Riding with the 19Th Texas Cavalry in the War West of the Mississippi 1862-1865

By Gary C. Cole

Riding With the 19th Texas Cavalry in the War West of the Mississippi 1862-1865 is the story of William Hardy Bennett’s Confederate military service as a Private in Co. B of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment during the War for Southern Independence and his experiences during Reconstruction that followed the war. He enlisted with the Mesquite Light Horse Militia in Dallas County, Texas on 8 January 1861 some one and a half months before the citizens of Texas ratified the State’s Ordinance of Secession. Some fourteen months later on 21 March 1862, he enlisted with Captain Allen Beard’s Company, Burford’s Texas Cavalry in Dallas, Texas to defend his family, Dallas County, and the State of Texas against a Yankee army determined to invade and destroy the State. Beard’s Company became Co. B of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment and was an important part of Colonel William Henry Parsons’ Texas Brigade that fought with distinction in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Hardy fought in some fifty engagements and was often in harm’s way, but he survived and returned to Dallas County, Texas after the war and prospered despite the economic and political problems that plagued the county during Reconstruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781490798547

Gary C. Cole

Gary C. Cole is an eleventh-generation American born in Dallas, Texas in 1943 and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Texas Christian University in 1965. He is a direct lineal descendent of two citizens of the Republic of Texas and is a great-great grandson of three Confederate Veterans - William Hardy Bennett, a Private in Co. B of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment, Richard Wesley Cole, a Private in Co. C, 5th Regiment Mississippi Calvary, and Davis Greene Chapman, a Private in the 18th Texas Cavalry Regiment. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and has authored three books about the War for Southern Independence - 12 APRIL, Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Days at Fort Delaware, and Riding With the 19th Texas Cavalry in the War West of the Mississippi 1862-1865. He is a retired insurance company executive and served as past Chairman of the Texas Health Insurance Pool, past Chairman of the Texas Association of Life & Health Insurers, and a past member of the Board of Directors of Regions Bank-Tyler. He is an ordained Baptist Deacon and lives with his wife Betty on a small farm outside Bullard, Texas where they raise Registered Texas Longhorns.

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Copyright 2019 Gary C. Cole.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9852-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9853-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9854-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019919742

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Illustration Credits for the cover: Alan Crosthwaite Photographer

Trafford rev. 11/23/2019

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North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

fax: [phone]

To my wife Betty

and

my great-great grandfather William Hardy Bennett

who honorably served the Confederate States of America

as a Private in Company B of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment

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Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1     Republic of Texas

Chapter 2     Secession

Chapter 3     War!

Chapter 4     Enlistment

Chapter 5     Scouting in Eastern Arkansas

Chapter 6     Marmaduke’s Raid

Chapter 7     Raiding in Louisiana

Chapter 8     Conscripts and Deserters

Chapter 9     Red River Expedition

Chapter 10   Return to Arkansas

Chapter 11   East Texas

Chapter 12   Home At Last

Chapter 13   A Subjugated People

Chapter 14   New Generations

Afterword

Appendix I   Three Generations

Appendix II   Genealogy

About The Author

Illustration Credits

Notes

Bibliography

Illustrations

William Hardy Bennett

William Hardy Bennett Sketch

Republic of Texas

Peters Colony Second Contract Boundaries

William Hardy Bennett Land Certificate

Sam Houston

The Trans-Mississippi Department

Company Muster-in Roll for Captain Allen Beard’s Company, Burford’s Regiment Texas Cavalry

Bounty Pay & Receipt Roll for Company B, 19th Regiment Texas Cavalry

Hardy & Sydney Bennett’s House

Charley & Carrie Cole

Hiram William Bennett

William Hardy Bennett

Sir William Wallace Quote

William Hardy Bennett & Cynthia Sydney Manning

Marion Monroe Bennett & Minerva Frances `Babe’ Chapman

Caroline Maude `Carrie’ Bennett & Charles Columbus Cole

Acknowledgements

A ny historical work such as this is indebted to those who have gone before and produced the historical record on which it is based. Without them, this story about William Hardy Bennett’s Confederate Military service as a Private in Co. B of the 19 th Texas Cavalry Regiment during the War for Southern Independence and his experiences during Reconstruction could not have been told. To them, I am extremely grateful.

Anne J. Bailey–historian, writer, and educator in Milledgeville, Georgia–authored or edited seven books about the Civil War. Two of those books–Between the Enemy and Texas: Parsons’s Texas Cavalry in the Civil War and In the Saddle with the Texans: Day-by-Day with Parsons’s Cavalry Brigade, 1862-1865–preserve much of the historical record about the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment and are referenced extensively in this book.

