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WITH TERRY'S TEXAS RANGERS: THE LETTERS OF DUNBAR AFFLECK Edited by Robert W. Williams, Jr. and Ralph A. Wooster By all accounts Terry's Texas Rangers was one of the most colorful cavalry regiments to serve in the Civü War. Recruited in south-central Texas, Terry's men were ordered to Kentucky in late 1861 and subsequently participated in some of die great battles of the West—from Shiloh to Chickamauga. Joining Company B of the Rangers in the spring of 1862 was seventeen-year-old Isaac Dunbar Affleck. The son of the noted Southerner agricultural reformer, Thomas Affleck, Dunbar (known to parents and friends as "Dunnie" ) had spent his childhood days on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, where his father raised cotton and operated the largest nursery in the lower South. The elder Affleck moved to Mississippi from Cincinnati in 1842, married a MagnoUa State widow, and became a staunch defender of slavery and die plantation system as well as publisher of the widely-circulated Affleck's Southern Rural Almanac and Phntation Calendar. In die late 1850's the Afflecks moved to Texas and established a plantation home, "Glenblythe ," near Brenham. In 1859 and 1860 young Dunnie attended müitary school at Bastrop, Texas. With the outbreak of the Civü War Dunbar returned home and joined a müitia organization known as Labadie's Rifles. By die spring of 1862, however, he had determined to see the war at first hand, and set out to join Terry's Rangers, then in northern Mississippi. The letters to his parents included here describe service with the Rangers from April, 1862, through May, 1863, during which time the regiment particiRobert W. Williams, Jr., is a member of the faculty at East Carolina State College. His collaborator, Ralph A. Wooster, professor of history at Lamar State College of Technology, is the author of The Secession Conventions of the South, published in 1962. 299 300WILLIAMS AND WOOSTER pated in Bragg's invasion of Kentucky and fought in die battles of PerryviUe and Murfreesboro. Throughout his müitary career young Affleck was a faithful letter writer, sending home smaU tablets by couriers headed toward Texas. The originals of the letters that foUow are now in the possession of Dunnie's son, Thomas Dunbar Affleck of Galveston, who generously allowed die editors to reproduce them. Nibletts Bluff1 Sunday April 6th/'62 Dear Mother & Father: I maüed a letter to you yesterday evening after I got to this place. I told you I expected to get of[f] on Tuesday but I think we wül get off this evening. I have entered into a big speculation since I came here. I bought a pony for forty doUars. I would nothave done itbut I could do no better, they chargefd] thirty doUars on the stage for Perry so I thought I would run the risk—2 Andrew Harris rode him tiirough to New Iberia.3 I told him to seU him for any price over fifteen dollars, and if he can do that I will be making five doUars, but as diis is my first speculation in horse flesh, I hope it will turn out weU. We wül use Andrew Harrises transportation ticket for Perry—the horse is worth the thirty-five doUars and I know I can get fifteen for him—. Perry has behaved himseU better than I expected—Coming up die river [he] took care of a mans horse for fifty cents, and when we got here the feUow started off, but Perry ran after him and made him paysince he has been here, he has been waiting on the Hotel. I dont know whathe expects to get. I told him he might make as much pocket money as he Uked so [long as] he looked after my things at the same time—. To day is Sunday, but die people here carry on just as they did yesterday—grog shops open and men drunk, there is no minister and I dont suppose there is a bible in the place—4 At the Hotel here they 1 Niblett's Bluff is located in extreme southwestern Louisiana next to the Texas line. 2 Dunnie...

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