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Ward Family
Mathew Ward | Morris Ward, Sr. | Morris Ward, Jr.

MORRIS WARD, JR. (1846 - AFT. 1900)

Morris Ward, Jr. was born in Florida or Alabama in June 1846. He was the sixth son and seventh child of Morris Ward, Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth Ann (Wilson) Ward. Morris Jr. spent his early childhood in Pike County, Alabama. Sometime between 1853 and 1858, his family removed to Texas. The 1860 federal census records that they were residents of Upshur County.

On the first day of February 1861, the government of the State of Texas voted to secede from the United States and join the newly formed Confederate States of America. A little more than a year later, on May 9, 1862, sixteen-year old Morris Ward Jr. enlisted as a private in Company D, 28th Texas Cavalry (Dismounted). His term of service: three years or the duration of the war. Unfortunately, Private Ward left no known journal or letters recounting his personal experiences of the war but the movements of his regiment and the battles in which they participated have been well documented.

The colonel of the 28th Texas Cavalry was Horace Randal, a West Point graduate and former U.S. army officer. In 1862, Randal, a native of McNairy County, Tennessee, was 29 years old (his date of birth being January 1, 1833). In 1839, when he was three years old, Randal's family migrated to Texas, settling near San Augustine. As a young man, Horace Randal entered the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated with the class of 1854, ranking forty-fifth in a class of forty-six. His classmates included a number of other graduates who would, in a just a few short years, become some of the best-known military leaders of both the South and North. Among these were J.E.B. Stuart and Stephen Weed.

After his graduation from West Point, Randal saw duty on the southwestern frontier with both infantry and dragoon outfits. Over the next few years he was stationed first at Fort Washita, then at Fort Bliss and finally, Fort Davis.

When the Civil War began, Randal resigned his U.S. Army commission on February 27th, 1861. Almost immediately afterwards he was offered a commission as a second lieutenant by the Confederate government but refused it. Instead, during 1861, he fought as a private soldier in Virginia before returning to Texas in 1862. There, he became an officer once again.

During the summer of 1862, after Randal took over as colonel of the 28th Texas Cavalry, the regiment became part of the 2nd Brigade of General John G. Walker's Texas Division. It had previously been brigaded under General Ben McCulloch of Texas Ranger fame. This division was the largest unit of Texans in the war. These troops, by their frequent long marches over the too-often muddy roads of Arkansas and Louisiana, earned the nickname "Walker's Greyhounds."

The first battle in which the 28th Texas Cavalry participated was at Milliken's Bend (June 7, 1863) during the Vicksburg campaign (spring and summer 1863). They later participated in the Battle of Mansfield (April 8, 1864), and the Battle of Pleasant Hill (April 9, 1864) during which Colonel Randal was fatally wounded.

In the spring of 1863, Walker's Division (including the 28th Texas Cavalry) was at Camp Wright, located four miles north of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. There, on April 23rd, the division held their weekly dress parade and a message from General Theophilus H. Holmes to General Walker, ordering the latter to proceed "without delay" to Monroe, Louisiana via Camden, Arkansas, was read to each regiment. The reason for the order? The Confederates had reason to believe the Federals would soon be making an attempt to take western Louisiana.

In his order, General Holmes passed on the sentiments of General E. Kirby Smith, commanding general of the district, who expressed "confidence in (the division's) strength, patriotism, and valor...Better officers and men no division can boast of. The Confederacy may well be satisfied with security of its interests entrusted to them."

The following day, Walker's division marched out of Camp Wright and headed south on the road leading through Pine Bluff. Recent heavy rains having recently flooded the Saline River and Moro Creek, they did not go to Camden (from which they would have gone by boat down the Ouachita River to Monroe) but instead marched straight south for Louisiana. Their route would take them through Monticello, the villages of Lacy and Fountain Hill, and thence to Hamburg, Arkansas.

Along the way, an officer of the 17th Texas Infantry, Captain Elijah P. Petty, sent letters home to his family in Bastrop, Texas. Well-written and informative, these letters traced the route of Walker's division and told of its experiences along the way. By April 29th, the division had reached Fountain Hill. There, wrote Captain Petty, "We have just received orders to remain at this place until further orders. These...may come at any moment."

Describing the soldiers' progress through southern Arkansas Captain Petty continued, "Through Drew County we had an ovation nearly the whole way. The ladies in perfect swarms were on the road side at every house. At points the whole neighborhood would assemble and such waving of handkerchiefs and throwing boquets (sic) I havent (sic) seen hardly in my life."

