TEXAS UNITS FIGHTING ELSEWHERE: 1861-1863
While the leaders of Texas were busily concerned with the well being of their own state, the men of Texas were actively serving the Confederate cause elsewhere. From the very outbreak of the conflict Texas units made proud names for themselves on all fighting fronts.
The Lone Star State was represented in northern Virginia by three regiments in the brigade of John Bell Hood. This brigade was formed at Dumfries, Virginia, in September of 1861, and consisted mainly of the First Texas Infantry, the Fourth Texas Infantry, and the Fifth Texas Infantry.[51] After intensive training first under L. T. Wigfall,[52] and then under Hood, the Texans were baptised in fire at Elthan’s Landing, Virginia, in May of 1862. Hood’s men had been ordered to protect the Confederate retreat route from Yorktown to Richmond. Suddenly, the Texans ran into a Union skirmish line of unknown strength near the York River. In a running fight, the Texas units chased the enemy for a mile and a half, taking forty prisoners. Hood, frequently apologetic in his reports, mentioned that the density of the forests had limited his movements to such a degree that he was unable to take more captives.[53]
In June, Hood’s Brigade was attached to Jackson’s Corps. Particularly at Gaines’ Mill the unit showed promise of its future greatness. It overran fourteen Union artillery pieces and captured an entire enemy regiment. The cost of these gains was not light, however, as the Fourth Texas lost all of its field grade officers and the entire brigade had five hundred and seventy casualties. General Jackson, on later viewing the site of the Texans’ triumph, declared “the men who carried this position were soldiers indeed!”[54]
The brigade’s next major action was at the Second Battle of the Manassas in the last days of August, 1862. On the 29th, the Texans engaged in a counter-attack that gained six Federal colors. An advance on the following morning cost the Union a mile and a half of ground and four artillery guns. Although Hood had been elevated to the command of a division, he could proudly claim that the Texans’ “gallantry and unflinching courage” were “unsurpassed within the history of the world.” In this great struggle the Fifth Texas lost seven color bearers.[55]
Then, in September, the brigade gained even greater renown at Antietam. At one point the Texans and one other brigade were pitted against two full Union corps. Hood described the event as “the most terrible clash of arms, by far, that has occurred during the war. The two little giant brigades of this [Hood’s] division wrestled with this mighty force, losing hundreds of their gallant officers and men but driving the enemy from his position and forcing him to abandon his guns on our left.”[56] The division’s rear guard action saved the Confederates from near certain annihilation, but at the end of the Antietam campaign only a fraction of the command could still be classed as “effectives.” The Texas Brigade lost five hundred and sixty men out of eight hundred and fifty-four present for duty. The First Texas lost over eighty percent of its original two hundred and twenty-six members.[57]
The next large scale action in which the brigade participated was at Gettysburg in July of 1863. During a series of attacks against Little Round Top Mountain, the men found that “as fast as we would break one line of the enemy, another fresh one would present itself, the enemy reinforcing his lines in our front from his reserves.”[58] The fighting became so heated that the First Texas ran out of ammunition and had to resort to emptying the cartridge boxes of fallen comrades and enemy dead. When darkness fell on July 2, members of the command piled rocks in front of themselves to protect their forward positions on the slope of the hill. The Texans continued to hold the right of Lee’s line throughout July 3, while Pickett’s great charge against the Union center was broken and the Southern army was bloodily repulsed. Over four hundred of Hood’s men were casualties in this great battle that marked “the high tide of the Confederacy.”[59]
Elsewhere, in the great campaigning area of the Kentucky-Tennessee-Mississippi region, Texas regiments were likewise prominent in military campaigns of this first half of the war. At Shiloh, described by Grant as “the severest battle fought at the West during the war,”[60] Texas was represented by Terry’s Texas Rangers (the Eighth Texas Cavalry), the Second Texas Infantry, and the Ninth Texas Infantry. On April 6, 1862, the Rangers shielded the Confederate left by scouting and blocking enemy flanking sweeps. The next day they protected artillery positions and stood by to lead a counter-attack that never materialized.[61] On the opposite extremity of the gray line the Second Texas cut its way forward for two miles on the first day’s fighting. It captured an entire Union artillery battery and, in the vicinity of the Hornet’s Nest, it secured the surrender of Prentice’s Sixth Union Division. One-third of the members of the Second Texas were casualties by the time General P. G. T. Beauregard ordered a general retreat on April 7. Beauregard had assumed command of Confederate forces after the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston of Texas in the afternoon of the first day.[62] Meanwhile, for two days the Ninth Texas had spearheaded attacks of the Second Brigade, First Division, of Bragg’s Corps.[63]
At Iuka, Mississippi, in September, 1862, Whitfield’s Texas Legion (twelve dismounted companies) and the Third Texas Cavalry (dismounted) captured a Union battery after a one hundred and fifty yard charge into the mouths of the guns. Then, as a Federal regiment sought to flank them, the Texans redressed their line in such a way as to force the new challengers back for several hundred yards. So close was this combat that a company officer of the legion killed the opposing regimental commander with a dragoon pistol. The Texas unit lost almost one-quarter of its men.
