The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (27 page)

Chapter 9

Confederate Frontier

Soon after his encounter with Ranger methods on the Rio
Grande, Robert E. Lee was assigned to command Fort Mason, forty miles northwest of Fredericksburg. Lee found secession sentiment to be strong, not only because of the Texans’ Southern ties, but because they believed the federal government was indifferent to Indian raids on the frontier. The weaknesses were twofold, one being the Kiowa and Comanche range along the north-south line between the Red and Nueces rivers and the other along the Rio Grande, where, in addition to Cortina’s assaults, citizens had to contend with depredations from Indians who took refuge in Mexico.¹

The situation along the Rio Grande, however, was far less serious than that along the north-south line. Raids were particularly bad in the vicinity of Fort Belknap, where, despite assurances by John R. Baylor and his adherents that peace would reign once the agencies were closed and the Indians removed, the situation was worse than ever. Some blamed the situation on the murder of Robert Simpson Neighbors, who, it was belatedly realized, had exercised a calming influence on the tribes. And there were those who contended the Neighbors assassination had alienated the federal government to Texas’s Indian problems. Conditions around Belknap and Camp Cooper were aggravated by “some white men around the agencies,” who were encouraging the Indian raids and profiting from the plunder.²

In response, Governor Houston ordered the organization of a new Ranger battalion in the region, with orders to treat “every Indian caught this side of Red River as an enemy to Texas.” Col. William C. Dalrymple was placed in overall command on the frontier and established his headquarters at the Clear Fork of the Brazos River about midway between the old Camp Cooper and Fort Belknap Indian reservations. He tightened discipline among existing Ranger units, prohibiting horse racing, gambling, and liquor in the camps, and positioned the six companies of his battalion on a north-south line of defense with his headquarters in the center. Scouting parties were constantly in the field, and a special “Indian Spy Company” consisting primarily of Tonkawas under Sul Ross’s brother Peter Fulkerson Ross was attached to the battalion.³

WHILE DALRYMPLE WORKED
to establish a frontier line of defense, secession sentiment was growing. A state convention had been called to consider the issue, and rumors reached San Antonio that Baylor was organizing a thousand men for a “buffalo hunt.” Because he was a known secessionist, locals believed this was a pretense to assemble enough men to seize the federal arsenal. General Twiggs, who had recovered from his illness, called up several state militia companies to strengthen the force around San Antonio. These, however, were soon disbanded, and local Unionists began questioning the Southern-born Twiggs’s own loyalty.

On February 1, 1861, the convention adopted a resolution declaring Texas a sovereign state. The resolution was submitted for a public referendum set for February 23. Houston reminded the legislature that the withdrawal of federal troops would leave the frontier completely exposed, and in response, the state ordered all frontier counties to form minuteman Ranger companies not to exceed forty men each. Each man was expected “to keep himself furnished with a suitable horse, gun [i.e., rifle], [Colt’s] navy revolver, at least one hundred rounds of ammunition, ten days’ provisions, and all necessary equipments, to be ready at any moment when called on to take the field.” The legislature appropriated $25,000 to supply Colonel Dalrymple.

The Secession Convention appointed a Committee of Public Safety to take over U.S. military installations from federal troops, secure public property on the posts before it was destroyed, and assume responsibility for frontier defense. McCulloch was designated to command the state military forces around San Antonio and assume control of military installations there. His brother Henry McCulloch, who had earned a reputation as a Ranger leader in his own right, was placed in charge of forces on the northwest frontier, and Rip Ford was named commander of the forces on the Rio Grande. Henry McCulloch was also to take possession of federal posts on the frontier.
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On the morning of February 16, Ben McCulloch led over a thousand state troops and Rangers into the city and demanded the surrender of all public property. As one Unionist remarked, “Captain Baylor’s buffalohunt had at last assumed a tangible shape.” Faced with this force and swayed, no doubt, by his own loyalties, Twiggs assented and sent a general order to all commanding officers in Texas to evacuate their garrisons and prepare to leave the state.
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Robert E. Lee arrived in San Antonio the afternoon of February 16, en route from Fort Mason to Washington, where he had been ordered to confer with General Scott. As he came into town, he was surrounded by Rangers. Caroline Darrow, a Union sympathizer, went to meet him and advised him the secessionists controlled the city. Lee, who at that juncture was still a federal officer, eventually was paroled and allowed to continue his journey.

