[93] recreant to their duty to the Confederacy and to Texas. The pilot boat was allowed to get close to the ship, when the boat was hailed and the pilot ordered to come on board. Captain Payne answered that he thought there were rather too many men to trust himself to; whereupon he was directed to come on board or he would be fired into. He went on board as ordered, and soon after the steamer sailed in all haste seaward, leaving the pilot boat and hands to return to us. I am thus particular in this narration, as the friends of Captain Payne fear that he may meet with foul play from the enemy. I shall ascertain through Commodore Bell his fate, and act accordingly. Smith, the deserter, was tried regularly the next day before a general court-martial, and being convicted of deserting to the enemy, was publicly shot in Galveston in accordance with his sentence. The proceedings, which were formal in all respects, legal and regular, are forwarded. At the time of these occurrences, I received through Col. W. G. Webb reliable information of an insurrection among the Germans in Colorado, Fayette and Austin counties, 800 being reported in arms to resist the conscript law and the State draft. I immediately ordered the Arizona brigade, with a section of artillery, to the disaffected region, declared martial law in these three counties, and had the ringleaders arrested and lodged in jail. The rest yielded, and tranquillity and obedience to the laws are now prevalent. Major Webb contributed much by his personal activity and influence to produce these results, and I earnestly recommend him to the President for the appointment of assistant adjutantgen-eral, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, to be stationed in the disaffected regions, and to take charge of the business growing out of these affairs and those of the militia. He was an officer of the old army and colonel under General Taylor in the Mexican war. The German ringleaders above mentioned have been turned over to the civil authorities for trial. I have the honor to announce that the whole coast and islands are now in our possession and that the Rio Grande is strongly occupied. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,J. Bankhead Magruder, Major-General Commanding.
This text is part of:
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.