Headquarters of US Army, 5th Military Dist.

Congress created the district in the First Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, joining Louisiana and Texas under Gen. Philip H. Sheridan at New Orleans. On July 30, 1867, Sheridan removed Governor James W. Throckmorton and installed Elisha M. Pease. After Gen. Charles Griffin died of yellow fever that September, his successor, Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, replaced more than 500 county officials in two months. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a Democrat, protested the removals but allowed the election of the 1868-69 convention under Reynolds's registration. Louisiana was readmitted in June 1868, leaving Texas alone in the district.

What the plaque says

Headquarters of US Army, 5th Military Dist. Site of the headquarters of the United States Army for the 5th Military District. Established in 1868 in an area of five acres. Abandoned in 1870 when headquarters were removed to San Antonio.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• Texas State Cemetery — 1.0 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 1.2 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.

More markers nearby

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