Site of Mustering of a Unit of Hood's Texas Brigade, C.S.A.
Independence, Washington County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Co. I, Fifth Texas Infantry Regt., Army of Northern Virginia, was raised here Aug. 1861, as "The Texas Aides" by Capt. J.B. Robertson. Unit fought in many battles of Civil War--Gaines Mill, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and the Wilderness. Robertson became brigadier general and succeeded Hood as Commander Oct. 1862. Replaced by brigadier general John Gregg, Jan. 1864. Col. R.M. Powell later held post until end of the war. The brigade surrendered at Appomatox, April 12, 1865, with 12% enlistees surviving. "Defeat could not dim their record." (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On this spot in August 1861, Captain J.B. Robertson raised Company I of the Fifth Texas Infantry, known as "The Texas Aides," for what became Hood's Texas Brigade. The unit fought in many of the Civil War's fiercest eastern battles — Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness — and Robertson rose to brigadier general, succeeding Hood in command. When the brigade surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, only about twelve percent of its enlistees remained.
Why it matters
Hood's Texas Brigade became one of the Confederacy's most storied fighting units, and this quiet crossroads sent its sons into the defining battles of the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In August 1861, the American Civil War was only months old, and across the South communities were raising companies of local men to send east. Independence, a Texas crossroads far from the fighting, answered that call. On this very ground, Captain J. B. Robertson organized a company of volunteers who called themselves "The Texas Aides" — neighbors and kin stepping forward into a war none of them could yet measure.
That company became Company I of the Fifth Texas Infantry Regiment, and it was folded into the Army of Northern Virginia — the Confederacy's principal army in the eastern theater. For Texans, this meant leaving the wide, familiar country of home and traveling hundreds of miles to fight in the wooded hills and river valleys of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
The early enthusiasm of 1861, with its parades and proud company names, belonged to a moment before the true cost was known. The men who mustered here would spend the next four years in some of the most punishing combat of the entire war.
People & events
The unit's roll of commanders reads like a chronicle of the eastern war. J. B. Robertson, who first raised the company as a captain, rose to brigadier general and in October 1862 succeeded John Bell Hood himself as brigade commander. In January 1864 Robertson was replaced by Brigadier General John Gregg, and later Colonel R. M. Powell held the post until the war's end. Each handoff of command usually meant the previous leader had been wounded, promoted, or lost — the churn of attrition made visible in a list of names.
The battles the marker records are the defining engagements of the era: Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. These were not skirmishes. Antietam remains the bloodiest single day in American history; Gettysburg was the war's great turning point. The Texans were repeatedly thrown into the hardest fighting, earning a reputation as troops sent where the line most needed to hold or break.
The arithmetic of that reputation is stark. When the brigade laid down its arms at Appomattox in April 1865, only about twelve percent of its original enlistees remained. The marker's closing line — "Defeat could not dim their record" — is the language of men and descendants determined to honor sacrifice, and it carries the weight of nearly nine in ten who did not come home whole.
Its place in the American story
Hood's Texas Brigade became one of the most storied fighting formations of the Confederacy, and its road began at ordinary places like this one. That is the larger point: the great armies of the Civil War were assembled from thousands of small communities, each sending a company of its young men into a national catastrophe. A quiet Texas crossroads is directly stitched into the story of Gettysburg and Antietam.
The brigade's staggering casualty rate is also a window into what made the Civil War so transformative and so terrible. Rifled muskets and massed assaults produced losses on a scale Americans had never imagined, and units built on hometown ties meant that a single bad afternoon could drape an entire community in mourning. The twelve-percent survival figure is the human face of "total war."
The surrender at Appomattox closed the war and, with it, the Confederacy. That these far-traveled Texans were present at the end — among the last of a famous brigade — ties this small Texas site to the very moment the nation began, painfully, to become one country again.
If you visit
This is a marker that rewards imagination more than sightseeing. Stand at the spot and remember that it was here, in the late summer of 1861, that local men gathered to enlist — probably amid a mix of pride, bravado, and unspoken fear. The ground looks peaceful now, which is exactly the contrast worth sitting with.
Let the distance sink in. The names on the marker — Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania — are a thousand miles and more from this Texas soil. The young men who mustered here traveled all that way and, overwhelmingly, did not return. A marker like this is really a memorial to a departure.
It pairs naturally with a Civil War–themed route through the region, and it deepens any visit to the eastern battlefields it names: to walk Gettysburg or Antietam and then to stand where some of the fighters began gives the whole story a beginning and an end. Take a quiet moment here for the roughly nine in ten who never saw Independence again.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. B. Robertson
- · John Bell Hood
- · John Gregg
- · R. M. Powell
Related events
- · Battle of Gettysburg
- · Battle of Antietam
- · Surrender at Appomattox
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Home Built in 1845 by General Jerome B. Robertson
Independence, TX
This home was built in 1845 by Jerome B. Robertson, whose long public life spanned the Republic and the Confederacy. He served as a captain in the army of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and in the Somervell Expedition of 1842, sat in both houses of the Texas Legislature, and rose to brigadier general commanding Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936.
Gen. James Willie
Independence, TX
James Willie was a Georgia-born lawyer who rose in the young state of Texas to become its Attorney General in 1856–57, helping shape the legal footing of a state barely a decade removed from its own republic. When secession came, he cast his lot with the Confederacy, serving as an officer until his death in Houston in 1863. His life traces the arc from antebellum statecraft to the Civil War that consumed it.
Moses Austin Bryan
Independence, TX
A grandson of Moses Austin, whose 1821 contract opened Texas to Anglo-American settlement, Moses Austin Bryan came to Texas in 1831 and worked alongside his uncle Stephen F. Austin. He fought at San Jacinto in 1836, served the Republic as a diplomatic secretary, joined the 1842 Somervell Expedition, and rose to major in the Confederate army during the Civil War.
Thomas Affleck
Brenham, TX
Scottish-born Thomas Affleck emigrated in 1832 and became one of America's best-known agriculturalists, championing scientific farming through his widely read "Affleck's Southern Rural Almanac," published yearly from 1845 to 1861. In the late 1850s he established Glenblythe, a large, highly organized Washington County plantation that even ran a wagon factory turning out wagons and ambulances for the Confederacy. After the Civil War he worked to rebuild Texas's economy, traveling to Britain to encourage investment and emigration before his death in 1868.