DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells this story, and I'm going to do it justice. Now, most stories about the end of the Civil War end at Appomattox, in April of 1865. Lee signs, the guns go quiet, and that's that.
But not every soldier got that memo — or more to the point, not every soldier was willing to receive it. General Jos. O.
Shelby, of Missouri, had a cavalry brigade. Un-surrendered. That word is right there on the marker and it carries a weight all its own.
Three months after Lee's surrender, Shelby's men were still moving — still armed, still carrying cannon, still marching under ragged battle flags. They came across Texas with all of it. Arms, cannon, and those flags that had seen God knows what by then.
Their aim was Mexico. The hope was to keep fighting somehow, somewhere, on the other side of that muddy river. But before they crossed, Shelby did something.
He assembled his command on the banks of the Rio Grande. Right here, near this spot in Maverick County. And what happened next was the kind of moment that doesn't need any embellishment from me.
At the sound of drum and bugle, they folded their flag. The last flag to fly over an organized Confederate force. They weighted it down.
And on July 4, 1865 — Independence Day, of all days — they consigned it to the waters of the Rio Grande. It's down there still.
What the marker says
The last flag to fly over an organized Confederate force was buried in the river near this spot on July 4, 1865, by Gen. Jos. O. Shelby, of Missouri. His un-surrendered cavalry brigade, with arms, cannon and ragged battle flags, marched across Texas three months after Lee's surrender, to enter Mexico in the hope to continue their fight. As a last rite on Texas soil, Shelby assembled his command on the banks of the Rio Grande. At sound of drum and bugle, their flag was folded, weighted and consigned to the waters of the muddy Rio. (1964)