Colonel C. M. Winkler

🏛️The era

When the Civil War began in 1861, Texas had been a state for only about fifteen years. It was full of recent arrivals from across the South. C. M. Winkler was one of them, a North Carolina native who had made Texas his home. Like many Texans, he answered the Confederacy's call early.

Most Texas troops served close to home or west of the Mississippi. A few regiments made the long trip east to Virginia, where the war's largest armies fought. Together those regiments became known as Hood's Texas Brigade, and their reputation spread quickly.

The county that carries Winkler's name sits far from all of that, out in the dry Permian Basin of West Texas. It is a long way from the Virginia battlefields where he fought, and that distance says something about how Texans chose to honor their Civil War veterans.

👥People & events

At the start of the war, Winkler organized a company of 150 men and took them east to join the Confederate army in Virginia. Raising a company was a sign of standing in a community, because men usually followed a leader they knew personally. His company became part of the 4th Texas Infantry, one of the core regiments of Hood's Brigade.

Winkler rose through the ranks to command the regiment as a lieutenant colonel. With the brigade he fought in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. That covers the great campaigns in the East, and also the brigade's service in the western theater after it was sent to Tennessee in 1863.

He distinguished himself at Second Manassas and was wounded at Gettysburg, two of the most famous battles of the war. Many men from the brigade were killed or wounded in the war. Winkler survived and was still in the ranks at the end. He surrendered with General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in April 1865.

The marker was placed in 1963, during the Civil War centennial, when Texas marked many sites and figures connected to the war.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Hood's Texas Brigade was among the hardest-fighting units in the Army of Northern Virginia. Its record is part of the core military history of the Civil War. Winkler's service follows that record from the early campaigns through Gettysburg to the surrender at Appomattox.

His story also shows how migration shaped the war. Winkler was born in North Carolina, fought for Texas, and ended up giving his name to a West Texas county. Men like him tied the old Southern states to the frontier West.

Naming Winkler County for him, and marking it again in the 1963 centennial, reflects how later generations of Texans remembered the Civil War. Those commemorations say a great deal about how Americans have argued over and shaped the memory of that conflict. They are part of the history too.

🧭If you visit

Kermit is the seat of Winkler County, in wide-open Permian Basin country with huge skies and flat horizons. It feels a world away from the wooded hills of Virginia and Pennsylvania where Winkler fought, and that contrast is worth thinking about when you stop here.

Take a minute with the marker and follow the geography it covers: North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and finally Appomattox. One man's war crossed most of the eastern half of the country.

The marker is a good pause on a drive through far West Texas, whether you're crossing the Permian Basin or heading toward the mountains and deserts to the west. Civil War enthusiasts following the story of Hood's Texas Brigade will find it an unexpected link to that history, far out on the plains.