Inez Ruth Moore Bennett–wife of Porter Travis Bennett, a great grandson of Hardy Bennett and nephew of my grandmother Caroline Maude ‘Carrie’ Chapman Bennett–published a 346-page book in 1973, entitled The Descendents of Hiram Bennett Pioneer Settler of Dallas County, Texas. Inez said that soon after her marriage to Porter, she became convinced that half of the county’s population were Bennetts. The Bennetts of Dallas County were not half of the citizens of the county, but there were lots of them. Inez spent much of her life compiling a detailed record of 598 of those Bennetts, documenting their relationships through marriage with 1,126 other families, and compiling a record of over 5,500 members of those families, most of whom were Bennett descendants. Her record of Hardy Bennett’s family and his descendants was invaluable in telling the story about Hardy’s life and his experiences during the War for Southern Independence and Reconstruction

Dixie T. Milton–Librarian of the Grand Lodge of Texas Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in Waco, Texas–sent to me on 12 June 1972 copies of twenty letters written home during the war by Hardy Bennett, five letters written home during the war by his son-in-law Watts Marks, Jr., and two letters written by Hardy’s father Hiram Bennett after the war. Those letters were invaluable in telling Hardy’s story.

Nancy Cole Douglas–my cousin in Azle, Texas–located and sent to me the Confederate Military Service Records for William Hardy Bennett, edited his picture, and restored the picture of his and Sydney’s home they built in 1851.

Haley Dowdy–a Junior at Whitehouse High School in Whitehouse, Texas–sketched a picture of William Hardy Bennett writing one of the many letters he sent home to his wife Sydney during the war.

Betty Sue Foote Cole–my wife of 56 years–assisted with proof reading in spite of her declining health and patiently endured the countless hours I spent producing this book. Her support and encouragement are greatly appreciated.

Foreword

Those who have gone before cry out for us to tell their story.

W illiam Hardy Bennett with his wife and infant daughter migrated from the State of Arkansas to the Peters Colony in the Republic of Texas between 5 November 1844 and 1 July 1845. A little over one and a half decades later, he would become part of a great war that would engulf a Nation of which he and the Republic of Texas were not yet a part. On 8 January 1861–the same day that Texans elected delegates to a convention to be held in Austin, Texas twenty days later on 28 January to consider severing Texas’ ties with the Union–Hardy joined the Mesquite Light Horse Militia which was tendered to the State of Texas on 21 May 1861 and became the 6 th Scyene, 13 th Brigade, State Troops. Ten months later on 21 March 1862, Hardy enlisted as a Private with Captain Allen Beard’s Company, Burford’s Regiment Texas Cavalry in Dallas, Texas to protect his family, Dallas County, and the State of Texas against a Yankee army determined to invade and destroy the State. Beard’s Company subsequently became Company B of the 19 th Texas Cavalry Regiment and was an important part of Colonel William Henry Parsons’ Brigade that fought in the Trans-Mississippi Department during The War for Southern Independence.

Riding with the 19th Texas Cavalry in the War West of the Mississippi 1862-1865 is the story of William Hardy Bennett’s Confederate military service in Company B of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment during the war and his experiences during Reconstruction. He fought in some fifty engagements during the war, most of which were small and many of which remain unnamed to this day. Although most of those engagements were insignificant when compared with the great battles of the war fought east of the Mississippi River at places like Shiloh, Sharpsburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga, the engagements were not insignificant to the cavalrymen of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment who personally experienced the engagements first-hand.

Nine days before William Hardy Bennett enlisted with Captain Allen Beard’s Company at Dallas, Texas on 21 March 1862, another William H. Bennett enlisted with Benjamin R. Tyrus’ Company of the 15th Texas Cavalry Regiment in Springfield, Texas on 12 March 1862. This William H. Bennett transferred to Company B of the 10th Texas Infantry Regiment on 30 November 1862, was captured at Arkansas Post on 11 January 1863, died of pneumonia at Camp Douglas, Chicago, Illinois on 23 February 1863, and has been a source of confusion to members of the Bennett family, Bennett Family Researchers, and some who actually experienced the war itself in spite of the fact that Hardy Bennett served exclusively and continuously with the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment from the date of his enlistment in March 1862 until May 1865 when he was informed that the war was over and he could go home.

The letters that Hardy wrote home to his wife Sydney during the war are an important part of his story. They evidence his abiding faith in God, affirm his love for his family, attest to his strong sense of patriotism, provide an insight into his emotions, and describe day-to-day activities, including obscure incidents and events while serving with the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment. In a letter dated 10 August 1862, Hardy told Sydney I want you to take good care of all the letters you get from me. They may be some gratification to me when I get home. Sydney took good care of the letters and they must have been some gratification to Hardy when he got home from the war because many of those letters have been preserved for more than one hundred and fifty-five years.

On 9 October 1971, my grandmother Carrie Bennett Cole told me that Hardy Murphy had recently donated to a Masonic Lodge in Waco, Texas a number of letters that Hardy Bennett had written home during the war. Some two months later, I wrote a letter to the Lodge asking if I could purchase a copy of the letters. Six weeks later on 12 January 1972, Ms. Dixie Milton sent me copies of the letters without charge. I read the letters, filed them away, and gave little additional thought about the letters until some forty-six years later when I began working on the manuscript for this book.