Secession now was a foregone conclusion, and the Rangers were barely controllable. Mrs. Darrow remembered:

During the next two days the Rangers were drinking and shouting about the streets, recklessly shooting any one who happened to displease them. From this time on, Union men were in danger, and Northerners sent their families away. Some who were outspoken were imprisoned and barely escaped with their lives; among them, Charles Anderson, brother of Robert Anderson [the Union defender of Fort Sumter].
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In the confusion, Ranger officers in the field began receiving conflicting orders. Lt. Buck Barry had spent most of January scouting for Indians. Upon returning to his main camp, he gave his men five days’ furlough and returned home. Here he found an order from Houston countermanding any further scouts, and another order from the Committee of Public Safety instructing him to raise a hundred men to assist in taking control of federal frontier forts.

Thus I found myself with two commissions, from two governments, without a precedent to be governed by. But the only conclusion I could arrive at was to stand by the voice of the people of Texas, who had voted by a large majority to secede. So I paraded my old company and explained the whole proceedings of the convention to them and told them that they were discharged. But I told them that if they wanted to they could help make up the company the convention had commissioned me to raise. About half of my old company went home as they said they did not care to fight their own government, and the other half stayed with me.
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One by one the military posts in Texas surrendered. Although some military commanders disabled equipment to keep the state forces from using it, there was little inclination to resist except at Camp Cooper, where Capt. S. D. Carpenter of the First Infantry put his troops on notice that he intended to defend the post.
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That done, Carpenter sent a letter “to the Commanding Officer of the State Troops of Texas, and other armed bodies of citizens, encamped in the vicinity of this post.” In it he said he had been advised of “a hostile movement against this camp” and demanded to know the state’s intentions. On February 18, Colonel Dalrymple replied that within twenty-four hours he would demand surrender of the post.

Carpenter was fully aware that Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens, Florida, were still holding out, and when Twiggs’s order arrived, he was sorely tempted to disobey and stand his ground. He knew that this would mean “the inauguration of a civil war that must eventually involve all the States in fraternal strife,” but was willing to take that responsibility. Carpenter, however, was a soldier, subject to the orders of his commanding officer, and that commanding officer had ordered him to surrender. After consultation with his own officers, he agreed to turn the post over to Dalrymple.
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In March, McCulloch assumed command from Dalrymple, who, as a Houston appointee, no longer had jurisdiction. Houston himself had been removed from office for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, and Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark was installed to finish the term. Buck Barry was placed in command of Camp Cooper, and Ranger companies also were sent to garrison Camp Colorado and Fort Chadbourne on the line of defense running south from Cooper, a line they held until May. “We were not able to keep the Indians from doing any mischief but broke up their camps and prevented them from doing serious injury at this time,” Barry observed. In San Antonio, meanwhile, the remaining army officers maintaining a federal presence in Texas were “seized by an armed force, acting under what they term the Confederate States of America,” and informed they would be confined until paroled or exchanged. They took their paroles and returned north. The breach with the United States was complete.
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AS TEXAS AND
the Confederacy prepared their respective defenses, the lines between a purely state ranger force and the army of a national government sometimes became blurred, making the Civil War a confusing period in Ranger history. The problem of identity is complicated by several factors. First, famous Rangers like Rip Ford, Sul Ross, and Ben McCulloch began the war commanding local Ranger units, prompting some historians to continue referring to them as Rangers even after they were transferred to the Confederate Army. Additionally, throughout the war, frontier Ranger units created by the state were called into regular military service by the Confederate government and reassigned to duties as soldiers.

