John Bankhead Magruder

Prince John Magruder was called the wittiest man in the old army, and his best bluff came before Texas. Commanding at Yorktown in spring 1862, he made a thin line look like a large army and held McClellan back for weeks. After the Seven Days he lost Robert E. Lee's favor and was sent west. He had a wife in Baltimore whom he saw only on furloughs, and many thought him single. After the war he offered his sword to Emperor Maximilian, came home to Houston, and died there in 1871. He is buried in Galveston.

What the plaque says

John Bankhead Magruder (August 15, 1810 - February 19, 1871) Virginia native John Bankhead Magruder graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1830. For meritorious service in the Mexican War (1846-48) Magruder was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He later resigned from the U. S. Army to join the Confederacy in 1861. As commander of the Texas District he overcame a Federal blockade and regained control of Galveston and the Texas Gulf Coast. After the Civil War he fled to Mexico and served in Maximillian's army. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 1.0 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.2 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 1.5 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.

More markers nearby

• James Love — steps away
• Major John M. Allen — steps away
• Captain William S. Fisher — steps away
• Lent Munson Hitchcock — steps away