DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just passing it along the way Duane does. Now, picture this. April 4th, 1964.
A hundred years to the rough edge of a season after one of the bloodiest campaigns along the Red River. Somebody decided that wasn't something you just let slide by on a calendar. So right here, on this spot in Shelby County, they held what they called a C.S.A.
Texas Muster. The purpose was to honor the Texans who made up the greater part of the forces fighting in the Red River Campaign of 1864 and 1865 — the campaign, the marker tells us, that prevented a Federal invasion of Texas. Those are the stakes the marker lays out.
A whole state sitting at the far end of that river, and the men who stood between it and what was coming. Now when they called roll that day — and they literally called a roll, descendants answering up for soldiers a hundred years gone — thirty-seven sons and daughters of those fighters stepped forward. Thirty-seven.
Think about that. They were old enough to have been born to men who carried rifles in those campaigns. Grandchildren came too, and great-grandchildren, and other kinsmen, all representing a roster of names that reads like a who's-who of Confederate command in the Trans-Mississippi.
The Trans-Mississippi commander himself, General E. Kirby Smith, was represented. And the generals came rolling off that roll call — A.
P. Bagby, John R. Baylor, August Buchel, X.
B. deBray, Tom Green, Walter P. Lane, Henry E. McCulloch, Jas.
Major, Horace Randal, Wm. R. Scurry, Wm.
Steele, John G. Walker, and Thos. Waul.
And the colonels — Henry Gray, Philip N. Luckett, P. C.
Wood. That is some company to be descended from, and on that April day, their kin showed up to say so. But here is where the story finds its legs.
Friends and descendants of the Val Verde Battery — they didn't just show up. They did the work. They restored one century-old gun.
Hauled it all the way from Freestone County. And that cannon took its place in a parade eight miles long. Eight miles long.
That procession moved thirty-six miles northeastward from this very spot, up toward the Mansfield Battleground. And when they got there — when that restored Val Verde gun reached the ground where the real fighting happened — it fired. And the marker says it plain: the cannon shook the earth, just as it had on April 8th, 1864.
Then, on that same ground, the assemblage unveiled the first out-of-state marker of the Texas Civil War Centennial, commemorating the Battle of Mansfield. A hundred years between the thunder and the echo. And they made sure the echo was loud enough to hear.
What the marker says
Held on this spot April 4, 1964, to honor Texans who made up the greater part of forces fighting in the Civil War Red River Campaign of 1864-1865, that prevented a Federal invasion of Texas. Descendants answering to roll call for soldiers of 100 years ago included 37 sons and daughters of those fighters. Grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other kinsmen represented such leaders as the Trans-Mississippi commander, Gen. E. Kirby Smith, and Gens. A. P. Bagby, John R. Baylor, August Buchel, X. B. deBray, Tom Green, Walter P. Lane, Henry E. McCulloch, Jas. Major, Horace Randal, Wm. R. Scurry, Wm. Steele, John G. Walker, and Thos. Waul; and Cols. Henry Gray, Philip N. Luckett and P. C. Wood. Friends and descendants of the Val Verde Battery restored one century-old gun and brought it from Freestone County to ride in the 8-mile-long parade that moved 36 miles northeastward from here to the Mansfield Battleground. There the cannon shook the earth as it did April 8, 1864, and the assemblage unveiled the first out-of-state marker of the Texas Civil War Centennial, commemorating the Battle of Mansfield.