Part 6 : 1861-1865

Shortly after the creation of the Confederate States of America, the new nation took up the effort, begun by South Carolina, to expel the United States garrison from Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked the fort. Within a few months, U. S. President Abraham Lincoln would order all Confederate ports blockaded and the Confederate government would declare that a state of war existed between the two countries. As usual in Colorado County in those days, the march to war was greeted with some enthusiasm. There had been a militia unit, called the Colorado Guards, in Columbus even before the war. In March 1859, the unit's captain, William J. Herbert, had gone to Austin and secured armaments for his men. Thereafter, though they began taking target practice, they remained mostly a ceremonial unit. On April 21, 1859, for instance, they marched through Columbus to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. On the Fourth of July, they leaped into even more social prominence. On that day, the Colorado Guards were the focus of a barbecue held in the grove of old, majestic live oaks north of Columbus that would soon become known simply as "the grove" and would regularly host such events. Before the barbecue, a number of Columbus women who had purchased a flag for the unit presented it to them, amidst the requisite speeches, at the courthouse, and the Guards responded with a demonstration of their military prowess. The barbecue featured more speeches, and a special recitation of the United States Declaration of Independence by local schoolteacher Philip Riley. To conclude the festivities, that evening, the Guards sponsored a ball at the courthouse. The patriotic fervor of the evening would soon ring hollow.¹

The peaceful existence of the Colorado Guards continued long enough for them to parade again through Columbus, and to conduct another ball, this one on November 18, 1859. By then, they had found a battle to fight. Two days before the ball, they met and appointed seven of their members to gather the necessary arms, ammunition, and horses so that the company could go to Brownsville and participate in the fight against Juan Nepomuceno Cortina. Two days after the ball, on November 20, the Guards, numbering about fifty men under Captain Herbert and his lieutenants John Cunningham Upton, James H. Bullington, and Reddin S. Hartsfield, left for the Rio Grande. It is quite possible that they never made it to the subsequent engagements with Cortina, for no record of any glorious exploits on the border by the Guards seems to have survived. Whether or not they were involved, Cortina had been effectively defeated before the end of 1859, and the Guards had certainly returned to the county by the following month, in time for four of the modern revolvers with which they had been furnished to be stolen. In February 1860, the state reorganized its militia, eliminating the legal basis for the existence of the Colorado Guards. In March, the government called for the return of the rest of the precious pistols for use elsewhere. The now defunct Guards, perhaps hoping to be enrolled as one of the new state militia companies, evidently did not comply with the request for several months. They had paraded in Columbus, in their full dress uniforms, for the last time in February 1860. By the time of their last parade, Howal A. Tatum and John Samuel Shropshire had replaced Bullington and Hartsfield as lieutenants.²

Though the Colorado Guards had expired, the men who had formed the company remained eager for military action. So did the public at large. In February 1861, one citizen wrote the Colorado Citizen to encourage the county to buy arms and ammunition "in case of invasion by any foe," adding, to ensure that his request would be taken seriously, that such weapons would also be useful "in case of a servile insurrection." Shortly after the secession referendum, Herbert gathered about eighty Colorado County men to again go to Brownsville, this time to help expel the same United States forces that they had attempted to help little more than a year earlier. Herbert and his men were slated to leave on March 1, but were not needed after David Emanuel Twiggs surrendered all his troops in Texas, as well as their arms and supplies. As the U. S. forces gathered at Indianola for evacuation, Fort Sumter was attacked and a state of war proclaimed. The Texas Confederates rushed to form companies to capture the departing, now-enemy, forces. Two companies from Colorado County, one under Herbert and the other under Upton, sped to Victoria to join the gathering army, which readily accomplished its mission.³

In the first few months of 1861, Colorado County men organized several new militia companies. A few days before the attack on Fort Sumter, the recently organized Colorado Blues, under Captain John Mackey, paraded through Columbus. By May, when a cavalry company, with Shropshire as captain, Upton, Timothy G. Wright, and Weston B. Yates as lieutenants, and Samuel E. Goss as company surgeon, and a company of Germans, with John W. Mathee as captain, were formed in Columbus, the county contained at least nine companies. In addition to Mackey's, Shropshire's, and Mathee's companies, there was a company under John T. Harcourt, a company at Harvey's Creek, two companies, one of Anglos and the other of Germans, on the Bernard Prairie, and a company under John K. Hanks, who had just purchased the local livery stable, at Alleyton. That summer, the county boasted at least fourteen militia companies. Five, including Shropshire's cavalry company, a company styled the Colorado Home Guard under Mathee, the Columbus Greys under Mackey, and the Colorado Rovers under Captain Suffer B. Lamb, were headquartered at Columbus. Two, John Duff Brown's Oakland Greys and John C. Benthall's Oakland Guards, were headquartered at Oakland. Two others, Francis Marion "Dick" Burford's Colorado Grays and David A. Hubbard's Harvey's Creek Mounted Infantry, were headquartered at Harvey's Creek. There were three companies in the German settlements, two, under Captains Mathias Malsch and Helmuth Kulow, with headquarters at Frelsburg, and the third, the Alleyton and New Mainz German Home Guard under Ernst Liermann, with headquarters at New Mainz. There was also one company headquartered at Eagle Lake under Thomas Scott Anderson and a company, the Crasco Hickory Company, under John Zwiegel, in the southwestern part of the county. All the companies were subject to be called to duty defending some part of the state for up to three months, but only one, the Columbus Greys, are known to have been called. In October 1861, they were sent to the mouth of the Brazos River.⁴

The same month that the Columbus Greys were called to the coast, a Columbus blacksmith named Andrew Jackson Nave decided to make his own, unique contribution to the war effort. On October 14, 1861, he requested of and received from the commissioners court, the sum of $250 to build a cannon. He got right to work. By October 23, he had finished a breechloading, smooth bore cannon which fired a three and one half pound ball and which had a rate of fire, he claimed, of twenty shots a minute. Nave hoped to build more such weapons, but evidently never did. The cannon he had built reportedly was sent to Fort Velasco and there used in combat under his direction.⁵

Earlier, other county men had begun making even stronger commitments to the war effort. With their appetites whetted by the easy duties of the militia, on July 10, 1861, a group of volunteers met in Columbus and formed themselves into a company of infantry for regular army service. They elected Upton captain, James Daniel Roberdeau first lieutenant, Bullington second lieutenant, Andrew Campbell Burford third lieutenant, and adopted the name Echo Company. In late July, as the company set out for Virginia, it was presented with a tri-colored flag inscribed with the motto "The Echo---Our Defenders" by Cynthia Campbell. On July 30, they were camped near Harrisburg with five other companies, and the trials of military service had already begun to set in. Numerous men were sick with chills and fever. The company's original third lieutenant, Burford, apparently did not accompany the company, for by the end of the month, he had been replaced by Edward Collier. On August 5, four or five more men left Columbus to join the company at Harrisburg. The expanded company started for Virginia on August 13. Among its members was one of the three brothers who owned the local newspaper, Benjamin Marshall Baker, and the schoolteacher, D. H. Henderson, each of whom began as sergeants. The artist Howal A. Tatum, who had recently declared as a candidate for congress, the physician Thomas T. DeGraffenried, and the attorney William John Darden, who had represented Colorado County in the sixth legislature, all had enlisted as privates. So had William Augustus Bridge, William H. Carlton, David M. Currie, Blythe W. Haynes, John M. Jenkins, William W. Pinchback, Calvin B. Tanner, and Enoch Thaddeus Wright, who, like Burford, were all the sons of local slave owners. The company also included three men who managed plantations, James Reynolds, John B. Wall, and Joe H. Whitehead, and five German-born men, Emil Auerbach, Emil Besch, Max Cabaniss, Jacob Hahn, and Fred Koepke. They soon suffered their first casualty. Andrew Legg started with the company for Virginia, but fell ill and returned to his father's home. He died there on August 25. Nonetheless, the men were in a jolly mood. For one thing, they had not yet seen combat, and still believed they were on their way to adventure and glory. For another, they had money. A small amount of money that had been raised at an 1860 benefit for the Columbus cemetery had been donated to the company, and, on August 17, the county had donated another $400. The young soldiers stripped to their underwear and gleefully splashed through the Louisiana swamps. They arrived at New Orleans on September 8 and there boarded a train. Riding the rest of the way, they reached Richmond, Virginia, on September 17 and waited to go into action. Before the end of the year, they would receive a number of blankets, socks, and other supplies collected and shipped to them by Collier's law partner, Richard V. Cook. The blankets were probably carried to the company by David Ellis Putney, who arrived on October 28 to serve in place of Thaddeus Wright. Wright had recruited Putney as a substitute so that he could accept a commission as a second lieutenant in the company that Cook planned to raise in Columbus.⁶

Upton's company, which then included 84 men, was admitted into the Confederate army as Company B of the Fifth Texas Infantry, a part of General John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade, which was a part of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The company was fated to see many battles, and suffer many casualties. Over the first few months of its existence, a number of men who were ill suited for service were discharged. Bridge, Reynolds, and Tanner were all discharged before the end of February. Earlier that month, Roberdeau and Darden were sent back to Texas to gather more recruits. Between March 11 and April 11, 1862, they signed up 37 more men in Columbus. Among the new recruits were the artist and schoolteacher, Gustav August Behné; newspaper men James Davis Baker and A. Hicks Baker, who were both brothers of Ben Baker; physicians Charles M. Terrell, Thomas W. Harris, and Jaquelin Smith Bruce; Robert Phillip Burford, who was the brother of the company's original third lieutenant; William Jenkins Harbert, who was William Harbert's son and Darden's brother-in-law; George Andrew Gegenworth, a German who had recently moved to Columbus to operate a cafe and ice cream parlor; August Enke and Henry Senne, two more Germans; Riley Luther Scherer, the one time schoolteacher; Albert Newton Cooper and William Jasper Cooper, each a son of Dillard Cooper, who had been captured with James Walker Fannin in 1836 and survived the subsequent massacre of his men; and one eager old veteran of the San Jacinto campaign, Sion Record Bostick. Another of the new recruits, William Ryan, was destined never to see action. Ryan enlisted on March 17, but on March 28, before the recruits left for the front, he was stabbed to death, allegedly by a man named John A. Pearce.⁷

Roberdeau, Darden, and the new recruits missed a brutal march through rain, hail, and snow, as the Echo Company, undersupplied with blankets and tents, got its first taste of the bitterness of a Virginia winter. Their first taste of battle was soon to follow. Scherer, who had become the last man to enlist in the company, ironically, was the first to die. He was killed at a skirmish at Eltham's Landing, Virginia on May 7, 1862. In addition, the man who had been the company's original first sergeant, W. D. Denny, but who had been promoted captain and transferred to regimental headquarters, was also killed, and Darden was captured. The Echo Company lost three more men at Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862, another, Koepke, at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862, and one more at Freeman's Ford on August 22, 1862. Upton, meanwhile, had made a favorable enough impression to be promoted to major and, like Denny, transferred to regimental headquarters on June 1, and then to be promoted to lieutenant colonel on July 17. He was replaced as company captain by his original first lieutenant, Roberdeau. Behné, Harbert, and Hahn also departed peacefully. That July, Behné was assigned to the intelligence office, Harbert was discharged because of a disability, and Hahn was given a furlough to Texas to recover from the wound to his foot he had received at Gaines Mill. Hahn would never return to the company, choosing instead to join another unit, a unit which remained in Texas throughout the war. Darden, however, was returned to the company in a prisoner exchange in August, and he and the rest of the still diminished Echo Company swung into action again at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862. There they sustained 22 casualties. Three men, including Pinchback were killed. Upton, who was no longer a part of the company, was also killed. Nineteen men, including Ben Baker, Bruce, Wall, Whitehead, and Captain Roberdeau, were wounded. Two weeks later, on September 17, 1862, four men were killed at the bloody battle at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. One of the four was Hicks Baker. He left behind him a wife to whom he had been married for some two and a half years and a nineteen-month-old son. In addition, Darden was wounded and again captured. Five days after the battle, the secretary of war discharged eight members of the company. Among them were Bostick and Harris, who were discharged because they were too old, Burford, who was discharged because he was too young, and Jenkins, Tatum, and both Cooper brothers, who were discharged for various disabilities and diseases. A few days later, on October 8, Jim Baker was also discharged for a disability. Terrell, who was also overage, had to wait until November 20 for his discharge, having been transferred, with DeGraffenried, to medical duties four days before the secretary of war's September review of the Echo Company's roster.⁸

