Civil War
A few days after the convention voted for secession from the union on February 1, 1861 (though before the necessary referendum), the Texas Committee of Public Safety established a Provisional Army, in which McCulloch received a commission as colonel. On March 4, he was appointed commander of the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment, also known (especially to its officers) as the 1st Texas Mounted Rifles. The unit was recruited from several counties in central Texas to serve for twelve months and was the first Texas cavalry regiment to enter Confederate service. Its mission was to maintain a line of patrol from the Red River southwest to the junction of the Concho and North Concho Rivers, a point near present-day San Angelo.
McCulloch was acknowledged by his superiors and others for his emphasis on precise discipline and gentlemanly conduct in his regiment. His training methods included complex cavalry and infantry maneuvers as well as sabre-fighting and the proper care of horses and equipment. Many Texas units maintained only lax rules of propriety and organization, but the 1st Texas remained a cohesive and loyal unit, disbanding only under the proper orders.
After receiving word of the action at Fort Sumter, McCulloch moved five companies to confront any federal troops remaining in Texas who had not yet embarked at the port of Indianola, but en route he received orders from Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn to intercept a federal force northwest of San Antonio. On May 9, McCulloch's troops, numbering some 1,300, captured the 8th U.S. Infantry near San Lucas Springs.
Late in June, McCulloch crossed the Red River with Maj. Edward Burleson to ensure the friendliness (or at least the neutrality) of the Wichita and Caddo Indians, following this with a warning that any raids across the river into Texas would bring retaliation—and over the following year, there were in fact a number of engagements between elements of the 1st Texas and Indian raiding parties. The success of the Texas troops in suppressing these raids is shown in the fact that the number of raids actually decreased during 1861 and 1862 from the numbers reported in previous years.
In September 1861, McCulloch, now a brigadier general, assumed temporary command of the Department of Texas until the arrival of Brig. Gen. Paul O. Hébert, and in December was named to command the new Western Military District, comprising that part of the state west and south of San Antonio. Early the next year, he was ordered to assume co-command of Texas State Troops being sent to Arkansas.
On September 6, 1862, following the death near Little Rock of his co-commander, Allison Nelson of Waco, McCulloch took command of the new Texas Division and organized it into four brigades, ultimately taking command of the Third Brigade himself while the division as a whole was under the command of Maj. Gen. John G. Walker. The division was attached to the District of Arkansas, Trans-Mississippi Department, and by April 1863 it was in Louisiana, where it took part in the Red River Campaign, the Camden Expedition, and the Battle of Milliken's Bend, which was an early phase of the Vicksburg campaign. In July 1863, the division arrived in Alexandria, Louisiana, where McCulloch was replaced by Col. George Flournoy. McCulloch was approached as a candidate for governor of Texas late that summer, but declined in order to remain on active service.
In 1864 and 1865, McCulloch was again in north Texas and in charge of the Western Sub-District of Texas (the entire District now being under the command of Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder), where he was active not only in dealing with Indian raids but in pursuing and arresting Confederate deserters and bushwhackers. At the end of the war, on his return to his home in Seguin, he found it necessary to travel with an armed escort because of threats against his life by deserters.
Read more about this topic: Henry Eustace McCulloch
Famous quotes by civil war:
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)