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chapter five CRISIS OF EMPIRE The recent problems at Fort Davis were soon overshadowed by the growing storm clouds of secession. From the moment of their incorporation into the Union, Texans had criticized the federal government ’s failure to prevent Indian attacks. Not surprisingly, the state’s secession convention would list this as one of their justifications for leaving the Union in 1861. The ensuing Civil War thus not only forced garrison members to examine their loyalties but also tested the ability of state officials to raise, equip, and train replacements for the regulars in blue. The state of Texas, rather than the federal government, would now assume responsibility for guarding the Davis Mountains outpost. Shorn of the money and troops that had once come from Washington, Texans were now on their own. The dilemma of secession sorely challenged the fidelities of the frontier regulars. Two officers destined to serve at Fort Davis had ruminated about the potential division as early as the 1856 presidential election. Each rejected extremists from both North and South in favor of the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan. “If he [Buchanan] is elected & our machinery does not work smooth the only thing to be done is to put Massachusetts & South Carolina in ruins,” wrote Assistant Surgeon DeWitt C. Peters, a native of New York. Similarly, the Pennsylvania-born Lt. Edward L. Hartz damned both the Republican Party’s “accursed fanatical interference in slavery ” as well as “the fanatic portion” of the South. Four years later, as news of South Carolina’s secession swept through Texas, U.S. Army officers voiced mixed reactions. Rhode Island’s Zenas R. Bliss still dismissed talk of secession as more of the bluster that had characterized recent national politics. On the other hand, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee wrote from Fort Mason: “I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union.” Yet Lee, a native Virginian who had faithfully served his country for thirty years, resolved to “return to my native State and share the miseries of my people” if his beloved Dominion left the Union.1 In late January 1861, a state convention assembled in Austin to consider relations with the U.S. government. Although many Texans, including Gov. Sam Houston, opposed disunion, the convention voted 166–8 to secede , a decision later ratified by a popular vote. Heavily dependent on federal protection and the local military establishment, residents of Fort Davis and Presidio had voted 48–0 and 316–0, respectively, against leaving the Union. However, the more populous El Paso precincts overwhelmingly supported secession, thus ensuring that the measure passed El Paso County by a healthy majority. The outcome led Fort Davis’s Daniel Murphy to predict that “there is a poor chance for us for getting any protection in this section of the country.”2 Bvt. Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs, who had on the eve of secession returned from a leave of absence to command the Department of Texas, had responded to the situation with dispatch if perhaps not loyalty. A native of Georgia, Twiggs had devoted his life to the service of his country, having opposed the South Carolina nullifiers of 1832 and fought in three wars. Yet the election of Abraham Lincoln had disillusioned the old warhorse, weary of his long quarrels with commanding general Winfield Scott. Frustrated by the War Department’s failures to provide specific guidance during the secession crisis, Twiggs had initiated correspondence with the governor of Georgia for a position with that state’s militia and begun negotiating the army’s possible withdrawal with representatives of the Texas secession convention. Rightly suspicious of his loyalties, in early February 1861 the War Department had relieved Twiggs of command, belatedly ordering troops in the Lone Star State to concentrate in anticipation of evacuation to Kansas.3 But the orders from Washington arrived too late. In mid-February, Twiggs surrendered all federal posts in Texas. By virtue of the agreement, the twenty-six hundred troops in the Lone Star State, composing nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. Army, were allowed to keep their small arms and assured of safe passage to the Union. In conjunction with the surrender, Twiggs ordered post commanders to prepare for a march to the coast. Startled by the abrupt capitulation, officers and men contemplated their loyalties. Twiggs returned to a hero’s welcome in New Orleans and a major generalship in the Confederate...

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