On August 17, 1861, about a month after Upton organized his infantry company, John S. Shropshire, who had been an ardent Unionist before the war, completed organization of a cavalry company for national service. On that day, Thomas G. Wright, the son of wealthy cattleman James Wright, enlisted and was made first lieutenant. David A. Hubbard, a farmer and former militia captain, and Pleasant J. Oakes, a merchant, were enrolled and named second lieutenants. John David Campbell, the son of the county's chief justice, and Wils L. Bonds, the son of a county commissioner, also signed on. Campbell became a corporal and Bonds a private. Robert G. Morgan, Jr., was about half finished building a house for William Stapleton near Harvey's Creek when he threw down his hammer and enlisted with Shropshire. William G. DeGraffenried abandoned his medical practice and his position as county coroner. Former district surveyor John I. Stolts; a schoolteacher named A. L. Grow; a grocer and saloon keeper named Manly C. Knowlton; and two sons of Methodist clergyman and slave owner Wesley Smith, Joshua S. Smith and James A. Smith, all signed up as privates. Stephen Monroe Wells, who had been teaching school at Colorado College and studying law on the side, and two youths who had listed themselves as students in 1860, George Huff Little and William Howard Shaw, joined them. Sixteen-year-old James Harvey McLeary, the son of a Harvey's Creek doctor, did as well. Two sons of Armstead Carter, Robert H., who gave his occupation as "gentleman" to the 1860 census taker but who had recently gone into partnership with his step-father in a livery stable, and Ashley B., a practicing attorney and sitting justice of the peace, rushed to enlist. Their step-brother, Alphonso B. Halyard, went along. Two other sets of brothers, Peter L. and Suffield Clapp and John T. and William F. Landrum, joined them. So did Samuel Henderson and Henry Beckwith, both of whom had been clerks in the same store when the 1860 census man came around. Four men, including Shropshire, Thomas Wright, and Oakes brought along slaves to take with them into the field. On the day they were organized, the commissioners court voted to allocate $600 to Shropshire's company. Two days later, after a short ceremony culminated by the presentation of a banner that was decorated with the words "Victory awaits you," the company left Columbus and headed to San Antonio to join the brigade being organized there by Henry Hopkins Sibley to invade New Mexico. With his young son ill and his wife pregnant, Shropshire did not leave Columbus until a day or two later. Shortly after catching up with his men in San Antonio, he sent a message to Columbus calling for about 20 more men. William Lott Davidson, whose father, A. H. Davidson, had been a secessionist crusader, was one of those who responded. Chief Justice Andrew Monroe Campbell also came to San Antonio, though only to deliver clothing that had been gathered for the company, and presumably to visit his son.⁹

Shropshire's company, and the rest of Sibley's Brigade, set out for New Mexico in late 1861. Moving up the Rio Grande River, shadowed by U. S. forces, the two armies met at Valverde, where, on February 21, the second and final day of the battle, Shropshire's company suffered 23 casualties, only one of whom was killed on the battlefield. Henderson was burned in the face and neck by a nearby explosion, but continued to carry out his duties. Shropshire, for his efforts, won a promotion to major and was given command of four companies. Wright was elevated from first-lieutenant to captain to take his place. Beckwith and a half dozen other members of the company were transferred to the new Valverde Battery, a unit created to operate the several artillery pieces the army captured at Valverde. Sibley, wisely or not, continued up the Rio Grande, stopping briefly at Socorro to establish a hospital. There, Company A left its men who had been seriously wounded at Valverde, including Lieutenant Hubbard and privates Augustus L. Baker, Robert Carter, Suffield Clapp, John Henry David, A. L. Grow, Manly Knowlton, Albert Gallatin Mitchell, Sanford Putnam, and John Stolts; and two men who were ill, Ashley Carter and Robert Morgan, Jr. Shortly afterward, Hubbard, David, and Putnam would die of their wounds, and, on March 11, Ashley Carter would die of his disease.¹⁰

The rest of Company A continued with the brigade toward Albuquerque. On March 16, Captain Wright was designated an assistant quartermaster and transferred to regimental headquarters. Wells was elected to replace him as company captain. He must certainly have been disappointed in his first taste of combat as company captain. At a skirmish at Apache Canyon on March 26, he led his command too far forward, then failed to retreat in time. Though none of his men were killed or seriously wounded, a great many, including John O. Allen, Ferd E. Caldwell, William L. David, Thomas F. Goode, George R. Guinn, Joel Thomas Kindred, Eli T. Matthews, William H. Newsom, August Schubert, James Watt Tinkler, Lovard T. Tooke, and John B. Winfree, all of whom had been residents of Colorado County two years earlier, were captured. Tooke was captured in a somewhat comical manner, when he and another man both tried to hide under a rock which was only big enough to conceal one of them. Two days later, in a brutal, bloody encounter with a fresh federal army at Glorieta Pass, Sibley's campaign in New Mexico was brought to its effective end. What remained of Company A sustained four casualties. Three men were wounded, and one, Seaborn Jones, was killed. Wils Bonds, who had been promoted lieutenant, was apparently captured. He would died at Fort Union on April 14. In addition, the company's original captain, Shropshire, was also killed at Glorieta, shot in the head, reportedly by a Union private named George W. Pierce. Shropshire's slave, who subsequently became known as Bob Shropshire, returned to Company A and stayed until the war's end.¹¹

Sibley's Brigade began falling back down the river, pursued though unmolested by U. S. forces. Finally, to avoid further confrontations with the federals, Sibley left the river, embarking on a 100 mile detour through the desert. On April 1, federal forces overran the hospital at Socorro and captured the surviving men who had been left there by Company A in February. Their former mates, meanwhile, were slogging through the desert. There, Little, who had carried the company flag at Valverde, proved himself an able forager. Nonetheless, the retreat was a nightmare. Three of the Colorado County members of the company, Captain Wells and Privates William Landrum and Joshua Smith, made it only as far as Fort Bliss, where they died in the hospital. The remnant of the defeated brigade staggered into San Antonio in July 1862, and was furloughed until November. Company A had only about thirty remaining men. Oakes, the only surviving original officer to remain with the unit, had assumed command. In October, Oakes recruited about thirty more men from Colorado and Fayette Counties, including William M. Garner, who was the son of slave owner Thomas Haslip Garner, John J. Maggett, Charles Seymour, and S. W. Slack, who were the overseers at the large plantations belonging to Charles William Tait, Andrew Monroe Campbell, and William Lucius Adkins respectively; and Richard J. Putney, to replace the men who had been killed or captured. Shortly afterward, the 5th Texas Cavalry reassembled at Hempstead, and were ordered to proceed to Monroe, Louisiana. Before they left, however, General John Bankhead Magruder called on them to assist in recapturing Galveston on January 1, 1863. Though Oakes' veterans and his new recruits participated in the battle, they suffered no known casualties.¹²

A few months after Shropshire's company left town, and even as Upton's Echo Company was enrolling more recruits in Columbus, Richard V. Cook was raising another company in town. Cook's company, which was formally organized on March 22, 1862, would be admitted into the Confederate army as Company D of the 21st Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and would spend most of the war in Texas. The fortunate men in Cook's company would have very different wartime experiences from those in Upton's or Shropshire's companies. Cook's men would see very little action and suffer very few casualties. Many would be detailed to other duties around the state; some who were got to spend a considerable amount of time at their homes. Cook's company sustained one of its few casualties on April 18, 1863. Stationed near the Sabine Pass, Cook's second lieutenant, Thaddeus Wright, was dispatched with some thirty other men to capture a handful of United States soldiers who were known to have come ashore the previous evening for reconnaissance. Thirteen federal soldiers came ashore again the next morning. The waiting Confederates captured three, but in the course of pursuing the other ten, one of whom would be killed and five of whom would be captured, Wright was shot through the head and killed.¹³

As fate would have it, Cook's company narrowly missed a chance to play a major role in one of the most celebrated battles of the war in Texas. A few months after Wright was killed, on September 2, 1863, Cook asked that his company be sent from the Sabine Pass to Beaumont so that it would not be negatively influenced by what he characterized as "the recent mutinous demonstrations" by the other parts of the battalion. On September 3, the army agreed to Cook's request. His company's stay in Beaumont, however, would not last long. On September 8, the United States attacked the Sabine Pass. The defenders at the pass observed the approach of the Union fleet and sent a message to Beaumont. Cook, there on duty, received the message, but did not report it to his superior officers until six o'clock the next morning. The distraught commander, Leon Smith, immediately ordered Cook's company back to the Sabine Pass, where they arrived too late to do anything but take a number of prisoners from the invading fleet, which had been defeated by Confederate batteries under the command of Richard W. Dowling.¹⁴

The departure of so many men, naturally, caused great changes within the county. Perhaps most visibly, with the Baker brothers and their employees in the military, the Colorado Citizen went out of business. Even before their enlistments, however, the effects of the war could be seen on the newspaper. Because it was unable to acquire paper, it nearly suspended publication in June 1861. It continued only after Caleb Claiborne Herbert secured a small supply of paper from friends in Galveston. Two months later, still lacking paper, the Bakers cut the size of their newspaper in half. Merchants too, must have had a hard time staying afloat. Many, if not most local stores, had for years stocked their shelves with merchandise purchased in New York. Naturally, after the war broke out, such commerce stopped. Local merchants may have enjoyed a brief surge in profits, as they apparently refused to pay for goods that had only recently been obtained from their New York vendors. But soon, the awful economic pressures of the war certainly began taking their toll.¹⁵

Money itself was in short supply, and many of the men who had departed to fight in the war had left behind wives and children who were scarcely able to support themselves. On March 17, 1862, the county addressed both problems. First, the commissioners court adopted a special property tax of six cents per $100 valuation to pay expenses generated by the war. Then, they voted to print and immediately issue their own currency, and to use the scrip to support the families of men absent in the service of the Confederate government. They named several men to committees for each of seven precincts in the county. By May, when the county paid the $70 printing bill, the scrip had been printed. For the next few months, it presumably was issued via the various precinct committees. But in November 1862, the county took over at least one of the administrative details. The commissioners voted to employ someone to take a census of the wives, children, and mothers of absent soldiers, and to have it completed by January 1.¹⁶

The census was presented at the January 5, 1863 meeting of the court. It listed 60 families. Each family was allocated either $10, $20, $30, or $40, evidently depending on its size, to last until March 1. On February 17, the court laid out the second payments, these to last until May 1. The second census contained 64 names. Families were again paid between $10 and $40, but the court also ordered that one woman, Ann Howat, be provided with a rented house. They also specified that the families of anyone who was working in the service of the government as a teamster were not eligible for support, and imposed a huge tax increase (25 cents per $100) to help pay for the war. The third list of dependent families, filed in April, contained 70 names. Some families were to receive as much as $100. The number of dependent families kept rising, from 89 in August, to 96 in November, to 119 in February 1864, to a high of 220 in February 1865. The final list, filed with the court on April 3, 1865, contained 156 families.¹⁷

As the rolls of dependent families swelled, taxes continued to rise. On May 18, 1863, the county imposed an additional tax of 5.25 cents per $100 valuation to be used specifically to support soldier's dependents. For the same reason, on January 3, 1865, the court ordered certain merchants and professionals to pay annual fees and, for some, a kind of sales tax. Wholesale merchants were required to pay $150 and retail merchants, $50. Both also had to pay one-half of one percent of annual gross sales. Retail liquor dealers were required to pay a $100 fee plus 2.5% of gross sales. Druggists, auctioneers, peddlers, cotton compressors, warehousers, and ferry operators had to pay a flat fee of $50 per year. For slave traders, and pool hall and bowling alley operators, the fee was $100. Lawyers and doctors were assessed annual fees of $10, plus 1% of annual gross receipts. Hotel and livery stable keepers had to pay $25; restaurateurs, half that much. Butchers had to pay only $5, but every employee of a railroad, from the president on down, had to pay $10, and the railroad itself, one-fourth of one percent of gross receipts. Stagecoach lines were taxed at 50 cents per mile of route inside the county.¹⁸

In an effort to use the money more efficiently, in February 1865, the county began buying certain necessities at a fixed rate and distributing them to the dependent families. Despite the county's attempt to save money via more efficient purchasing, and the directly visible use to which the increased taxes were being put, several merchants balked at them. In March, a number of merchants presented a petition to the commissioners stipulating that the new taxes levied against them were too high and ought to be reduced. The court refused, on the grounds that reducing the tax on merchants would be unfair to the others who had been taxed, but did, in response to another request, exempt one hotel keeper, Gideon W. Cottingham, from the tax because he had been using his hotel, the Colorado Anchor House, as a home for two soldiers.¹⁹

