Stand With The Second !

                                                                       Texas Memorial at Vicksburg

 

 

 

On the morning of May 22, 1863, Private Brooks scanned the Union line for activity. He wiped the early morning sweat from his eyes for a better look.   Vicksburg summers promised stifling humidity, raging dysentery and waves of biting insects.  Except for the frequent artillery shellings, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.  Plumes of campfire smoke rose in the distance; the Yankees were cooking breakfast.

General Ulysses S. Grant finally had Vicksburg in his grasp; his forces surrounded the Mississippi River port from all sides.  Union shells rained down on the residents from river mortars and land batteries.  Civilians and soldiers alike were forced to spend long stretches in trenches and caves.   At 10 A.M., the shelling stopped.  The blue clad Yankees began falling into columns with fixed bayonets.  Members of the Second Texas Infantry Regiment knew what was coming.  Soaked with sweat, covered with dirt, and starving for a decent meal, they grabbed their rifle muskets and took their positions along the earthen barricades.  In addition to their own rifle muskets, each Texan possessed five or six outdated smoothbore muskets to increase their short range firepower.   A lone cannon sounded in the distance; the Union columns began moving toward them.  Brooks screamed, "Here they come!"   

The Second Texas consisted of ten companies mustered in September, 1861.  Organized in Galveston, most of its ranks consisted of young men from Harris and Burleson  counties in Southeast Texas.  Among them were Sam Houston Jr., son of the heroic general of the Texas Revolution and Albert Jones, the son of Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas.  Despite his opposition to Secession, Sam Houston visited the Second often, told jokes and watched them drill.

During the Battle of Shiloh, the Second saw heavy action and played a major role in capturing the stubbornly held "Hornet's Nest."  Close to one hundred casualties were sustained, including Sam Houston Jr., who was wounded and later sent to a Union prison camp.  Six months later, it participated in a disastrous attack on Corinth, Mississippi, a critical railroad juncture in Northern Mississippi.  Col. William Rogers, wearing an iron vest and carrying the regimental flag himself, led his command against the stout defenses of Battery Robinette.  The vest failed to protect him and he was toppled from the battery's walls in a bullet ridden heap.  Confederate forces were forced to retreat.  Out of 314 troops, the Second Texas lost 116 men.  Its next assignment would prove more daunting: Vicksburg.

No sooner had the Second arrived when it was rushed to Chickasaw Bayou along the Yazoo River.  General William Tecumseh Sherman attempted to take Vicksburg from behind, thus avoiding the heavy gun emplacements along the river; he failed miserably.  His forces were pinned down beneath the bluffs under a hail of gunfire.  When Union steamships anchored to evacuate Sherman's troops, the Second Texas launched a bold attack.  Union troops were shot off their boat decks while navy officers hurriedly cut their anchors and steamed away from the river bank.  "This most gallant regiment with a dash," wrote Brigadier General Stephen Lee, "rushed almost up to the boats delivering their fire with terrible effect on their crowded transports."

The Second Texas in time became a superb defensive unit, eagerly serving at positions under serious threat of attack.  After holding off a Union amphibious force at Fort Pemberton near Greenwood, they were sent south to Warrenton to protect Vicksburg's southern approaches.  While there, they supplemented their meager corn meal diet with an abundance of crawfish.  As Grant closed in on Vicksburg's outskirts, the Second was called up to help defend the city.  A crescent shaped earthen fort or lunette became their home for the duration of the siege.  The Second Texas Lunette, as it was called, guarded the vital Baldwin Ferry Road into Vicksburg.  Because of its location and importance  it would certainly be subject to Union assault

An entire brigade from the command of Union General James McClernand hit the Second Texas Lunette head on. Carrying scaling ladders and shouting "Vicksburg or hell," Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin troops attempted to scale the sloped earthen walls of the lunette.  They were mowed down in heaps by the many accurate muskets of the Second Texas.  Cotton bales used to bolster the lunette walls caught fire, sending an eerie shower of cotton embers over the Texan defenders.  The fires were put out as Union troops fell back into the only available cover, a deep moat at the base of the lunette.  Despite their success, the Texans couldn't fire their cannons because they were quickly shot by Union troops in the moat while servicing their guns.   Instead, crude hand grenades were constructed from artillery shells and rolled down the sloped walls into the crowded moat below.     

A second assault at 5:00 PM met the same fate.  The lunette was briefly pierced at times but vicious counterattacks erased any success.  Three brigades assaulted and three brigades failed.  Union flags stuck in the lunette's walls were removed in true Texas fashion by lassoing them by rope and pulling them down.  A carpet of mangled Union bodies laid at the foot of the lunette.  For three days, a terrible stench rose from the dead as they rotted under the summer sun. A temporary truce allowed for a brief respite and the removal of the dead and wounded.  Henceforth, siege warfare would ensue until Vicksburg's surrender on July 4, 1863. 

