DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little East Texas wind behind it. Now, 3.5 miles west of where you're rolling right now, there's a place called Burleson Lake — and if that ground could talk, it would tell you about the last time the Army of the Republic of Texas made camp together. The very last time.
Picture it: summer of 1839, the dust barely settled, the echoes of battle still hanging in the air. These men had just fought the decisive engagement of the Cherokee War — the Battle of the Neches, over in Van Zandt County, on July 16th, 1839 — against Chief Bowles of the Cherokees and their associated tribes. And decisive is the word the record uses.
Whatever happened on those grounds, it was enough. It was over. So the army pulled back and made camp on Burleson Lake, under a command that reads like a roll call of Texas legend: General Kelsey H.
Douglass, General Thomas J. Rusk, General Edward Burleson, and Colonel Willis H. Landrum.
Four men. One lake. One final camp.
Then Texas Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston gave the order — muster out. The army had done what it was called to do, and there was nothing left but to send the men home. And on July 25th, 1839, that is exactly what happened.
From the shores of Burleson Lake, the soldiers departed for their homes. No fanfare recorded. No ceremony described.
Just men pointing themselves toward wherever home was and riding off into a Texas summer. The Army of the Republic of Texas walked away from that lake, and it never assembled like that again.
What the marker says
On Burleson Lake, 3.5 miles west of here was last Cherokee War Camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas. Under Gen. Kelsey H. Douglass, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, Gen. Edward Burleson, and Col. Willis H. Landrum. Texas Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston ordered the army mustered out after its decisive victory in Battle of the Neches against Chief Bowles of the Cherokees and associated tribes on July 16, 1839, in Van Zandt County. From the Burleson Lake Camp, the soldiers departed for their homes on July 25, 1839. (1975)