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Terry's
Texas Rangersby
Mike Cox | |
One
year before the American Centennial, most of the nation celebrated the signing
of the Declaration of Independence on Sunday, July 4, 1875.
Three days
later, only a decade after the bloody Civil War that nearly made moot what happened
in Philadelphia in 1776, the surviving members of Terry’s Texas Rangers gathered
at Barton
Springs in Austin for a reunion.
That was Wednesday, July 7. |
Surviving
Members of Terry's Texas Rangers Gather at the Northside of their Monument on
the Capitol Grounds in Austin (No date available)
Courtesy United Daughters of the Confederacy, Shropshire-Upton Chapter, Columbus,
Texas |
First
a note on nomenclature: Though popularly known as Terry’s Texas Rangers, the command
organized in Houston in 1861 by B. F. Terry and T.S. Lubbock was officially the
8th Texas Cavalry. They were regular gray-clad soldiers, not Indian-fighting Texas
Rangers. Still, some of them had ridden as rangers before the war.
So
why didn’t the ex-Confederates have their get together on Sunday after church
rather than wait until the middle of the work week? Was it simply a matter of
scheduling or were those battle-scared rebels who had their annual meeting in
the Capital City that year still somewhat unreconstructed?
The account
of the event published in the Austin Daily Statesman did not address the calendar
issue, but it’s not hard to imagine that men who had fought hard for the South
and lost many friends in the process still had a little trouble getting too fired
up over the Fourth of July.
The Texans who rode with the Terry and Lubbock,
and later under Col. John A. Wharton, paid a high price for their beliefs. Of
1,700 who served in the regiment, the 8th Texas consisted of only 150 men by the
end of the war.
“Many of them died from exposure and disease, many were
killed in battle, many were seriously wounded and forced to retire from the service,
and many became prisoners of war,” The Confederate Veteran magazine later noted,
“but it is said that no one of them ever deserted the cause. They were the…swiftest
horsemen, the surest and best shots, and of the coolest and bravest…[unit] that
ever charged a battery.” |
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Terry's
Rangers monument close-up
TE photo |
No
matter why the veterans set July 7 rather than July 4 as their meeting date, they
had a fine time along Barton
Creek that afternoon.
“The weather was warm,” the newspaper reported,
“but the surroundings of the place are so delightful that this objection was to
a great extent overcome. The clear, limpid, dashing stream added its cheerfulness
to the scene while soldierly hands once more clasped each other in brotherly affection.”
Though Barton
Springs had long been a popular venue for picnics and other outdoor activities,
the adjacent land was then private property. The Confederate veterans met under
the pecan trees on land belonging to fellow former rebel William C. Walsh, who
owned a nearby quarry.
Capt.
Rufus King, the ranking surviving officer of the regiment, called the reunion
to order at noon. Early in the war, King raised a company in Bastrop County and
eventually became the ranking captain in the regiment. The newspaper filled in
the rest of his service record:
“He remained with the Rangers until
the battle of Shiloh, where he received three balls in his body, one passing through
his shoulders, another shivering in his arm and the third spending itself in his
thigh.”
After King spoke, he asked another veteran to offer the invocation.
Following the prayer, the captain called the roll. Sixty veterans answered present.
The
highest ranking former Confederate on hand at Barton
Springs that hot afternoon was Gen. Braxton Bragg, a North Carolinian, 1837
West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran then working as a railroad inspector
in Galveston.
The namesake of future Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Bragg had
been one of only eight general officers to lead Confederate forces during what
some sons of the South call the “War of Northern Aggression.”
Though
not the Confederacy’s brightest star, for a time Bragg stood at the top of the
chain of command of the 8th Texas. Known by historians as a well-organized if
sometimes incompetent sourpuss, Bragg was asked to speak to the Texans.
“Like a soldier…[he] obeyed,” the Statesman reported. The article continued: “His
remarks were on the style of ‘a little more grape,’ [as in “have another drink,
boys”] and were enthusiastically received by his hearers. His towering form, noble
demeanor, suavity and age, are such as to command the respect of any one.”
Barely a year later, only 59, Bragg dropped dead while walking with a friend
down the street in Galveston.
While his body was shipped to Mobile, Ala. for burial, some say his spirit remains
in Texas in the form of an apparition known as Bragg’s
Light. |
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Unknown
Undated Event on the Southside of the Monument
Courtesy United Daughters of
the Confederacy Shropshire-Upton Chapter, Columbus, Texas |
As
many of the former rebels meeting at Barton
Springs followed Braggs’ “order” and enjoyed distilled spirits or cold brew,
regimental chaplain R.S. Bunting closed out the formalities with a reading of
another officer’s order, the April 30, 1865 swan song of Gen. “Fighting” Joseph
Wheeler, commander of the corps that included Terry’s Texas Rangers:
“Gallant Comrades—You have fought your fight: your task is done. During a four
years’ struggle for liberty you have exhibited courage, fortitude and devotion.
You are the victors of more than two hundred sternly contested fields. You have
participated in more than one thousand conflicts of arms. You are heroes! Veterans!
Patriots! The bones of your comrades mark battle fields upon the soil of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
You have done all that human exertions could accomplish.” |
| Reunion
of Terry's Texas Rangers in San Marcos (No Date) |
© Mike Cox
"Texas
Tales"
July 3, 2008 column
More on Texas Towns
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Announcement
Mike Cox's "The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900," the first of
a two-volume, 250,000-word definitive history of the Rangers, was released by
Forge Books in New York on March 18, 2008
Kirkus Review, the American
Library Association's Book List and the San Antonio Express-News have all written
rave reviews about this book, the first mainstream, popular history of the Rangers
since 1935. | |
| Books
by Mike Cox - Order Here |
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