Fayette County, C.S.A

Behind the county's war was slavery's fast growth. Enslaved people in Fayette County numbered 206 in 1840, 820 in 1850 and 2,072 by 1855, and the 3,786 counted in 1860 exceeded the county's entire population of ten years before. Even so, German and Bohemian voters, who generally opposed slavery, helped defeat secession here. About 800 county men served in the Confederate army. Slaves had made up more than a third of all taxable property. Many freedpeople left their former owners' farms, but most ended up working the land on shares for a third or half of the crop.

What the plaque says

Fayette County, C.S.A Although voted 600 against to 580 for secession, began Confederate recruiting in June 1861. La Grange was headquarters for 22nd Brigade, Texas State Troops, Brig. Gen. Wm. G. Webb commanding, of which 18 companies (1,238 men ) and 72 officers were from Fayette. Special county war taxes provided relief for soldiers' families. Funds were also raised by the famous "Cow Order" for seizure of strays. Censors here banned exchanges of mail with the U.S. Confederate cotton gathered in and stored at La Grange and Round Top was freighted to Mexico by local men hauling 5 or more bales on each 3-months-long trip. In 1863 a dozen teamsters lost outfits and barely saved themselves when bandits struck near Roma, on the Mexican border. Gen. Webb and Cols. John C. and Wm.F. Upton were Fayette County men. Local C.S.A. units were commanded by Capts. Ira G. Killough and Ben Shropshire, who fought in the Arizona-New Mexico campaign. Gen. Tom Green, first county surveyor, and Indian fighter and hero of San Jacinto and the Mexican war, had a part in such Confederate victories as the recapture of Galveston and the Battle of Mansfield, La. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 16 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Bastrop State Park — 29 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.

More markers nearby

• James Seaton Lester — steps away
• Fayette County — steps away
• Kreische Complex — 1.6 mi
• Monument Hill Tomb — 1.6 mi