From Chapter 1, Pioneer
William Berry Duncan rode into town from his house on the east bank of the Trinity River south of Liberty, Texas, on March 1, 1862 to nominate officers for a unit of Texas Volunteers in the army of the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.). It was the day before his forty-fourth birthday, the same birthday he shared with the Republic of Texas, created in 1836, and its first president, Gen. Sam Houston, born March 2, 1793. Commanding officer Capt. Ashley Spaight swore Duncan and twenty-six other men into Spaight’s unit a month later. It was two weeks short of a year after America’s Civil War began at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Duncan marked the event in his diary on the day he took the Confederate army oath, “I was not willing but finally agreed.”
The Provisional Congress of the C.S.A. authorized formation of a regular army on March 6, 1861. The same day, Confederate legislators called out C.S.A. state militias and authorized recruitment of 100,000 volunteers for a provisional army. Clearly hesitant to enlist twelve months after these bills became Confederate law, what finally prompted the middle-aged Duncan, shown in figure 1, to join Spaight’s battalion? With northern lawmakers in mind, was he a Jacksonian Democrat who dreaded big government and shared Thomas Jefferson’s sentiments written in the Declaration of Independence eighty-six years earlier, “We have warned our (British brethren) from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us”? Or was he simply one of many Southerners who reacted to war cries from secessionist politicians? Could Duncan’s response have been more measured, prompted less about defending states’ rights and preserving slavery, more by fear of an alien invasion? Was he in fact driven to secure his economic independence, concerned that Federal occupation might mean confiscation of the frontier land his father, father-in-law, and he had worked so hard to improve? What were his thoughts and how did life change for pioneer Texas cattleman, farmer, and public servant William B. Duncan when he served as a Confederate cavalryman in America’s Civil War?