Disease and starvation would reduce the Second Texas more than Union arms.  The survivors were paroled after the surrender and forced to sit out any fighting until exchanged.  By foot, they traveled back to Texas in small groups.  Out of the initial 1,300 men, only 200 were left upon their arrival.  Too reduced in numbers to be effective elsewhere, the Second Texas was used to guard the Texas coastline until the end of the war.

Check out Joseph Chance's book, "The Second Texas Infantry" and visit the wonderful Vicksburg National Battlefield Park.  With or without the casinos, the park and city are definitely worth a two to three day visit.

"Paging Johnny Ringo ! Johnny Ringo to the set please !"

                                                                                       Johnny Ringo

 

During the late 50's and early 60's, TV Westerns were all the rage.  Every network had at least four Westerns a week.  Some such as "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza," and the "Big Valley" (gosh that Linda Evans was cute) became prime time icons.  Any network that put a show in "Bonanza's" time slot faced a brutal demise.  I've always wondered why a Western about three single half-brothers of varying physique, a three times widowed patriarch, and an overly polite Chinese cook named Hop Sing merited such a following.    I guess people just couldn't get enough of that hunky "Hoss" Cartwright.  Other shows portrayed famous Old West  personalities such as Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok and Colonel George Armstrong Custer.  Not surprisingly, Native Americans hated "Custer" so much they protested it right off the air.

One character that found its way into numerous TV Westerns, and movies as well, was a little known gunfighter from Texas history, Johnny Ringo.  Historians agree that there are no redeeming qualities to Ringo.  He didn't own a massive cattle ranch, didn't kill anybody of note nor did he serve in the law enforcement community.  The only two reasons are he indirectly confronted the legendary Wyatt Earp and he had a really cool name.  Mostly the latter it seems.

In 1850, John Peters Ringo was born in Indiana and grew up in Liberty, Missouri; an area tainted by the Kansas-Missouri border violence during the Civil War.  Looking for greener pastures, the Ringo family loaded up a covered wagon for a move to California.  During the move, Ringo's father accidently blew his head off with a shotgun.  The tragedy had a traumatic effect on Ringo; his life took a downward spiral ever since.

During the mid 1870's, he migrated to Mason County, Texas; a region rocked with ethnic strife between Texas ranchers and German settlers.  A full scale range war broke out in 1875 when ranchers began rustling the Germans' cattle.  Texas law at that time allowed ranchers to round up cattle, regardless of their ownership, as long as they reimbursed the owners after the cattle was sold.  How hard do you think those ranchers tried to find and pay those owners?  Needless to say, the Germans were really pissed.

 Because they were in the majority, the German settlers were able to elect law enforcement officials sympathetic to their grievances.  Within a day, Sheriff John Clark arrested nine suspect ranchers and let it slip that he had no problem with them being lynched.  After being dragged from their cells, two of the ranchers were hanged while a third was shot.  Only the intervention of the Texas Rangers prevented further bloodshed.  The Mason County War or "Hoodoo War" took an ominous turn with the murder of popular ranch foreman, Tim Williamson.   Williamson's close friend, a hot-tempered former Texas Ranger named Scott Cooley, vowed vengence for his friend's murder.  Within a few months, he would gun down a dozen men.

Into the fray stepped Johnny Ringo, also a close friend of Cooley's.  Ringo assisted in the shootings of at least two settlers.  By the end of the year, both Cooley and Ringo were on the dodge from sheriff posses.  Ringo spent almost two years in a Llano County jail for the murder of Jim Cheney, one of the settlers killed during the Mason County War.  He was later released and ironically served as a constable in Loyal Valley, a German community in the same Mason County he once terrorized.  Afterwards, he headed out west to Arizona, a favorite destination for former Texas outlaws. 

With an uncanny knack for finding trouble, Ringo rode into Tombstone, Arizona.  Somewhat like the Mason County War, the conflict in Tombstone was between local outlaw ranchers known collectively as the "Cowboys" and Tombstone's established business community. The word "cowboy" was actually a derogatory term back then.  A cowboy was thought of as a lowlife,  an unruly character more worthy of a jail sentence than respect. It was more proper to be referred to as a cattleman or a rancher, never a cowboy.

 The "Cowboys" made their fortunes by rustling cattle across the border in Mexico and robbing stagecoaches.   Ringo befriended local rancher Ike Clanton and an odious outlaw named "Curly Bill" Brocious, both members of the "Cowboy" clan.  After a hard day of rustling, the "Cowboys" reveled in the town's saloons and brothels.  Firing his pistols in the air after a heavy round of drinking, "Curly Bill" accidently killed Tom White, the town's marshal.

 

                                                                 "Curly Bill" Brocious

Ringo also became noted for his own whiskey induced tantrums. He shot one man in Safford, Arizona after offering to buy the man a whiskey and the man ordered a beer instead.   In another incident, he almost got into a gunfight with the famed tubercular gambler, "Doc" Holliday. 