On December 25, 1861, the state legislature passed a law which again reorganized the state militia, and made, with few exceptions, "every able bodied free white male inhabitant" between the ages of eighteen and fifty subject to service in the militia. Generally, militia service consisted of parading around at a company assembly every other week. Those who missed the assembly could be fined up to $5, though the company captain could waive such fines. Doubtless, his perceived willingness to do so was a principal factor in his selection, for it was up to the members of each company to elect the captain. However, Section 34 of the act gave the governor the authority to send the militia into the field. To do so, he was first required to ask for a sufficient number of volunteers from among the local militia units. If, however, fewer volunteers than he deemed necessary responded to the call, he was authorized to conscript other members of the units. The conscription process was quite simple. The local officers were to write the names of the members of their company on individual slips of paper and draw enough names from a hat to fill the governor's quota. The revised militia system found its way to Colorado County in March 1862. In that month, twelve companies were organized in the county. The first captains included Richard V. Cook, Simon Thulemeyer, Thomas L. Townsend, and John Zwiegel, all headquartered at Columbus, Daniel W. Jackson and John N. Arnold, both headquartered at Oakland, Michael Quin and Ernst Liermann of Alleyton, and John Hastedt, August Georg, and Frederick Schneider of Frelsburg. In April, Georg, who had died, was replaced by Bernard Geistmann, and Cook, who had become captain of a company in the Confederate States Army, was replaced by Cleveland Windrow.²⁰

Before the end of the year, Quin and many of the other men in the new militia companies would follow Cook's example, leaving the militia commanders to deal with the most unwilling and least able-bodied men in the county. One such militia commander, the plantation owner Charles William Tait, who was in his late forties, found himself dealing with a near mutiny. In October 1863, Tait and two militia companies under his command were stationed at the Sabine Pass when Colonel Augustus Buchel ordered them to a post across the river in Louisiana. Despite Buchel's assurances that they would return to Texas in only twenty days, Tait's men, grumbling about the rations that both they and their horses received and convinced that they were of little value to the war effort, refused to leave the state. Efforts to persuade them succeeded only in dividing the unit into two factions, who bitterly debated each other's respective cowardice and foolishness. Angered by the incident, Buchel requested that he be sent no more state militia units and Tait offered to resign his commission. Tait's resignation was refused. Instead, he won a promotion, from major to lieutenant colonel. His militia companies apparently never left Texas.²¹

For the ever troublesome German settlers in northern Colorado County, the new militia system, and indeed the war itself, was a most unwelcome intrusion. As has been seen, they voted heavily against secession, and the fact that they were in the minority statewide did nothing to change their minds about the morality of their arguments. Some, rallied by Frelsburg residents Hermann Emil Mathias Jordt, Carl August Sabath, and Helmuth Kulow, on April 7, 1862, formed themselves into a company of infantry, elected Jordt captain, Sabath, Kulow, and Gerhard Frels lieutenants, and went off to become Company H in the 17th Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Unhappily, they had expected another company of German-speaking men, a company raised by Julius Bose in Comal County, to serve in the same regiment. However, Bose's company ended up elsewhere, prompting Jordt, Sabath, and Frels, on June 11, 1862, to petition the governor to allow their company to be reassigned to another regiment. He refused. Isolated from the rest of their regiment by their inability to speak English, they apparently were given little to do, and most of the men spent a good bit of the war absent with illnesses. The company is known to have engaged in combat only once, at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana on June 7, 1863. There, two of them, including Rudolph Ilse, were killed, and two were wounded. Seven other members of the company died before the end of the war. Most of those, including Henry Berttram, Henry S. Schneider, and Henry Spinck, died of disease. Captain Jordt also died during the war, on July 22, 1863, though the cause of his death is unknown. After his death, Sabath was promoted to captain. He and Frels, who had resigned his commission on February 10, 1863, were replaced as lieutenants by Johann Baptist Leyendecker and William B. Roever. Eduard Kollmann had been promoted lieutenant nearly a year earlier.²²

Though Jordt apparently had little enough trouble raising a company of his fellow Germans, others in the area were not so lucky. On November 28, 1862, A. J. Bell, the Confederate army's enrolling officer in Austin County, notified his superior, Major J. P. Flewellen, that a number of local people, most of whom were German, were balking at being conscripted into a state militia unit. He went on to state that the rebels had held a number of very well-attended meetings, many of which were secret, at which they resolved to resist the draft. According to his information, at the last meeting, they had decided to petition the governor, stating that they would not submit to the draft law until and unless they were armed and clothed and provisions to provide for their families were made. Bell requested that a force be sent to compel the rebels to enroll on government terms.²³

On December 4, Flewellen sent the report to General Magruder and volunteered to lead a force to ensure compliance. Two days later, Magruder, evidently believing the reports to be alarmist, ordered Flewellen to conscript first, those who were most resistant, and to have them shipped to regiments in other departments, but to do so in a manner which would not stir up a rebellion. Whatever measures Flewellen took were ineffective, for, after a draft was held just before Christmas, the spirit of rebellion increased. Many of the drafted men refused to be sworn in and the officer in charge of doing so was assaulted and driven from the area. Another man, a friend of the enrolling officer, was mobbed and beaten as well. On Christmas Day, a small regiment of cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Peter Hardeman, who had been ordered to Columbus some two weeks earlier, arrived in town.²⁴

Nonetheless, thereafter the anti-conscription meetings increased in frequency. On December 30, 1862, a number of armed men were seen traveling through Frelsburg, on their way to Shelby for a meeting the next day. About 600 people, including delegates from Colorado, Austin, Lavaca, Fayette, and Washington Counties, reportedly attended the meeting, and resolved to resist the draft by force of arms if necessary. The following day, a group of German draft resisters met at the home of a man who had been drafted and organized themselves into a military unit with the express purpose of resisting conscription. In early January, more reports of the draft resisters began reaching the high command. One stated that the Germans were openly rebellious. Another claimed that more than 1000 Germans were gathering at Frelsburg, planning to resist the draft and, of course, to free the slaves.²⁵

On January 4, 1863, in a meeting at Biegel Settlement, calmer elements among the resisters adopted a long declaration. On January 8, they presented it to Brigadier General William Graham Webb of the Texas militia, who was headquartered at La Grange. It outlined their concerns for the support of their families, pointing out that if they served in the militia for the three month period being demanded, they would miss planting season. They also expressed anger that while they and their families found it nearly impossible to obtain cloth, slaveholders seemed to have little difficulty doing so; noted that they were philosophically opposed to the war; and declared that though they were willing to serve as state troops, they refused to take the Confederate States Army oath. They concluded with an appeal to Webb to use his influence to postpone their impressments until after planting season. Webb, who had been ordered to raise a militia unit and get it to Houston as rapidly as possible, was not in the least responsive to their arguments. He claimed that the document itself provided enough evidence of sedition to send the ringleaders to prison for more than two years. On the day that Webb received the declaration, martial law was authorized in Colorado, Fayette, and Austin Counties, and Texas Governor Francis R. Lubbock arrived in La Grange to assess and deal with the revolt. He remained for two days, receiving the ringleaders and listening to their complaints.²⁶

Meanwhile, Magruder ordered Hardeman and elements of Sibley's old brigade to move against the resisters. On January 11, Hardeman's adjutant reported that 25 men under Major George T. Madison had been sent to La Grange and 25 under Lieutenant R. H. Stone to Bellville, and that Hardeman himself had taken 50 men north from Columbus to arrest the ringleaders and disarm the disloyal citizens. Within a week, the insurrection was over. Those who previously had refused now agreed to serve, and by the middle of January were on their way to Houston. Comically, in light of the extreme effort that had been expended to get them there, shortly after they reached Houston, they were sent home. There, local and military authorities were attempting to deal with the complaints by several Germans of rough treatment, and of theft, by the Confederate troops. As the reports came in, Magruder ordered Hardeman to severely restrict the ability of his men to leave camp. By January 21, Magruder's adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Henry L. Webb, was in Colorado County, investigating the situation. On February 10, he reported that discipline among Hardeman's troops was sadly lacking; that Hardeman was ill and Madison in effective command; and that indeed "the arrests [of draft resisters] were made with much cruelty and violence to women and children and to the prisoners arrested." He had turned the prisoners over to the civil authorities in their home counties, and promised to punish any soldier or officer who had committed any depredation against any civilian.²⁷

Shortly, Webb discovered that the abuses were not committed by any of Hardeman's soldiers, but rather by civilian guides he had hired. Two of the guides, the Muckleroys, probably Mike and James, took the opportunity to exact a measure of revenge against their neighbors, who had for years reviled them as slaveholders. The Muckleroys and the other civilian guides rather rudely ensured that the women and children of the households did not interfere as the men were being arrested. One woman in particular, in the confusion and anxiety of the moment, received slight wounds from both a bayonet and from the butt of an army rifle. No charges were ever brought against anyone for any injury inflicted during the arrests. To the chagrin of the military, the local authorities, with only the mildest of admonitions, quickly released the men who were arrested for leading the draft revolt.²⁸

Despite the aggressive suppression of the draft revolt, many Germans would continue to surreptitiously resist the Confederate government. In late 1863, when Webb submitted a list of draft evaders from his district to his superiors, most of the 44 people from Colorado County on the list were German. In the last year of the war, Aaron T. Sutton, a Union soldier imprisoned in Texas, was aided by Germans, both when he escaped his captors and when he was in custody. Hermann Nagel, a physician who had first settled in Colorado County before, around 1855, moving just across the county line to Millheim, clung to his Unionist sympathies and anti-slavery beliefs despite apparent danger to his life. He seems to have been involved in underground activities, at least once conspiring with a friend to keep him out of military service and evidently paying regular visits to draft evaders in hiding. In November 1863, concerned about his continued well being and the possibility that his unusually tall fourteen-year-old son, Charles, might soon be conscripted, he conveyed his herd of cattle to his wife, then he, Charles, and a group of other men secretly fled to Mexico. Mexico was, naturally, the most popular destination for Colorado County's German draft evaders. Another such, Frank Albert Laake had been in America for only a few years and in Colorado County for just a few months when the question of secession came up for a vote. A Unionist and, by trade, a freighter, he avoided the draft, as did many others, by signing on to haul cotton from the railhead at Alleyton to Mexico. But eventually Laake's service as a freighter was not enough for the Confederacy and he was conscripted in Columbus. Given leave to take his wagon and team home, he did so, then fled into Mexico. He, however, was averse only to serving in the Confederate army, for he left Mexico shortly afterward for New Orleans, where he enlisted in a U. S. infantry unit. He served until June 1, 1866, after which he returned to his home in Texas. Another German, Henry Dedrich, who in the early stages of the war was accused of harboring a runaway slave, actually served in the Confederate army for a time, before returning home, evidently without authorization from his commanders. He was apparently sheltered by another German, Joseph Dungen, who was indicted for doing so. Neither the case against Dedrich for harboring the slave nor that against Dungen for harboring Dedrich came to trial until after the war, at which time, on November 2, 1865, both were dismissed. Friedrich Meyer found the simplest way around military service. On June 18, 1862, he formally declared that he was a subject of Germany, that he had never applied for citizenship of either the United States or the Confederate States of America, and that he was not a permanent resident of the country.²⁹

Many of the Germans who did find their way into the military seem to have served without enthusiasm. Germans like Johann Friedrich Leyendecker and Johann Friedrich Bonitz quickly tired of military life. Leyendecker, whose career as a private and a musician in the 17th Texas Infantry required him to face no hostile foes, concocted a scheme that would have allowed him to return to his home without securing a discharge. On November 28, 1864, he notified General William Robertson Boggs that he had invented "a rifle ball which will explote at the moment they strike the object of their aim" and asked only that he and a friend be given time to develop it, at, he implied, their homes in Colorado County. Sadly, Leyendecker was refused, the exploding bullet remained undeveloped, and the Confederacy lost the war. Bonitz, whose military service had been distinguished enough that he had risen to the rank of sergeant, reached the end of his rope on September 3, 1864. Thereafter, he refused any longer to obey orders or perform any other military duty, stating as his reason that his term of enlistment had expired and that, in any case, he was a foreign national. He was promptly arrested, and demoted to private. He spent most of the next six months under guard, finally escaping on February 27, 1865. By then, the Confederacy was in such disarray that he was not pursued.³⁰

Though Confederate troops had passed through the county in droves in the autumn of 1861, it apparently was not until Sibley's Brigade returned from New Mexico in the summer of 1862 that any troops other than state militia were stationed in Colorado County. By November 1862, when Sibley's Brigade re-formed, there were three units camped in the county: an infantry unit of about 500 men and a cavalry unit of about 750 men at Columbus, and another cavalry unit containing about 600 men, though no horses, at Oakland. It is likely that the army recognized the importance of the transportation system which was anchored at the terminus of the railroad in Alleyton much earlier, though it had only been in the previous month that they set up a dispatch service, with relays of mules, along the route from Alleyton to San Antonio, and that they began keeping on reserve at Alleyton, one locomotive, to be ready to travel at any time. The same month, they transferred all but one month's commissary stores from Harrisburg inland to the more secure but readily accessible Alleyton, and, apparently, established a hospital in Columbus. Still, it was difficult for the government to maintain the troops in the area. By 1863, corn had fallen into such short supply that the Confederate commander at Alleyton, Lieutenant Colonel Henry L. Webb, recommended that his remaining cavalry be dismounted and the horses sent to the men's home counties to live on the range until they were needed. With prices high elsewhere, only one Colorado County farmer, Ethelbert Bruce Fowlkes, would sell corn to the local troops. In return for his willingness to do so, Webb allowed Fowlkes to keep the seven slaves that otherwise would have been pressed into government duty.³¹

