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Chapter 7 Mumps
- Texas A&M University Press
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Chapter 7 Mumps despite feeling out of sorts, duncan did his best to celebrate his forty-fifth birthday on March 2, 1863. He asked seventeenyear -old Sabine to prepare a birthday meal and proclaimed it a very good dinner , but he skipped drill and a dress parade that afternoon. A second wind and his love of gambling took him to a birthday card game that lasted until 3:00 the next morning; he won $17. Hot cards and a poker face overcame physical discomfort for Duncan again the next night when he won $55 in another game in the adjutant’s tent that lasted until dawn. Four days later, though, Duncan felt very bad; pain in his back was excruciating. He had the mumps and spent several hours on Monday, March 9, with one of his card-playing pals who also happened to be the battalion physician. Finding no relief, Duncan soon retreated to his tent. Mother Nature interrupted his convalescence. A Confederate gunboat was on patrol in the gulf outside Sabine Pass one morning when high winds blew it onto a sandbar. Water depth there at low tide is only seven-and-a-half feet; it rises less than eighteen inches at high tide, making navigation risky for a steam-powered keelboat even in calm winds. Duncan dressed, saddled his horse, and rode through the surf to help tow the stranded vessel into clear water. Just as the men fastened lines to the beached craft, Union gunboats appeared and opened fire. The Confederates shot back but both sides’ rounds fell short as the boat popped free. It headed back through the pass to flee the Federal vessels while Duncan and other soldiers watched from the sandbar. The Confederate gunboat escaped and Duncan and his men returned to camp. When he climbed off his horse, Duncan was exhausted and in great pain. Duncan’s decision to leave his sickbed to ride to the aid of the beached gunboat reveals another reason why Ashley Spaight worked so hard to persuade the Liberty County cattle drover to join his unit: Duncan was a natural leader. He A4950.indb 47 A4950.indb 47 10/17/08 8:54:19 AM 10/17/08 8:54:19 AM 48 Chapter 7 learned to set an example from his lifetime in the cattle business where tough cowboys held high standards for trail bosses. If the headman was incompetent, lazy, or a coward, his status would not inspire a cowboy’s loyalty or encourage him to take risks to save a stray calf. If a boss is full of bluster, down-to-earth folks in the American West today say he is “all hat and no cattle.” Authentic Texas cattleman William Duncan would have known what that meant. It was how he would have described General Magruder. When they chose their officers, the men of Spaight’s Battalion participated in a highly subjective process. Most of them looked for character, intelligence, sociability, persistence, expressiveness, and judgment. Some added dependability , integrity, and humility to the list. Others might have considered traits like self-confidence, plain speaking, courtesy, initiative, loyalty, tactfulness, sincere, spontaneous cheerfulness, and the willingness to do one’s duty while asking others to do theirs. There were a few who had no clue as to what makes a leader, but they knew one when they saw him. Whatever their leadership criteria, the cavalrymen of Company F knew William Duncan was a leader. When that Confederate boat was in trouble, no one ordered him to help. Sick though he was, Duncan did not send a substitute; he went himself. Duncan does not talk specifically about leadership in his diary, either as a businessman or a Confederate cavalry officer. It is clear however that he lived it, even though his ride to the beach with mumps that morning knocked him back into his bedroll with a body blow. He stayed in bed the next five days, taking salts, drinking tea, and drifting in and out of consciousness while fever and chills plagued him. As the vernal equinox brought sunnier skies, milder temperatures, and calmer winds, his physical health improved but his attitude did not keep pace. “The weather is beautiful,” he writes. “I know the country [sic] beautiful now. How I long to be at home to enjoy the beauties of nature with ‘friends the beloved of my bosom.’ I am real homesick,” he continues. “I am thoroughly tired of this kind of...