Peculiar Honor

About

The 28th Texas Calvary (dismounted), a unit of Walker’s Texas Division campaigned in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas in some of the fiercest yet least studied battles of the Civil War. Part of the division known as “Walker’s Greyhounds” because of their amazing mobility and marching stamina, the men of the 28th helped preserve Texas from Federal invasion.

Col. Horace Randal, a young professional soldier, raised the mounted regiment in 1862 from a number of counties in east Texas. Soon after arriving near Little Rock, Arkansas, the unit was dismounted by Confederate authorities and served as infantry until the end of the war. The 28th’s finest service occurred during the Red River campaign in 1864 where their hard fighting at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins’ Ferry helped repulse a Union attack that threatened the Confederacy in the West.

Johansson skillfully employs sources such as compiled service records, diaries, letters, muster rolls, newspapers, state tax rolls, and census records to tell the story of the unit. Statistical analyses reveal the overwhelmingly Southern origins of the regiment, (perhaps due to a conscription law), and the general conformity of the enlistees’ occupations and wealth to those of the region. By blending traditional narrative history with a quantitative approach, this book examines common soldiers in terms of their social, mental and political worlds, creating an invaluable portrait of the men fighting in the Trans-Mississippi theater.

Author

M. Jane Johansson is adjunct professor of history at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This, her first book, is based on her dissertation, which received the Arts and Scientists Dean’s Dissertation Award for Research Achievement in 1994 from the University of North Texas.

Award

1997 Winner of the Ottis Lock Award for the Best Book on East Texas History.