Members of Confederate Congresses

🏛️The era

When Texas voted to secede in early 1861, it joined a new government that was being built from scratch. Delegates from the seceding states first met as a Provisional Congress, which wrote a constitution and set up the Confederate government, before regular elected Congresses took over. The capital itself moved during the war, from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia.

Texas was the westernmost of the Confederate states and was far from both capitals. Its representatives traveled long distances to take part in a government that was trying to fight a war, raise money, supply armies and hold a new nation together all at the same time.

The marker covers the whole four years and four months between secession and the end of the war. During that time Texas sent eighteen men to the Confederate legislature, and their stories show how closely government service and the battlefield were connected.

👥People & events

Texas's seven delegates to the Provisional Congress came from across the state: John R. Gregg, John Hemphill, William B. Ochiltree, Williamson S. Oldham, John H. Reagan, Thomas N. Waul and Louis T. Wigfall. They helped create the Confederate government in its first year.

The First Confederate Congress, from 1862 to 1864, included B. H. Epperson of Red River County, the county where this marker stands, along with M. D. Graham, Peter W. Gray, Claiborne C. Herbert, Frank B. Sexton, John A. Wilcox and William B. Wright. Oldham and Wigfall represented Texas in the Confederate Senate. Wigfall had been one of the most outspoken secessionists in the country before the war.

Herbert and Sexton were re-elected to the Second Congress in 1864. They were joined by John R. Baylor, Anthony M. Branch, Stephen H. Darden and Simpson H. Morgan, the last of these another Red River County man. So this corner of northeast Texas sent two of its own to the Confederate Congress.

Not all of them stayed in their seats. Several left the legislature to fight, and two became generals. Others took jobs the Confederate president gave them. The best known is John H. Reagan, who became postmaster general in the Confederate cabinet and later became one of the most prominent Texans of the postwar era.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

We usually picture the Civil War as a war of battlefields, but the Confederacy was also trying to function as a government. It passed laws on the draft, taxes and money, and it argued constantly about how much power the central government should have over the states. Texas's congressmen were part of those debates.

The marker also shows how thin the line between politics and soldiering was. Men moved back and forth between Richmond and the front lines, and a seat in Congress could lead to a general's commission or a cabinet post. Reagan's appointment brought a Texan into the Confederacy's inner circle.

Remembering these men today is part of understanding how secession actually worked in practice, and how completely states like Texas committed their leadership to the Confederate cause, a cause built on defending slavery.

🧭If you visit

Clarksville is one of the older towns in northeast Texas, the seat of Red River County, near the river that forms the state's border with Oklahoma. It's a fitting spot for this marker: two of the congressmen it names, Epperson and Morgan, came from this county.

Take a moment to find those local names in the list and think about how far Richmond was from here in the 1860s. For a small-town lawmaker, going to Congress meant a long, difficult journey through a country at war.

The marker is a good stop for travelers who like political history or are exploring the Red River Valley. It works best as part of a slow drive through the old county seats of northeast Texas, where courthouses and historic markers tell the region's long story.