After White's death, local law enforcement fell into the firm hands of the Earp brothers: Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt.  The "Cowboys," lead by Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury, "Curly Bill" and Johnny Ringo, had an ongoing dispute with the Earps over gambling operations in Tombstone.  The confrontation turned deadly when Wyatt pistol whipped "Curly Bill" after Marshall White's shooting.  In 1881, a series of stage coach robberies committed by the "Cowboys" brought things to a head.  The Earps and their friend "Doc" Holliday killed three of the "Cowboys" during the Old West's most famous gunfight, the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral."   Shortly after, the "Cowboys" got their revenge;  Virgil lost the use of an arm after being shot and Morgan was killed by a shotgun blast to the back. 

Enraged, Wyatt Earp went on a vendetta.  Ringo was now a target of Earp's wrath.  His friend "Curly Bill' was killed by Earp at Iron Springs.  He managed to avoid the vendetta, but not his own inner demons.  He was found under a tree at West Turkey Creek Valley with a bullet hole in his temple.  Had he had committed suicide, or did an Earp supporter finally catch up with him?  Some have speculated that "Doc" Holliday killed Ringo.  A theory proved impossible because of records showing Holliday in a Colorado courtroom at the time.  More probable was severe depression brought on by heavy drinking.  Ringo was buried at the spot he was found.

Johnny Ringo probably gained more fame through film and TV than anything he did in real life.  In 1959, "Johnny Ringo" appeared for one season on CBS.  For some strange reason, he plays a gunfighter turned sheriff and curiously packs a Confederate LeMat revolver.  Any TV Western with a setting in Arizona was most certainly going to have an episode featuring Johnny Ringo.  One of my favorites, NBC's "The High Chaparral," had him on twice.

Noted actors such as Gregory Peck, John Ireland, Kris Kristofferson and Michael Biehn (he played Reese in "The Terminator" ) played Johnny Ringo or a variation of him in the movies.  Here is a scene from the 1993 movie "Tombstone" where Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Biehn, confronts "Doc" Holliday played by Val Kilmer.  Wyatt Earp was played by Kurt Russell and Powers Boothe made a convincing "Curly Bill."  Check it out.

 

 

And lastly, we have the Johnny Ringo song performed by actor Lorne Greene, the father of the Cartwright boys on "Bonanza."  More of a narration than a song actually.   Good thing Lorne didn't give up the day job.

 

Tragic Turncoat

                                                     Captain Martin Hart

Unlike most Texas Unionists who simply put aside their feelings for the good of the state and supprt the Confederacy, former State Senator Martin Hart decided to act on his; he joined the Union Army.  A resident of Greenville, Hart was a prominent lawyer, politician, land owner, and committed Unionist.  To add fuel to his inner flame, his father, John F. Hart, was shot during a land dispute with wealthy slaveholders. The death of his father and the loss in court of the disputed land left Martin deeply embittered.  Along with twenty-four others, he signed the “Address to the People of the State;” a circular that condemned slavery and foretold of its eventual destruction.  The “Texas Republican,” a Marshall, Texas newspaper, denounced the document as “an insidious attempt to prejudice the nonslaveholder, not only against slaveholders, but slavery itself.”

 In August, 1862, Hart and thirty-seven followers, known locally as the Greenville Guards, left North Texas for Ft. Smith, Arkansas.  Upon reaching his destination, he obtained a commission to raise a Confederate company. The commission was only part of an elaborate ruse; Hart used the commission to pass through Confederate lines into Union held Southwest Missouri.  In Springfield, he obtained a captain’s commission to raise a company for the Union Army.  Hart hoped to use his new command to recruit fellow North Texans for an entire regiment, the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment.  Part of his command was sent back to North Texas to help recruit in Hunt County for his new regiment.   Meanwhile, the newly commissioned Captain Hart and his remaining men began operations in Northwest Arkansas.  With personal scores to settle, ragtag, ill-disciplined Arkansas Unionists began to sign on with Hart's growing company.

Union General Francis Jay Herron ordered Hart to pursue the notorious Confederate guerilla, James Ingraham.  The elusive Ingraham managed to avoid Hart while ambushing Union wagon trains in Benton County.  Ingraham himself would become a target after the war; the son of one of his victims would gun him down.  In addition to hunting Ingraham, Hart conducted operations against regular Confederate forces.  In January, 1863, he attacked the rear guard of Colonel Joseph W. Speight’s 15^th Texas Infantry Brigade, capturing and paroling 20 soldiers.  According to an Arkansas local, Sophia Kannady, Hart was a perfect gentleman.  "Hart lifted me off my horse.  He was a fine looking man, and while he robbed us of our team, provisions and everything else, he did not cause me to be searched nor did he take my horse." The gentle niceties would soon end.

Word of Hart’s turncoat activities trickled down to North Texas, causing a widespread panic that he was going to invade his home state.  Confederate General William Steele alerted his superiors that Hart was wreaking havoc in the countryside with a bloodthirsty band of Unionists and deserters.  Lieutenant Colonel R. P. Crump of the 1^st Texas Partisan Rangers began a determined pursuit of Hart.

