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R 99 5 Demoralization and Desertion Why Texans Returned to the Lone Star State during the War Perhaps we who are from Tex and Ark may recross the River—God send the great blessings. I am truly sick of this side, and the vast Army here. We fare much better when off to ourselves. General Price has gone to Richmond for the purpose, I think, of getting his troops transferred to the other side of the River again—his men, as well as those from Texas are not satisfied here. I would give almost any consideration to touch the West bank of the Miss River again. Lawrence Sullivan Ross, 6th Texas Cavalry A ​ S the Civil War stretched into a second year and then a third, Texans’ priorities began to change. The men began contemplating whether they wanted to continue the struggle. Early in the war, soldiers expected the conflict to be brief, so when Texans received orders transferring them to the east bank of the Mississippi River there was little opposition. But as the war progressed, many Texans wanted to return to the Lone Star State, especially when there was a perceived threat to their homes, wives, and children.1 Texans, though highly motivated to fight for the Confederacy, succumbed to the same despair that many Southern soldiers experienced when the war reached the doorstep of their homes. The despair Texas soldiers experienced was amplified for many reasons, including the hardships of soldiering; letters from home detailing the privations of their wives, children, and family members; loss of their horses; and, most important, the imminent threat to their hearth and home in the Lone Star State. Though Texans succumbed to the same influences that affected other Confederate soldiers, they experienced them differently because of the effects of multiple local attachments. Texans who were recent immigrants to the state, as most were, had more than one hometown or county. The desire to defend the 100 Chapter 5 place of their birth was initially a significant motivation for manyTexans to fight east of the Mississippi River, but the desire to protect their adopted homes influenced them to return to Texas. Though the men left Texas to defend their old hometowns to the East, their attachment to the Lone Star State never wavered. “Back in Tex how I love to think of my own loved Tex,” wrote James K. Street of the 9th Texas Infantry. “But what makes it peculiarly dear to me, is ‘The loved ones at home’ are there.”2 When their adopted state faced a serious threat to its security in 1863, Texans begin to reprioritize their motivation to fight for the Confederate cause. No longer was it to protect their extended families east of the Mississippi River but to defend their homes and immediate family, because the North finally threatened them. The danger the Union army posed to Texas during the latter half of the war had a devastating impact on Texans’ morale. John Baynes, a scholarof morale and motivation, argues that a soldier’s spirit “is concerned with the way in which people react to the conditions of their existence.” Maintaining morale is extremely important in warfare, even more important than tactics, because commanders have difficulty getting soldiers to fight well if their hearts are not in the conflict.3 When the Civil War began, morale was not a concern for the commanders, because the men’s heads were full of romantic ideas of battlefield glory. The romance of warfare quickly dissipated once men experienced combat. A “Letter from the 2d Texas Regiment” appearing in the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph on July 16, 1862, demonstrated that the realization of war had reached Texas soldiers. In the letter, an unnamed soldier wrote that the “romance of soldiering has pretty nearly worn off, and it has become reduced to facts and figures.”4 Another Texan, John Allen Templeton , expressed a soldier’s reaction to the hardships of war: “I must acknowledge that farming is a tolerable hard way of living but ‘soldiering’ is much harder. It is true that while an army is stationed at one place any length of time it is not so hard—but no telling at what moment we may be ordered on a long march to go to a fight. In marching & fighting there is but little fun.”5 Even the act of drilling in camp discouraged some men, as Samuel A. Goodman Jr. of the 13th Texas Infantry reported graphically in a letter...

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