It is not known when the unit at Oakland decamped. At least some elements of units at Columbus, including part of Peter Hardeman’s command, were sent off to participate in the January 1863 recapture of Galveston. Some of Hardeman’s men, as we have seen, remained in the county and assisted in squelching the German draft revolt. Many or all of his soldiers who went to Galveston quickly returned, via the railroad, to Colorado County. On January 19, nine men attempted to leave the unit. All were arrested and charged with desertion. They were placed in the Columbus jail on January 21. Their court-martial began three days later, but had reached no conclusion by February 8, when their captain ordered the prisoners released. Two months later, Hardeman’s men marched off to Victoria. Some of his men, and other soldiers, remained in Columbus to assist military physicians at the local Confederate hospital. The hospital, which was probably a series of tents, stretched out over at least one hundred yards and could accommodate at least two hundred patients. In the early part of 1863, numerous new patients arrived regularly. Those who died, about two or three a week, were buried in a rapidly-created military cemetery. In late April, the cemetery contained about fifty graves, all of them apparently unmarked. Late in August 1863, another Confederate unit, the 37th Texas Cavalry Regiment commanded by Colonel Alexander Watkins Terrell, established a camp near Columbus. Shortly afterward, Colonel Terrell went to Houston on business, leaving Lieutenant Colonel John C. Robertson in charge. On September 10, a group of soldiers went to Alleyton on a shopping spree. They wanted to buy boots, but when they offered to pay for them in Confederate specie, the store owner refused to accept it. Determined to have the boots, but unable to pay in any other currency, they took them by force. The store owner complained to Robertson, and he passed the matter on to the company captain, Caldean G. Murray. Murray apparently took no action on the matter, for other things soon occupied his mind.³²

On September 11, Robertson received orders from General Magruder to temporarily dismount his troops and take them to Galveston to aid in that city's defense. It was the second such order the regiment had received. On August 15, while camped in Richmond, the regiment had sent such a detachment to Galveston. This time, however, the troops balked. The orders asked the troops to leave their horses in the Colorado County camp, and a number of the men, championed by Captain Murray, refused to do so. They were suspicious that once they had been transformed into infantry, they would never be remounted. Murray, who had apparently been subjected to just such treatment earlier in his military career, confronted Robertson and stated that he had promised his men that they would not be dismounted. As Murray spoke, the men cheered, and Robertson grew fearful that an armed rebellion was about to break out. He turned to the troops and made a speech denouncing Murray and assuring the troops that their conversion to infantry was only temporary. But, as Robertson stated in his report on the incident six days later, he "found that insubordination had been increased and excited by Captain Murray to such an extent that the troops were beyond [his] control." He dismissed the men hoping that a night's sleep would calm them down.³³

The next morning, however, Robertson found "a large number of horses saddled up and the troops preparing to leave." He again assembled the men and addressed them, this time claiming that he intended to call for volunteers only to go with him to defend Galveston. As he stated in his report, he had no intention of living up to the promise, but was only stalling until the troops could be subdued. He returned to his quarters thinking that the rebellion had been stopped. A short time later, Murray, Lieutenant Jesse G. Chancellor, and about 100 men rode out of camp. Apparently, they took several of the horses that had belonged to the men previously sent as infantry to Galveston. They also took the men's saddles, which had been stored under guard in Alleyton. Robertson took most of the remaining men to Galveston where he filed his report on the mutiny. Murray and Chancellor were charged with desertion. In November 1863, Murray was allowed to resign his commission and Starr was promoted into his place.³⁴

On September 30, a number of Murray's fellow company captains wrote headquarters attempting to explain the desertions and imploring that their unit be "remounted at once and permitted to pursue our original purpose," that is, permitted to engage the enemy as an active cavalry unit. The captains claimed that the men who had deserted had only done so because they wanted a more direct role in the war, and that since they left, they had attempted to join other units. The deserters went unpursued for a month. On October 17, Robertson and 25 men, returned from the coast, set out from their camp near Columbus to find Captain Murray. On the road they met Lieutenant Russell J. Starr, who was returning to the camp with a few of the deserters. Starr informed Robertson that Murray could probably be found near his home in Wood County. Robertson learned from other sources that Murray and about 60 men were camped near Springville, in Wood County, and that they were armed and prepared to resist arrest. Robertson selected four men and directed them to pose as deserters, join Murray's party, and return with reports on his strength and intentions. He then proceeded to Henderson County where he captured Lieutenant Chancellor near his home. He rendezvoused with his spies near Tyler on October 28 and started the next morning for Wood County. He arrested three of Murray's men on the 29th, learned from them where Murray had gone, and arrested him without incident.³⁵

Naturally enough, the war largely arrested the growth of Colorado County's towns and communities. However, the Confederate government did establish two new post offices in the county during the war. The first, on December 28, 1861, was at the place that had originally been called Prairie Point but which by then had come to be firmly and finally designated by its new name, Oakland. The Oakland Post Office was located in the store owned by the postmaster, David C. Neer, and his partner, Thomas H. James, reflecting the position at the center of the community that their store, which like the county printed its own currency during the war, held. Nearly a year later, on October 30, 1862, the government established the Osage Post Office to serve the community around the Harvey's Creek school. The community immediately adopted the name Osage, and, two years later, so did the school. On October 29, 1864, the state legislature formally incorporated the school's board of trustees, still composed of Dick Burford, Samuel B. DeHart, William Good, Cataline C. Jones, Samuel Davies McLeary, and Michael Nave, and renamed the school the Osage Academy.³⁶

Eagle Lake, however, grew very slowly, if at all. Neither did Columbus, though it remained the largest and most prosperous town in the county, and the only one that contained any brick or masonry structures. However, the considerable commercial activity caused by the presence of the railroad on the east side of the river spurred rapid growth in Alleyton. With all her ports blockaded, the Confederacy relied on overland transportation to Mexico for its international trade. As the last depot on a close extension of the railroad to Mexico, Alleyton became a locus of the Confederacy's international cotton trade. Where no town had existed just two years earlier, by 1863, one traveler noted, Alleyton had developed into a "little wooden village . . . crammed full of travelers and cotton speculators." At least until the Mississippi River was captured by the Union, cotton flowed into Alleyton and from there was carted to Mexico by a growing number of teamsters, whose service as such at least kept them out of the army. The teamsters, however, had difficulties of their own. Many of the wagon trains were owned by individuals who lived near the Mexican border, and accordingly were staffed by Mexican nationals. In the spirit of unrestrained free enterprise, they and their Confederate counterparts evidently maintained a lively, and frequently violent, competition for business. One of the most successful of the American teamsters was a woman named Sally Scull who had deep roots in Colorado County. Her rough, masculine behavior and mode of dress, her superior ability with guns and with vulgar language, and her frequent marriages and sexual indiscretions, elevated her to nearly legendary status.³⁷

Artistic activity apparently slowed to a near stop during the war. The two most prominent painters in the county, Behné and Tatum, both spent the early years of the war in the military. Behné's service ended on October 20, 1863 when he was discharged from the military because of lung disease. He may have returned to Columbus, but certainly went to Havana, Cuba, before the cessation of hostilities. Upon his discharge, Tatum returned to Columbus and there found his wife, from whom he had been estranged since he had moved out of Robson's Castle in October 1860, visiting friends in town. They reconciled their differences, albeit only temporarily. The death, on May 23, 1863, of their two-year-old son caused another crisis in their relationship, which finally ended in divorce in 1866. Tatum's artistic career was apparently interrupted by these sad domestic proceedings. However, another artist who certainly had no aspiration or expectation of achieving fame, made his mark in Colorado County during the war. That painter, Louis Hoppe, was apparently an itinerant farm worker who, during the war quietly and obscurely painted four now-celebrated pictures, two of flowers, one of Johann Leyendecker's house near Frelsburg, and another of a house in Fayette County.³⁸

The foremost patron of the arts in the county, Robert Robson, was almost certainly never aware of Hoppe's modest artistic activity. Other matters held his attention, and the attention of the numerous people who followed the proceedings of the local courts for entertainment, for the entire war. In late 1860 or early 1861, Robson, who was 61 years old, ill and apparently near death, was faced with a dilemma. He did not want his relatives to inherit his considerable property; nor did he want to divest himself of it and spend the rest of his days in comparative poverty. So he conceived a plan which would afford him enough money to live well, but which, when he died, would leave him with a small estate. He called Robert Hardin Tobin, a fellow land-speculator and fellow member of the local masonic lodge and a man he had described as "my worthy & trusty friend," to his home and offered to sign over all his property, which would later be valued at $80,000, in return for an uncertain number of $9000 annual payments, to be paid each January 1 as long as Robson lived. Given Robson's physical condition, Tobin was only too eager to accept. Both men signed the contract on February 7, 1861, giving Tobin nearly a full year before the first payment came due. According to the contract, Tobin thereby acquired more than 30,000 acres of property all across Texas, Robson's home (known as the castle) and furniture, several lots in Columbus, including all the lots and buildings on the east side of Milam Street between Walnut and Crockett, lots in Matagorda and San Antonio, and two slaves. Two days later, the men modified the contract, returning the slaves and two nondescript lots in Columbus to Robson and reducing the annual payment to $8650. In April, Robson moved out of the castle and Tobin moved in.³⁹

A few weeks later, Tobin got more good news. On May 6, a suit, probably for divorce, brought against him by his wife, Martha, was dismissed. But there were more legal troubles brewing for the suddenly prosperous Tobin. Shortly after his deal with Robson was made, Tobin was heard to say that he did not expect Robson to live to collect even one of the annual payments, but he was wrong. Robson, to Tobin's regret, continued his existence. When the first payment came due, on January 1, 1862, Tobin missed it. Robson patiently waited through another year, but when Tobin again failed to pay on January 1, 1863, Robson went to court. He filed suit on March 1, 1863.⁴⁰

Tobin's lawyer, James Monroe Daniels, answered that Robson had persuaded Tobin to sign the contract under fraudulent terms, to wit, that Robson did not own all the land he claimed to, and that Tobin had since made a standing offer to Robson to cancel the contract. Tobin described how Robson had repeatedly invited him into his home and professed a deep affection and esteem for him, deeper, in fact, than he held for any of his relatives, and how those visits had induced him to place an unwarranted trust in the contract Robson proposed. The case dragged on for months, then years. Robson kept his health, and the number of past due payments piled up. After the so-called Stay Law, which suspended the state's debt laws, was passed in December 1863, Tobin called on its provisions in an effort to get the case dismissed. But, on May 28, 1864, the legislature passed a law specifically excluding his debt to Robson from the class of contracts covered by the Stay Law. Then, in April 1866, Tobin himself died. His administrators wrangled with Robson for two more years. Finally, on May 21, 1868, the case was settled out of court. Robson got all his lands back, plus $500. Tobin's estate paid all court costs.⁴¹

Besides that of William Ryan, two other killings of more than passing interest occurred in the county during the war. On February 16, 1862, Jesse Tanner, a fairly prosperous farmer in his mid-thirties, was shot and killed. Though a man named Robert Tarkington was accused of the crime, no one would ever be convicted of it. The same was true of the second killing. In June 1863, Thaddeus Warsaw Hunter, enraged that a dog belonging to a Czech tenant farmer named Frantisek Sugarek had killed some of his sheep, went to Sugarek's home with a gun, intending to kill the dog. To protect the dog, Sugarek confronted Hunter with his own gun. The men argued, and Hunter shot and killed Sugarek. Though these facts were clearly in evidence, Hunter was found not guilty of murder, evidently on grounds of self-defense.⁴²

