Texas in the Civil War - Adjutants General

The office these five men held has had a broken history. The Republic of Texas had an adjutant general until the Fifth Congress abolished the post in 1841 and gave its duties to the secretary of war. The state revived it in 1846, though at first its work was limited to verifying veterans' land claims, and it operated only intermittently until the Twenty-ninth Legislature established the present office in 1905. Today the governor appoints the adjutant general to head the Texas military forces, and the department, renamed the Texas Military Department in 2015, is based at Camp Mabry.

What the plaque says

Texas in the Civil War - Adjutants General Texas in the Civil War ADJUTANTS GENERAL Texas in 1861-1865 had 90,000 men fighting for the South - many in units east of the Mississippi. Yet at home she had to defend 2000 miles of coastline and frontier from constant threats made by federals, Indians, and outlaws. The state Adjutant General filled the necessary Confederate troop requisitions. At the same time he organized, posted and supplied the Texas frontier Regiment in a string of forts a day's horseback ride apart, from the Rio Grande to the Red River. He was also assigned the duties of State Inspector General, Commissary General, Ordnance Officer, and Quartermaster. He handles state correspondence on military affairs, disturbing orders and forms, kept records of the state troops, and assembled registers of Texans in Confederate service; had general charge of all military property; collected and repaired arms; inspected arsenals and magazines, received and distributed munitions. From an 1861 salary of $500, pay for this office was increased by 1865 to $2,000 a year. N. H. Darnell, Dallas; Wm. Byrd, Austin; J. Y. Dashiell, San Antonio; D. B. Culberson, Jefferson; and John Burke of Marshall successively held this difficult office. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 1.1 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• Harry Ransom Center — 2.1 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 2.4 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 2.5 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Camp Mabry — steps away
• Major John B. Jones — steps away
• William Steele — steps away
• Texas in the Civil War - Federal Forces — steps away