In my thread "Union vs CSA Guerrillas" their was some Unionist guerrilla activity in Tx.
Leftyhunter
That's something new to me, the whole guerilla war? I mean how extensive it was, Union and Confederate- and how much it affected civilians. 18th Virginia has a thread on Missouri- horrible stuff, very extensive. So it's weird, when this ' guerilla ' thing comes up, like now in Texas, does that mean civilians suffered the same way there, too?
I know that in my own family's case my g-g-grandfather left Hunt County, Texas and traveled to Ft. Smith, Arkansas and joined the 14h Kansas Cavalry (Union). This was in 1863, he was discharged at Ft. Gibson, Indian Territory, in June 1865.
I became aware of a bit of local history since moving from Dallas to North/East Texas in 1999, including the bit I mentioned above. Very similar to the experience related by
@TinCan was one Martin Hart who was a local lawyer operating out of a log cabin on what passed for the town square in Greenville, seat of Hunt County. (It was in reality a mudhole surrounded by more log cabins with a log or wooden court house in the middle.) According to the story, Hart proposed to his neighbors to raise a company of rangers to go north and offer their services to Confederate authorities at Fort Smith, Arkansas. When Hart's company got to Ft. Smith he then got a pass to go even further north to the village of Fayetteville which was a Confederate outpost. Instead of stopping there however, the company proceeded all the way to Springfield, Missouri, where they then revealed their true Unionist sympathies and offered their services to the local Federal commander.
Hart was offered the colonelcy of a regiment to be known as the
1st Texas Cavalry (Union) if he could raise the men for it. He and a number of others returned to the vicinity of Ft. Smith to prey on slave-owning planters and farms in the vicinity. Meanwhile, others went back to Texas and "hid out" in the numerous
thickets that covered the area that became post-war Delta County in the forks of the Sulphur River. From there, they visited their families remaining in the area and attempted to contact neighbors they believed to have similar sympathies. This effort collapsed and their hideouts were discovered and raided with at least six being captured and another "disappearing", possibly murdered.
Two were taken to Greenville for trial and ordered to be forwarded to Austin or somewhere south of Greenville; they got about two miles out of town where they were summarily lynched in the Sabine River bottoms. The county seat of Hopkins County was the now-totally gone
Tarrant (not to be confused with the county of the same name surrounding Ft. Worth), but for security - and the improved likelihood of conviction - four were taken south of the South Sulphur River to Sulphur Springs, then called
Bright Star. Following a drumhead trial they were driven in pairs in two wagons - seated on their coffins - to an escarpment overlooking a river bottom looking north toward Paris where they too were strung up on a convenient tree limb.
Back in Arkansas, Capt. Hart murdered at least one slave-owning planter before being captured himself and executed along with his principal lieutenant. Following the war, his brother became leader of the remaining Unionists in the area and was himself murdered in the series of Reconstruction confrontations that became known as the
Lee-Peacock Feud.