50th Anniversary of Battle of Galveston
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Jan. 1, 1863 --- Jan. 1, 1914 In commemorating the 50th anniversary of the capture of Galveston by the Southern Confederacy. Gen. Arthur P. Bagby commanding the "Neptune." Dedicated to the heroes who wore the gray at the battle of Galveston. Jan. 1, 1863 Capt. J. T. Whitfield Lieut. J. W. Carson Private Jno. Buchanan Capt. Jas. Walker Sergeant W. H. Turk Capt. J. W. Whitfield In memory of Lavaca Co. men who fought in the Civil War. Capt. James Walker Gen. John B. Magruder Col. Tom Green Col. Arthur P. Bagby Com. Leon Smith Co. G. W. H. H. Brazier Banners may be furled but heroism lives forever.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On New Year's Day 1863, Confederate forces under Gen. John B. Magruder retook the port of Galveston from Union occupiers in a combined land-and-water assault. Fifty years later, in 1914, the veterans and families of Lavaca County raised this monument to the local men who fought there and elsewhere in the Civil War. Its roll of names, from privates to generals, preserves the memory of a community's wartime service.
Why it matters
The Battle of Galveston kept a vital Texas port in Confederate hands, and monuments like this show how Southern communities memorialized the war for generations afterward.
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Related people
- · Gen. Arthur P. Bagby
- · Gen. John B. Magruder
- · Col. Tom Green
- · Com. Leon Smith
Related events
- · Battle of Galveston (1863)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Arthur Pendleton Bagby
Hallettsville, TX
Arthur Pendleton Bagby was an Alabama-born West Point graduate who cast his lot with the Confederacy, rising from colonel of the 7th Texas Cavalry to major-general. He rode in Sibley's ill-fated 1862 New Mexico campaign, helped defend Galveston, and led a brigade at the Louisiana battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign. He lived to become the last surviving member of his 1852 West Point class and is buried at Hallettsville.
General John W. Whitfield
Hallettsville, TX
John W. Whitfield came to Texas after a career as a Tennessee legislator, Kansas Indian agent, and territorial delegate to Congress, then organized a Lavaca County cavalry company for the Confederacy in 1861. The unit grew into the 27th Texas Cavalry — 'Whitfield's Legion' — fighting at Pea Ridge and charging an artillery battery at Iuka at heavy cost. Promoted to brigadier general in 1863, Whitfield left field command from ill health, and his brigade later won lasting fame under 'Sul' Ross.
John Wilkins Whitfield
Hallettsville, TX
John Wilkins Whitfield rose to brigadier general in the Confederate Army, leading the mounted command known as Whitfield's Legion. He fought at Pea Ridge and Iuka and commanded a brigade during the Vicksburg Campaign, later serving in the Texas legislature. His marker, erected by the state in 1963, records a career that spanned battlefield and statehouse.
City Cemetery
Hallettsville, TX
In 1889 the Hallettsville town council, worried about the poor state of its scattered graveyards, set out to establish a proper city cemetery, buying 4.5 acres from Antonia Kuhn the next year and reinterring existing burials there. Around it, the Odd Fellows, Catholic, and Jewish citizens laid out their own grounds, and a nearby tract became an African American cemetery—a patchwork mirroring the town's diverse population. Its headstones inscribed in Czech, German, and English, the cemetery counts Confederate Maj. Gen. Arthur Pendleton Bagby among its notable dead.