One month later the Second Texas Infantry gained fame at Corinth, Mississippi. For two days their courageous commander, Colonel William P. Rogers, led charges against the enemy’s heaviest fortifications. Finally, Rogers managed to plant his regimental flag on the wall of the inner works. Seconds later, however, the Texans were forced to pull back before a Union counter-thrust. In the withdrawal Rogers escaped about twenty paces when his body was riddled by hostile fire. So brave had been this Southern leader that the United States forces gave his body a worthy funeral with full military honors. The Second Texas lost about half of its men in these two days.[64]
In the December battle at Stone’s River (Murfreesboro), Tennessee, a number of Texas organizations were attached to Bragg’s army. Terry’s Texas Rangers, the Fifteenth Texas Cavalry, the Tenth Texas Cavalry, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry, the Ninth Texas Infantry, the Fourteenth Texas Cavalry, and Douglas’ Texas Battery were involved in this conflict. The Rangers raided the enemy’s rear and gained intelligence while the rest of the Lone Star State units, except Maxey’s Ninth Infantry, were grouped together in Ector’s First Brigade of Hardee’s Corps. The Tenth Texas Cavalry took three stands of enemy colors and six artillery pieces, and the Eleventh Texas Cavalry captured three batteries and drove the Union forces back for three miles. The remaining Texas units participated in heavy fighting.[65]
Then, in the spring and early summer of 1863, two Texas organizations, the Second Texas Infantry and eleven companies of Waul’s Legion particularly distinguished themselves in the defense of Vicksburg. When Grant’s men closed in on the river town, the Second Texas was charged with safeguarding the vital Baldwin’s Ferry Road approach to the Southerners’ line. This was judged to be “the assailable point of our lines; the face of danger; the post of honor; the key of this portion of our works of defense.”[66] After preliminary probes against the Texans’ positions, on May 22 the Union threw five regiments against them. Colonel Ashbel Smith, the Second Texas regimental commander, reported that during this horrible struggle “my men received the enemy with a most resolute fire; my cannon belched canisters: my men made the air reel with yells and shouts as they saw the earth strewn with the enemy’s dead. One of the enemy’s regiments staggered and was thrown into utter confusion. Our men, too, fell thick and fast; the detachment of cannoneers suffered particularly.”[67] At times during the days’ fighting, opposing infantrymen were firing within five paces of each other. Cotton bags that had been stacked to shelter the Confederates were torn open by Minie balls, and as whisps of cotton floated through the air some were ignited by the gunfire. In fact, these bits of burning fibre had to be snuffed out by the Texans’ bare hands when they endangered the unit’s ammunition supply. As the unsuccessful Union attackers fell back that night, the Second Texas, all but broken as a military organization, estimated that five hundred United States dead were left on the ground before it.[68]
Beleaguered Vicksburg fell on July 4, but Colonel Smith could claim that his unit was justifiably proud even in defeat.
The Second Texas Infantry achieved one victory—they utterly destroyed any prestige which the enemy might have heretofore felt when the soldiers they should encounter should be Texans.... When the Second Texas Infantry marched through the chain of the enemy’s sentinels, the spirits of most of the men were even then at the highest pitch of fighting valor. Released from the obligation of their parole, and arms placed in their hands, they would have wheeled about, ready and confident.[69]
Also noteworthy in the great Vicksburg campaign was Waul’s Texas Legion, commanded by Colonel T. N. Waul. On May 22, all but two of its companies were defending the outskirts of the town. As an element of General S. D. Lee’s Brigade, these Texans, “Unprotected by breastworks, ... were subject to the most galling fire, and well they sustained the noble cause for which they fought, never relaxing, but [fighting] with increased ardor, until the last of the enemy was prostrated or driven from their sight.” The loss was very severe, particularly so in officers, every officer of the staff present being either killed or seriously wounded.[70] Later, when two Alabama regiments were unable to take a heavily defended United States flag on a close-in parapet, General Lee assigned the task to Waul’s men. They “moved to the assault, retook the fort, drove the enemy through the breach they entered, tore down the stand of colors still floating over the parapet, and sent them to the colonel commanding the Legion, who immediately transmitted it, with a note to General Lee.”[71] At the time of surrender, Waul’s unit had suffered almost seven hundred casualties at Vicksburg and had lost more officers than all the other regiments of the oversized division to which it was attached.[72]
These were instances of but a few Texas units involved in several major engagements. Elsewhere dozens of Lone Star State regiments were proving their military prowess. Naturally not all units were as outstanding as Hood’s, but in the great majority of cases Texas organizations performed in a very impressive manner.