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The history of the War Between the States as it transpired in the Trans-Mississippi West is little known. Much attention has been focused on the victorious campaigns of the gallant Army of Northern Virginia, and on the valiant struggles of the hard-luck Army of Tennessee. But thousands of brave men struggled and died for Southern Independence in the far west, fighting in campaigns whose names are now rarely heard. Among the least known of these Trans-Mississippi Army units is the Arizona Brigade. This is their story.
It may be said that the Arizona Brigade is a paradox of contradiction. It was formed for the invasion and recapture of the Confederate Territory of Arizona (which was lost to Union invaders in July 1862), and yet never once set foot in Arizona. The Regiments within the Brigade were unofficially known as "Arizona Cavalry Regiments," and yet almost all the men within them were from Texas. And it was called the "Arizona BRIGADE," and yet never fought together as a Brigade...its Regiments were detailed to other Brigades instead.
Be that as it may, the Arizona Brigade and its individual regiments left a rich and colorful record that deserves to be told, and it is hoped this paper will accomplish that object.
The history of the Arizona Brigade can be said to with the collapse of the Confederate Territory of Arizona in July, 1862. The said Confederate Territory had been founded by Lt. Colonel John Robert Baylor, Second Texas Mounted Rifles, following a successful invasion by Confederate forces in August, 1861. Baylor had declared himself military governor of the new Confederate Territory, a post in which he was later confirmed by the Confederate Government. The Confederate Territory of Arizona had much support among the people of Arizona (the term "Arizona" then meaning what we would consider the southern halves of the present-day States of Arizona and New Mexico), but was militarily weak, and it maintained a precarious existence until it finally fell to Union invasion the following July.
When the Territory fell, some Confederate leaders were willing to abandon it. For example, Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, commander of the Confederate Army of New Mexico (the name by which the forces assigned to defend the Confederate Territory of Arizona were known) stated his own belief that Arizona and New Mexico were "not worth a quarter of the blood and treasure which had been expended" for their conquest and defense, and many other Confederate leaders shared his view.
However, John Robert Baylor thought otherwise, and in this he was supported by the many Arizona secessionists who ardently desired to see Arizona liberated from the rule of the hated Yankees. With their support, Baylor began to work to raise a new army with which he would invade and recapture Arizona for the Confederacy.
Baylor had received orders on April 14, 1862 from George W. Randolph, Confederate Secretary of War instructing him as follows...
"You are authorized to enlist volunteers in Arizona Territory and to muster them into service, singly or by companies, for three years or the war, to be organized as soon as a sufficient number of companies are mustered into a regiment, electing field officers. You will continue to organize regiments under this authority until a brigade has been raised for the defense of the Territory."1
Armed with this authority, Baylor began preparations to raise this new "Arizona Brigade" almost immediately after his arrival in San Antonio, Texas, sometime in July 1862. Baylor set up his headquarters at Eagle Lake, Texas (located between San Antonio and Houston), and began to organize and recruit. He planned to raise five Battalions of Mounted Rifles, each of 500 men, for a total of 2,000 men in the brigade. Recruiting went well, and by December 1862 Baylor already had 1,500 of the planned 2,000 men signed up. However, arming and equipping the men had proved to be extremely difficult, with the result that only three companies (about 300 men total) had been armed, and those "indifferently" at that.2
