On or about Saturday, the 27th day of February in the year 1864, James Madison Hall penned the following words in The Journal ... [/ul][/quote]
*David Alexander Nunn, lawyer and Confederate Army officer, was born in Summerville, Mississippi, on October 1, 1836, the son of John and Jane (Tubb) Nunn. John Nunn was a former soldier of Andrew Jackson. David Nunn was educated at Murfreesboro and attended law school in Lebanon, Tennessee. He furthered his legal studies in New Orleans and was admitted to the bar in Mississippi in 1857. On June 8, 1858, he married Helen Williams at Macon, Mississippi, and the couple set out for Texas on their wedding day. Although they had intended to settle in Waco, they made their home in Crockett, where in 1859 Nunn was elected the town's first mayor; his wife taught school there. By 1860 they had an infant daughter, Corine. When Texas seceded from the Union, Nunn raised a cavalry company from Houston and Madison counties. The company was mustered into Confederate service on September 29, 1861, as Company I, Fourth Texas Mounted Volunteers, at Camp Sibley, near San Antonio, and assigned to Gen. Henry H. Sibley's Arizona Brigade. It took part in the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862. Unfortunately, Nunn was unpopular with his men and resigned in response to their petition on February 27, 1862, shortly after the battle of Valverde. He returned to Crockett, raised a second cavalry company for service with Walker's Texas Division, was elected captain, and served with it until the end of the war. Nunn was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875 and served as chairman of the seven-man committee that devised the public-education aspects of the state's basic laws. After the session Nunn returned to the practice of law. He died in Crockett on August 13, 1911.
On February 17, 1864, Congress changed the age limits to run from 17 to 50, but those under 18 and over 45 were constituted a reserve for state defense and were not required to serve beyond their state's limits.
The February 17, 1864 conscription law abolished all industrial exemptions but did continue to exempt the physically unfit, ministers, editors, printers, apothecaries, physicians, hospital and asylum workers, mail carriers and government officials. This law ended once and for all the exemption for cattlemen.
David Alexander Nunn (1836-1911) was Crockett's first mayor. Sometime after February of 1862, in Crockett, Nunn raised a cavalry company for service with Walker's Texas Division, was elected captain, and served with it until the end of the war.
21 Mar 1864. Union blockading ship attacks Velasco.
The high point of the service of Walker's Texas Division was during the early months of 1864, when it opposed federal Maj. Nathaniel Bank's invasion of Louisiana by way of the Red River valley.
On April 8-9, it was committed with other Confederate forces in the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, halting Bank's advance on Shreveport and Marshall.
On April 10, with Thomas J. Churchill's and William H. Parson's division, it began a forced march north to intercept federal Maj. General Frederick Steele, who was moving from Little Rock to Camden, Arkansas, in cooperation with Bank's invasion from the south.
Steele reached Camden on April 15, then evacuated it on the 27th.
On the 30th he was overtaken by Confederate forces, including Walker's Division, at Jenkin's Ferry on the Saline River, fifty-five miles north of Camden. The ensuing fighting was desparate, costing the lives of two of the three brigade commanders of the division, Brig. Gen. William Read Scurry and Brig. Gen. Horace Randal. Steele completed his withdrawl to Little Rock, ending the last real threat to western Louisiana and Texas during the war.
In June Walker was directed to assume command of the District of West Louisiana and Maj. Gen. John Horace Forney took command of the division.
Initially the division was made up of four brigades ... 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. (The original regiments of the Fourth Brigade were detached from the division shortly after its organization, and these were captured intact at Arkansas Post on January 11, 1863.
Later in the war another Fourth Brigade was reconstituted which included the sixteenth and Eighteenth Texas infantry and the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-fourth Texas Cavalry regiments (dismounted).
At the same time the Twenty-ninth Texas Cavalry (dismounted) was added to the First Brigade and the Second Regiment of Texas Partisan Rangers (dismounted) to the Third Brigade.
For a brief period, during the Jenkin's Ferry phase of the Red River Campaign, the Third Texas Infantry was assigned to the Third Brigade, but this regiment was ordered to return to Texas shortly thereafter.
The fighting service of Walker's Texas Division was less arduous than that of many similar commands in the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. It operated efficiently, however, under peculiar difficulties unknown east of the Mississippi River and it deserved major credit for preserving Texas from federal invasion.
Through the summer of 1864, as the weight of three years of war bore down upon the tattered Confederacy, realistic people in the South lost hope for the cause. The Union now controlled the Mississippi River. Federal troops occupied much of Tennessee, together with portions of Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. The Confederate Army had eroded in strength to barely 150,000 men, and this weary and ill-equipped force faced an enemy one and a half times their number....
And suddenly in September came the words tidings of all. Atlanta had fallen. President Lincoln was urging that Northern churches proclaim a day of thanksgiving. In her diary, Mary Chestnut penned a grim notation: "There is no hope."...
More than $700 million circulating in legal Confederate paper money was worth perhaps a fortieth its face value in real purchasing power....
No longer were there any volunteers for service, and conscription was being evaded with universal hostility and thoroughness....In desperation, the government began to draft boys 14 to 18 years old to serve in a junior reserve, and men from 45 to 60 years old to make up a senior reserve....As one chronicler put it, the South was "robbing the cradle and the grave to supply Lee's army." ...
Crockett Quid Nunc
Number 5
September 27, 1864
CLOTHING FOR THE SOLDIERS ... In obedience to special orders #221, from Dept. Headquarters, the following named officers are ordered to Texas to collect clothing and conscripts for Brigd. Gens. Maclay's and Waul's brigades, Maj. Gen. Walker's old division. It cannot be too earnestly impressed upon the friends and relatives of the soldiers of these brigades and divisions the importance of furnishing them good warm clothing to shield them from the inclemency of the coming winter.
LOCAL NEWS ... Walkers old division was at Monroe, Louisiana a few days ago. Letters for Waul's Brigade should be addressed to Jefferson. Letters for Randall's Brigade should be addressed to Marshall.