And finally, many Texas units serving with the Confederate forces in the East styled themselves “rangers.” Among the most famous was the Eighth Texas Cavalry, known as Terry’s Texas Rangers in honor of their first commander, Col. Benjamin F. Terry, who was killed in the battle of Woodsonville, Kentucky, in December 1861. Despite their heroic service, Terry’s Texas Rangers were soldiers who served in a war totally unrelated to traditional Ranger conflicts, and for that reason they are beyond the scope of this work. The genuine Ranger was still the citizen volunteer called into service to defend the frontiers of the state.
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Ultimately, protection of the Confederate frontier devolved on three different Ranger units during different periods of the war. The first, known as the Mounted Riflemen, was raised by Henry McCulloch almost immediately after secession. It was replaced in early 1862 by the Frontier Regiment. When that regiment was incorporated into the Confederate Army in the spring of 1864, its role as a Ranger force was assumed by the Border Regiment. Often the same people served in each of these regiments, simply transferring from one to the other; Indian fighting was a highly specialized profession, and men who knew the frontier were always in demand. And regardless of what they were called, they were Rangers in the truest sense of ideal, organization, and mission.
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As always, the Rangers existed because of need, and with the expulsion of the last federal troops in the spring of 1861, some sort of immediate protection for the frontier became imperative. As early as March 4, Confederate secretary of war Leroy Pope Walker wrote Ben McCulloch, acknowledging that although the Confederate government itself was in the process of organizing and would be unable to field a regular army in the immediate future, “the necessities of your defenseless frontier demand instant action.” In view of the emergency, Walker and Confederate president Jefferson Davis requested McCulloch to raise the regiment of Mounted Riflemen for frontier defense. It consisted of ten companies, composed of sixty to eighty men each. Later that month, Henry McCulloch, to whom Ben had given the task of organizing the regiment, ordered Buck Barry to enlist a mounted Ranger company that would be “entitled to the same pay and allowances allowed volunteers in the army of the ‘Confederate States’ and subject to the same rules and government.” He was ordered to report to Camp Cooper on May 4, where it would be mustered into Confederate service for twelve months.
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Camp Cooper was a key link in the badly deteriorated line of defense between the Red River and the Rio Grande. To the west were the Mexicans, who, in the words of Governor Clark, “bear no love to us,” and to the north and west were the Indians, “who are our perpetual foes.” Rip Ford was managing to hold down the area along the Rio Grande with five makeshift companies, while Henry McCulloch’s regiment had responsibility for the entire north-south line and was completely inadequate for the job.

“The people of this State have been positively assured that their protection would be far more perfect under the Government of the Confederate States than it was under that of the old United States,” Clark advised President Davis, adding, “Our protection properly devolves upon you. . . .” If Texas received that protection, the Confederacy could depend on its steadfast support. Otherwise, Clark warned, the proHouston faction stood a good chance of getting enough support to break away from the Confederacy and form an independent republic.

Having dealt with the Indian crisis as U.S. secretary of war, Davis was not blind to the situation, but the difficulties of organizing, leading, and defending a new nation took priority over the frontier problems of one state. Secretary Walker, meanwhile, had no better grasp of the true nature of Texas’s plight than had many of his Union predecessors. Despite previous expressions of concern, he soon decided the raids were “merely predatory and incursional, and carried on only by roving tribes of Indians.” The secretary of war had absolutely no understanding of the devastation these “roving tribes of Indians” could inflict; one fourth of the United States Army had been unable to control them in the 1850s, and the single regiment of mounted rifles he envisioned had no chance whatever. His assurances that the Confederate government would defend the state “at whatever cost” rang hollow. The situation that had helped prompt secession from the Union was no better under the Confederacy.
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