War Record
CHAPTER IV
My First Military Experiences.
R. P. Faddis was a native of Minnesota, raised and educated there, and was about nine years my senior. He was more familiar with the true conditions in the North than I was.
When war was threatened, before Sumter was fired on, minute companies were organized in many of the important towns of Texas; forts and arsenals on our frontiers were taken possession of by the State, and the garrisons shipped North. A Captain Stoneman collected about five hundred picked troops at Fort Brown and refused to surrender. Colonel Ford, an old commander of Texas Rangers, collected about three hundred men and demanded the surrender of the fort, which was refused.
An old New Orleans boat, called the General Rusk, was dispatched to Galveston for reinforcements. On its arrival there, telegrams were sent to Houston, Hempstead and Navasota, which places had organized companies, for the companies to report by twelve o’clock that night for passage on the General Rusk, for Brazos, Santiago. Twelve o’clock that night found four companies aboard of this boat, coasting down the Gulf in a storm, without ballast, rolling and making us all seasick; nearly five hundred men lying on the lower deck. We finally arrived at Brazos Santiago, where we found some other citizen soldiers in the old army barracks, including the Davis Guards, under command of Captain Odium and Dick Dowling.
After two weeks’ camping on Brazos Santiago Island, Captain Stoneman surrendered Fort Brown, and, after disarmament, was sent North with his troops. We then returned home and resumed our civic avocations.
We next organized a cavalry company, commanded by a Captain Alston; Hannibal Boone, First Lieutenant, and W. R. Webb, Second Lieutenant. I was offered the second lieutenancy, but declined, saying I would only serve in a private capacity. I was not a military man, and never expected to be. In about thirty days we were called to hasten to Indianola on horseback, where they had collected more troops, which had refused to surrender. We immediately started there and, when near Victoria, we got information that these troops had also surrendered, making it unnecessary to go any further, and we again returned home to resume our several pursuits. The company then disbanded and largely merged into a new company, organized for frontier protection against Indians. I remained at home, attending to my business with Faddis.
A couple of young Englishmen had come to Hempstead about a year before and started a foundry and machine shop, the second one in the State. They were both experts in their business and good men, receiving the financial support of the community, and soon owed our firm a large amount of money for advances to their hands and monies loaned.
In July, 1861, the same year, Colonel Frank Terry, a large sugar planter in Fort Bend County, and Thomas Lubbock of Houston, returned from the battle of Manassas, where they had served as volunteer aides on the staff of General Beauregard and through their intrepid daring and valuable services, were commissioned to raise a regiment of Texas Rangers.
Immediately upon their return, they issued a call for volunteers, to serve during the war, in Virginia; the men to furnish their own equipment. The response was prompt; in less than thirty days ten companies of over one thousand men were on their way to Houston to be mustered into the service of the Confederate States Army for the war. The personnel was of the highest order, some of the best families in South Texas were represented, many were college graduates, professional men, merchants, stockmen and planters; all anxious to serve in the ranks as privates; all young, in their teens and early twenties; rank was not considered and when tendered, refused; the main desire was to get into this regiment.