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Chapter 18 Resolve as the war crept slowly toward its end, the flow of reassigned Texas Confederate officers and men increased at Camp Lubbock . Among them was an old friend of Duncan’s, Lt. Col. Edward Bradford Pickett. Pickett was a Liberty man who led a cavalry unit of Texas volunteers in battles through Louisiana, Arkansas, in the siege at Chattanooga, and in John Bell Hood’s Tennessee campaign. He was captured in Arkansas and later repatriated to the Confederacy in a prisoner exchange. Pickett was elected to the Texas state senate after the war, served as president of the Texas Constitutional Convention in 1875, and became president of the first board of directors of Texas A&M University when it was founded in 1876. He saw plenty of action in his Civil War and he and his Liberty County neighbor, William Duncan, had notes to compare and memories to share at Camp Lubbock. The weather in Houston was miserable for nine straight days in late January and early February 1865. Cloudy skies and cold rain mixed with sleet driven by north winds were the rule. When a day finally dawned with brilliant sun shining in clear skies, Duncan was inspired to tackle an early spring-cleaning. He encouraged his bed bugs to find new homes by arranging his mattress and blankets “to sun” outside the tent. Then he packed another goodie bag to send home to Celima. His parcel this day included three pairs of shoes, a dozen fine linen handkerchiefs, and one well-made comb. There was extra room in the basket, so the ever-practical Duncan topped it off with three pairs of old socks that needed darning and a bottle of brandy for future toasts. He sent the surprise home to Liberty with two of his men. With increasing frequency, Spaight asked Duncan to serve as Camp Lubbock’s Officer of the Day. A soldier approached him in that capacity on February 10 and reported, “the men of the regiment intended to go to town and take the commissary.” Duncan says, “I knew my company was not in it.” Although worried about mutinous mischief, Duncan busied himself building A4950.indb 117 A4950.indb 117 10/17/08 8:54:38 AM 10/17/08 8:54:38 AM 118 Chapter 18 a small hut. He was fed up with sleeping in an insect-infested army tent. As Duncan worked on the new hut one morning, several soldiers walked hurriedly past him toward the sound of a single drumbeat. He put his tools down and followed . The group joined a large crowd already gathered outside another officer’s tent, shouting complaints about camp conditions and threatening to desert en masse. Duncan listened for a while, then stepped in front of them to appeal for order. “I thought of what I had heard,” he says, “and went to the place and talked to them.” Duncan’s speech was in vain. All but two of the men in the crowd deserted after the incident. The two who did not run were arrested and detained. William Duncan showed courage that day at Camp Lubbock. A hostile crowd is a complicated, dangerous organism that can only be explained in terms of its origin, nature, and organization. Individuals in a hostile crowd share a preexisting bond; in this instance, it was probably hunger and disgust with intolerable living conditions in Camp Lubbock, sprinkled with fear of a Federal attack. Individuals in a hostile crowd lose critical discrimination and ordinary self-control, yield to natural inclinations usually forbidden by convention or law, and hide behind anonymity. A man of intuitive common sense, William Duncan sensed the dangers of mob violence yet stood before the mutinous soldiers at Camp Lubbock to appeal for calm and patience. It was a situation of considerable personal danger, yet Duncan proved again his was the courage of a natural leader. On a broader scale, the incident was further evidence discipline was disintegrating quickly in Confederate Texas. Colonel Spaight visited Camp Lubbock the next day and Duncan says he “ordered [a] court of investigation in regard to the mutinous conduct of the men.” Duncan adds that two of his soldiers, H. V. Barrow and W. S. Barnes, “were arrested and sent to Houston for being concerned in the mutiny.” Duncan rode into town the next day to visit them in the stockade. Confederate survivors in Houston as well as throughout the South were sick, tired, hungry, and afraid...

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