Name: The Campaigns of Walker's Texas Division by Blessington
Brand: J. P. Blessington
Price: 44.95 USD
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Defending Texas

Certain history is supposed to stay buried these days. It needs to be hidden away, never talked about, unless to condemn it. Those old monuments? “They have to go,” say the high-pitched voices.

But Texas has Confederate heroes worth knowing, and our history from 1861 to 1865 is worth exploring. It’s a period of time we should seek to understand. Not as twenty-first century gate-keepers say we should understand it, but as the people who lived it understood it.

I know publishing a Confederate history will produce squawking from certain folks enamored of their own virtue.

These shallow thinkers can’t comprehend that it’s possible to abhor slavery and still honor our Confederate veterans. We can lament the horrible institution and still admire the courage and martial prowess of our forebears.

It just takes a degree of broad-mindedness. A willingness to look at the past not through our own experience, but through the experience of those long dead. If some people can’t manage to do it, that's their failing.

Joseph P. Blessington has left us a special book.

Published back in 1875, it is based on meticulous journals he kept during the war.

What did Blessington do during the war? He served in the only division made up of troops from a single state and the largest unit of Texas troops.

"Texans are born soldiers; from early boyhood they are

taught the use of the rifle and six-shooter. They know that

much depends on their skill in the use of arms"

They were Walker’s Texas Division, also known as Walker’s Greyhounds, or the Greyhound Division. It was made up of these regiments. Maybe you have an ancestor who served in one:

3rd Texas Infantry

10th Texas Infantry

12th Texas Infantry (Young’s Regiment)

14th Texas Infantry (Clark’s Regiment)

16th Texas Infantry (Flournoy’s Regiment)

17th Texas Infantry (Allen’s Regiment)

18th Texas Infantry

19th Texas Infantry

22nd Texas Infantry (Hubbard’s Regiment)

6th Texas Cavalry (Gould’s)

13th Texas Cavalry (Burnett’s)

15th Texas Cavalry

18th Texas Cavalry (Darnell’s)

25th Texas Cavalry (Gillespie’s)

28th Texas Cavalry (Randal’s)

29th Texas Cavalry (DeMorse’s)

34th Texas Cavalry (Well’s)

Daniel's Battery

Edgar's Battery

Haldeman's Battery

2nd Texas Partisan Rangers

They served in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, never crossing the Mississippi River. That's a telling detail. These men were all volunteers and many enlistments early in the war had stipulations. Some regiments saw themselves as defenders of Texas from invasion and only consented to be deployed in adjacent states to do just that.

"The gallant dead—how fell they ? Heroes! thousands of

whom have no monuments save the memory of their

everlasting valor. At the cannon's mouth, where the

foe stood thickest, in the deadliest charge, with the

forlorn hope, on the perilous scout, or at the first breach

—there lay the Texan."

Joseph Blessington did not just rely on his journals, he interviewed other Greyhound Division veterans and pored over the official records. This is a complete history.

We are proud to bring it back to life for today's Texans.

Physical Details

The Campaigns of Walker's Texas Division
340 pages
Satin Finish Jacket