Lamar County, C. S. A.

The plaque credits Lamar County with voting against secession; the Handbook of Texas adds who lived there. The 1850 census counted 1,085 enslaved people, 27 percent of the population, and the 1860 share was 28 percent. Only about 20 percent of households held enslaved people, and just forty-one owners held twenty or more. Delegate George W. Wright voted against leaving the Union in 1861 while owning thirty-five enslaved people. The county's vote of 663 to 553 against secession came from a place where nearly three in ten residents were in bondage.

What the plaque says

Lamar County, C. S. A. Of uneasy border of Indian Territory in the Civil War. A military transport center, on the Old Central National Road surveyed in 1844 by the Republic of Texas, to run from San Antonio, crossing Red River north of Paris. A rich farming area. Lamar County gave much food to the Confederacy, despite unrest over rumors of Federal invasion from the north. In 1861, Lamar County sent to the Texas Secession Convention the one delegation to vote unanimously against secession. Citizens in the statewide election also opposed secession by vote of 663 to 553. Once war came, however, the county raised at least 9 combat companies. Organized 9th Texas Infantry, led in succession by Colonels S. B. Maxey, W. H. Young and W. A. Stanley. The 9th fought at bloody Shiloh in 1862 and later was in famous Hood's Texas Brigade, one of the most illustrious armies in the Civil War. Maxey became one of the 3 major generals and Young one of the 32 brigadier generals given by the state of Texas to the Confederate cause. Among most noted of Texas contractors of beef to feed Confederate armies was a Lamar countian, John Chisum, who during wartime became a cattle king, with great herds in open country to the west. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 2.4 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 23 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• The Paris Fire, 1916 — steps away
• Paris — steps away
• Paris Fire Department — steps away
• Paris Public Schools — steps away