Granbury's Texas Brigade: Diehard Western Confederates

7 A New Start

85 chapter seven A NEW START Like most prisoners captured relatively early in the Civil War, the Arkansas Post prisoners would soon find themselves exchanged and back in the Confederate ranks in time to participate in the Tullahoma campaign—a disaster for the South that nonetheless gave these Texans a new start and a chance to prove themselves. Following their exchange, the Confederate war effort continued to fare badly, but this did not seem to dampen the morale of the Arkansas Post prisoners. Rather, local matters captured their attention , underscoring the importance of perspective as outlined in Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee, “Texans to the Front,” and other literature. The issue that bothered the Texans most after exchange became the ignominious consolidations, in which authorities folded regiments in with each other due to reduced numbers. It was this issue that preoccupied their letters and diaries most of all. Also, after the exchange a small number of Texans opted to leave their original regiments and head back to Texas to fight, especially in the later summer and early fall of 1863, supporting Grear’s argument in “Texans to the Front” that the Mississippi River served as a psychological barrier between these Texans and their homes, encouraging them to desert in order to fight closer to home. However, also after the exchange the Texans finally began experiencing effective leadership at the brigade and division level in the form of James Deshler and Patrick Granbury’s Texas Brigade 86 Cleburne, ensuring that those who stayed in the ranks deepened their devotion to the Confederacy and to the Confederate cause.1 By spring, Federal officials had arranged an exchange of the Arkansas Post prisoners. Normally the exchange would have taken place at Vicksburg , but because of the ongoing efforts of Grant to capture the city, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs decided to send the Arkansas Post regiments to Virginia. Around the first of April the Federals loaded the first contingent of five hundred prisoners onto trains for their journey east. The westerners first traveled by train to Indianapolis and Columbus. All along the way, hostile crowds hurled rocks, insults, and beer bottles at the passing Confederates, forcing their Yankee guards to protect them from harm. In several shipments of five hundred each, they sent the prisoners to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Elmira, New York, before reaching the Susquehanna River. Here the guards loaded them aboard steamers and sent them downriver into the Chesapeake Bay and thus to Fort Monroe, on the tip of the Virginia peninsula. At Fort Monroe the Federal authorities arranged an exchange for the prisoners with the Confederate War Department . After their exchange, the former prisoners sailed upriver to City Point, Virginia, where they again set foot on dry land and continued by rail to Model Barracks, near Petersburg, Virginia. At Model Barracks they awaited the rest of the prisoners and their officers.2 The Texans and Arkansans spent their time quietly at Model Barracks as the Confederate War Department decided what to do with them. Despite this tranquility, events in northern Virginia soon interrupted their repose. On May 5, Confederate officials suddenly shipped the former prisoners north to Richmond to act as part of the city’s home guard during the Battle of Chancellorsville. After arriving, the former prisoners merely marched to the city square to await further orders. There they spent the night in a church on Canal Street, and the next morning they moved out onto the Ashland Road to picket the roads leading into the Confederate capital. That morning as they moved northeast out of the city, “a young lady came to the window to ask what soldiers we were, and we told her Texans, and she screamed to her mother not to be uneasy, that the Texans were there.”3 A little later on, the Texans encountered Hood’s Texas Brigade, a part of James Longstreet’s corps, hurrying to the front to rejoin Lee. An emotional reunion ensued in which friends and relatives enquired about one another. 87 a new start After the emergency of defending Richmond passed, Confederate officials transported the Texans and Arkansans back to Petersburg and from there to Tennessee. From Model Barracks on May 9, Colonel Robert R. Garland placed his brigade on cars bound for the Army of Tennessee, followed some days later by the rest of the Arkansas Post garrison, the brigade of Colonel James Deshler. On May...