Moss Bluff Rebel: A Texas Pioneer in the Civil War

Chapter 11 Escape

Chapter 11 Escape the day after colonel major, general green, and Major Hunter overpowered Brashear City, Captain Duncan organized a detail of twenty men in Washington to move 111 Union prisoners to Alexandria, sixty miles north of Opelousas. That night, he went into town with his doctor and two other officers for an evening of music and dancing. Duncan says he enjoyed the outing. He was very much at home with his Anglo, Creole, and Cajun friends in southwest Louisiana whom he described as “very clever people,” including the five young ladies with whom he danced that night. He was up early next morning to supervise arrangements for the prisoners to go north and prepare a wagon train to head south to meet Colonel Major. Duncan did not yet know all the details of the Brashear City victory, but he did know Colonel Major needed wagons to haul the captured cache of Union weapons and ammunition to a more secure area away from New Orleans. Duncan’s health had recovered sufficiently to let him conclude he could ride and fight, if need be. The northbound prisoner detail left around 8:30 a.m., and Duncan rode out of camp with the wagon train headed south about the same time. After a few miles, he sent wagons and escorts ahead while he stopped to call on Mrs. Anderson who had returned home, then rode through Opelousas without stopping. Duncan’s doctor was with him and the two overtook the wagon train at Bayou Carron Crow, camping there for the night. The next day, June 26, the wagons reached Vermillionville in the rain and Duncan wrote to Celima after they made camp beneath a bridge. He bought another bottle of whiskey for $5 and heard “news of a victory gained by our forces at Barwick [sic] City.” The next day’s ride took them to a spring one-and-a-half miles north of New Iberia, thirty-eight miles south of Opelousas. Sabine put up their tent while Duncan bathed and changed clothes before riding into town to spend the night at Alexander Hébert’s place. A4950.indb 71 A4950.indb 71 10/17/08 8:54:26 AM 10/17/08 8:54:26 AM 72 Chapter 11 Duncan bid Mr. Hébert “Au revoir” the next morning around 11:00 after borrowing $100. His wagon train had already left New Iberia. Duncan stopped in town, buying a horse brush for $5, tobacco for $1.75, writing a short letter to Celima, and dropping by Mrs. Gravenberg’s for dinner. That afternoon, he caught up with the wagon train between Jeanerette and Franklin, southeast of New Iberia. They had already made camp at Sorrel’s plantation. Duncan rode into Franklin the next morning and made a beeline for Mrs. Hayes’s place for dinner and conversation with her and two friends. No wonder Duncan wasted little time getting to Mrs. Hayes’s house. She filled him with cakes and figs, the first of the season, and gave him a jar of orange preserves. Pleasantly stuffed with goodies, Duncan climbed back on his horse and rode slowly to join his men, in camp this time two miles south of Franklin on the Opelousas Trail. After siesta to sleep off Mrs. Hayes’s feast, Duncan went in search of the house of William Hayes, presumably a son or nephew of his dinnertime hostess. Duncan says Hayes “had married an old sweet heart of mine, Catharine Moss.” He found the Hayes’s house two miles from camp, knocked on the door, and introduced himself. Their surprise Texas visitor must have charmed Catharine and William Hayes because they invited Duncan to stay for supper. He left at 10 p.m. and rode back to camp. Reflecting on the evening and reunion with his former flame after twenty years, Duncan says it was the “First time I have met the woman since Aug., 1843. She has changed a great deal. But I reckon, not more than me.” Duncan had orders to load Brashear City’s Federal rifles, cannon, and other bounty and move the captured arms and supplies to safer Confederatepopulated territory out of range of patrolling Union gunboats. After Duncan’s pleasant stay in Franklin, he joined his wagons as they rolled past Fort Bisland on the way to that night’s campsite one mile south of Pattersonville. Duncan says he “saw the celebrated battle field [and] the bones...