As with most guerilla warfare units, the fine line between military activity and criminal activity can become blurred during the course of war.  Military objectives become lost in the shuffle as personal scores are settled.  Nowhere was this more true than in the Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas;  Bushwhackers, Jayhawkers and Red Legs showed little mercy toward their victims.  Hart’s Arkansas Unionists, with a deep rooted hatred of slaveholders, took their hostilities out on their neighbors.  In Charleston, two prominent planters, Edward Richardson and DeRosey Carroll, were beaten then shot repeatedly after being called out of their homes.

Despite being held up by the harsh winter weather, a detachment of Crump’s men encountered a local Arkansas Unionist who mistook them for Union cavalry, probably because of their captured Union apparel.  Utilizing their mistaken identity, Crump’s men persuaded the Unionist to lead them to Hart’s camp.  At 2:00 AM, January 19, 1863, Crump surrounded Hart’s camp near Ft. Smith on the Poteau River.  Hart and his Greenville Guards were holed up inside a blacksmith shop.  Crump shouted, "Unconditional surrender within five minutes, or I shall fill the shop full of holes!" Hart and twenty three of his men surrendered.  He was taken to Ft. Smith for a drumhead court-martial.  Both Confederate and Union authorities in the region usually didn't offer clemency toward guerillas.  Hart was hanged from a tree branch and buried in an unmarked grave.  After the war, his body was exhumed and reburied at the National Cemetery at Ft. Smith.

Devil Dog

                                                                 Lt. Jack Lummus

"Don't stop now, keep going!"

For members of Company E, 27th Marines, those words brought out every ounce of rage within; their lieutenant was down!  Studded with concrete pill boxes and hidden snipers, the Japanese line seemed impenetrable.  Nevertheless, the marines broke through, taking out enemy positions left and right until they reached their objective, the northern coast of Iwo Jima.  First Lieutenant Jack Lummus would not witness their victory, but his spirit sustained their drive.  

Born on October 22, 1915, Jack Lummus grew up during the Depression on a cotton farm in Ennis, Texas.  A tight family budget wouldn't allow him to graduate from Ennis High School; the costs of a graduation robe and senior portrait were too high.  He got his high school diploma instead from Texas Military College on a sports scholarship.  After receiving a full scholarship from Baylor, he excelled in both baseball and football, obtaining all Southwest Conference honors in both.

Before Jack became a teenager, the Japanese officer that would end his life was learning cavalry tactics at Fort Bliss in El Paso.    Tadamichi Kuribayashi was serving as a deputy military attaché in Washington D.C..  For two years, he traveled across the U.S. studying American industry and military science.  In 1931, he concluded his experiences in a letter to his wife.  "The United States is the last country in the world Japan should fight," he wrote.

Before he left Baylor, Lummus signed contracts to play football for the NFL's New York Giants and minor league baseball for the Wichita Falls Spudders of the West Texas-New Mexico League (this league included such colorful names as the Roswell Sunshiners, the Lubbock Hubbers, the Big Spring Barons,  the Amarillo Gold Sox, and my personal favorite, the Borger Gassers).  He only played in twenty six games with the Spudders before being called up for active duty by the U.S. Army Air Corps.  During flight training, his wing clipped a fence post while taxing down the runway, thus damaging the plane and flunking him out of flight school.  Apparently, they weren't too forgiving back then if you wrecked a plane during training.

 He next played tight end for the New York Giants at the whopping salary of $100 a month.  During the 1941 NFL Championship game, the Chicago Bears defeated the Giants 38 to 9.  It would be the last game of Lummus' pro career.  Shortly afterwards, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve; the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor two weeks earlier.

Lummus' athletic ability made him a natural fit for the Marine Corps.  He attended officers training school at Quantico, Virginia, played for the Marines' Devil Dogs baseball team,  and was a member of the elite special operations unit, the Marine Raiders (similar in concept to today's Navy Seals).  Upon graduation, he received a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant.  In February 1945, his unit landed on the volcanic shores of Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima (Japanese for sulphur island) is part of the Volcanic Islands, 750 miles south of Tokyo. The "South Pacific" charm didn't exist here. There were no palm trees, no half clad hula dancers, and no Bali Hai.  The largely uninhabitable terrain resembled a lunar landscape with smelly sulphuric mists rising from the ground.  The soft, ash laden, volcanic soil made it extremely difficult to dig foxholes or drive vehicles on.  The landing beach would resemble a vast salvage yard because vehicles had no traction in the very fine soil.  Iwo Jima was only good for fertilizer, air strips, and graveyards.

For the U.S., Iwo Jima would provide an ideal base for B-29 heavy bombers.  Its close proximity to the Japanese mainland (about 3 hours flight time) would allow them to step up their bombing raids and provide them with the added luxury of fighter escorts.  In addition, it would deny the Japanese another fighter base to intercept U.S. bombers in route to  Japan and a forward post to warn of incoming enemy attack.