I knew nothing about Hardy Murphy, but learned from Inez Bennett’s book that he was a great grandson of William Hardy Bennett. Hardy Murphy’s grandmother was Hardy and Sydney’s oldest child Dosha Delilah who married Watts Marks, Jr. on 19 March 1861. Their daughter Rhoda married William Franklin Murphy on 1 June 1901 and their fourth child born 27 August 1911 was William Hardy Murphy. Hardy Bennett’s letters were passed down over the years from Hardy and Sydney Bennett through their daughter Delilah and her family until the letters eventually came to Hardy Murphy who donated the letters to the Masonic Lodge in Waco when he was sixty years old. The letters are an important part of Hardy’s story and are now easily accessible to his descendants.

Hardy’s Confederate military service records are few, but his letters are irrefutable proof that he served exclusively with the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment during the war and participated in many engagements not clearly evident from a casual reading of the history of the war west of the Mississippi River. Some of Hardy’s letters are torn with missing text and some of the words are barely discernable. The letters are presented in this book exactly as they were written with poor grammar, incorrect spelling, improper capitalization, and an almost complete lack of punctuation, requiring a careful reading to accurately determine what was being written.

Although there were few major battles fought in the Trans-Mississippi Department, the cavalrymen of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment experienced first-hand the dangers and horrors of war and endured the hardships and privations common to all Confederate soldiers on both sides of the Mississippi River. Hardy and his fellow cavalrymen were constantly on the move and spent little time in camp. Their days usually began before dawn, ended well after dark, and were spent scouting enemy forces along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, attacking Yankee gunboats, skirmishing with Union forces, and occasionally engaging them in battle. For the most part, the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment with the other Confederate forces of the Trans-Mississippi Department kept the Union armies from invading Texas and the State was spared the destruction experienced by the rest of the Confederacy. And for that, a debt of gratitude is owed to Hardy Bennett and the cavalrymen of the 19th Texas Cavalry Regiment.

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Hardy Bennett writing a letter home to his wife Sydney during the war.

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REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

W illiam Hardy Bennett and his wife Sydney–daughter of Redrick Manning and Sarah Williford– migrated from the State of Arkansas to the Peters Colony in the Republic of Texas between the birth of their first child, Dosha Delilah, on 5 November 1844 and 1 July 1845. The Republic of Texas was then nine years old, having gained its independence from Mexico in 1836, some fifteen years after Mexico had gained its independence from the Spanish Empire, which in 1521 had conquered and subsequently colonized the territory in the southern part of North America that later became the United Mexican States. ¹

Former Tennessee Governor Sam Houston migrated to the Mexican State of Coahuila y Tejas in 1832 and became actively involved in the politics of the Texas revolution. He was elected a delegate from Refugio to the Texas Independence Convention at Washington-on-the -Brazos and was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence on 2 March 1836.

The Texas Declaration of Independence

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence

Made by the Delegates of the People of Texas

in General Convention at the town of Washington

on the 2nd day of March 1836

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the ever ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being disregarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and the mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.

The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.

In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made by the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.

It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.

It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government.

It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the live, liberty, and property of the citizen.

It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources (the public domain), and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.

It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.

It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental right of representation.

It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trail, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.

It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant posts for confiscation.

It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.

It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.

It has invaded our country both by sea and land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.

It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.

It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.

These and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has been heard from the interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal separation.

We, there, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River. ²

Houston was elected Commander-in-Chief of the small Texas revolutionary army on 4 March ³ and joined his poorly equipped and untrained 374-man army at Gonzales on 11 March 1836. He soon learned that the Alamo had fallen five days earlier on 6 March and all of the Texian defenders were killed. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s large Mexican army left the Alamo and advanced towards the Texian settlements along the coast and Houston’s small revolutionary army retreated towards the Gulf Coast ahead of Santa Anna’s much larger Mexican Army and picked up additional recruits along the way while a much smaller Mexican army massacred 425-445 Texian prisoners of war on 27 March at Goliad. By 11 April, Houston’s army had grown to some 1,500 men and ten days later on 21 April 1836, he defeated Santa Anna’s army at the battle of San Jacinto and forced Santa Anna to sign the Treaty of Velasco on 14 May 1836, granting Texas its independence. Almost two months later on 4 July 1836, the United States officially recognized the Republic of Texas. Houston became the Republic’s first President with over 79% of the vote in the September 1836 election and actively supported the annexation of Texas by the United States. ⁴

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Republic of Texas 2 March 1836 -19 February 1846

Although Texas had sought annexation by the United States soon after its independence from Mexico, the proposed annexation got caught up in the increasingly bitter political debate in the United States over territorial expansion and slavery. Texas withdrew its proposal for annexation to the United States in late 1838 and continued its struggle to survive as an independent Republic. ⁵

The Republic of Texas had struggled to formulate a land policy which would effectively utilize its abundant lands and increase its population, but its population had not significantly increased since its independence and in 1841 only numbered some 50,000-60,000 citizens, most of whom lived in the lower Colorado and Brazos River Valleys, along the coast, and in the East Texas Piney Woods. The Republic’s vast public lands were almost worthless and the Republic was broke. Money was