It was at this point that Baylor was suddenly removed from command, due to an action he had taken while serving as Governor of Arizona. Baylor had, in March 1862, issued an order to his military commanders in which he directed them to call in the various bands of the Apaches for "peace talks." When the Indians came in, Baylor instructed, they were to be gotten drunk, the adults killed, and the children sold into slavery to defray the expense associated with killing their parents! News of this order had only just reached the Confederate Government in Richmond, and President Jefferson Davis was outraged when he heard of it. He immediately removed Baylor from his post as Governor of Arizona, stripped him of his rank, and cashiered him from the Army.3 But Baylor’s Brigade lived on, and plans proceeded for the ultimate invasion of Arizona. By the Spring of 1863, the brigade quartermaster had begun to amass supplies for the expedition, which was expected to begin shortly. The five Battalions of the Brigade had, by this time, been consolidated into four Regiments, designated at the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Texas Cavalry Regiments, Arizona Brigade (also sometimes unofficially called the 1st-4th Regiments of Texas-Arizona Cavalry, or 1st-4th Arizona Cavalry Regiments).4
But then, news came of a Union offensive in Louisiana that endangered Texas. Union General Nathaniel Banks was pushing up the Bayou Teche, with the aim of proceeding up the Red River and occupying east Texas and securing for the Union the rich cotton production to be found there. Major General John Bankhead Magruder, desperate for troops to resist this invasion, issued orders to postpone the expedition to Arizona. The Arizona Brigade was broken up, and the regiments (most still not at full strength) were rushed to different sectors. Although the regiments would still be officially designated as members of the Arizona Brigade, and would continue to be so until the end of the war, the brigade would never again function together as a single unit. And with the dispersal of the brigade, the last chance for the recapture of Arizona was lost.5
But though now deprived of the reason for their formation, the regiments of the Arizona Brigade would all leave a rich and varied history in the upcoming campaigns. Some would serve with great distinction, and some would end up as renegades. We will now examine their records.
The FIRST TEXAS CAVALRY REGIMENT, ARIZONA BRIGADE, was formed on February 21, 1863 as a result of Special Order #81, District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, which directed that the First Cavalry Battalion of the Brigade, commanded by Lt. Colonel William P. Hardeman, be consolidated with several independent cavalry companies to form a regiment. Hardeman was commissioned as Colonel of the new Regiment. Other field officers were Lt. Colonel Peter Hardeman (brother of the regimental Colonel who would replace his brother as Colonel), and Major Michael Looscan. After Peter Hardeman took over as Colonel, and Looscan resigned as Major, Edward Riordan became the Lt. Colonel, and Alexander P. Terrell became the regiment’s Major.
The First Regiment served mainly in the Red River area of Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory (what is now Oklahoma) during the war. It served with a number of different commands, but mainly with Colonel Richard M. Gano’s Texas Cavalry Brigade (which itself was assigned to several different commands during the war).
Battles in which the First Regiment was involved were the Camden Expedition (March-May 1864), the Battle of Poison Spring (April 18, 1864), the Battle of Massard’s Prairie (July 27, 1864), and the Battle of Cabin Creek (September 19, 1864). The regiment also fought a number of skirmishes with hostile Indians and with raiding parties of Union soldiers sent out from Fort Smith, Arkansas, the names of which are not recorded.6
Of the battles listed above, the Battle of Poison Spring (in which not only the First Regiment, but also several other Texas Cavalry Regiments and at least two Regiments of Choctaw Indians, were involved) was probably the most famous, or perhaps we should say "infamous," and as such it deserves some further elaboration. For the Battle of Poison Spring has gone down in history as the "Fort Pillow of the West," due to an alleged massacre of Union negro troops which took place there.7
The events which lead up to the battle began in March, 1864. A Union army, under Major General Frederick Steele, was moving south from Little Rock, Arkansas, heading for Shreveport, Louisiana. Steele’s aim was to link up with the army of Major General Nathaniel Banks, which was moving northward up the Red River toward Shreveport. However, Steele’s army had run short of supplies by mid-April, with Union soldiers living on half-rations. The Union army halted at Camden, Arkansas, and a supply base was set up. On April 17 a foraging expedition of about 1,000 men, which included the First Kansas Colored Infantry (about 500 men strong), was sent out to secure supplies for the army.8 The expedition left Camden with 198 wagons and orders to take, by force, corn and other food from Southern farmers in the surrounding areas. The expedition looted the farms of many poor Southern families, leaving them destitute and starving, and filled their wagons not only with food items such as corn and bacon and livestock such as hogs and geese, but also with such items as stolen bed quilts, women’s and children’s clothing, jewelry, household furniture, and various other items of outright plunder that the negroes intended to send to their families in Kansas.9