"At Monticello," he wrote, "there were more ladies and prettier ones than I ever saw in my life. Every house and every corner and every yard swarmed. At the Court house there was a perfect crowd of them. Such a fluttering of handkerchiefs, such a showering of flowers and boquets (sic), such a rushing of negroes and little boys bearing flowers and boquets (sic) to the ranks as then and there took place did the hearts of the weary soldier good and in return hats waved and cheer after cheer went up such as Monticello and this portion of the Confederacy ever witnessed before."

In contrast to his happy report of the welcome the Confederate soldiers received along their line of march, Captain Petty complained of the Federal troops in the vicinity of the Mississippi who "having failed to take Vicksburg and Port Hudson have become mad and now going out into the country bordering that stream and are destroying everything particularly crops, provisions and farming utensils; burning residences, gins, etc.; stealing negroes and every thing they can lay their infernal hands on." No doubt Captain Petty echoed the sentiments of many of those in Walker's division when he declared he hoped the "Black Flag" (signifying "no quarter") would be raised and he would "get to fight under it."

On May 1st, the division was camped three miles west of Hamburg, Arkansas "on the road leading to a little place called Mary Saline." The night before, in Hamburg, the soldiers had once again been well-received by the local citizens who had thrown a dance for their benefit. There, reported Captain Petty, "it was a grab game. Men pitched in without ceremony or introduction and actually pulled the women out on the floor to all of which they did not object and cheerfully submitted."

Upon reaching Oauchita City, the troops took boats down the Ouachita City to Trenton, a small village about two miles north of Monroe - a distance of about fifty miles which they traveled in just three hours. There, near Trenton, they set up camp. From this camp, two miles west of the town on the Shreveport road, Captain Petty wrote to his wife, remarking "The Washita Valley is a magnificent farming section. There is immense wealth in it but the people are alarmed & this road is lined with negroes, wagons & families en route to Texas. They came from the Mississippi River and all the Bayous bordering on it. I never saw such an exodus before." In this same letter, Captain Petty wrote of his concern was for his fellow Texans, "Texas will be over run I fear with negroes. Its immense capacities will be taxed too heavily and her own citizens will have to suffer for food."

On Saturday, May 9th, Walker's division filled fourteen steamboats which set out for Alexandria, Louisiana by way of the Washita River, Little River and Catahoula Lake. Wrote Captain Petty: "...it presented a grand scene to see us steaming, one after another down this beautiful river with banners fluttering, bands playing, men huzzaing and cheering, with the bank lined with ladies with palpitating hearts and fluttering handkerchiefs."

However, this fleet of steamboats had gone only seventy miles downriver when they were ordered by General Walker, on the lead boat, to turn about and return to Trenton. At first, when no reason was given for the order, there was quite a bit of excitement and curiousity about why this was done. Later, it was learned a courier had given General Walker the news that the Yankees had taken Alexandria. To have proceeded further would have put the whole division in danger. The boats arrived back at Trenton about 2 o'clock in the morning on Sunday.

The division remained encamped near Trenton until the 15th of May. It then left on a forced march to reinforce General Richard Taylor's troops near Natchitoches. By May 19th Walker's men were four miles northeast of Sparta, in Bienville Parish. The next day they marched nineteen or twenty miles to a point near Black Lake in Natchitoches Parish. Two days later they reached a point about a mile from Campti, a town on the Red River. There, wrote Captain Petty, they "encamped in a beautiful grove on a considerable lake the water of which is not very good...and is filled with alligators."

From Campti, Walker's division traveled by steamboat down the Red River to Alexandria - which had recently been vacated by the Federal troops. They no sooner arrived, on the 28th, than they learned they were to return to northeastern Louisiana. The Yankees, it was believed, were closing in on Vicksburg, Mississippi. "Vicksburg is in a critical condition but I have every confidence in the skill of our generals and in the heroism and bravery of our men..." wrote Captain Petty.

From Alexandria, the soldiers marched to the Little River where they boarded boats at La Croix's Landing. Traveling down the river they passed through Catahoula Lake, back into the Little River, then into the Black River at Trinity - where the Ouachita, Tensas and Little rivers come together. They then traveled north up the Tensas River "steaming like life in the direction of Vicksburg." By May 30th, they were camped on the Tensas about twenty miles below Vicksburg and nine or ten miles west of the Mississippi River.

Shortly upon arrival a scouting party was sent out which captured a Federal soldier "and several negroes with a cart & some tricks & provisions." On May 31st, McCulloch's brigade came under fire by Federal artillery and one man was killed. Randal's troops were six miles away during the fight and so did not come under fire that day.

Milliken's Bend was a Federal camp lying immediately above the town of the same name, nearly opposite Vicksburg - on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River. The camp was 150 yards wide and was sheltered by two levees, one on the land side and the other on the Mississippi. It was garrisoned by the 23rd Iowa Infantry and four regiments of ex-slaves from Louisiana and Mississippi known as the African Brigade. In all, the garrison, commanded by Colonel Hermann Lieb, consisted of 1,061 men.