Slaves, too, got caught up in the Colorado County courts during the war. Though they were legally considered to be private property and held few rights as citizens, slaves were nonetheless subject to criminal penalties if they violated certain laws. The punishment often took the form of a public lashing administered by the county sheriff. Three such spectacles occurred in Colorado County during the war. At the spring term of district court in 1863, one of William Harbert's slaves named John was finally convicted of attacking a white man named Harvey McKinley with a knife on July 9, 1860. Found guilty of aggravated assault and battery, John was sentenced to 1000 lashes, to be inflicted on the courthouse lawn in ten weekly sessions of 100 lashes each, beginning at four o'clock on Saturday, May 9, 1863. The lash was described as "a Strop of leather sixteen inches long and two wide with handle twenty inches long." The following spring, Allen, a slave belonging to Williamson Daniels, was found guilty of manslaughter for killing another slave on December 29, 1863. The victim, a man named Sandy, belonged to Weston B. Yates, but the court did not indemnify Yates. Like John before him, Allen was sentenced to 100 lashes on his bare back on ten consecutive Saturdays on the courthouse square. The third case was decided at the fall term in 1864. Low, a slave belonging to Elisabeth Oliver, and Wylie, Albert, and Edd, slaves of Samuel Betts, were indicted for breaking into and burglarizing the home of William M. Baker on March 17, 1864 at about midnight. They stole a pistol valued at $50, a fold of calico worth $10, and a coat worth $20. Low was found guilty and, like the others, sentenced to 1000 lashes on his bare back to be administered in ten sessions beginning on Saturday, November 5, 1864. But Low was not given a week to recover from the beatings. His sessions on the square were scheduled for every other day.⁴³

During the war, only one more free citizen who willfully harmed a slave was indicted. At the fall term in 1864, Sion Bostick was brought up on charges of attacking Joseph, a slave belonging to George B. Halyard, with a sharp stick on October 16, 1864. The indictment was eventually quashed, on November 2, 1865. In another case, Matthew McDowell was charged with carrying liquor to a slave named Bill, who was the property of John S. Lewellyn, without Lewellyn's written consent. McDowell's alleged offense occurred on March 1, 1865. The case against him was filed on May 3, 1865 and came up for trial during the spring term that year. It was continued until the fall term, then disappeared from the docket. It was certainly the last case involving a slave in Colorado County.⁴⁴

The Echo Company entered its second winter in Virginia in far worse condition than it had its first. By the end of the summer of 1862, many of the men had no shoes, and clothing was in short supply. Wall's wound at Bull Run, to his hand, and the rigors of life in the infantry prompted him to desert the company on February 8, 1863. Though he was rumored to have joined a cavalry company from Tennessee, it can only be stated with certainty that he never reappeared among his Colorado County mates. Darden, too, left the company. Paroled by his federal captors in April 1863, he was granted a furlough by the Confederate army, returned to Columbus, and never rejoined the company. In August 1863, he was again elected to the state legislature. Though he was to hold that office for the duration of the war, he was not formally discharged from the army until January 16, 1865. By then, he had attended his last legislative session. He would spend the rest of his days uneventfully working at his Columbus law practice, but otherwise removed from society, a virtual recluse in his extensive personal library.⁴⁵

In March 1863, the company made another long march through snow. This time, the snow was seven to twelve inches deep, and the weather was too cold to allow the men to comfortably rest for more than a few moments at a time. The haggard Texans must have welcomed the following spring; though by then perhaps one or two had learned to prefer cold weather to the heat of combat. In the summer, the remainder of Echo Company moved north with Lee's army into Pennsylvania, where, at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, twelve of them sustained fatal wounds. Henderson, the schoolteacher, who had been promoted to lieutenant, and a young man from Vermont named Henry Pratt who, three years earlier had been quietly working on a Colorado County farm, were left wounded on the battlefield and taken prisoner. Both survived long enough to contemplate the endeavors which led to their common fate, to die in a United States prisoner of war camp. Roberdeau too was wounded at Gettysburg, taken prisoner, and confined, for the rest of the war, in POW camps. In his absence, the company was commanded by Lieutenant Collier. Collier's command was lucky at Chickamauga, where, on September 19, 1863, five of them were wounded, but none were killed. The following spring, Gegenworth and Enke both returned to Texas on furloughs; neither would deign to return to the company.⁴⁶

By the summer of 1864, Echo Company had so few men left that it could scarcely be thought of as an effective fighting unit. Perhaps this was to their advantage, for after Gettysburg, only two more members of the company would be killed in action. One of the unfortunate men was Emil Auerbach, who was killed in a charge at the Wilderness on May 6, 1864. Though his remaining weary companions spent the rest of the summer and early fall engaging the enemy at places like Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Chaffin's Farm, and Darbytown Farm, only four of them would be wounded and one killed. Collier left the army with a disability on November 30, 1864, leaving Ben Baker in operative command until the surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Baker and the company's nine other remaining men, among them Besch, Carlton, and Currie, were released from service on April 12. In all, counting Upton, 29 members of the company had sustained fatal wounds in action; 15 others, including Cabaniss, Haynes, and Cleveland Coffee, the son of one-time Colorado County sheriff Logan M. Coffee, had died of disease or other causes; 27 had been discharged for various reasons; eleven had been transferred; and eleven others had deserted. In addition, when the war ended, nine of the company's members were listed as absent without leave, eleven, including Roberdeau and Senne, were in federal POW camps, and two were in hospitals.⁴⁷

The remnants of the cavalry company that had been organized by John Shropshire saw little action after the sad conclusion of the New Mexico campaign. Joel Kindred, who had been captured at Apache Canyon, then paroled and exchanged, and William H. Shaw, were two of the very few men in the company who were killed after Glorieta. Robert Carter, who had been captured at the Socorro hospital, remained in the custody of the Union and died at a hospital in St. Louis on April 17, 1863. Reportedly, ten other men, including William L. David, William H. Newsom, Charles Seymour, Peter G. Silvey, and Samuel W. Terrell, also died of disease.⁴⁸

Before the war was over, fully one-third of the county's eligible male population served at least some time in the army of the Confederacy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the proportion of German-born men who served was considerably lower than that of others; only about one-fourth of the local Germans served.⁴⁹

A number of Colorado County men joined Company F of the 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment, which became known as Terry's Texas Rangers. Among them were Samuel B. DeHart and Thomas J. Grace, who were slaveholders from Osage; James E. Carlton, Oliver E. Herbert, James F. Jenkins, Daniel Cherry Payne, and Henry Terrell, all the sons of slaveholders; John Robert Hester and Burr E. Joiner, each of whom managed plantations; and James T. Pettus, a railroad engineer who before the war lived with Herbert's family. DeHart, who was 55 when he joined, was quickly discharged, probably because of his age. Pettus was killed near McMinnville, Tennessee on August 29, 1862. Payne died, evidently of disease, in Nashville, Tennessee. The others apparently survived the war. The three sons of plantation owner John Hancock Crisp, Samuel S., Alexander S., and Richard C., also joined Terry's Texas Rangers, though they served in Company B. The oldest of the three, Samuel, was killed in Kentucky in July 1863. The other two survived.⁵⁰

More than 80 Colorado County men served in various companies in the often reorganized 13th Texas Infantry Regiment, which spent most of the war stationed in Texas. The men of the 13th Texas returned home on furloughs and various errands with some regularity, and rarely if ever laid eyes on anyone in a blue uniform. Some of the Colorado County men, including Robert Levi Foard, William G. Hunt, and Henry Madison Johnson, achieved high rank. Foard, who had been a young attorney before the war, and Hunt, who was in his late 40s, entered the service on October 24, 1861. Both signed on for one-year terms. Foard began as a lieutenant and Hunt a sergeant. When their company was incorporated into the 13th Texas and designated Company G on June 11, 1862, two of the original lieutenants, Alexander J. Folts and John Mackey, failed to win reelection, and both immediately secured discharges because of their ages. Hunt, however, who was older than either, was elected lieutenant and extended his term for two years. Foard did even better, getting the rank of captain and command of the company. He so impressed his superiors that, on November 14, 1863, he was promoted major. Hunt was promoted captain and given command of the company, which by then had been redesignated Company C. Less than a year later, on the third anniversary of his initial enlistment, Hunt resigned his commission, citing his three years of service, and noting that "I am now in my fifty second year, and begin to feel the effects of old age. I do not feel able to undergo the fatigues of a soldiers life." Johnson, who had enlisted in the same unit as a corporal, rose through the ranks and eventually, on November 26, 1864, took Hunt's place as captain.⁵¹

The 35th Texas Cavalry, like the 13th Texas Infantry, from which many of the men who served in it transferred, spent most of the war stationed in Texas and afforded its members little chance to engage in combat. Company F, featured about a dozen Colorado County men, Alston Boyd Bonds, who was its captain, and Walter G. Washington, who was the son of plantation-owner Lawrence Augustin Washington. The younger Washington, and four other Colorado County members of the company, J. A. Finch, Eaton Pugh Newsom, J. R. Newsom and Asa Newton, endured some hardship during the conflict: all were hospitalized after receiving bad vaccines. Four Colorado County members of Company D endured worse fates. On December 31, 1863, some fifty officers and men embarked on an expedition to attack a modest U. S. encampment on the Texas coast near Matagorda. Setting out on three smaller boats from two steamboats anchored offshore, the soldiers were about half way to shore when a sudden windstorm blew in. Only one of the three boats made it back to the steamers. Eighteen of the men, including four from Colorado County, Julius M. Connor, William G. Copeland, and the McKinley brothers, Daniel A. and Thomas, drowned.⁵²

Some fifteen Colorado County men joined a cavalry company raised by John Duff Brown near Oakland. Brown took his company to Washington County, where they were enrolled as Company D of Waul's Texas Legion. The company spent most of the war campaigning in Mississippi and western Tennessee, though without Captain Brown, who was discharged because of illness in the autumn of 1862. None of the Colorado County members of the company were killed in the war, but two were grievously wounded, two others, Isaac G. Sellers on December 13, 1862 and James M. Holden on August 17, 1863, were captured, and another, John M. Barry, deserted. Before he was captured, Holden had assaulted one of his fellow privates from Colorado County, Stephen Middleton, and inflicted serious enough wounds with a knife that Middleton either died or was disabled for further service. The other member of the company who was wounded, George Millan McCormick, was shot in the leg in action near Tupelo, Mississippi, on July 15, 1864. Unable to retreat with his company, he was captured by the federal army and taken to a field hospital, where surgeons amputated his leg. The next day, the Confederates captured the hospital, retrieved McCormick, and assigned his brother and fellow member of Company D, Stephen Montgomery McCormick, to nurse him back to health.⁵³

More than a dozen Colorado County men, most from around Alleyton and Eagle Lake, joined a company of infantry raised by one of the two Alleyton militia company captains, Michael Quin. Quin, who worked for the railroad, went back down the line to Eagle Lake, enlisting the aide of James B. Good to help him raise the company, and then into Fort Bend County. There he enrolled a number of men to augment those he and Good raised in Colorado County. Among the Colorado County men were several Germans: Mike Fricke, William Miekow, Ferd Smith, and John Suhr. From Alleyton, store owner Thomas H. Rolluson, and his step-son, Pinkey Hill; and from Eagle Lake, Good's younger brother, Edward L. Good, also joined up. So did Alfred Stricklin, who, in 1860, had run the Good family hotel in Eagle Lake, the same hotel in which Quin then lived. Among the other privates were the Hoover brothers, Marshall and Merritt, who were farmers near Alleyton. The company was mustered into service on April 1, 1862 at Alleyton as Company H, 16th Texas Infantry, with Quin as captain, and Good and William T. Strahan as lieutenants. To help finance it, the county had already set aside $250. The company spent the war campaigning in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but apparently saw little action. None of the Colorado County men in the unit were either killed or wounded during the war, though one, Miekow, would die, apparently of disease. He died in Arkansas on November 14, 1862. Both Good and Strahan would resign their commissions, Strahan only eighteen days after being enrolled. Another lieutenant, James McDonald, who apparently had been working on the railroad before the war, would be captured at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana.⁵⁴

Many other Colorado County men served in other units during the war. At least six Colorado County Germans, Anton Braden, George Gerbermann, Fritz Kansteiner, Franz Kuhn, Fritz Kuhn, and John Meismer, joined Company A of the 3rd Texas Infantry at La Grange on June 18, 1862. Like the six Germans, the brothers Joshua P. and John S. Kindred left the county to enlist. They joined Company F of the 4th Texas Infantry on March 7, 1862 in Lavaca County. For them, the decision was a poor one. Three months after their enlistment, Joshua was wounded and John killed at the Battle of Gaines' Mill near Cold Harbor, Virginia. John B. Dodd enlisted in the 27th Texas Cavalry on the first day of 1862, but he was so young, or appeared to be so young, that his captain detailed him back to Columbus to serve as a nurse and recommended him for a discharge as underage. Nonetheless, the eager Dodd returned to duty and, in action near Corinth, Mississippi on October 5, 1862, was captured by the enemy. His comrades, not knowing his fate, reported that he had been killed, and only learned the truth when he turned up on a parole list a few weeks later.⁵⁵

