Bampson of Bampson's Legion: An Informal Study of Confederate Command

BAMPSON OF BAMPSONS LEGION: AN INFORMAL STUDY OF CONFEDERATE COMMAND Matthew Hodgson if the election of James K. Polk to the presidency in 1844 insured that Texas would join the Union, then the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 made it no less certain that she would leave it. Following the lead of South Carolina and the states early to secede, Texas called a convention, which, in Austin on February 2, 1861, passed an Ordinance of Secession, providing for an election on the 23rd at which Texas would ratify it. And on this date, amid scenes of wild enthusiasm , the people of the Lone Star State cast their lot with the Southern Confederacy. Texas' military contributions to the South have been much chronicled, particularly those commanders and their gray-clad brigades who served with such valor and distinction with the Armies of Tennessee and Northern Virginia. Less marked, however, has been the attention of Civil War specialists to those doughty personages who confined their bellicose exertions to Texas and the Confederate West. We do know a little of Tom Green and his improbable horse marines, victors over a Union fleet at Galveston Bay. We know something more about John Baylor and his picturesque "Babes," who, having relieved the beleaguered city of Tucson of Apache menace, substituted for the torments of the tomahawker those of the tax collector. But who is conversant with the life, and more especially, the martial career ofAlpheus Tuesday Bampson? Or ofthe9th Texas Partisan Rangers —the famous "Bampson's Legion?" What scholar has penetrated the clouds of time or the attics of Austin to illumine Major Bampson's oblique role in the earlybattles of Valverde and Glorietta Pass? Who has Born and reared in Tennessee, Mr. Hodgson has studied at the Universities of North Carolina and Kentucky. He now resides in Atlanta, where he is Southern Sales Director for the College Textbook Department of Houghton Mifflin Company. This article evolved from a talk given at the Southern HistoricalAssociation meeting lastfall in Atlanta. 157 158MATTHEW HODGSON done the historical spadework needed to identify the Texas Colonel whom General Dick Taylor espied seated on a blanket playing a game ofmote with some privates, and using marked cards, at that, if one is to believe Xavier DeBray's History of the 9th Texas?1 And who can relate, with that historical finality so prevalent nowadays , the gallant Bampson's appearance and subsequent demise at the Battle of the Crater, where, according to Spaulding's definitive account, "This officer was blown higher, and remained aloft longer, than any other in the Confederate service"?2 I ask these questions with the natural diffidence of the commercial man interloping into the realm of Clio, from whence, on the other hand, have come so many in recent years to enter my own milieu. It is my hope that the foregoing and what is to follow will animate eager and competent historians—the two are not necessarily incompatible—to delve furtherinto thelives of otherinteresting, if somewhat obscure, Confederate leaders. Lee's horse, Traveler, noble brute that it was, can scarcely accommodate still another rider; while the gay tunes of Sweeney, Jeb Stuart's personal banjoist, if heard as frequently as have been written about,would surelybe eligiblefor"YourHitParade." Alpheus Tuesday Bampson was born of well-to-do parents in Princess Anne County, Maryland, on August 23, 1822. Little is known of his early years; pertinent letters from bis mother and kinsmen were destroyed a generation ago by a fearful clergyman uncle who was then seekingprefermentfromhis bishop.3 Evidentlyyoung Bampsonwas, for a time, a student at Princeton University . The records of that venerable institution indicate that a Mr. Bampson was expelled from this college on November 9, because of bis propensities for gaming, the consumption of spirituous liquors, cockfighting, stabling a horse in the college library, cheating, lying, and insolently suggesting that Mr. Duckworth, the Latin Master, did not know the difference between a gerund and a gerundive—all of which might have been borne by the college authorities save the last affront.4 1 Xavier DeBray, History of the 9th Texas Partisan Rangers (Nachitoches, La., 1887), p. i. 2 William Spaulding, "The Battle of the...