The Miraculous Survivals of Private Nance - Part 1

 

Texas Cavalry

During the Civil War, death came sudden and came often.  Whether it was from a battle wound, effects of weather, accident, or disease, chances were slim for survival.  Private David Carey Nance of Parson’s Texas Cavalry seemed to buck the odds, surviving bullet wounds, disease and a massive explosion that flattened most of a Texas town. 

Like most young Texans at the beginning of the war, Nance saw the war as a chance for adventure while defending his state from Federal invasion.  Born on February 2, 1843 in Case County, Illinois, he spent his youth working the family farm near Cedar Hill, a few miles southwest of Dallas.  The Nance family was against secession, opposed to slavery, but anti-abolitionist.  A rash of fires in Dallas led many to believe an abolitionist plot was at work to incite a slave revolt in North Texas.  Three suspected abolitionist preachers from the North were beaten before being driven out of town while dozens of suspected slaves were whipped.  Though no arsonist was found, war sentiment increased.  After Fort Sumter, local companies were formed for service in the Confederate Army.  Many young men in Nance’s home county enrolled in three companies that became attached to Colonel William Parson’s 12th Texas Cavalry Regiment.  Against the wishes of his bible-thumping father, Nance enlisted.  Although delayed by illness, bad weather, and pursuit by a hungry pack of wolves, he and his horse caught up with his company outside of Houston at Sims Bayou.

By December 1861, the 12th Cavalry’s camp was a muddy shantytown of various tents, canvass overhangs and crude wigwams made of pine limbs.  Dubbed Camp Hebert in honor of the District Commander of Texas, General Paul Herbert, its purpose was to guard the railroad track and telegraph lines between Galveston and Houston.  Like many Confederate camps early in the war, disease, not bullets, was the biggest killer.  Plagued by an incessant cold rain and living in a morass of knee deep mud, more than forty-eight men succumbed to pneumonia and typhoid, referred to back then as “Bayou Fever.”  One of Nance’s messmates, Billy Parsons, fell victim to disease.  Depression followed in Camp Herbert, but quickly subsided after an announcement from Colonel Parson.  The 12th was heading to Missouri or Kentucky.

The Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge, however, led to a change in destination.  After the battle, Major General Earl Van Dorn marched his army into Mississippi to assist Major General Albert Sidney Johnston in his attack on Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant.  Arkansas was stripped bare of manpower, arms and supplies.  A desperate call for troops was sent out.  Newly appointed General Thomas Hindman declared martial law in Little Rock while raising an army.  Parson’s Texans were appropriated to help defend Arkansas.  Victorious at Pea Ridge, General Samuel Curtis’ troops marched southeast along the White River, burning farms and stealing livestock along the way.  Upon reaching Batesville, he rendezvoused with troops under General Frederick Steele, arriving from Southeastern Missouri.  Ordered to capture Little Rock, Curtis was hit with a wave of partisan attacks, slowing his advance and buying time for Hindman to bolster his defenses.

After a two-week furlough and a bout with pneumonia at the family farm,  Nance headed to Little Rock.  Placed under the command of a former Arkansas politician, Albert Rusk, Confederate cavalry units camped at Searcy, on the move to scout and engage Curtis.  Humidity and mosquitoes plagued the cavalrymen, forcing them to cover themselves with blankets to repel the pesky insects.  On July 6, 1862, the 12th and 16th Texas regiments arrived at the Cache River to hold the James Ferry and prevent Union troops from crossing.  The 12th camped six miles south of James Ferry on the Des Arc Road.  The following morning, Parson’s asked for 70 volunteers to form an advance guard further up the road.  Nance was among 20 who volunteered to form a skirmish line ahead of the advance guard, watching for any Union activity ahead.  Nance found himself at the furthest and most vulnerable point in the line.  Alone in a Cypress swamp, Nance suddenly saw Federal cavalry 40 yards away.  They immediately opened fire, wounding Nance twice in throat.  Both he and his horse, droppedl into the swamp.  Such wounds were always fatal; the trachea was damaged, sometimes severed, causing blood to flow into the lungs.  Using a ripped portion of his shirt to form a crude bandage for his neck, Nance crawled in the mud and hid under a fallen tree.  He didn’t remain hidden long.  “The enemy moved up, and I was in their midst, but they had not discovered me,” wrote Nance.  “My hat, clothes and gun were gone, but I had side arms left which I tried to use.  Just then another ball crashed through my shoulder as I lay along. Then I was helpless, with three crimson streams flowing fast; and I thought my time was short.”  A union cavalryman put a pistol to his forehead but was stopped short of pulling the trigger by a sympathetic captain; who forced him to stand up and then led him to a field hospital.  Covered in blood, gore and mud, Nance was left for dead in a grassy knoll among dead and critically wounded soldiers.  After thirty minutes, he managed to crawl back into the brush without being detected by his guards.  An hour later, his bloody and distorted form was discovered by fellow Texans.  Nance was loaded into a wagon bound for a hospital at Des Arc, Arkansas.  During the bumpy two hour ride, the other two wounded men with him passed away.  After the wagon arrived, Nance managed to lower himself from the wagon and incredibly walked up a flight of stairs to his hospital room. 

The fight at Cache River was a bloody tactical win for Curtis but a strategic loss for his campaign.  Casualties amounted to 63 for the Union and 90 to 250 for the Confederacy.  Short on supplies, harassed by Confederate cavalry, and unable to live off the country, he gave up his attempt to capture Little Rock, marching instead to Helena where Mississippi River steamboats could supply him.  The capture of Little Rock was delayed for a year.

Nance’s wounds were cleaned and bandaged.  Assured that no vital organs were damaged, he went to sleep on a real bed, but was kept awake most the night by a mortally wounded soldier; who moaned all night until his death the following morning.  His face purple and swollen, his jaws were too sore to function, preventing him from eating.  On July 10, Nance was transferred to a military hospital at Little Rock, sixty miles away.  The mule driven wagon was anything but comfortable; blow flies tried to get at his wounds while dust added to his difficulty in breathing.  The five story St. John’s College hospital held 500 sick and wounded patients.  An average of eight patients died each day.  Nance wrote, “Soldiers constituting so-called  undertaking details made regular visits to the wards twice a day collecting bodies for burial.”  As if his wounds were not bad enough, he came down with erysipelas, a bacterial skin infection characterized by a painful red rash caused by unclean, poorly bandaged wounds.  Placed in the erysipelas ward, Nance endured two weeks of further agony.  Though he survived his wounds, his physician didn’t.  He died from disease.  Granted a sixty day furlough, Private Nance headed back to Texas and his family.  What awaited him at home would be far worse than his wounding at Cache River.