In the Saddle with the Texans: Day-by-day with Parsons’s Cavalry Brigade,1862-1865

Confederate cavalry operating in the Trans-Mississippi during the Civil War has received little scholarly attention, partially because of the paucity of written resources that survived the conflict. While there are a few published letter collections and a handful of memoirs, little is known of the troopers’ daily activities. With the publication of the order book of Parsons’s Brigade, a compilation of the original daily orders preserved by members of the brigade following the Civil War, the story of these horsemen comes to light. The Texans were on the move daily, skirmishing or scouting with Union cavalry from the time they arrived in Arkansas in 1862 until the time they returned to Texas in 1865. As cavalrymen, they endured a life of privation and hardship, sleeping in the muddy bayous of northeastern Louisiana or along the banks of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. For the first time the reader can follow the everyday life of a Texas cavalryman as he served the Confederacy faithfully in a losing cause.