Soon after the war broke out, A. H. Davidson, who had campaigned hard for secession and who had represented Colorado County at the secession convention, secured a commission in the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel and set about raising a battalion for service in the New Mexico campaign. The troops he raised, however, were assigned to another commander, and he was left in Texas, complaining, but with his commission intact, to raise more men. It was not until October 1862, after Sibley's army returned from New Mexico, that he succeeded, with the help of his son, William Lott Davidson, and of Samuel G. Ragsdale. The younger Davidson had been slated to be a captain in his father's original battalion, but had gone off to serve as a sergeant in Sibley's army. Lieutenant Colonel Davidson's newly organized unit remained largely inactive for a year before, in September 1863, it was ordered to Galveston to serve as infantry. A month later, Davidson was killed in action in Louisiana. His son, who had had the end of his little finger on his left hand shot off at Valverde and sustained a more serious wound to his left leg at Glorieta, would endure four more slight wounds before the war ended.⁵⁶

Henry Cameron McNeill, the son of plantation owner Angus McNeill, also served with Sibley's army. Like the elder Davidson, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel. When the war broke out, McNeill, who had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1857, was serving in the U. S. Army as a lieutenant. He resigned his commission on May 12, 1861. In New Mexico with Sibley, he served directly under Colonel Thomas Green, who would later praise him highly. He commanded troops at Valverde and was principally responsible for the capture of Socorro and its supplies on April 25, 1862. After returning to Texas, McNeill served as an administrator under General John Bankhead Magruder, then was promoted to colonel and given command of Green's old regiment, the Fifth Texas Cavalry. He and his unit spent the rest of the war in various duties in Texas and western Louisiana. McNeill's brother-in-law, Thomas Scott Anderson, was also commissioned a lieutenant colonel. He, and Colorado County physician Samuel E. Goss, who was commissioned assistant surgeon, were each assigned to the staff of the Sixth Texas Infantry. Stationed in Arkansas, Goss died there, of disease, on November 23, 1862. Anderson was captured, along with three of his horses and nearly 5000 other Confederate soldiers, when U. S. forces took Fort Hindman on January 11, 1863. Anderson spent just over three months in captivity. He was exchanged on April 29, 1863, and returned to the Confederate army. When the U. S. captured Vicksburg and the Mississippi River shortly afterward, Anderson was on the west side of the river and his unit on the east. Rather than have him attempt to rejoin the Sixth Texas, in July 1863, Magruder requested that he be assigned to duties on the west side of the Mississippi. Nonetheless, he turned up at the Battle of Chickamauga near the Tennessee-Georgia border in September 1863. At the height of the battle, when Brigadier General James Deshler's death moved each of his subordinates up one notch, Anderson took command of the regiment composed of the Sixth and Tenth Texas Infantry and the Fifteenth Texas Cavalry (dismounted). The following month, he agreed to serve under Magruder in Texas, where he remained for the duration of the war. On April 27, 1864, Magruder promoted him to colonel and placed him in command of a regiment of cavalry. He was reduced to lieutenant-colonel and relieved of his command on February 27, 1865.⁵⁷

Other men with close ties to large Colorado County plantations also became Confederate soldiers. William Dunovant, the son of Alexander Quay Dunovant, joined the army when he was fifteen; was wounded in the right arm at the Second Battle of Manassas; rose to the rank of captain; then was severely wounded in the left arm, resulting in its amputation and the end of his military career, in Virginia in the summer of 1864. Harry W. Rhodes, the son of Henry David Rhodes, though he too was only fifteen years old, struggled against his father's wishes and finally enlisted in the army in June 1861. His father secured his discharge, then, in November, the month he turned sixteen, allowed him to go to Memphis, Tennessee and enlist in a unit that already included one of his uncles. He was captured twice, escaping both times and returning to duty; and was wounded several times, on three occasions so severely that he spent six weeks or more in recovery. He recovered from his third wound in March 1865, having been at his father's house for the previous four months. Though the war was winding to its end, his enthusiasm remained unabated, and he immediately returned to his unit, arriving only ten days before it surrendered.⁵⁸

On Monday, June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger announced that the people who had theretofore been slaves in Texas were henceforth to be free citizens. Word of his announcement, which undoubtedly came as no surprise, quickly reached Colorado County. There, during the last two years of the war, what had once been a rapidly growing slave population had leveled off. In the last year that slaves were counted, 1864, there were 4086 in the county, only slightly more than the 4028 that had been present two years earlier.⁵⁹

Nearly one in every five of the 4000 or so Colorado County people who were freed from slavery in the summer of 1865 lived on the great plantations, some decades old, in the Eagle Lake Bottom. In 1864, though John Matthews had ceased to operate it, the Matthews plantation had resumed its position as the home of the most slaves in the county, 148. On January 14, 1861, in his mid sixties, Matthews had conveyed the entire plantation, complete with 145 slaves, and all his other holdings in Texas, to his brother, Nathaniel, in return for $10 in cash and the promise that Nathaniel would continue to operate the plantation and would give one-half of all its profits to him on May 1 each year as long as he lived. Though he was some ten years younger than Matthews, like him, Angus McNeill had also turned his plantation over to others; in McNeill's case, to his son, Henry C. McNeill, and son-in-law, T. Scott Anderson. Together in 1864, they owned 46 slaves. Nearby, John Gilbert Montgomery had continued to operate the old Stockton plantation, with, in 1864, 40 slaves. His father, James S. Montgomery, once the largest slaveholder in the county, still boasted 86 slaves. His holdings had no doubt been reduced by cessions to his other two sons, William W. and Samuel Stephen, who had fourteen and eight slaves respectively on their adjacent land, and to his now-deceased daughter, Laura Ann, and now-deceased son-in-law, John Shelby McNeel, whose children owned eighteen slaves in 1864. Caleb Claiborne Herbert, who spent most of the war serving in the Confederate congress, had also conveyed part of his plantation to his heirs, in his case, his daughter, Sarah, who had married Thomas Garner in 1857. Her father gave her more than 500 acres on January 3, 1862. In 1864, she and her husband operated their farm with the help of 21 slaves; Herbert himself owned 50; and Herbert's brother, William J. Herbert, owned 27. The other large plantation men in the Eagle Lake Bottom, among them Richard H. Foote, who had 42 slaves, George Washington Thatcher, who had 33, Nathan B. Floyd, who had 31, Phineas M. Garrett, with 29, Joel D. Shrewsbury, with 21, William H. Strahan, with 18, James G. Newsom, with 16, and the partnerships of Calvin Gordon and Alexander Quay Dunovant, with 56, and John W. Wicks and Isaac J. Frazer, with 49, had also continued operations.⁶⁰

Across the river from the Eagle Lake Bottom, and upriver and nearer Columbus, the plantations of Henry David Rhodes, who owned 104 slaves in 1864, Charles William Tait, who owned 68, Lawrence Augustin Washington, who owned 26, George S. Turner, who owned 23, and Ethelbert Bruce Fowlkes, who owned 36, and those of James Wright, who owned 42, John Pinchback, who owned 92, William and Mary Pinchback, who had 73, Isam Tooke, who had 22, Philip E. Waddell, who had 34, John Oscar Tanner, who had 30, James Carlton, who had 32, Andrew Monroe Campbell, who had 56, and the estates of Abraham Alley, which had 33, and of John F. Miller, which had 22, would also be profoundly effected by emancipation. Though no new plantations had cropped up in the area, one, that that had been operated by John S. Shropshire, who had been killed in the war, had, naturally, changed hands. His widow, the former Caroline Tait, who was the actual owner of the plantation, remarried, to William Shelby Delany, on July 22, 1863, and she and her new husband operated their plantation with 80 slaves in 1864. Around the bend across the river from Columbus, John Hancock Crisp had 140 slaves, William Harbert had 130, David Hardee Crisp had 65, James Lee Taylor had 39, Harriet Burford had 30, Milas Brandon Mathews had 21, and the former Elizabeth R. Nice, who had married Hugh L. Davidson on October 28, 1861, had 29. These, the largest slaveholders in the three areas with the largest slave populations, were horrified at the thought of losing their slaves, particularly so because, to them, each slave represented an asset with real cash value. In Colorado County in 1864, the tax assessor assigned a value of about $550 to the average rural slave, and put the value of the slave populations of Nathaniel Matthews, William Harbert, and Henry D. Rhodes at more than $70,000 each.⁶¹

The fourth great slave-plantation area in the county, the area near Oakland, was composed of about a dozen large plantations that contained 269 slaves. Oliver B. Crenshaw, who had 23 slaves in 1864, Clarissa Ann Eason, who had 26, Caroline F. Fowlkes and her son, Thomas A. Woolridge, who together had 28, John McKinnon, who had 29, Don Fernando Payne, who had 10, Zachariah Payne, who had 21, and John Tooke, who had 26, had all continued their operations in the area. They had been joined by Jeremiah G. Walker, who had established a plantation with 32 slaves on 550 acres he had purchased on June 27, 1860. Nearby, John N. Arnold and R. B. Edwards, who had 16 and 21 slaves respectively, had established plantations on land they acquired from Cleveland Windrow on February 24, 1860. Because Windrow died before they completed paying for the land, Arnold and Edwards were forced to go to probate court to secure their deed, a process which was not completed until February 1863.⁶²

North of Oakland, Noah Bonds had established a plantation with 26 slaves on land he had purchased at an auction at the courthouse on October 2, 1860. To his north and east, around Osage, William L. Adkins, with 94 slaves, Thomas H. Insall, with 40, Francis Marion "Dick" Burford, with 32, and Green K. Hubbard, with 16 slaves, had been joined by Wesley Smith, who had 13 slaves. Across the river, inside Walnut Bend, William Fitzgerald's son, Alexander, and daughters, Susan Amanda Daniels, Julia L. Neavitt and Delinda Jane Shaw, had, between them, 44 slaves; Thomas J. Grace, who had moved his operations across the river, and Rebecca Clack Grace, had separate plantations containing a total of 35 slaves; and Julia A. Currie, who had purchased 1000 acres from William Fitzgerald's heirs on November 28, 1859, had 25. Upriver from Walnut Bend, Samuel J. Harrington, with 46 slaves, had moved in near John Edward Pearsall, who had 47 slaves, Thomas J. Jarmon, who had 21, and the Crier family, which had 21. West of Columbus, the slave population on Daniel Miller's plantation, which had been in place since 1844, had grown to 14. To his west, David Tooke had 37 slaves, and to his east, Thomas Haslip Garner had 34.⁶³

Near Frelsburg, Mike and James R. Muckleroy had continued to operate their comparatively small plantations. In 1864, they owned twelve and seven slaves respectively. Nearby, William E. Stokes had established a larger plantation, with 16 slaves, on what had been Franz Prechectil's farm, which he purchased from Prechectil on August 29, 1861. Like the hated Muckleroys, William Frels had continued to use slave labor on his plantation. In 1864, he had ten, more than any other Frelsburg-area German. Charles Kessler, who had acquired substantial acreage on the bend of the Colorado River northeast of Columbus, also owned ten. Charles Ehlinger, who owned seven slaves, Henry Obenhaus, who owned five, Christian Kelch, who owned four, and Elizabeth Hahn, who owned one, like Kessler, lived outside the predominantly German areas. Three Germanic residents of Alleyton, William Mewes, Henry Gaedke, and Jan Reymershoffer, owned slaves. So did four Germans who lived near New Mainz: Anton Burttschell, with three, Alexander Dunlavy, with two, and Frank Dungen and Franz Kotzebue, with one each; and two Germans besides Frels who lived in Frelsburg: Franz Ordner and Carl Friedrich Sophus Jordt, each of whom owned one slave. Granger's proclamation, of course, freed all these rural slaves, and the dozens who were owned by residents of and who lived in Columbus, Alleyton, and Eagle Lake. Though their freedom opened the door to many opportunities, with no money and, by and large, little education, they had little capacity to take advantage of them.⁶⁴

 Notes to Part 6

1 Colorado Citizen, March 5, 1859, March 26, 1859, April 2, 1859, April 16, 1859, May 28, 1859, June 4, 1859, July 2, 1859, July 9, 1859. Though the law which created the Texas state militia was passed on April 21, 1846, no company is known to have existed in Colorado County prior to 1859. The 1846 law declared that every able-bodied man between the ages of 18 and 45 were liable to serve, and required companies to hold at least two musters between March and November each year (see Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897 (Austin: The Gammel Book Company, 1898), vol. 2, pp. 1400-1423).

2 Colorado Citizen, September 29, 1859, October 27, 1859, November 17, 1859, November 24, 1859, January 28, 1860, February 18, 1860, March 17, 1860, May 5, 1860. The pistols that had been provided by the state were quite modern, Colt 1851 Navy model, .36 caliber, six-shooters. The Colorado Guards were dissolved because the law which had allowed their creation was revoked and superceded by another, quite similar law which was passed on February 14, 1860 (see Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 4, pp. 1483-1500).

3 Colorado Citizen, February 16, 1861, May 11, 1861; The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 volumes (Washington: United States War Department, 1880-1901), series 1, vol. 1, p. 632.