The Japanese knew Iwo Jima was a likely target and took every step possible to make it invulnerable.  After all, it was the first piece of sacred Japanese soil to be invaded.  Unlike the other Far East countries, Japan had never been invaded successfully by a foreign power.  General Kuribayashi, Iwo Jima's commandant, constructed an extensive network of underground tunnels to service every inch of the island.  Pill boxes and bunkers were cleverly placed to produce a lethal crossfire for advancing U.S. forces.  To preserve his manpower as long as possible, he forbade the use of suicidal  banzai charges, a staple of Japanese combat tactics.  The defensive strategy was simple: kill as many Americans as possible and delay the eventual invasion of the Japanese home islands.   Japan's dwindling navy and air force assured the defenders there would be no reinforcements.  You were there to fight and die. 

Aerial and naval bombardment did nothing to soften Iwo Jima for invasion.  The Japanese defenders waited until the shelling ceased and the marines came ashore.  When they started moving inland, the slaughter began.  From perfectly concealed positions, machine guns, artillery, and giant spigot mortars opened up with devastating effect.  One Lieutenant Colonel recalled, "You could've held up a cigarette and lit it on the stuff going by,  I knew immediately we were in for one hell of a time." You never saw a live Japanese soldier; they were too well dug in. It was like you were fighting the ground itself.   Gunfire was useless.  Flamethrowers, grenades, and extreme valor were the only effective weapons the marines had.

 The night brought its own horrors.  The Japanese would crawl out of their tunnels and attack the marines in their foxholes.  If you left your foxhole, there was the likely danger of being shot by your jittery buddies next door who mistook you for the enemy.  If things weren't bad enough, the Japanese would call out in English for medical corpsmen then shoot them when they approached.

Lummus survived the initial beach landings, witnessed Mt. Suribachi's fall, and helped secure the main airfields.  Kuribayashi slowly fell back to the rugged northern point of the 8 square mile island.  It was there he would make his last stand.  Supplies and ammunition were running out, but not their resolve.  Iwo Jima was the only battle where U.S. casualties outnumbered Japan's.  According to the ancient Samurai Code of Bushido, surrender was considered a  shameful act of cowardice; you either died in combat or committed suicide.  Only 216 of the 22,060 Japanese on Iwo Jima were captured.

                                                           Flag Raising on Mt. Suribachi

It was into this last desperate stronghold that Lt. Lummus led E company.  In succession, Lummus took out three pillboxes by firing into their apertures with his carbine then tossing in grenades.  The concussion from a Japanese grenade knocked him off his feet.  Undaunted, the advance continued while a second grenade tore a gaping wound in Lummus' shoulder.  Incredibly, he took out a foxhole before stepping on a land mine.  The blast tore off both his legs, leaving mere stumps to stand on.  Propped up by an elbow, the ash covered torso presented a ghastly sight only made agreeable by Lummus' stirring words of encouragement.  He was taken to a field hospital where he told Dr. Thomas Brown, "Well Doc, the New York Giants lost a mighty good end today."  Lt. Jack Lummus died on March 8, 1945 at the age of 29. He was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor and reinterred at Myrtle Cemetery in Ennis. Appropriately, an intermediate school in Ennis was named Jack Lummus Intermediate School in his honor.

The body of General Kurybayashi was never found.

Check out these three fine movies on the Battle of Iwo Jima:

The classic "The Sands of Iwo Jima" starring John Wayne.

Clint Eastwood's two highly acclaimed films: "Flags of Our Fathers" for the American view and "Letters From Iwo Jima" for the Japanese view. 

To see what the Marines were up against during World War II, check out the great HBO mini-series "The Pacific."  Very gruesome, intense stuff.  Not for kids and the faint of heart.

For more details on the life of Jack Lummus and his family, take a look at the impressive website www.jacklummus.com.

Sul Ross' Texas Hold'em



Colonel Lawrence Sullivan Ross

Colonel Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross saw the blue wave coming and was stunned in his tracks. His fellow Texans of the 1st Texas Legion and General John C. Moore’s badly depleted Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi regiments were engulfed like beachfront condos during a hurricane. General Dabney Maury screamed at Ross and his fellow officers, “Run for your lives!” Ross’ only hope now was to pull his troops back across the Davis Bridge and take up positions on a nearby ridge. The remnants of Moore’s brigade became intermingled with Ross’ men, causing more confusion and more captives. Confederate General Earl Van Dorn’s Army of West Tennessee, as well as Ross himself, was in grave danger of being overtaken. It was now up to Ross; he had to hold off thousands of Federal troops with only a few hundred exhausted men.


Lawrence Sullivan Ross was born on September 27, 1838 in Bentonsport, Iowa. Anxious for a warmer climate, his family migrated to the Republic of Texas. They later founded present day Waco where he attended Baylor University and later Florence Wesleyan University in Northern Alabama. The Ross family found warmer weather, cheaper land, and the dreaded Comanches.


