Texas Joins the Confederacy
Wednesday is the sesquicentennial of Texas officially joining the Confederacy. Journalist Richard Parker has a great post up on the event at the New York Times Disunion blog.
Secession fever set in quickly. Militia companies were raised across the state. Wealthy men funded them and experienced soldiers and American Indian fighters led them. An assortment of units in colorful uniforms drilled in town squares: part of the First Texas Infantry in red stripes, some Fourth Texas Infantry troops in gray and trimmed in blue. One cavalry commander even sported jaguar skins. There was no shortage, however, of bravado. Pvt. Ralph J. Smith, in Company K of the Second Texas Infantry, put it simply: “We knew no such words as fail.”
Private Smith enlisted in the 2nd Texas in October 1861 at Galveston. He was captured at Shiloh in 1862, exchanged that fall, captured and paroled at Vicksburg in July 1863, and eventually surrendered with his regiment at the end of the war, finally being paroled in August 1865. He published a short memoir in 1911, Reminiscences of Civil War.
_______________
Image: Ambrotype believed to depict the surrender of General Twiggs’ federal forces to the Confederates in the main plaza in San Antonio on February 16, 1861. Texas State Library.
Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
I always thought Texas officially joined on March 2, not March 1.
Indeed, yes. The anniversary crept up on me and I repeated an error from the Disunion blog. Maybe you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
Thanks.
No worries. I only thought of it, because it’s my brother’s birthday and my Texan parents mentioned it a few times. I enjoy the blog. Keep posting.
My ancestor, Capt. Edward Malone, Sr., CSA, Co. F, 24th Alabama Infantry, was twice wounded and 1867, buried at Trinity Episcopal Church, Galveston. Before that he served as a Lt. under his brother-in-law, Maj. Henry van Buren of the Rio Grande Volunteer Light Artillery (the Galveston Battery) which used two light cannon from the defunct Texas Republic Navy. The unit helped capture the vessel “Star in the West”. Dos any one know from which Texas Republic Navy ship the cannon came from, and their contemporary fate? Are their any photos of the unit? I assume Malone was buried six feet deep. After the hurricane, wasn’t another circa ten feet added to Galveston Island. Would Malone, 1821-1867, now be 16 feet below?
Old Episcopal Cemetery is near my home; next time I’m that way I’ll see if I can find Malone’s stone. There are no burials in or on the grounds of Trinity Episcopal, AFAIK; it would have been in Old Episcopal. He would be in good company there.
There was a grade-raising after the 1900 storm, but it would not have been much at that location, if any. Trinity is probably the best-preserved and maintained cemetery in that complex.
Don’t know about the cannon.
Thank you. He is buried next to the church below a window. He was a Mobile/Galveston cotton broker. Malone and van Buren wed daughters of 1815, 3rd U.S. Infantry, Col. Gilbert Christian Russell, Sr., for whom Russell County, Alabma, is named. I tried to send you Malone’s picture in uniform but could not figure how? e-mail and I will return it with his picture. He and his brother, 2nd Lt. Thomas Malone, Jr., CSA, were Alabama Pvts. in the Mexican War, but I doubt they left Mobile? Their father, Thomas Malone, Sr., in 1803 was U.S. Land Agent, U.S. Magistrate, Asst. U.S. Indian Agent, a Freemason, Ft. St. Stephens, Alabama, and with Capt. Edm. P. Gaines, arrested Aaron Burr and escorted Burr to trial, Richmond, Va.
“He is buried next to the church below a window.”
I’ll certainly check that, as well.