On April 18, as the plunderers were on their way back to Camden, they were ambushed by a large Confederate force (which outnumbered the Union troops by at least three-to-one) under the command of Brigadier General Samuel Bell Maxey. A fierce battle ensued, in which the Confederates overwhelmed the Union force. The Confederates caught the wagon train in a thundering crossfire of artillery and then charged it from the front, sides, and rear.10 Union casualties were extreme. About 600 Union soldiers were left dead on the field, "principally negroes who neither gave nor received quarter" (to quote Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, Commander-in-Chief of all Confederate forces west of the Mississippi River, who spoke of the affair in a letter to his wife penned shortly after the battle). Among the approximately 200 Unionists who were captured (again according to General Smith) were only two negro prisoners.11
Almost immediately, the Union authorities charged that a massacre had taken place. Confederate soldiers were accused of having driven captured wagons back and forth over the fallen negro wounded until none were left alive (incidentally, the white Confederates were not the only ones charged with atrocities that day...the Choctaws were accused of scalping both dead and wounded prisoners).12 But, as with the more famous incident at Fort Pillow (which, as it happened, occurred within days of the fight at Poison Spring), we really don’t know what happened. Maybe a massacre took place, and maybe it didn’t. As one prominent historian of the Red River Campaign has said regarding Poison Spring, "it is often difficult to draw the line between legitimate killing and murder."13 Was there a massacre at Poison Spring, motivated by race hatred, as Union accounts claimed? Possibly, but one has to ask...if a large Confederate force had managed to trap and overwhelm General William T. Sherman and his army of looters after it left Georgia and South Carolina in flames, might not something similar have happened to them, irregardless of the fact that those looters were WHITE MEN? The fact that the looters in the Poison Spring case were negroes may have contributed to the ferocity of the reaction by the Confederate troops upon discovering the contents of the captured Union wagons. But, then again, if the negroes really did "give and receive no quarter," as General Smith claimed in his letter previously quoted, there may have been no massacre at all. And it is hard to imagine that white men, apprehended under similar circumstances, would not have met a similar fate.
The SECOND TEXAS CAVALRY REGIMENT, ARIZONA BRIGADE, was formed on February 21, 1863 pursuant to Special Order #81, District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was formed by consolidating Lt. Colonel John W. Mullen’s Cavalry Battalion (one of the original five of the Arizona Brigade) with two independent companies, thus raising the Battalion to regimental strength. Mullen continued to serve as Lieutenant Colonel of the new regiment, and George Wythe Baylor, younger brother of former Arizona Governor John R. Baylor, was commissioned as regimental Colonel. Completing the regiment’s field staff was Major Sherod Hunter, an Arizona Confederate who had commanded the Confederate force which occupied Tucson in the Spring of 1862 and fought the westernmost battle of the war at Picacho Pass, April 15, 1862.
Battles in which the Second Texas-Arizona Regiment was involved included Brashear City (June 23, 1863), Cox’s Plantation (July 12-13, 1863), and the many battles and skirmishes of the Red River Campaign of March-May 1864, including the major battles at Mansfield (April 8, 1864) and Pleasant Hill (April 9, 1864).14
The THIRD TEXAS CAVALRY REGIMENT, ARIZONA BRIGADE, was organized on February 21, 1863, pursuant to Special Order #81, District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. It was formed by consolidating the Third Cavalry Battalion, Arizona Brigade, with several independent companies to raise the battalion to regimental strength. The Third Regiment was commanded by Colonel Joseph Phillips. Other field officers were Lt. Colonel George T. Madison (who had been the commanding officer of the original Third Cavalry Battalion) and Major Alonzo Ridley (who later became the regiment’s Lt. Colonel). Major Ridley (on the right) and Lt. Frank Mullen of the Second Arizona Cavalry (on the left) are shown in the photo.