After he graduated, he joined the Texas Rangers. In 1860, at the Battle of Pease River, he captured Cynthia Ann Parker, the white mother of famed Comanche war chief, Quanah Parker. Ross also gunned down Parker’s Comanche father, Peta Nocona. His reputation as an Indian fighter soared afterwards.


Leading a company of Indian scouts for the U.S. Cavalry, Ross encountered a Comanche encampment near present day Rush Springs, Oklahoma. The Comanche chief, Buffalo Hump, had led a number of devastating raids into Texas and was a prime target for reprisal. In the ensuing fight, Ross was hit in the shoulder by an arrow and shot in the chest with a carbine. He had to be carried from the battle site on a mule drawn litter. Riddled with infection, he survived but would suffer from the effects for the rest of his life.


After Texas seceded, he joined the Confederate Army and became a major in the 6th Texas Cavalry. Impressed with Ross’ Indian fighter skills, former Texas Ranger General Benjamin McCulloch sent him on several scouting missions within the Union lines near Springfield, Missouri.


At the Battle of Pea Ridge, the 6th Texas served under the incompetent hand of Major General Earl Van Dorn. The poorly coordinated battle was a disaster for Confederate aspirations west of the Mississippi. To his credit, Van Dorn gave one of the more artful excuses for losing a battle. “I was not defeated, but only foiled in my intentions.” An accomplished skirt chaser (he was called “the terror of ugly husbands”), he was later shot in the back of the head by Dr. James Peters; his hot young wife Jesse was having an affair with Van Dorn.


In full retreat and destitute, Ross was forced to send his regiment's horses back to Texas for lack of forage. The 6th Texas Cavalry was now an infantry regiment on foot. Van Dorn took his ill-fated army across the Mississippi River but just missed the Battle of Shiloh.


To assist the Confederate Army of Tennessee while it invaded Kentucky, Van Dorn was charged with keeping the Union Army of the Tennessee occupied in Northern Mississippi. Joining forces with Sterling Price’s Missourians, he decided to attack the heavily fortified railroad junction of Corinth. Met with heavy artillery fire and stout fortifications, Van Dorn failed to dislodge the Union defenders. At Battery Robinett, the 2nd Texas Brigade was decimated along with its commander, Colonel William P. Rodgers, who wore an immense iron vest that failed to protect him from the hail of bullets. Sul Ross almost met the same fate as Rodgers but lost his horse instead.


Van Dorn ordered a retreat west to Ripley, Mississippi; a route that would take his army across the Hatchie River. The Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, sent troops under Stephen Hurlbut from Bolivar, Tennessee to cut off Van Dorn’s retreat. From the East, General Rosecrans was ordered to pursue him from Corinth. Fortunately for Van Dorn, Rosecrans was slow in taking up the pursuit. Nevertheless, Grant was confident he had his man in the bag.


The bag had an opening, but it depended on how fast Van Dorn could get across the Hatchie. As elements of Van Dorn’s command crossed the Davis Bridge, they encountered Hurlbut’s troops. Colonel Wirt Adams’ Mississippi cavalry managed to delay the Union attack for a short time. Union General Edward Ord (My God! Who was this guy's barber?) arrived on the scene and assumed command of Hurlbut’s forces. Sensing a decisive victory, Ord’s blood was up and he pressed his troops hard to attack; he even struck one officer with the flat of his sword for falling back to realign his men. Illinois troops crossed the narrow bridge where they became pinned down between the bridge and Ross’ position on the ridge. Ord himself became a casualty after canister shot hit him in the leg, knocking him from his horse.

 

Major General Edward Ord

Things got worse as more and more Union troops crossed the bridge.  Ord's command became a tangled blue mass as they filed into the confined and overcrowded area at the base of the ridge; they were sitting ducks.  Texas and Arkansas troops mowed them down with brutal efficiency. One Union sergeant assumed command of his company after all the officers were killed and he buckled on his dead captain's sword belt.  “We would allow them to approach until we could see the white of their eyes,” recalled Colonel Ras Stirman. “Then without exposing ourselves in the least, we would pour volley after volley into them, cutting them down like grass. I never saw such slaughter in my life.”


For six hours, a Union force four times the size of their opponent’s was held back; Van Dorn made his escape further downriver at Crum’s Bridge. Ross lost only 7 killed and 22 wounded.  Ord lost 570.


Ross survived the war and fathered eight children. Undoubtedly the most popular man in Texas during the late 1800’s, he later became the Sheriff of McLennan County, a state senator, the first Commander of the Texas Division of the United Confederate Veterans, and a two term Governor of Texas.


Ross' most notable achievements came during his tenure as the first President of Texas A&M University. Because of his extreme popularity and Confederate veteran support, A&M's enrollment soared. Like a doting father, Ross made himself accessible to his students and would personally discuss their performance with each of them. Many of the Aggie traditions we are familiar with today were started while he was president. Here are just a few:


· The highly acclaimed Marching Texas Aggie Band.


· The Aggie Ring.


· The first football game between Texas A&M and the University of Texas.


