Texas Mounted Arms in the Civil War (Part I)

This is the first of a five-part series to be featured weekly at RealClearHistory.

Texas’s mobilization for the Civil War represented a cavalry-centric and monumental societal effort as almost 60,000 Lone Star horsemen fought across battlefields ranging from the deserts of New Mexico to the forests of the Carolinas. Simultaneously confronted with invasion by the Union Army and raiding by Amerindians, the frontier polity embraced the two-tiered strategic posture that reflected its traditional approach to mounted arms warfare, which had previously characterized its struggles in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War.

While the Lone Star State deployed approximately 92 numbered regiments for Napoleonic operations of mass, scale, and centralization in Confederate-Union engagements, the embattled society concurrently fielded a series mounted ranger corps to protect home territory from raiding by both Natives and partisan Unionists. This manner of compound warfare compelled Texas to negotiate a scope and diversity of strategic challenges which no other American state, Confederate or Union, faced during the rebellion.

Francis Lubbock, the Governor of Texas from 1861 to 1863, proudly boasted of his polity’s feat in deploying soldiers across the continent while yet defending its troubled borders: “As to Texas, she needed no foreign bayonets to protect her soil; that, her sons demonstrated their ability to do; an besides, she had been gallantly represent by regiments, composed of her bravest and best, on every battlefield from New Mexico to Virginia.” Of the 90,000 Texas soldiers that mobilized, 58,000 joined as light cavalry, mounted riflemen, or irregular rangers, reflecting the states historical predilection for mounted warfare. In a telling contrast, only 30,000 Texans enlisted in infantry, artillery, or logistical units.

Unlike Texas’s previous military efforts, where the early, militant Texas Rangers rode as the most ubiquitous and popular form of Lone Star militarism in the face of Comanche and Mexican opposition, a more conventional Texas Cavalry manifestation, harkening back to Sam Houston’s Napoleonic cavalry battalion during the San Jacinto Campaign of 1836, gained ascendancy during the Civil War. This shift in focus found expression in both the state’s commitment to fighting beyond its borders, which favored expeditionary mounted forces in far flung campaigns, and in historical imagination in which colorful units like the 8th Texas Cavalry attained outsized importance in Lone Star memory. In terms of activated regiments, this functional reversal reflected a twelve to one disparity between the quantity of units mobilized as Confederate light cavalry and those recruited as irregular ranging corps for localized defense on the Indian Frontier.

In the conventional arena, Texas Cavalry in the Eastern Theater, Trans-Mississippi Region, and New Mexico conducted predominantly linear operations in support of combined arms brigades, divisions, and corps. Since actionable intelligence and maneuver superiority offered a critical advantage to opposing armies, the mobility of light horse assets proved critical to enabling strategic success. Just as in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, Texan mounted forces once again embraced functions of reconnaissance, raiding, screening, harassment, retrograde coverage, and occasionally the mounted shock charge. They also served with notable success as independent strike elements, mobile components of larger infantry brigades, and corps-level reconnaissance assets.

The 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment offered an ideal example of conventional light cavalry, this time at echelons below the brigade level. Popularly known as Terry’s Texas Rangers, they served as arguably the most lethal mounted regiment in the Civil War on either side. Of all the multiplicity of Lone Star units that fought in that conflict, this command, more than any other, personified the tactical culmination of the state’s military culture while combining distinctive ranger and cavalry qualities into a single fighting formation. As such, the 8th Texas Cavalry’s wartime actions encapsulated the ability to excel in confrontations of both guerrilla rapidity and massed armies. Among the most famous of all Texas mounted formations in the history of the state, this regiment combined frontier audacity, mobility, and firepower to accomplish screening, raiding, reconnaissance, and shock-charge actions.

Terry’s Texas Rangers first organized in Houston in September of 1861 in response to the Confederate call to arms during the first stage of Rebel mobilization. On August 12 the founders of the unit, Benjamin Terry and Thomas Lubbock, advertised that they were “authorized by the Secretary of War of the Confederate States of America to raise a regiment of mounted rangers for service in Virginia.” Another recruitment announcement stated that each company would consist of “not less than 64 nor more than 100 privates,” and that “each man must furnish the equipment for his horse, and arm himself either with a short rifle or double barrel shot gun, and a six-shooter.”

The wording of these advertisements was highly suggestive of the distinctive frontier character of the regiment. The designation of mounted rangers for service in Virginia indicated that Richmond fully understood the famed tactical capabilities of Texan frontiersmen armed with Colt revolvers and buffalo hunting rifles. The concurrent requirement for the cavalrymen to equip themselves with both long-range and short-range weaponry also revealed the intended versatility of the regiment. In short, both the Confederate War Department and Texan organizers hoped to capitalize on Texas’s long experience with frontier conflict by placing a body of aggressive Lone Star cavalry at the center of the war’s decisive theater.

The New Orleans Picayune agreed with this intent as the regiment mobilized. The paper wrote of the Texan reputation for combat effectiveness: “If this regiment does not make its mark on the Lincolnites, there is no virtue in strength, courage, patriotism and throughout knowledge of the use of horses and arms.” In September of 1861 the Bellville Countryman, as it reported the formation of the famed 8th Texas Cavalry Regiment in Houston, echoed the prevailing sentiment that occurred all across the state as each county dispatched their young men to serve in the Rebel mounted corps: “The regiment will be the pride of Texas, and will feel that they have an ancient and glorious fame to sustain.” The editor then boasted that “there is an amount of manliness, chivalry and bravery in the Regiment which cannot be surpassed any regiment of troops in the word. We feel a pride in them, as the representatives of the State itself.”