First Hand Account - Ector's Texas Brigade

ECTOR’S TEXAS BRIGADE,Comrade R. Todhunter, Higginsville, Mo., writes:

Noting the many prominent commands mentioned from time to time in the VETERAN, I have seen no record of what I consider, with pardonable pride, one of the best brigades in the Confederacy. I refer to Ector’s Texas Brigade, composed of the Ninth Texas Infantry, Tenth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, and Thirty Second Texas dismounted cavalry, and for the last year of the war the Twenty Ninth and the Thirty Ninth North Carolina Infantry (Eleventh Texas, after the battle of Murfreesboro, remounted).

Now if any brigades in the Armies of Tennessee and Mississippi did more fighting from the beginning to the close of the war than did this, history has so far failed to record it. Note its deeds at Wilson’s Creek, Corinth, Iuka, Richmond, Ky., in the Kentucky campaign under Gen. Kirby Smith, Murfreesboro, Mississippi, under Gen. Johnston against Grant and Sherman, Chickamauga, the hundred days’ fighting from Dalton to Atlanta, including Peach Tree Creek and Jonesboro, the Tennessee campaign, including the charge at Altoona, control of the pontoon bridges to Columbia, Tenn., two days’ fighting at Nashville, under fire every day while in charge of the rear of Hood’s army out of Tennessee and after crossing the Tennessee River, ordered to report to Gen. D. J. Maury, at Mobile. From this place the brigade was sent under Gen. R. L. Gibson to Spanish Fort, there remaining over two weeks, fighting continuously though outnumbered many times by the enemy. Both armies intrenched within three hundred yards of each other.

In many of the above engagements, though our loss was from thirty to sixty three per cent of the effective strength (Chickamauga sixty three per cent) no engagement exceeded Spanish Fort in severity.

The various campaigns and engagements grouped above will be recalled by members of many brigades in the Armies of Tennessee and Mississippi, as they fought side by side with us.

I deem it a duty while esteeming it a privilege to say that we never met a foe in open field whom we did not drive, nor did we ever meet a foe who could drive us. In some battles a brigade or command on the right or left of ours giving way, it was necessary to move by the flank in retreat. In that event firing of small arms did not cease, nor did the enemy’s loss lessen. In many battles notably Richmond, Ky., Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga

Ector’s Brigade was among the first of the infantry to open and the last to close.

The regiments comprising this brigade entered the Confederate service over eight thousand strong, and surrendered at Meridian, Miss., under Lieut. Gen. R. Taylor, to Gen. E. R. S. Canby only five hundred and forty men, nearly all of whom were battle scarred. Every commander of this brigade was, during the war, either killed or wounded. Gen. Ector, who commanded longer than any other officer, had his leg shot off at Atlanta. Being an old man at that time, he was never able to resume duty. Some of the most prominent men in the State of Texas to day were members of that brigade.

Source: Confederate Veteran Magazine, June 1899

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