Early in the morning of June 7th, while Randal's brigade waited in reserve, Confederate scouts for McCulloch's Brigade approached Milliken's Bend. About a mile and a half from the Federal camp they were fired on by the Federals. Fleeing, the scouts were shot by McCulloch's men who initially mistook them for the enemy charging. McCulloch pressed forward and formed up three regiments - Allen's, Fitzhugh's and Flournoy's - at the landside levee. They then charged over the levee, ten feet high and topped with cotton bales, crying "No Quarter!"

Many of the African-American soldiers fought back the hardest, after some of their number, along with the white soldiers had retreated. The Confederates engaged them in hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and muskets used as clubs. Other negroes cowered in the fortifications and were shot in the head.

As the battle progressed, the Confederates drove the Federals into the open area between the two levees and toward the riverbank. However, and unfortunately for the Southern soldiers, the Federal gunboat Choctaw opened fire with heavy artillery. As a result, McCulloch's men were forced to fall back to the landside levee. General McCulloch then sent for reinforcements.

A Confederate gunboat, the Lexington, arrived about 9 o'clock in the morning and lobbed some shells into the woods. About noon, General Walker arrived with Randal's brigade but the men were exhausted from lack of water and the heat of the day. The battle was not resumed. In the evening General Walker withdrew both McCulloch's and Randal's men toward Richmond, Louisiana.

Randal's troops later boarded a train at Delhi - to be taken back to Monroe, for further transportation back to the Red River. Upon arrival they embarked aboard boats for the trip down the Ouachita River to Columbus, but there, instead of going on to Alexandria as they expected, they were turned back toward Richmond. By the time they rejoined the rest of Walker's division they were nearly worn out from all the traveling they had done. J.P. Blessington, in Walker's Texas Division, wrote:

While we remained encamped in the Mississippi bottoms, Falstaff's ragged regiment was well uniformed in comparison with our troops. No two were costumed with any attempt at uniformity, and each individual stood forth a decided character. But few of the troops had shaved for weeks, and, as a consequence, there was a large and general assortment of unbrushed black, gray, red, and sandy beards, as well as ferocious moustaches and whiskers - enough to rig out an army of West India buccaneers. A more brigandish set of Anglo-Saxon forces has never been collected. Then, as to costume, it is utterly impossible to paint the variety our division presented. Here would be a fellow dressed in homespun pants, with the knees out of them; on his head might be stuck the remnant of a straw hat, while a faded Texas penitentiary cloth jacket would perhaps complete his outfit. His neighbor, very likely, was arrayed in breeches made out of some cast-off blanket, with a dyed shirt as black as the ace of spades, and no hat at all. Then would come a man with a woolen hat made like a pyramid, sitting jauntily upon his head, while, to introduce his style of hat, he had it covered over with assorted buttons; and to top the climax, had a red tassel sewed on top. Notwithstanding his gaudy hat, a part of a shirt, and occasional fragments only of what had once been a pair of military pantaloons, made up the rest of his attire.

On June 29th, at Mounds Plantation, Randal's brigade, along with Parson's Texas Cavalry, surrounded a Federal fort built atop an ancient Indian mound. It was garrisoned by negro soldiers whose three white officers asked to surrender and be taken as prisoners of war while their troops, numbering 113 men, were to be surrendered unconditionally. The Confederates agreed to these terms. General Walker, upon hearing of it, probably echoed the sentiments of many a Southern soldier when he remarked, "I consider it an unfortunate circumstance that any armed negroes were captured." To be sure, a number of Federal officers did not approve of using blacks as soldiers (lacking confidence in their abilities) but to the Southern officer, it was the foulest of deeds for the Yankees to pit ex-slaves against their former masters.

Unable to come to the relief of Vicksburg, by now under heavy siege by Federal troops under General Ulysses S. Grant, Walker's men remained camped near Delhi, from where they could hear the enemy cannonade. After waiting anxiously for word, to their dismay news came on July 7th that Vicksburg had been taken three days earlier. Some of the men felt that with the fall of this important Confederate city, the war was as much as over.

The same day that news came of the fall of Vicksburg, Walker's division marched up Macon Bayou to Monticello, returning the next day. Three days later they boarded a train for the 40-mile ride to Monroe. Next, on July 19th, they were ordered to go to Alexandria via Campti, on the Red River. Part of the journey was made by water. At Alexandria, they encamped until August 10th, moving on to Camp Green -located in the woods some 20 miles southwest of Alexandria.

Ward Family
Mathew Ward | Morris Ward, Sr. | Morris Ward, Jr.

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