Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

There was only one feasible route open to the retreating invaders. This was down the Rio Grande, and across this single path was a Union army numbering more than three times those who essayed to escape. The Confederates forded from the east bank to the west side of the river, and for several days, both forces, Union and Confederate, marched southward along the stream on opposite sides. Now and then they exchanged shots. It was soon discovered that to avoid an engagement, which the Confederates were not prepared to risk, something must be done to escape the presence of the enemy, so superior in numbers, food and equipments. The thought of capture aroused the hearts of all the men to heroic resolve to do and dare all that was possible to avoid the humiliation and misfortune of a surrender.

From out of the conflict one thing had been brought, and these brave men were desirous of bearing this back to Texas so that the great march should not be without one trophy, and like grim death they hung to the six-gun battery of twelve-pounders that they had captured at Val Verde, a short while before. They were to haul these cannon over the wilds safety had forced them to traverse. They were to push and pull them to the crest of hills to find that they could only be lowered with ropes to the depths below, and each hour of suffering and companionship with the mute and inanimate guns would add renewed purpose to save them, if their saving was to be compassed by human determination and indomitable will.

In this campaign Joseph D. Sayers came to the front. He was destined to play a distinguished part in the war, and later in the history of Texas.

When the battery was captured at Val Verde, young Sayers was not twenty-one years of age. His cheerfulness under trial, his valor and dauntless courage attracted the attention of the leaders, and he was designated by common consent captain of the battery which held so dear a place in the hearts of all who survived this expedition. He had enjoyed a brief season at a military school, but he was a born soldier. He was authorized to select the members for the battery and with them he clung to the guns with bulldog tenacity, and brought them safely through the dangers that ever loomed up on the homeward march.

Captain Sayers, while in command of the battery, was severely wounded at Bisland, Louisiana; and also at Mansfield, Louisiana, while serving on General Green’s staff with the rank of major. At General Green’s death the young officer crossed the Mississippi River with General Dick Taylor, upon whose staff he served until his surrender in Mississippi in April, 1865.

On every field and in every sphere he met the highest calls of a patriotic service and when paroled had won the commendation and admiration of those who fought with him. His war experiences fitted him for a splendid civil career. He became lieutenant governor, and later governor of Texas. He served fourteen years in Congress, and when he voluntarily retired, his associates in the House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring that his leaving Congress was a national rather than a party calamity. Amongst Confederates, his career in the trans-Mississippi, and later in the cis-Mississippi armies, gave him universal respect, and the good opinion of the great state of Texas was manifested in the bestowal of every honor to which he aspired.

He still lives, in 1914, at Austin, and there is no one who loves the South but that hopes for lengthened years to the hero of Val Verde.

Councils of war were called, and it was resolved to leave the river, march inland, over mountains and canyons and through forests that had never been trodden by civilized man. The Spaniard, whether stirred by religion or love of gold or gain, had never ventured to traverse the country through which General Green and his men now undertook to march. Half-clad, nearly starved, footsore, with both nature and men rising up to oppose their escape, without water sometimes for two days, except what was carried in their canteens, they hazarded this perilous journey. Trees and vines and shrubbery with poisonous thorns stood in their pathway. With axes and knives, they hewed them down, and boldly and fearlessly plunged into the wilderness to escape their pursuing and aggressive foes. Over this rough, thorny road they traveled for one hundred and fifty miles; and then, guided largely by the sun, moon and stars, and nature’s landmarks, they reached the river highway along which they had marched in the early winter and struck the Rio Grande, some distance below Fort Craig. With exuberant joy, they realized that they had left their enemies behind. Nine long and dreary days had been consumed in this horrible journey. Man and beast alike had suffered to the very extreme of endurance. The average distance for each twenty-four hours was sixteen and two-thirds miles. Where the intrepid and exhausted column would emerge, even the experienced and stout-hearted guide, Major Coopwood, did not know. West, south, east, the gallant band must search for a path, and down canyons, over precipitous cliffs, where the eye of white men had never penetrated, these gallant Texans, half starved and consumed for many hours with the fierce and debilitating burnings of thirst, hunted for a path which would enable them to leave their enemies behind and miles below emerge into the Rio Grande Valley, at a point from which they could, unmolested, pursue their march to El Paso.

One-fifth of their number had died in battle or from wounds and sickness, and three-fourths of the survivors marched into San Antonio on foot. Eight months had passed since the journey was begun. More than three men each day, from either wounds or on the battle field or through disease, had gone down to death, and along the march of twelve hundred miles, on an average of every four miles beside this devious and suffering road, was the grave of some comrade, to tell of the ravages and sorrows of war.

Barring the battery which had been captured in the earlier periods of the expedition, the brigade came back empty handed, but the men who composed it brought with them a spirit of courage, a quickened patriotism, a self-reliance, a steadiness of purpose, and a conception of war that was to make them one of the most distinguished and successful organizations of the world’s greatest war; and trained for future services and succeeding triumphs and victories that would endear them not only to the hearts of the people of Texas, but to all who loved or fought for the independence of the South.