The Third Texas-Arizona Cavalry Regiment participated in many battles, including those at Donaldsonville, Louisiana (June 28, 1863); Cox’s Plantation (July 12-13, 1863); Stirling’s Plantation (September 29, 1863); Bayou Bourbeau (November 3, 1863); and the many battles and skirmishes of the Red River campaign in Louisiana, including most importantly Wilson’s Farm (April 7, 1864), Sabine Crossroads, or Mansfield (April 8, 1863), and Pleasant Hill, (April 9, 1863).15
For most of the war the Second and Third Texas-Arizona Cavalry Regiments were assigned to the Texas Cavalry Brigades of Brigadier General Thomas Green (May-December 1863) and Brigadier General James Patrick Major (December 1863-April 1865) and served mostly in Louisiana. Brief descriptions of the major battles fought by those Brigades during this period are in order.16 Both the Second and the Third Regiment would have been present for, and would have participated in, most or all of these battles...
BRASHEAR CITY (June 23, 1863): The battle in which the Second Regiment figured most prominently was the capture of the Union supply depot at Brashear City, on June 23, 1863. On the night of June 22, 1864, Major Hunter led 250 Confederate cavalrymen (three companies from the Second Texas Cavalry, Arizona Brigade, volunteers from other Texas Cavalry units, and a contingent from the Second Louisiana Cavalry) aboard a flotilla of flatboats, skiffs, rowboats, dugout canoes, even sugar coolers...in short, anything that would float. Hunter and his "mosquito fleet" slipped silently down the Bayou Teche to the Atchafalaya River, thence up said River to Brashear City (a distance of about 12 miles, all of which had to be traversed by rowing, as the boats had no sails).
At daybreak on June 23, 1863, Hunter's force disembarked from their strange fleet, then marched a further four miles, single file, through a swamp of mud, water, and tall palmetto to reach Brashear City. As Hunter and his men emerged from the woods, Confederate artillery stationed on the shores of Berwick Bay across from Brashear City (including the four guns of the Valverde Battery, captured by the Confederate Army of New Mexico at the Battle of Valverde in 1862) opened fire. Most of the Union garrison marched off to the shores of the bay in response to this attack, leaving the rear approaches to Brashear City open. Major Hunter led his men in a bayonet charge that took the enemy completely by surprise. Most of the Union garrison was too stunned by this sudden onslaught to put up a fight, but the Confederates did find a few pockets of resistance that cost them 3 killed and 18 wounded.
As a result of this daring amphibious assault, Hunter and his 250 men captured Brashear City, 1,300 Union prisoners, 11 heavy siege guns, 2,500 stands of Enfield and Burnside rifles, immense quantities of quartermaster, commissary and ordnance stores, as well as 2,000 negroes and between 200 and 300 wagons and tents. The overall value of the captured supplies was more than $2,000,000, and General Richard Taylor's Confederate Army was to be well supplied by them for many months.17
DONALDSONVILLE (June 28, 1863): Green's and Major's Cavalry Brigades assisted in an attack on Union-held Fort Butler, at the junction of the Bayou LaFourche and the Mississippi River near the town of Donaldsonville. The attack, made in the darkness of the early morning hours, resulted in a confused melee in which men from both sides hurled bricks from the fort’s parapet at each other. The attack was finally driven off by the fire of Union gunboats on the Mississippi.
COX’S PLANTATION (July 12-13, 1863); A Union force of 6,000 men, led by Brigadier Generals Godfrey Weitzel and Cuvier Grover, advanced southward along the Bayou LaFourche from Donaldsonville. They had gone less than ten miles when they were ambushed at Cox’s Plantation by the Texas Cavalry of Brigadier Generals Thomas Green and James P. Major. The Yankees were severely thrashed by the badly outnumbered Texans, and forced to retreat back to Donaldsonville.
BAYOU BOURBEAU (November 3, 1863): In cooperation with three regiments of Major General John G. Walker’s Texas Infantry Division (known as Walker’s Greyhounds due to their many long and rapid marches from one front to another), the Texas Cavalry Brigades of Thomas Green and James P. Major routed a larger Union force under Major General William B. Franklin, capturing 600 men and one cannon.
