passwords at frequent meetings to discuss
resistance to Confederate authorities.
One such meeting, at Rock Creek near
Gainesville in early October 1862, led to
an unimaginable tragedy. After the young
son of a loyal Confederate told his father
that Union Leaguers had threatened to kill
him after he stumbled on their meeting,
Texas state troops arrested 159 men sus-
pected of being members of the group. The
prisoners were brought into Gainesville,
where a large, unruly mob thronged the
streets. One witness recalled, “When Iarrived near town, I saw crowds in every
direction, armed and pressing forward pris-
oners under guard. The deepest and most
intense excitement that I ever saw pre-
vailed. There were three or four hundred
men in sight. All reason had disappeared.”
Someone shouted, “Shoot all prisoners
where they now stand!”
To quiet the mob, local leaders immedi-
ately called a special town meeting. A 12-
man, extralegal “citizens court” jury that
included Young and six other slave owners
tried the men for treason and insurrection.
Based on a two-thirds majority vote, seven
Unionists were convicted and hanged,including Henry Childs and his brother
Ephraim. After the court adjourned for a
week, an angry mob stormed the jail and
demanded that 14 other Unionists be
hanged as well. Panicked jailers complied,
and the men were taken, three or four at a
time, to an elm tree on the banks of Pecan
Creek. Their bodies were then thrown into
an unoccupied building along with those
of two other luckless deserters who had
also been hanged by the mob.
In all, at least 41 suspected Unionists
were killed in Gainesville during the “hang-ing days” of October 1862. Other Union-
ists were hanged in the adjoining counties
of Wise and Grayson. The Reverend
Thomas Barrett, a Disciples of Christ min-
ister who had served on the initial citizens’
jury in a vain effort to spare the prisoners,
said the number was too low. Barrett
alleged that many other Unionists who had
come into Gainesville to surrender had
been hanged without any sort of trial what-
soever, “quick victims of lynch law.” One
of those hanged was the editor of the Sher-
man Patriot, who had ill-advisedly
applauded the ambush slaying of Colonel
William Young by Unionists near the RedRiver.
Texas contributed two regiments and
two battalions of cavalry to the Union
Army. The largest regiment, about 500
men, was organized in New Orleans in
November 1862. (Texas’s total free popu-
lation in 1860 was 421,215.) Joining the
Union Army late in the war became attrac-
tive to men with no great affinity for the
Union because it had become pretty obvi-
ous by then that Texas Governor Sam
Houston had been right when he said in
1860, “Let me tell you what is coming.
After the sacrifice of countless millions of
treasure and hundreds of thousands of
lives, you may win [but] I doubt it. I tell
you that, while I believe with you in the
doctrine of states’ rights, the North is deter-
mined to preserve this Union [and] when
they begin to move in a given direction,
they move with the steady momentum and
perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and
what I fear is, they will overwhelm the
South.” Because of his opposition to seces-
sion, Houston was removed from office.
He turned down Lincoln’s offer to lead
Union troops to retake Texas.
Mississippi’s only white Union unit was
the 1st Mississippi Mounted Rifles. A news-
paper ad placed by the recruiting station in
Vicksburg told potential recruits of a $
bounty and an abundant supply of good
clothing and wholesome food. (Until June
1864 a Union private’s pay was $13 a
month.) More than 600 men enlisted in the
1st Mississippi. Some only stayed long
enough to collect a bounty before deserting,
some taking their horse and gun with them.
By enlisting after deserting from another
unit, some of them collected the bounty
more than once. The great majority of the
1st Mississippi’s officers were from the
North. Some of its enlisted men had previ-
ously served in the Confederate Army. The
role of the 1st Mississippi was to protect the
Federal base at Memphis and conduct expe-
ditions in Mississippi, Missouri, and
Arkansas. It engaged a number of times in
small-scale combat with Confederates.
Most of the whites in Arkansas who
owned slaves owned only a few, and they
lived in the southern and eastern lowlands.Union sympathizers dangle from elm trees along Pecan Creek, near Gainesville, Texas, following a mass
lynching in October 1862. At least 41 suspected Unionists were killed during the “hanging days,”
although witnesses put the number of victims much higher.Q-Spr16 Southerner v Southerner *Ads_Layout 1 1/14/16 12:34 PM Page 18