Between the enemy and Texas: Parsons's Texas Cavalry in the Civil War

Abstract

Parsons's Texas Cavalry belonged to the Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department for the entire Civil War. The brigade, composed of the Twelfth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-first Cavalry Regiments as well as Morgan's Battalion (later regiment) and Pratt's Battery, fought Federal troops from Missouri to Louisiana. Most of the war they served as scouts and skirmishers along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, but they participated in numerous small fights from the spring of 1862 until February 1865 suffering their greatest casualties in the last major battle fought west of the Mississippi River at Yellow Bayou, Louisiana, on May 18, 1864. Since the men serving under Parsons had a singular dedication to Texas this is a socio-military analysis rather than straight military history. To understand why their loyalty centered more on Texas than on the Confederate cause, it is necessary to examine not only battles, but the background and beliefs of the men who, by choice, fought west of the Mississippi River.