WILSON’S FARM (April 7, 1864): The advance guard of Major General Nathaniel Banks’ Union army, consisting of a division of cavalry and recently-formed regiments of mounted infantry under the command of Brigadier General Albert L. Lee, encountered the four regiments of James P. Major’s Texas Cavalry Brigade on the road between the towns of Pleasant Hill and Mansfield, Louisiana. Lee’s men had never before encountered Confederate cavalry, and expected them to retreat, as had the various Confederate infantry units with which they had previously skirmished. Instead of retreating, however, Major’s Texas cavalrymen gave a thunderous Rebel Yell and charged into Lee’s leading brigade. A wild, close-range melee ensued, with troopers on both sides firing revolvers and carbines. Major’s men swept right through the stunned Yankees and attacked Lee’s wagon train (pictured here), and it was only with great difficulty that the Yankees finally drove off the outnumbered Texans, who retreated, ending the battle. Union commander Lee, tunned by the sudden onslaught, called for reinforcements, which were promptly dispatched, setting the stage for the next day’s engagement at Sabine Crossroads.
SABINE CROSSROADS, OR MANSFIELD (April 8, 1864): The Union advance guard, which now consisted not only of Lee’s Cavalry Division but also included the 4th Infantry Division, 13th Corps, under the command of Colonel William J. Landrum (Landrum’s force had been rushed forward to reinforce Lee’s advance guard after the unexpected attack by Major’s Confederate cavalry the previous day), continued to advance toward Mansfield. Confederate Major General Richard Taylor, seeing that the Union advance guard was separated from the bulk of their army by their wagon train, decided to attack. Taylor’s Confederate army executed what was almost a classic double-envelopment of the Union force. Major’s Cavalry Brigade held the extreme left of the Confederate battle line. Fighting dismounted, they managed to work themselves around the right flank of the Union line and take the Union force in the rear. Other Confederate units had also managed to outflank the Union force on its left flank as well, and the Yankees fled in disorder. In the confusion of the retreat some Union regiments attempted to hold their ground, and two of these (the 130th Illinois and the 48th Ohio) were surrounded and captured by Major’s Cavalry Brigade. The panic-stricken Yankees were pursued for over two miles by the jubilant Confederates, and only the timely arrival of another Union infantry division under Brigadier General William H. Emory prevented their utter destruction.
The FOURTH TEXAS CAVALRY REGIMENT, ARIZONA BRIGADE was the brainchild of Spruce McCoy Baird, former attorney general of New Mexico Territory (U.S.) and an ardent secessionist who had accompanied the Confederate Army of New Mexico when it retreated back to Texas. Baird began to recruit troops for the recapture of Arizona, at first independently of the larger effort which John R. Baylor was organizing at Eagle Lake, Texas. However, by the end of 1862 Baird had moved his recruiting efforts to Eagle Lake, and his embryonic regiment became part of the Arizona Brigade.
The Fourth Regiment was organized in February 1863, with Spruce Baird himself commissioned as Colonel and placed in command of the regiment. Other field officers were Major Edward Riordan and Lt. Colonel Daniel Showalter.18
Lt. Colonel Showalter, who would later command the Fourth Regiment after Baird resigned in early 1864, was a California politician and ardent Southern sympathizer who had been captured and imprisoned by Union authorities in November 1861 while attempting to leave California on his way to join the Confederate army in Texas. Released from his enforced confinement at Fort Yuma after five months, Showalter made a second attempt to defect, this time successfully. Slipping through the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Showalter made his way to Texas, where he took a commission in the Fourth Regiment.19
Baird’s recruiting efforts were never as successful as those of Baylor, and Baird was forced to move his recruiting efforts yet again in early 1863. He set up headquarters near the Pecos River, in far west Texas, and his recruiters signed up draft evaders, deserters, and other riff-raff who had drifted into the no-man’s-land between Confederate Texas and Union-held New Mexico. Naturally, the discipline and quality of the regiment suffered as a result.20
The Fourth Regiment only took to the field in late 1863, due to the slowness with which its ranks were filled. The regiment was not assigned to a specific brigade or division for most of the war, but rather was used as a sort of "mobile reserve" force, to be moved wherever it was needed.21
