Thus closes my notes for the month of December and also for the year just passed and gone and now numbered with the things that were. Whether the Almighty will spare me to chronicle the daily events of the incoming year is more than I know but trusting in Him I shall enter upon the pleasing task, which is useful as a reference and may be profitable to those who have an interest in me.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Friday, October 23rd, 1863
To day the boys were compelled to stop working in the mill field to haul cotton from Mr. Leaverton's gin, he wanting the use of it for his own crop. they made 3 loads. I ground 18½ bushels of corn & killed two fine ducks. Weather changeable and cold with a strong wind blowing from the north. at night there was a hard frost which killed nearly all kinds of vegetation.
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1863 First Texas Cavalry USA
ReplyDeleteFriday, October 23, 1863
On this day in 1863, the First Texas Cavalry, USA, left New Orleans for South Texas as part of the Union effort to interdict the lucrative trade between Confederate Texas and Mexico.
The First was one of two regiments of Unionist cavalry from Texas to serve in the Civil War; the Second was formed in Brownsville after the Rio Grande campaign got underway. Loyalty to the Union was anything but a major consensus in Texas during the Civil War.
A total of 1,915 Texas men served the Union cause, in contrast to the many thousands who served the Confederacy. Brownsville was a center of Unionist sentiment.
Significant numbers of civilians who supported the North fled to the lower Rio Grande, where a provisional state government was set up under Andrew J. Hamilton, and where Edmund J. Davis and others recruited cavalrymen for the North.
Davis had formed the First Texas Cavalry, USA, in New Orleans in 1862. In November 1864 the regiment was merged with the Second into the First Texas Volunteer Cavalry. This new twelve-company regiment engaged in patrolling and reconnaissance duties until the end of the war, and was mustered out of service on November 4, 1865.