· The school newspaper “The Battalion.”


· The first Silver Taps Ceremony was held for Ross after his death.

Sul Ross Statue at Texas A&M University

After his death in 1891, the entire Texas A&M student body accompanied his body back to Waco. A bronze statue of him was erected on campus.  To this day students place pennies at the base for good luck during exams. In 1920, Ross was honored by having a college at the Big Bend town of Alpine (Sul Ross State University) named after him. Gig Em !

 

 

 

Big 50

Army scout and buffalo hunter Billy Dixon didn’t like what he was hearing.  While loading his wagon, he could hear the low rumble of hoof beats in the distant prairie.  His friend Bat Masterson grew nervous, “What the hell is that?”  

“I don’t know,” said Dixon, “but I don’t like it.”

 Suddenly the hoof beats gave way to Indian war whoops.  Masterson, Dodge City’s famed marshal, fled to the nearby saloon with Dixon right behind him.

Ike and Shorty Shadler weren’t as lucky.  Cut off from the nearby trading post, they tried to hide beneath a canvas tarp in the back of their wagon.  When one of the Indians pulled back the tarp, he was met by a rifle blast to the upper body.  Both brothers were quickly overwhelmed with bullets, arrows and scalping knives.  The brothers’ Labrador tried to defend them but met the same fate.  Impressed with the dog’s courage, the Indians scalped the Labrador.

At dawn on June 27, 1874, a band of over two hundred Comanches, Cheyenne, Kiowas and Arapahos descended on the trading post of Adobe Wells in the Texas Panhandle.  They were led by the last of the great Comanche war chiefs, Quanah Parker.  The son of an Anglo mom, Cynthia Parker, and a Comanche father, Peta Nocona, Parker had a long standing score to settle with the white Texans that killed his father, held his mom captive, and were slaughtering all the buffalo, an integral part of Plains Indian culture. 

                                                                       Quanah Parker
                                                       

                                                                                                                
Adobe Wells existed for one purpose, the hunting, skinning and shipping of buffalo hides.  From 1871 to 1874, the once vast buffalo herds of the Great Plains were being wiped out.  The last great herds were in the Texas Panhandle.  Filthy, hard drinking, foul mouthed buffalo hunters arrived to finish the job they started in the upper plains of Kansas and Nebraska.  For the Comanches, Adobe Wells was a threat to their very existence.

To bolster his attack, Quanah brought along a popular medicine man called Isa-tai, whose name literally translates into “Coyote Vagina.”  I can’t imagine what a name like that implies and I’m not sure I want to.  Deluded by his own sleight of hand magic tricks and over the top claims, Isa-tai convinced many Comanches that he could make them bullet proof against the white man’s guns.  Before the end of the day, many of Quanah’s warriors would come to regret their faith in “Coyote Vagina’s” big medicine.

Luckily, the buffalo hunters that resided at the sod built village were up and about.  The local bartender, James Hanrahan, had been tipped off earlier about a possible attack by traders who were in contact with the Comanches.  To prevent a panic, he kept the hunters busy repairing a ridgepole that held up his tavern’s roof.  After they finished their task, he gave them all free drinks.  Drinks at 5:00 AM in the morning? These guys were really tough.  When the attack came, they were ready.  They had more than enough ammo and each possessed the most powerful firearm of the Old West, the Sharp’s 50 caliber buffalo rifle, better known as the “Big 50.”

Popular on both sides during the Civil War, Sharps rifles were noted for their accuracy and reliability.  The word “sharpshooter” comes from one who possessed and was proficient with a Sharp’s rifle.  Berdan’s Sharpshooters, a Union regiment of marksmen, obtained immortal fame for their skills with the Sharp’s rifle.  Despite its reliability, it was one thing to shoot a human, but quite another when it came to buffaloes.  Their thick hides and massive size made them difficult to bring down.  Buffalo hunters needed more fire power for a quicker kill.

In response, Sharps developed a rifle with a 34 inch octagonal barrel and a huge 50 caliber cartridge to fill it.  The “Big 50’s” awesome firepower could take out a 2,000 pound buffalo at 1,000 yards.  Against humans and in the hands of experienced marksmen, the results were devastating.  

                                                 The Sharp's 50 Caliber Buffalo Rifle

Twenty eight men and one woman barricaded themselves within two stores and a saloon.  The two foot sod walls offered excellent protection.  In addition, sod doesn’t burn, which took away that mode of attack from the Indians.  The Indians could only surround the post and pick off the inhabitants, something that was difficult to do against raw meat-eating buffalo hunters.  The “Big 50’s” began dropping Quanah’s band like the buffaloes they were intended for.  Indians who fell back to what they considered a safe distance suddenly became casualties of the rifles astonishing range (three quarters of a mile distant).