4 Colorado Citizen, May 11, 1861, May 18, 1861, May 25, 1861, October 26, 1861; Texas State Militia Muster Rolls, RG 401, Files 4, 21, 55, 118, 131, 366, 421, 408, 409, 782, 837, 1353, 1354, Texas State Archives, Austin; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, p. 406; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book E, p. 549. Malsch quickly resigned his commission and was replaced by Friedrich Otell (see Texas State Militia Muster Rolls, RG 401, File 409, Texas State Archives, Austin).

5 Colorado Citizen, November 2, 1861; Weimar Mercury, March 12, 1904; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, p. 404. Major Julius Kellersberg, in reporting on the batteries in place at Fort Velasco on November 3, 1862, did not specifically refer to any of the artillery pieces as breechloaders, but his report does not exclude the possibility that Nave's cannon was present (see Official Records, series I, vol. 15, pp. 853-854). After the war, Nave kept his cannon, and on the day of his funeral, in 1904, it was set up on Milam Street in Columbus and fired several times. In 1930, the cannon was donated to the Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio. It has since disappeared from the museum grounds.

6 Colorado Citizen, June 15, 1861, July 13, 1861, August 3, 1861, August 10, 1861, August 31, 1861, September 21, 1861, October 12, 1861, November 13, 1908, November 20, 1908; Eagle Lake Headlight, May 26, 1923; Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Members of the Texas Legislature, 1846-1962 (n. p., 1962), p. 23; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, p. 401; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Roll 421. Andrew C. Burford was the son of Harriet Burford, William A. Bridge the son of William Bridge, who owned eleven slaves in 1860, David M. Currie the son of Julia A. Currie, who owned twelve slaves in 1860; William H. Carlton the son of James Carlton; Blythe W. Haynes the son of Calvin Haynes; John M. Jenkins the son of James H. Jenkins, who owned nine slaves in 1860; William W. Pinchback the son of John Pinchback; Calvin B. Tanner the son of John O. Tanner, and Thaddeus Wright the son of William J. Wright (see Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Schedule 1, Schedule 2, Colorado County, Texas). The company also included privates named Henry Haynes and John M. Grace. Haynes may have been Blythe Haynes' brother, though no evidence to support that conclusion has been found. Henry Haynes would be wounded and captured at Gettysburg, and die of his wound in a federal prison camp. Grace appears to have been the brother of slaveholder Thomas J. Grace. He would be discharged because of lung disease on January 9, 1862.

7 Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, June 29, 1861; Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 480: State of Texas v. John A. Pearce. There was also a recruit named William L. Rhodes who signed up for duty in Columbus on March 25, 1862. He may have been the son of plantation and slave owner Henry David Rhodes, though he seems not to have been. Rhodes would be wounded at Antietam, and die of pneumonia two months later, on November 20, 1862. He has a probate file at the Colorado County courthouse, but it contains no documents, nor does there seem to be any mention of him in the probate minute or final record books (see Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 414: W. L. Rhodes).

8 Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, September 14, 1899, October 5, 1899. Denny had been reported dead of disease in the Colorado Citizen of August 31, 1861, but that report was retracted in the issue of September 21, 1861. According to Roberdeau, during an early stage of the battle, Pinchback had predicted his own death (see Colorado Citizen, September 14, 1899). Upton had lost the August 6, 1860 Colorado County sheriff’s election to Ira Albert Harris by only twelve votes (382-370). Had he won, he probably would not have joined the army, and his life might have been saved (see Colorado County Election Records, August 6, 1860). Hicks Baker had married Elizabeth Secrest on April 25, 1860. Their son was born February 8, 1861 (see Colorado County Marriage Records, Book D, p. 69; Colorado Citizen, February 9, 1861).

9 Muster Rolls, Company A, Fifth Texas Cavalry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, August 10, 1861, August 24, 1861, September 7, 1861, August 1, 1913; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1761: Robert G. Morgan, Jr. v. William Stapleton; Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Colorado County, Texas, Schedule 1; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, pp. 401, 406; "Civil War Letters of John Samuel Shropshire," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, January 1997, pp. 65, 68. Shropshire's slave was named Bob, Wright's Howell, and Oakes' Mac. The fourth slave, whose name was Ed, was brought into the field by James Carson, who started his military career as a private, but was promoted sergeant two months after he enrolled.

10 Muster Rolls, Company A, Fifth Texas Cavalry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, July 15, 1897.

11 Muster Rolls, Company A, Fifth Texas Cavalry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, August 1, 1913; Weimar Mercury, July 16, 1915; Overton Sharp-Shooter, February 23, 1888, March 5, 1888 or the more convenient reprint of the same material in Jerry Don Thompson, ed., Civil War in the Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), pp. 82-83, 136-137; Official Records, series 1, vol. 9, pp. 537, 545. Shropshire was buried near the battlefield. In June 1987, a man who was building a house discovered the body, after which it was excavated, removed from the site, and identified. After a debate of some months, on August 5, 1990, Shropshire's remains were reinterred in his native Bourbon County, Kentucky (see Houston Post, July 17, 1987, July 25, 1987, September 24, 1988, March 18, 1990; Houston Chronicle, July 17, 1987; Dallas Morning News, June 3, 1990; Lexington [Kentucky] Herald-Leader, August 6, 1990; Bourbon [County, Kentucky] Times, August 8, 1990; Bourbon County [Kentucky] Citizen, August 8, 1990, copies of each of which can be found in Shropshire Family File, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus).

12 Muster Rolls, Company A, Fifth Texas Cavalry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Weimar Mercury, July 16, 1915; Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, pp. 212, 857, 878; Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 438: Stephen M. Wells. Though the exact date and place of Wells' death is unknown, he is known to have been in the Fort Bliss hospital in June 1862, and he certainly died before November 25, 1862, when the first of his probate papers was filed, leading one to the conclusion that he died at Fort Bliss.

13 Muster Rolls, Company D, 21st Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus and Richard V. Cook's letter of August 8, 1863, which is contained therein; Official Records, vol. 15, pp. 402-403, 1053. In November 1864, at his request, Cook's company was reassigned to the 13th Texas Infantry Regiment, where it was designated as Company A.

14 Letter of Richard V. Cook, September 2, 1863, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Roll 421; Ernest Mae Seaholm and Bill Stein, comp., "Richard V. Cook and the Battle of Sabine Pass," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 8, February 1991, pp. 243-258; Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 1, p. 308, part 2, p. 215.

15 Colorado Citizen, August 15, 1857, March 5, 1859, June 15, 1861, June 29, 1861, August 10, 1861; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1650: Walter Tufts and Charles A. Colley v. D. J. Hollister, H. C. Drew, and A. F. Smith; Civil Cause File No. 1695: Lathrop & Wilkinson v. Henry M. Johnson. The last known edition of the Citizen until after the war was issued on November 2, 1861. The Confederate government actually passed a law, on May 21, 1861, that made it a crime for Confederate citizens to pay debts to individuals or corporations anywhere in the United States except Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, or Washington D. C. The law suggested that the debts be paid into the Confederate treasury, which would then issue a certificate that would be redeemable after the war (see James M. Matthews, ed., The Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America (Richmond: R. M. Smith, 1864) p. 151).

16 Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, pp. 419-420, 422-423, Book 1862-1876, p. 3.

17 Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 1862-1876, pp. 5-6, 10-13, 18, 21; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book C, pp. [67-75].

18 Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 1862-1876, pp. 15, 33.

19 Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 1862-1876, pp. 35, 36.

20 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 5, pp. 455-464; Texas State Militia Muster Rolls (RG 401), File 494, Texas State Archives, Austin. Those who did not have to serve in the militia included postmasters and mail carriers, ferrymen on public roads, railroad engineers and conductors, steamboat officers and crews, district judges and district clerks, and county clerks, chief justices, and sheriffs.

21 Official Records, series I, vol. 26, part 2, p. 351; Seaholm and Stein, comp., "Richard V. Cook and the Battle of Sabine Pass," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 8, February 1991, pp. 256-257. One of Tait's companies was from Colorado County, the other from Fayette County.

22 Muster Rolls, Company H, 17th Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Petition of Captain Jordt and Company, June 11, 1862, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin. Of the 126 men known to have served in Company H, 53 had been in Colorado County in 1860. One of those, Charles Lessing, enrolled as a substitute for Andrew J. Smith, a Tennessee-born slaveholder who was no doubt aghast to realize that he had enrolled in a German-speaking company. The isolation of Jordt's company can be inferred from the writings of Elijah Parsons Petty, who was the captain of another company in the 17th Texas Infantry, Company F. Published as Journey to Pleasant Hill (Norman D. Brown, ed., (San Antonio: The Institute for Texan Cultures, 1982)), Petty's voluminous correspondence scarcely mentions Company H. He once reports that "the Dutch company is the only one that has lost no men" (p. 105), makes a passing reference to Lieutenant Kollmann, whom he calls "Coleman" (p. 224), and reports that one "Dutchman" had deserted (p. 284). Though he speaks routinely of other companies, no other mentions of Jordt's company have been found in his letters.

23 Official Records, series I, vol. 15, p. 887.

24 Official Records, series I, vol. 15, pp. 886, 890, 925, "Diary of James Pitman Saunders," in John Bennett Boddie, comp., Historical Southern Families, vol. 7 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1963), pp. 175-176..

25 Official Records, series I, vol. 15, pp. 921, 925.

26 Official Records, series I, vol. 15, pp. 921, 926, 945, 974.

27 Official Records, series I, vol. 15, p. 931, 936, 942, 946, 955, 956, 974, series I, vol. 53, p. 844, series 2, vol. 5, p. 831; [La Grange] True Issue, February 5, 1863, February 12, 1863.

28 Official Records, series 1, vol. 15, pp. 978, 981, 989. Two of the other civilian guides were identified as Hendersons. The woman who was injured by the bayonet is identified as "Mrs. Rouge." Her name may have been Runge. Lieutenant William J. Wheeler, who investigated the incident, filed his report on February 23, 1863. In regard to this incident, it states "Mrs. Rouge, the lady who is reported to have been so badly misused, states that she received no injury at the hands of Lieutenant Stone, and she does not think from any of the men under his command; that Lieutenant Stone did not come into her house, and that she was injured, but to the best of her knowledge the injury she received was at the hands of men who were not under Lieutenant Stone's command, but were citizens, neighbors, living in that vicinity, and not from any of Lieutenant Stone's command; that she was knocked down, not by any of Lieutenant Stone's command, and that she received one or two scratches from a bayonet, whether it was thrust at her or whether in the confusion of the moment, which she thinks most likely, she ran against it, she cannot tell; that she received the butt of a gun, but says the blow was not aimed at her; that being excited and alarmed for her husband's safety she accidentally ran against it; and that she is confident, from the general conduct and demeanor of the lieutenant and the men of his command, that they intended no injury or insult to her whatever."

29 Texas State Militia Muster Rolls, RG 401, File 693, Texas State Archives, Austin; Aaron T. Sutton, Prisoner of the Rebels in Texas (Decatur, Indiana: Americana Books, 1978), pp. 97-101, 116-119; Charles Nagel, A Boy's Civil War Story (St. Louis: Eden Publishing House, 1935), pp. 207-216, 227-254; Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans, ed. by Eugene Campbell Barker and Ernest William Winkler (Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, 1914), vol. 3, p. 1538; Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 482: State of Texas v. Henry Dedrich, Criminal Cause File No. 501: State of Texas v. Joseph Dungen, Minute Book C2, pp. 423, 425; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book E, pp. 662, 669. Though the cotton freighters avoided the perils of life in the military, their occupation was not without its dangers. According to family tradition, on one of Laake's trips, his caravan was attacked by bandits. One of his companions was killed and he himself was hit in the head with a metal object. The wound left a scar that remained bald for the rest of his life (see Ernest W. Laake, The History and Living Descendants of the Frank Albert Laake Family (n. p., n. d.)).
    On July 25, 1887, twenty-five years after he declared that he was a temporary resident, Meyer, long past the age at which he could be drafted into military service, applied for United States citizenship. He received it on September 30, 1891. He died November 7, 1903, and was buried at Trinity Lutheran Church in Frelsburg, where, undoubtedly, he will remain permanently (see Colorado County Naturalization Records, District Clerk Record Book 1, p. 127, County Clerk Declaration of Intention Book 1, p. 82; Tombstone of Friedrich Meyer, Trinity Lutheran Cemetery).

30 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 388, 422, 426; Johann F. Leyendecker to General William R. Boggs, November 28, 1864, Leyendecker Family Papers (Ms. 37), Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus. General Boggs dismissed Leyendecker's proposal on December 1, 1864 with a terse, "I have no time to attend to such experiments."

