west with his father in search of fresh land and a new life in the 1830s. The family had done well for itself, and by 1860, which had brought the Texas Troubles and the election of Abraham Lincoln, Loughridge was an upper-middle-class judge in his late thirties. His wife, Felicia, was in her early twenties, a well-read, thoughtful mother raising their two young daughters. Throughout the Civil War era, they shared a powerful ideological faith in the Confederacy and would turn to their Christian faith to sustain them through the challenges the war brought. The men he led would come to appreciate Loughridge’s quiet, steady determination and fearless leadership in battle. His dedication to Confederate independence never wavered. As he explained in the first year of the war: “Our independence as a nation, and the protection of those we love, must be secured. Chains & cuffs have been forged for us!” Texans had to “carry the war into this Northern Africa. Humble our foes, & force them to grant our demands. A few years ago their warriors stood side by side with ours on the burnings sands of Mexico. Now they are called upon to devestate, steal, & in every way rob us of our property.”⁸ Loughridge and another equally determined Corsicana attorney, Clinton M. Winkler, an Indianan-turned-Texan, took out ads in the local papers in May 1861 calling for a company of mounted riflemen who would serve the Confederacy as a cavalry unit or, if that were not acceptable, then as infantry.⁹

Across the state, Texas counties raised companies, and the most enthusiastic of them prepared to dash to Virginia to defend the new Confederacy. The Marion Rifles drilled in Marshall, Texas, before leaving for New Orleans on May 11.¹⁰ Three days later, the Lone Star Rifles of Galveston announced that they would soon depart for Montgomery, Alabama, before continuing on to Virginia. A few spaces were available, they told readers of the Houston Weekly Telegraph, and all a man needed to join was ten or fifteen dollars, though “none but number one men will be accepted.”¹¹ By late June, the citizens of Seguin were boasting that their company, under the command of Captain Benton, was ready to march as soon as the necessary supplies were raised. Several hundred miles to the north, the Centerville Times reported that a company from Robertson County already had their men and supplies together. The sixty-four volunteers were “each armed with one of Colt’s five shooting rifles,” while the company had gathered “1000 pounds [of] lead, 10 kegs powder, 27,000 ball cartridges and 27,000 percussion caps” along with the necessary wagons and mule teams to transport their volunteers to the “seat of war.” No one seemed to know exactly where that would be, but Texans wanted to be there.¹²

At the height of their enthusiasm, word surfaced again that none of these men would be accepted for service east of the Mississippi. It appeared that enough volunteers were available in the East to meet the military needs there. The Confederate government repeated its request that the Lone Star State drill for their own defense.¹³ Texans listened, and then rejected that option. They had every confidence in their ability both to protect both their state’s western border and to serve throughout the nation with which they had so quickly come to identify. This included the men who would join the Texas Brigade who believed Virginia was the most effective place for them to defend southern rights while also protecting Texans’ rights.

They were right to trust that they would be allowed to serve in the East. None other than Louis T. Wigfall and John Marshall, the young editor who had alerted the state to the “arsons” of 1860, were making their case in Virginia, and their requests built upon a host of arguments Davis had heard from Texans that spring. Representatives came as individuals or in pairs, each sent from local communities who ignored or were ignorant of the idea that there might be a proper chain of command for such appeals. The citizens of Galveston sent Judge L. A. Thompson, while T. S. Lubbock and George Goldthwaite represented volunteers in Houston. Capt. Philip A. Work and 1st Lt. J. J. Burroughs (later of the First Texas Infantry) argued on behalf of the Woodville Rifles of Tyler County. By late June, President Jefferson Davis, either convinced by their arguments or exhausted, approved not one, but two regiments of Texans for the battle that was sure to come. “Let Texas now ‘arm and to horse’: for the battlefield of Virginia,” their friends in Corpus Christi cheered.¹⁴

From Cass County in the north to Goliad near the Gulf of Mexico, men continued their rush to arms, organized themselves into companies, and offered their services to the Confederacy. Many Cass County men would later become Company D of the First Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, while Goliad County offered Company A of the Fourth Texas. The Lone Star Rifles of Galveston would become Company L of the First, while Washington County men could be found in Companies E, F, and I of the Fifth Texas. Even Wigfall raised a unit. Much like the hyperbolic senator, his would be a one-thousand-man elite regiment in which no man would weigh less than 170 pounds, all would be at least six feet tall and thirty-six years old, and every soldier would carry an Enfield rifle, two revolvers (Navy Colts, no less), and a “six-pound bowie knife.” Led by the daring Wigfall, it “would be the terror of the Abolition army.”¹⁵