By four o’clock in the evening the attack winded down.  Isa-tai, covered with a yellow war paint to project his magic, witnessed first- hand the end of his magic and influence.  One of the Cheyenne whipped Isa-tai in the face with a leather quirt.  He asked, “What’s matter your medicine?  You have polecat medicine.”  As if to put an exclamation point on the buffalo hunters’ dominance, Dixon shot a warrior from a mile away, the most famous single shot in the history of the Old West.

Indian losses totaled around 15 while the hunters lost 4; one by accident after he discharged his rifle into his head after his wife handed it to him.  For the Comanches, it was another marker on the road to defeat.                                                                                               

Billy Dixon

The Lion of the Rio Grande

Let’s face it!  Most of us know little about the role Hispanics played in America’s bloodiest conflict.  We think of them as mere bystanders who could care less about the Gringos’ big fight.  After all, there was little slavery in the Southwest and the recent War with Mexico left them feeling more like conquered subjects rather than U.S. citizens.  However, there was one very notable exception, a former Tejano mayor named Santos Benavides. 

                                                        Santos Benavides

The Laredo native was born in 1823 to an affluent family whose ancestry included Laredo’s founder, Thomas Sanchez.  When Texas was under Mexican rule, Benavidez was a strong backer of the Federalists during their decades- long struggle with the Centralists in Mexico City.   Isolated in a remote stretch of Northern Mexico, he believed Laredo was best served by a decentralized, regional government.  Because of his belief, it’s not surprising Benavides was attracted to the states rights doctrine of the Confederacy. 

After Texas seceded, Benavides was commissioned a captain in the Texas 33^rd Cavalry and assigned the task of patrolling the Rio Grande Valley; a job he was highly suited for.  Because of his ties to the region, Benavides maintained an effective network of spies, informants and scouts on both sides of the border.  Eventually, he became colonel of the regiment, the highest ranking Hispanic during the war.  Mexican governors, with mounting problems of their own, negotiated with him, befriended him or simply looked the other way if he crossed their borders.  Vital cotton shipments from Laredo to Matamoros (see “The Mexico Connection” posting) were often guarded by Benavides’ men.

                                                            Juan Cortina

Benavides' main adversary was a Mexican rancher, politician and outlaw named Juan Cortina.  Owner of a large ranch near Brownsville, Cortina fought against the U.S. during the Mexican War.  He hated the Anglo Texas politicians who tried to take his land and exploit poor Hispanics.  In one instance, he shot Brownsville’s town marshal for pistol whipping a former ranch hand of his.  Prior to the Civil War, Cortina supporters occupied Brownsville until driven off by the U.S. Cavalry and local militia.  When Federal forces invaded South Texas in 1863, Cortina sided with them and offered his services to Union General Nathaniel Banks.  To this day, his legacy fuels debate. Was Cortina a glorious hero of the downtrodden or an opportunistic outlaw thug?   

In April 1861, Hispanic residents in Zapata County revolted against Confederate authority.  With Cortina’s support, they marched on the village of Carrizo.   At Henry Redmond’s Ranch outside the village, Benavides’ Tejano cavalry plowed into Cortina’s men, routing them into the Rio Grande.  In a note to the Confederate command, he showed his ruthless side.  “I particularly ordered my men not to arrest any of the bandits, but to kill them all,” Benavides reported. “Consequently, I have no prisoners.” As a reward, the Governor of Texas presented him with an engraved pistol.

This led to an ongoing border conflict between the Confederate Benavidez in Texas and the Union supporting Cortina in Mexico.   If provoked, Benavides did not hesitate to pursue his adversaries across the border and attack them wherever they camped.  An example was Octaviano Zapata, a Mexican bandit who received U.S Consulate support from Matamoros.  After attacking Confederate supply trains and displaying a U.S. flag in the process, he thought he was safe in Mexico.  He didn’t count on Benavides tracking him down. In 1863, near the Mexican town of Mier, Benavides surprised the Zapatista camp and brutally dispersed them.  All of Zapata’s lieutenants were killed.  Zapata, firing his pistol to the end, had his head caved in with a rifle butt.

In March 19, 1864, a detachment of 200 Texas Unionists set out to attack Laredo from the Mexico side of the border.  Benavides was sick in bed when warned of their approach.  Half dead from illness, he arose from his bed and quickly gathered forty two of his men and a handful of locals to act as snipers.  Laredo’s streets were barricaded with cotton bales.  For three hours, he held off repeated Union assaults.  Benavides exclaimed, “As it is, I have to fight to the last; though hardly able to stand I shall die fighting.  I won’t retreat, no matter what force the Yankees have-I know I can depend on my boys.”  At nightfall, the Union force retreated with no casualties on the Confederate side.

After the war, Benavides served three successive terms in the Texas Legislature.  In 1884, he was appointed the Texas delegate to the World Cotton Exposition.  He remained a rancher and political force until his death in 1891.  Benavides' guarding presence was vital to the defense of Texas during the Civil War.  As the war progressed, he made Federal invasion more daunting and more doubtful of success.  Today, his contributions are honored by the Laredo school that bears his name, Colonel Santos Benavides Elementary School.  Go Broncos !