No list of the engagements fought by the Fourth Regiment has survived.22 It is known that the first assignment of the regiment was against hostile Indians in north Texas (around September 1863). On November 17, 1863, the regiment was ordered to San Antonio, in response to the threat of a Union sea-borne invasion which never materialized.23
In early 1864, the regiment was sent to the lower Rio Grande, near Brownsville, Texas, where it was placed with a command called "The Cavalry of the West" under Colonel John Salmon Ford (shown at left), popularly known as "R.I.P." Ford due to his habit, while filling out death certificates, of adding the abbreviation "R.I.P." (for "Rest in Peace") after the names of those men under his command who had "gone to meet their maker." 24 Ford’s command was then engaged in operations against Union forces under Major General Francis J. Herron, which had occupied the lower Rio Grande region since November 1863.25
Ford’s operations had a simple, but undeniably important aim...to secure the routes by which the Confederacy shipped cotton to Mexican, European, and even Yankee cotton merchants who had established themselves in the border towns of northern Mexico. Confederate cotton was sold there for gold and silver, which in turn was used to purchase vitally needed war supplies for the Confederacy. And since Mexican ports could not be blockaded by the Union fleet, the Rio Grande crossings were the only relatively unimpeded means of entry for European goods into the Confederacy.26
However, Union forces now occupied the important river crossing at Brownsville, opposite the Mexican city of Matamoros, forcing Confederate cotton traders to transport their precious cargo by land over costly and dangerous routes far to the west which led to trading centers at Laredo and Eagle Pass. And now, Union forces were moving up-river, threatening even these remote Confederate outposts. Something had to be done, and "R.I.P." Ford aimed to do it! In a series of engagements that began in March 1864, Ford and the "Cavalry of the West" gradually pushed back the Union forces to their stronghold at Brownsville, and finally captured Brownsville itself in July 1864.27 The Fourth Regiment, under the command of Lt. Colonel Showalter, figured prominently in this campaign. In particular, it won praise for its capture of a Yankee riverboat during one of the final battles near Brownsville.28
The praise won by the Fourth Regiment and its commander was to be short-lived, however. Within a short time, Lt. Colonel Showalter was facing court-martial. It seems that Showalter had a problem with alcohol, and had, while "in a maudlin condition," beat a hasty retreat before a raid by the Mexican bandit, Juan Cortina. Colonel Ford got the charges dropped, however. "When not under the influence of liquor," Ford explained to his angry superiors, "he [Showalter] was as chivalrous a man as ever drew a sword."29
In September 1864 the Fourth Regiment was re-assigned again, this time to the 7th Texas Cavalry Brigade, Drayton’s Cavalry Division, which was stationed in Cooke County in northern Texas.30 By that time the ill-disciplined riff-raff within its ranks had become almost impossible to control. These problems were exacerbated by a cronic shortage of provisions and pay, which afflicted all Confederate units in the Trans-Mississippi during this time.31
By the beginning of 1865 the Fourth Regiment was in a state of mutiny, and was little more than a disorganized mob. The men soon began to raid the surrounding countryside, ostensibly to obtain food and other provisions. While doing so, however, the men committed various acts of murder, rapine and plunder against the local inhabitants. In fact, the depredations committed were so severe that the other regiments of the 7th Brigade were detailed to hunt them down, and the war ended with the Fourth Regiment being pursued through north Texas by their own comrades, other Confederate soldiers.32 The Fourth Regiment thus ended the war not as heroes, but as renegades. It was a sad end, but one that is perhaps not entirely unexpected!
What, then, can finally be said of the Arizona Brigade? In effect, the Arizona Brigade was a microcosm of the entire Confederate army, and its men displayed both the best and the worst qualities of the Confederate fighting man. The regiments of the Arizona Brigade left records both of valor, and of infamy. They produced both heroes and renegades. And somewhere in between was the vast majority, who did their duty to the best of their ability, saw the war through to the end, and remained true to their colors. And in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?
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