The American Civil War: The Common Texan Soldier's Experience
... to be true Hudson activated the state troops in North Texas in late September 1862 and ordered the arrest of all able-bodied men who did not report for duty. Texas state troops led by Col. James G. Bourland arrested more than 150 men on the morning of October 1. In Gainesville he and Col. William C. Young of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry, home on sick leave, supervised the collection of a citizen's court of twelve jurors. Bourland and Young together owned nearly a fourth of the slaves in Cooke County, and seven of the jurors chosen were slaveholders. Their decision to convict on a majority vote was a bad omen for the prisoners, all of whom were accused of insurrection or treason and none of whom owned slaves. The military achieved its goal of eliminating the leadership of the Union League in Cooke County when the jury condemned seven influential Unionists. However an angry mob took matters into its own hands and lynched fourteen more before the jurors recessed. James Lemuel Clark, a son of one of the fourteen men who were lynched, recollects his feelings towards the incident in a letter he sent to his mother and siblings after the incident: I have just received your kind letter of December the 12th. I was glad to hear from you and that you was well, but oh the horrors and agonies of my heart at hearing of the cruel murder of my Father no tongue can tell. Mother what to do. I am at a loss. Your condition is dreadful but thank heaven there is a just god to whome the blood of my dear Father and tears of a deeply injured family cry for vengence. Men who have no more feelings of humanity that they have deserve to be cast into the very depths of the gulf of perdition. It seams as if it is out of my power to come home at present but I will come home as soon as I posabley can. Mother God bless you and keep you by his tender care. I don’t know how you are going to get along but do the best you can and when I get home you shall not suffer if it is in my power to keep you from suffering…. Violence in Gainesville reached an all time peak the following week, and on Thursday October 16, 1862, in two separate events, James A. Dickson, a consumptive who was exempt from military service, and Colonel William C. Young were murdered in cold blood. In the ensuing hysteria, moderate jurors were replaced, legal formalities were waived, and a more vengeful Citizens Court reversed the acquittal of nineteen prisoners and lynched them. Colonel Young was one of those nineteen men. Their execution was supervised by Capt. Jim Young, Colonel Young's son. On that very same day James A. Dickson was ambushed while hunting with his younger brother-in-law and an older man in the bottoms along Hickory Creek, a tributary of the Red River. The Great Hanging of Gainesville, Texas was not the only Texan tragedy during the War Between the States. Another infamous blood-battle was fought just that winter before the hanging in the New Mexico Territory. This battle was infamously known as Bloody Valverde. Nobody tells the Battle of Valverde better than the Confederate soldiers who fought there. This story is told through the memoirs and recollections of William Davidson, a soldier in the Sibley Brigade. In the summer of 1861 Lt. Col. John R. Baylor led a small band of Texans in occupying the Mesilla Valley in southern New Mexico. By December 1861 a much larger 3,000 headstrong Texan Army began to arrive at Franklin (El Paso) and moved north to join Baylor. In command of the Confederate Army of New Mexico was Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, a twenty-two year veteran of the antebellum army, who had been stationed in New Mexico prior to the war. Sibley's objective, although never clearly defined, was to expand the Confederacy to Colorado and eventually California, thus making them a transcontinental nation more likely to win diplomatic recognition in Europe. In early 1862 Sibley moved against Fort Craig, a Federal bastion in south-central New Mexico. By February 16th the Texan army had pushed within a mile of the post. At the fort a Union force of 1,250 Federals and 1,350 New Mexican volunteers and militia awaited the Confederate advance. All were commanded by Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby. Realizing that Fort Craig was well guarded to be taken by assault, Sibley offered battle on the open plain south of the fort. When Canby refused, Sibley decided to bypass the fort by retreating down river some seven miles to the village of Paraje, where the Confederates crossed the east bank of the Rio Grande. Sibley miscalculated that it would take his army one day to reach the Valverde Fort, some six miles upriver from Fort Craig, where the Confederate army could then cross the river. Slowed by deep sand, the Texans were forced to make a dry camp on the eve of battle. Realizing that the Valverde Fort was Sibley's objective, Canby sent a battery of artillery and two regiments of volunteers across the river to impede the Texan advance. Although Canby ordered his army into battle position and sent out skirmishes, the Union force was driven off by the Confederate artillery. At daybreak on Friday, February 21, 1862, Sibley ordered Major Charles L. Pyron, with 180 men, to reconnoiter a road to Valverde. Pyron was followed by Major Henry R. Raguet with five companies. Pyron rode north along the eastern extremities of Black Mesa before turning west along the north edge of the escarpment to the river. Reaching a small cottonwood grove near the ford, the Confederates commenced watering their horses when Pyron discovered a force of Federal cavalry in his front. As the Texans took cover in the sandy bottomland, a fierce firefight erupted. In response, Canby hurried Colonel Benjamin S. Roberts with regular and volunteer cavalry to the scene. Hearing the same gunfire, Major Raguet, joined by Colonel William R. Scurry and the remainder of the Confederate Fourth Regiment, raced for the river. By ten o'clock, a section of Captain Trevanion T. Teel's artillery had also reached Valverde. Several times the Texans advanced toward the river, only to be driven off by a heavy Union artillery bombardment. About this time Union forces moved to envelop the Confederates right by crossing the Rio Grande upriver from Valverde. Such a move forced Scurry to divide his command and lengthen the Confederate line. For two hours Captain Alexander McRae, a North Carolinian who had remained loyal to the Union, continued to pound the Confederate position on the east bank with his artillery. By eleven o'clock it was evident to Colonel Scurry that the Confederates would have to withdraw. Retreating from the Bosque and the east bank of the river in confusion, the Texans were able to take refuge behind a low ridge of sand hills that paralleled the east bank of the river. By midday the tide of battle was clearly swinging in favor of the Federals. By one o'clock, as additional units, both Union and Confederate, raced for Valverde, General Sibley had become so ill, exhausted, and drunk that he had retired to an ambulance in the Confederate rear, and the Confederate army was turned over to Colonel Thomas Green. On the Confederate right, Capt. Willis L. Lang with a company armed only with lances, launched a gallant and courageous attack against a company of Colorado Volunteers that had been hastily recruited and hurried south from Denver. The volunteers held their fire until the Lancers were within a few yards of the Federal line and then fired a deadly volley into the charging Confederates. In the suicidal attack, the Lancers, Company B of the Fifth Regiment, suffered a greater loss of life than any other company in the Army of New Mexico. Captain Lang was so severely wounded that he later committed suicide. Lieutenant Demetrius M. Bass, Lang's second in command, was wounded several times and died several days later. Shortly after three in the afternoon, Colonel Canby arrived on the battlefield and decided to advance his right and center while using his left as a pivot, thus forcing the Confederate left. To reinforce his army Canby ordered Colonel Christopher Carson's regiment of volunteers across the river. At the same time Colonel Green decided on an all-out attack on the Federal artillery. Concealed by the sand hills, Green advanced on the Union center as Colonel Raguet moved against a Federal battery firing on the Confederate left flank. Raguet's cavalry adva...