Organization, Loss of Commanders
Following the secession of Texas with the rest of the Confederacy, Benjamin Franklin Terry, a wealthy sugar planter, recruited for and organized the Rangers in Houston, Texas, in August, 1861. Initially bound for service in Virginia and the "eastern theater", the regiment instead was placed under the command of Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston for service in the "western theater". They immediately saw action, with their first skirmish being on December 17, 1861, near Woodsonville, Kentucky, when they engaged Union forces while being supported by the 6th Arkansas Infantry. The skirmish, while minor, cost them Colonel Terry, who was killed in action. Colonel Terry was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lubbock, who received a promotion to colonel. However, Col. Lubbock died from disease before ever actually taking command. John Austin Wharton then received a promotion to colonel, and assumed command. He would hold that position until he was promoted, eventually rising to the rank of Major General. After his first promotion he would be replaced by Col. Thomas Harrison.
Read more about this topic: Terry's Texas Rangers
Famous quotes containing the word loss:
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)