31 Colorado Citizen, August 31, 1861, September 7, 1861, September 14, 1861; Official Records, series 1, vol. 15, pp. 149, 825, 826, 832, 851, 883-884, 955; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Service Record of Alfred J. Dockery, Roll 10. Dockery was hospitalized in Columbus on January 10, 1863, then detached to the hospital as an attendant until at least a year later. Bill Winsor, in his Texas in the Confederacy (Hillsboro: Hill Junior College Press, 1978), reports that a surgeon named W. R. Robinson established a hospital in Columbus on October 15, 1862 (see p. 45). Winsor provides no source for his information. There was a physician named William R. Robinson who served in the Confederate army in Texas, but his military record does not mention the Columbus hospital.
    The Confederate government had passed two laws which allowed it to impress slaves for whatever end (see James Muscoe Matthews, ed., The Statutes At Large of the Confederate States of America, Passed at the Third Session of the First Congress; 1863 (Richmond: R. M. Smith, 1863), p. 104; James Muscoe Matthews, ed., The Statutes At Large of the Confederate States of America, Passed at the Fourth Session of the First Congress; 1863-4 (Richmond: R. M. Smith, 1864), pp. 235-236).

32 "Diary of James Pitman Saunders," pp. 177-184; Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 2, pp. 237-239. The camp was called Camp Kelsoe Springs. It may have been at Kessler's Chalybeate Springs, or, conceivably, in the Alfred Kelso Survey west of Columbus.

33 Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 2, pp. 237-239.

34 Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 2, pp. 237-239; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 177, 179.

35 Official Records, series I, vol. 26, part 2, pp. 278-280, 330, 469-471.

36 Grover C. Ramsey, comp., Confederate Postmasters in Texas (Waco: W. M. Morrison, 1963); Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 5, p. 837; Hank Bieciuk and H. G. "Bill" Corbin, Texas Confederate County Notes & Private Scrip (1961), p. 90, which contains a reproduction of a Neer, James & Co. note. McLeary was the first postmaster at Osage.

37 Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, The Freemantle Diary (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), p. 49; Official Records, series I, vol. 15, p. 1017; Doris Glasser, ed., "The Gustav A. Forsgard Diaries," The Houston Review, vol. 14, no. 1, 1992, p. 56. For more on Sally Scull see Daniel E. Kilgore, "Two Six Shooters and a Sunbonnet The Story of Sally Skull" (in Frances Edward Abernethy, ed., Legendary Ladies of Texas, Dallas: E-Heart Press, 1981), pp. 59-71; Frank X. Tolbirt, An Informal History of Texas (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), pp. 214-218; Paul Carl Boethel, Colonel Amasa Turner The Gentleman From Lavaca and Other Captains at San Jacinto (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1963), pp. 131-136; Bill Stein, trans. and ed., "The Sally Scull Divorce Papers," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, May 1992, pp. 122-126. Forsgard, on February 1, 1863, unfavorably compares Alleyton to Hempstead, but makes favorable remarks about Columbus. There is no apparent evidence that Alleyton, as some have claimed, was larger than Columbus before, during, or after the war.

38 Galveston Daily News, August 23, 1895; Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Pauline A. Pinckney, Painting in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 141-145; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1790: H. A. Tatum v. Jane Tatum, Minute Book C2, p. 575. No primary sources, other than his paintings, have been located for Hoppe. Despite diligent searching, no record of his birth, his arrival in the United States, his presence in Texas or any other state, or of his death, has been located. All of his pictures, three of which remained in the hands of Leyendecker's descendants until 1976, are now a part of the collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art. For the best discussion of his work, and photographs of his four known pictures, see Cecilia Steinfeldt, Art for History's Sake: The Texas Collection of the Witte Museum (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993), pp. 131-134.

39 Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1763: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin; Civil Cause File 1777: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin; Colorado County Deed Records, Book L, pp. 74-77; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book E, p. 348.

40 Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1763: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin; Civil Cause File 1777: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin; Civil Cause File No. 1687: Martha C. Tobin vs. Robert H. Tobin. The court's decree allowed Martha Tobin to remove all the case's papers from the court's records, and she apparently did. It cannot be confirmed that the suit was for divorce because the papers are missing.

41 Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1763: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin, Civil Cause File No. 1777: Robert Robson v. Robert H. Tobin; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 5, pp. 449, 479, 795. In addition to being his lawyer, Daniels was Tobin's brother-in-law.

42 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 485: State of Texas v. Robert Tarkington, Criminal Cause File No. 496: State of Texas v. Thaddeus W. Hunter; Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Schedule 1, Colorado County, Texas.

43 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 364: State of Texas v. John, a slave, Criminal Cause File No. 499: State of Texas v. Allen, a slave, Criminal Cause File No. 511: State of Texas v. Low, a slave, Minute Book C 2, p. 350.

44 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 512: State of Texas v. Sion R. Bostick, Criminal Cause File No. 527: State of Texas v. Matthew McDowell.

45 Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Colorado Citizen, June 2, 1881; Darden Family File, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library; Members of the Texas Legislature, 1846-1962 (n. p., 1962), p. 48.

46 Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus. Pratt died on October 23, 1863 (see Register of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Who Died in Federal Prisons and Military Hospitals in the North (U. S. War Department, 1912), p. 293).

47 Muster Rolls, Company B, Fifth Texas Infantry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus. Though Auerbach was the only man killed in battle after Gettysburg, a private named W. L. Burton was shot by a sharpshooter at New Market Hill, Virginia on August 18, 1864. Since his death occurred outside battle, he has been numbered with the fifteen who died of disease or other causes. Neither Andrew Legg nor William Ryan has been counted among the company's casualties.

48 Muster Rolls, Company A, Fifth Texas Cavalry, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Roll 32; Theophilus Noel, A Campaign From Santa Fe to the Mississippi; Being a History of the Old Sibley Brigade (Raleigh: Charles R. Sanders, Jr., 1961), pp. 132, 142-143. Noel states that Shaw was killed at Fort Butler on June 28, 1863 and that Kindred was killed at Yellow Bayou in Louisiana on May 18, 1864. He also reports, inaccurately, that David Hubbard was killed at Latourche in July 1863, when in fact he died in a hospital in February 1862 of wounds suffered at Valverde; and that Robert H. Carter, Martin Pankey, and John Stolts were killed at Valverde when in fact all three were wounded but survived. Having pointed out these inaccuracies, it should also be stated that no source other than Noel has been discovered which confirms that Shaw and Kindred were killed in action, or that David, Newsom, Seymour, Silvey, and Terrell died of disease.

49 According to a count based on Eighth Census of the United States (1860) Schedule 1, Colorado County, Texas, there were 1343 males between the ages of 12 and 45 in Colorado County in 1860, of whom 406 were born in Germany, 37 in what became Czechoslovakia, and 900 elsewhere. A comparison of the list of the 1343 names with the Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, revealed 103 Germans, four Czechs, and 400 others who could reasonably be identified as Confederate soldiers. Many others may have served; however, there was often insufficient information to determine that an individual on the 1860 census was the same individual found in the compiled service records. There were two John Millers, two James Walkers, and one James Johnson, one John Smith, one John Washington, one John White, and one John Wilson in Colorado County in 1860, and innumerable ones in the Confederate army. There were also six Colorado County men who were over the age of 45 when the 1860 census was taken who are known to have served in the Confederate military and a seventh who enlisted but was never accepted into service. These seven men were: Henry Terrell, who was 55, Samuel B. DeHart, 54, John Noack, 50, Robert A. Bell, 49, Henry Spinck, 47, William G. Hunt, 46, and Howal A. Tatum, 46. Two of the seven, Noack and Spinck, were German.

50 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 49-53; Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Schedule 1, Colorado County, Texas. Carlton was the son of James Carlton, Herbert the son of William J. Herbert, Jenkins the son of James H. Jenkins, Payne the son of Zachariah Payne, and Terrell the son of Henry Terrell. Hester managed the plantation of Julia Currie; Joiner that of Samuel Stephen Montgomery.

51 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 362-371.

52 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 167-171; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the Official Records (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906) series 1, vol. 21, pp. 857-858.

53 Muster Rolls, Company D, Cavalry, Waul's Texas Legion, Microfilm edition in Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Civil War letters of George McCormick (Ms. 6), Draper/McCormick Papers, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus, or the convenient transcriptions in Bill Stein, ed., "The Experiences of George McCormick in Waul's Texas Legion," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, December 1989, pp. 35-65; John Duff Brown, "Reminiscences of Jno. Duff Brown," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 4, April 1909, pp. 309-311. Waul's Texas Legion, which was organized by Thomas Neville Waul, at its inception contained infantry, cavalry, and artillery units.

54 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 381, 382, 383, 384, 385; Colorado County Police [Commissioners] Court Minutes, Book 2, pp. 420-421. Another Colorado County German, Henry Sudmeyer also joined the company, but never reported for duty. Six days after joining Quin's company, he joined the company raised by Jordt, that is, Company H, 17th Texas Infantry, and served in it throughout the war.

55 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Rolls 138, 273-280, 288. Dodd was 15 when the 1860 census was taken.

56 Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Roll 210; Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 2, p. 246, series 1, vol. 50, part 2, p. 333; Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans, vol. 3, p. 1292; Oran M. Roberts, "Texas," in Clement A. Evans, ed., Confederate Military History, (12 vols., Atlanta: Confederate Publishing Company, 1899), vol. 11, pp. 380-383; Mamie Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray 1861-1865 (1912. Reprint. Dayton, Ohio: Morningside, 1986), pp. 174-175. After A. H. Davidson's death, Ragsdale took over command of the battalion, thereby giving it the name by which it is now known, Ragsdale's Battalion.

57 Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, from its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903 (2 vols., Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903. Reprint. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), vol. 1, p. 679; Official Records, series 1, vol. 9, pp. 520, 605-606, vol. 15, p. 217, vol. 26, pp. 66, 396, 454, 478, vol. 24, part 2, p. 932, vol. 30, pp. 192-193; vol. 41, part 3, p. 969, vol. 41, part 4, p. 1144, vol. 48, part 1, p. 1458; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers who Served in Organizations from the State of Texas, National Archives Microfilm Publication No. 323, Roll 308, 310; Colorado Citizen, January 21, 1921. On December 4, 1863, Green called McNeill "the best officer" in his brigade (see Official Records, series 1, vol. 26, part 2, p. 478). He had graduated 26th in his West Point class.

58 Roberts, "Texas," in Evans, ed., Confederate Military History, vol. 11, pp. 380-383, 595-597.

59 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1862, 1864.

60 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1864; Colorado County Deed Records, Book L, p. 33, Book M, p. 541; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book D, p. 12. The few large plantations listed above housed 737 of the 4086 slaves in the county in 1864.

61 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1864; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book D, pp. 105, 127. The average value of a rural slave was based on the value of the slaves on the plantations mentioned above, plus those of the largest plantations near Oakland, the three plantations upriver from Columbus, the plantations near Harvey's Creek, those at Walnut Bend and upriver from Walnut Bend, and those near Frelsburg, all of which will shortly be discussed. The plantations considered in this study contained 2813 slaves (about two-thirds of all the slaves in the county) valued at $1,566,100, or $556.74 each. All 4086 slaves in the county in 1864 were valued at $2,299,455, or $562.76 each. These valuations, of course, were in Confederate money. Its relative value in United States dollars can be roughly deduced by a comparison of the values placed on four taxable commodities, horses, cattle, sheep, and rural land, by the tax assessor during and immediately after the war. Unhappily, the valuations for the first three of these commodities for 1863 and 1864 are lost. For 1861 and 1862, the assessor assigned an average value of $44.89 to horses, $6.00 to cattle, $2.55 to sheep, and $7.43 to an acre of rural land. For 1865 and 1866, he assigned values of $30.73, $4.07, $1.91, and $5.14 to the same commodities. All four commodities were reduced in value by about thirty percent. If the same had held true for slaves, then the average slave had a tax value of about 400 United States dollars in 1864, and the average rural slave about $10 less (see Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1861-1866).

62 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1864; Colorado County Probate Records, Final Record Book F, pp. 14-17, 302-303; Colorado County Deed Records, Book K, p. 665, Book L, p. 390.

63 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1864; Colorado County Deed Records, Book E, p. 138, Book K, pp. 488, 783, Book L, p. 246, 405. Bonds' plantation was in the James G. O'Farrell Survey, Hubbard's and Smith's in the Henry Austin Survey, Currie's in the Peyton R. Splane Survey, Harrington's in the Joseph Duty Survey, and Miller's in the Elisha Flowers Survey. Hubbard purchased the biggest part of plantation on June 15, 1859; Harrington bought his plantation on April 21, 1863; and Jarmon bought his on September 1, 1854.

64 Colorado County Tax Rolls, 1864; Colorado County Deed Records, Book L, p. 173. Many persons who owned large numbers of slaves in 1864 apparently had no land in the county on which to employ them. These included L. B. Cooper, who owned 31, B. F. Montgomery, who owned 26, and William John Darden, who owned 21 slaves and, for land, only a lot in Columbus.