Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
Past the Victoria Mall, out on U.S. 77 North, a smaller-than-normal historic marker sits lonely next to some power line poles at the edge of an empty lot.
“Founded in 1824 by Martin De Leon as center of his colony, Mexico’s buffer against Comanches. Active in 1836 in support of Texas War for Independence, and in Confederate cause during Civil War. Historic trade, cattle, oil and industrial center.”
It’s a squat little marker, dedicated in 1964.
The last sentence of the marker seems to bear out Reed’s assessment. And yet, there in the first sentence, is the Spanish Founding Father of Victoria — a proud Hispanic heritage thrives.
In the second sentence, sits another embodiment of Texas sentiment regarding who would dominate Texas thought for many decades: the Confederate soldier.
As Roy Grimes wrote in his book “300 Years in Victoria County,” “Southern sentiment was still quite tender in Victoria in 1885,” two decades after the end of the Civil War. It would remain so for many more years.
When secession was declared in Texas, Victoria followed suit. As Grimes wrote, Victoria had “a large vested interest in that classification of property,” slavery.
For example, John Linn, one of the original founders, owned a number of slaves, according to documents at the Victoria Regional History Center. His sons fought for the Confederacy, one dying during the war.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, 3 or 4 miles outside of Victoria, newly minted Confederate soldiers from Victoria and the surrounding counties trained at Camp Henry E. McCulloch, named for a Texas Revolution hero.
Victoria sent three companies off to fight: Company B, Sixth Texas Infantry; Company A, Thirteenth Texas Cavalry Battalion and Company C, Fourth Regiment Texas Mounted Volunteers. John Linn’s son, Charles Carroll Linn, served as a first lieutenant in the latter company and survived the war.
Two Confederate soldiers from Victoria — R.R. Gilbert and Charles Leuschner — wrote of their experiences as part of Company B, Sixth Texas Infantry.
Gilbert’s writings, as “High Private,” appeared in the Victoria Advocate and the Houston Telegraph and were composed at the start of the war.
Gilbert, wrote Grimes, “apparently was a newspaperman who served only a comparatively short” enlistment, poking fun in his reports at army life.
Belva Zirjacks, one-time president of the Victoria chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, discovered Charles Leuschner’s Civil War diary quite by accident while cleaning out a dusty closet at a historic home.
It was subsequently published with a text written by Charles D. Spurlin.
Leuschner served in the Confederate Army from beginning to end, captured at the Nov. 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin in Tennessee.
That battle was a last-ditch effort by General John B. Hood’s army to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. So fierce was the fight that men appeared standing in death — propped up by the bodies surrounding them.
Leuschner wrote that the fight was back-and-forth chaos. At one point he captured several “yankey” prisoners, but then found himself isolated facing a line of enemy soldiers and had to throw down his rifle and surrender.
He was sent off to a prisoner of war camp and on Dec. 21, 1864, wrote “I got sick with feber.”
Then, on Jan. 2, 1865, he noted, “I got well.”
The final paragraph of Leuschner’s diary, written on June 15, 1865, after surrender, is a poignant testament to what he suffered during the war and upon being surrendered. It is worth reading in its entirety.
As Leuschner wrote it: “I expectant to be happy, and I was for a little while; but it is not so now, my heart has a whegd thrown upon it which cannot be easily taken off. It pains me. I may forget it for a minute or two, but it will come in my mind again. I try all in the world to be happy and other’s that see me think so, but there is something that works in me which I dare not explain. Had we gained our independence, I would have bin happy. My heart would have leaped for joy, but now it is not so. When I am in the presence of Ladie’s, I forget for a little while; but while I am speaking my troubles come into my mind, where at other times I would have Killed myself a laughing. I could not now make a laughing if I was to try my hardest.” (“Civil War Diary of Charles A. Leuschner,” Eakin Press, 1992)
One final note: “Victorians were present at Glorieta, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Mansfield, and Palmetto Ranch; places that millions of people would read about,” Grimes wrote over 100 years after the Civil War ended.
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