The American Civil War: The Common Texan Soldier's Experience
The American Civil War:
The Common Texan Soldier's Experience
Natalie Gray
June 24, 2004
HIS 469: The Civil War and Reconstruction
Dr. Susannah Bruce
Sam Houston State University
The American Civil War: The Common Texan Soldier's Experience
The Civil War is one of the darkest periods in American history and no one tells the story better than that of the common Texas soldier. While the nation was divided and fighting amongst itself, some states and families were divided too. There was a case where one son would kill his own father. This case is told through the recollections of James Lemuel Clark, and how at The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, he was unable to control the death of his own father. Through the memoirs of William Davidson, a common soldier in the Sibley Brigade, he would recall the Battle of Valverde, also known as Bloody Valverde. When the Civil War is told to readers, it mostly recollects on the battles fought between the Northern States and the states of the Deep South. However small the battles of Texas were, the Great Hanging of Gainesville, Texas and the Battle of Valverde makes Texas a significant factor in the telling of the Civil War.
Less than eighteen months after Texas seceded, the Cooke County citizens had been thrown into mayhem as opposition against secession had become the insolence of the Confederacy by many settlers. The majority of Texans did not want the state to secede. Never more than technically loyal to the emerging regime, they resented the lack of frontier defense and Confederateled against sequestration, impressments, taxation, and conscription. Efforts by Colonel James Bourland to enforce the conscription increased the anger of settlers and facilitated the creation of the Peace party. The members of the party viewed Bourland and the Confederate authority as the gravest threat to peace and security in Cooke County. At the same time,...
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