Most of the companies were not officially mustered into service as members of Texas regiments until they arrived in Virginia, but all summer long, Texas families presented their men with flags and speeches that highlighted their faith in the liberty that they believed their new Confederate nation would protect against the tyranny of the Union. The “Robertston Five Shooters” drilled “regularly six hours a day . . . to meet, with becoming bearing, the Northern fanatics who have sworn our extermination.”¹⁶ These early volunteers for Virginia drilled not to defend their immediate homes but to travel thousands of miles to defend their new nation. In Austin, Texans took pride in this, with the editors of the Austin State Gazette arguing: “In taking troops from Texas the Confederate government passes [over] . . . troops in the Confederate States already raised, drilled, and in camps ready in an hour’s warning to respond to the requisitions made. . . . It takes these twenty [Texas] companies at [a] much heavier outlay than those of any other State. We know well the obstacles in the way of the President Davis.” They were honored by Davis’s faith in Texans’ unique ability to help save their new nation.¹⁷ It was July 1861, Texas had been part of the Confederacy for only five months, and their loyalty to it was firmly in place.

The Schadt siblings of Galveston offer a superb example of how swiftly Texas Brigade volunteers identified with the Confederacy. When Charles and William Schadt enlisted in 1861, they could not bring themselves to tell their sister in person. Instead, Caroline discovered their decision in a letter that began: “Beloved Sister . . . Don’t be surprised. . . . William and myself are going to Virginia. . . . Ere you receive this letter we will be on our route.”¹⁸ In a startling moment, Caroline realized that her only two remaining siblings had just left for war.

In 1845, Carl and Caroline Schaeffer Schadt had immigrated to Galveston from Prussia with their six children. They were part of a wave of migrants, foreign and domestic, who poured into Texas to seize the promise that the Republic offered. Galveston, recruiters promised, enjoyed a strong economy and one of the finest natural harbors in the Gulf of Mexico. Texas, they insisted, was going to be the “Empire State of the South,” and Galveston would be the next New York City.¹⁹

When the Schadts arrived, it seemed many of these predictions would come true. But the neat streets that crisscrossed the island belied the filth and disease that plagued the town. Nearly one in every two children born on the coast died before reaching adulthood. The seven-week “fever season” that swept through the “Queen City” every year took a heavy toll on the immigrants who were “strangers to our climate,” one Galveston hospital reported. Indeed, 90 percent of the patients who came through the city’s charity hospital were born abroad. But “Yellow Jack” and dysentery attacked natives, rich, and poor alike. In 1844, 400 people died of yellow fever; a decade later, 535 died during the “fever season.” William Pitt Ballinger, who served as U.S. district attorney for the State of Texas in the early 1850s, could do nothing to stop the disease that killed four of his children one summer, just as the prominent German newspaper editor Ferdinand Flake had watched helplessly as five of his children faded away one summer after another. It was the same for the Schadts. The disease likely swept in quickly, stealing the lives of the parents, Carl and Caroline Schadt, along with three of their children, in a matter of days, leaving the promise of America to four-year-old Caroline, five-year-old William, and nine-year-old Charles.

When the Civil War began, the siblings remained close, and Charles’s and William’s departure created a daunting situation for eighteen-year-old Caroline. But, as Charles explained, they had to go. “Don’t grieve about us,” he advised. “You will never have any reason to be ashamed of your brothers, we go [to Virginia] to fight and expect to have enough of it. It is hard to part, but our Country requires us, and as Southern men we must meet the call of our gallant President.” Just sixteen years in the country, and Charles Schadt was as southern, and now as Confederate, as any man in the ranks of the Lone Star Rifles. And Caroline could only read his admonitions and pray that her brothers’ transition from “Galveston street parading,” as William called it, to real soldiering would go as well as Charles promised.

Not far from Galveston’s shores, another Texas family watched their son rush off to war. Thomas Fletcher did not support secession. As his neighbors raged against what they saw as federal transgressions in the 1850s, Fletcher had steadfastly defended Union. By the end of the decade, Tom Fletcher was quieter, but no less determined in his views. He had moved his family from St. La...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 TO ARMS IN TEXAS
• 2 THE RUSH TO VIRGINIA
• 3 RECRUITS ON THE DRILL FIELD
• 4 THE POTOMAC BLOCKADE
• 5 SEEING THE ELEPHANT
• 6 SLIPPING THE BRIDLE
• 7 THE COST OF REPUTATION
• 8 A LACK OF LEADERSHIP
• 9 REUNION WITH LEE
• 10 DETERMINATION & DEFEAT
• 11 WAGING PEACE
• CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX