Lone Stars


   The allied offensive in North America would begin five days after the war heated up in Europe. The original date for the attack had been set for the First of April and kept getting postponed for any number of reasons. It is safe to say, that by May the Second, Colonel Jesse James was getting apprehensive about setting foot in the United States for the first time in at least fifteen years. Some have wondered why he waited and, given his reputation, the speculation is justified even if it is no real mystery. The reason why he did not lead his troops into northeast New Mexico until the very second his orders specified was, simply, because of who his boss was.
James had given no small amount of grief to many of his past bosses, all of whom were Directors of Public Safety for the state of Texas. He had even caused one or two Confederate presidents to squirm because, like the politicians in Texas, they found out that there was no controlling this would be anti-US crusader. In return, what James would find out the hard way was that his current boss was just as determined as he was and, more importantly, Major General William Jesse “Bill” McDonald was equally as competent at bending other men to his will. This should be surprising because, even if it is not well known, McDonald was at the heart of many of the stereotypes for what has come to be thought of as the Texan Cowboy.
McDonald’s reputation is somewhat ironic in that he never actually worked in the cattle industry. For most of his life he worked as either a military man or as a law enforcement official in one capacity or another. Following the American 61, in the state of Texas, these two professions were more often than not, one and the same. Of all the Confederate States, with the exception of Virginia, Texas had what could easily be considered a standing and effective army that was all it’s own. Texas was far more exposed to danger than was Virginia. It also had a lot more territory to defend and fewer people to do it with.
The situation faced by Texas fell completely on the shoulders of it’s Department of Public Safety, which managed all military and police affairs, as well as the states prison system. Strangely enough, public records also show that the Texas DPS owned a number of billiard halls but, exactly why and how, were never recorded. While the Texans gained a reputation for being no non sense frontiersmen, with a can do attitude and with a taste for action the truth was somewhat different. The DPS was a good example of exactly how bureaucratic the state of Texas had become. The various sub agencies of the DPS were so complicated that, even now, we can barely understand them. It’s doubtful that anyone at that time did.
While tales of Bill McDonald tend towards the kind that has him fighting rustlers, desperado’s, and apache renegades, the truth is that he was more commonly having to combat bureaucrats and politicians over matters of administration. This was true even if McDonald was never actually, officially, in charge of the DPS. Despite his lack of a title there were very few people, of the time, who doubted that he was the guy who really ran things. A lot of this seems to be due to the fact that people really believed his reputation as a ‘fighting man’ and they were afraid of him.
This might go a long way towards explaining exactly why the DPS appeared to be a logistical mess before the war. When the people with the actual jobs were not the people really doing them, and this was true of more cases than just McDonald’s, then it makes it very hard to coordinate with them if you are an outsider. There have been those who have suggested that this was deliberate on the part of the Texans since it was a common attitude that their state was simply allied with the CSA and not an actual member. In truth, the attitude did not reflect the real situation but, such attitudes do breed strange circumstances.
Of course one can easily say that such independent attitudes bred some very dubious choices within their own military. The Texan military system was so multi-layered, and non specific, that the Confederate General Staff had long since given up even dealing with them. There were three types of rangers under this system and what their specific operations were, could change daily. The regiments that were officially called the “rifles” seemed to suggest that these units were infantry. In practice this seemed to never be the case since clearly ten percent of those regiments started the war as cavalry units. Some of these units even changed multiple times during the war and, quite often, even the DPS was not notified that this had happened.
To add to the confusion was the State’s reserve system. The state had an official part time reserve called the State Defense Force. It had a state Militia which in theory was every able bodied man that owned a firearm (meaning everyone). It also had an official state police force known as the “State Patrol” that was, in theory at least, responsible for law enforcement by aiding local county agencies. All of this was only in theory and the outbreak of hostilities proved it. It became apparent that many men belonged to all three organizations at the same time. Since they could not very well be in three places at once, what normally happened was groups of individuals would meet in each town and draw straws to see who went to which mobilization. Sometimes they would play cards to choose, while at other times, there was gun fire involved in the selection process.
It would not appear as if any officer of the state was involved in any of these informal arrangements. There is also no records to indicate exactly how many men wound up reporting for duty and to where. What we do know is that once mobilization was complete, the Texan Army got a new class of military unit, that being the Texas State Patrol Regiment. The law enforcement duties then became the primary function of the official Texas State Militia, and the State Defense Force was grouped into a single infantry regiment and eventually sent to defend Tennessee.
As confusing as all of this sounds, one has to wonder how it even functioned yet, it did. It not only worked but, far better than other more rigid systems used in states like Mississippi and Georgia. The reason it did seems to all be due to one man, that being Bill McDonald. This is how he wound up commanding Confederate Operations in New Mexico. The general staff in Richmond had wanted to send a Regular Army General Officer but, for obvious reasons, it would be impossible for anyone but a Texan too command, so, McDonald was made a Brevet Major General of the regular Confederate Army.
This gave McDonald command of all Confederate units in the Far Western Theater of Command and not just those belonging to Texas. At the time, most of the regular army assets in theater were mostly logistical in nature, such as, the newly formed First Motorized Supply Battalion, which consisted largely of Astin Greene’s trucks and it’s support staff. The only line units, that McDonald gained control of, that were of any significance at all were those that belonged to the Confederate State of Sequoia. This state found itself even more exposed than Texas and most of it’s military was busy guarding the US border. So far, their main saving grace was the fact that the US was preoccupied elsewhere.
That was not to say that Sequoia lacked troops that could participate in the up coming offensive. The state commander of troops in Sequoia was a Muskogee (Creek) named Emmet Brown Weatherford. While technically speaking, Weatherford was not even in the military and held no rank, he was in effective control of the troops in his sector. Sequoian politics were even more complicated than those of Texas and an explanation of them could fill an entire book all by itself. The state operated much as a miniature Confederacy inside of a larger one, and most decisions were made by committee meetings and quite often the authority granted any particular leader was situational. Weatherford fell into this category and often compared himself to ancient Roman dictators. It seems to have been a valid comparison.
This was not to say that Weatherford was unqualified for his job. In many respects he was probably more qualified for a field command than not only McDonald but, almost any officer in the Confederate Army. Weatherford’s family held a very long running connection with the British Empire that predated the Confederate States. A distant relative of his, that he was named after, had led the Red Sticks in the Creek Civil War, of eighty years prior, and fought Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. At the tender young age of sixteen, the current Weatherford had attended the British War College at Sandhurst. He also held a commission in the British Army even if he had not served in a very long time.
Weatherford took McDonald’s ascension to theater commander with a grain of salt. He did not stand in McDonald’s way but, he did not seem to really change the dynamics of the relationship he had already fostered with the Texan. He seems to have viewed any orders from McDonald as requests. Still, Weatherford complied and gave McDonald no reason for a show down that Weatherford had to have known he could not win.
Weatherford’s main problem here seemed to have been his skin color. The Confederacy’s attitudes about such things were bizarre to say the least. It’s even doubtful if the people alive, at that time, really understood them. Not only did people of pre-Columbian descent have the full legal rights of any white citizen, they also had their own state that they completely dominated. Despite this seeming advantage, they were never fully trusted, or even unofficially allowed, to rise to the top rungs of society outside of their own little area. Relations between the whites and “civilized tribes” remained generally good but, that was as far as it went.
The reason for this seems to be nothing more than simple skin color and this why it became unmanageably complicated. As his portraits clearly show, Weatherford looked like someone that you would think of as a pre-Columbian. At the same time, he had two brothers that served during the war. One was an officer in the State Militia in Florida and spent most of his time at Jacksonville. His other brother was a Confederate Naval officer and would eventually command a Destroyer. Both of these men did not share Weatherford’s ethnic looks.
This was a typical problem in Confederate society that spilled over into their military which was, like any other military, the ultimate instrument of government. As a consequence, they were not only bound to follow the laws but, they took it very seriously. This ultimately was the main reason that Confederate land forces were very state centered. What constituted a “race” in one state could be radically different from others. Who could hold what post, due to race, was a consideration and there were more than a few who found it legal to be an officer in one state and, at the same time,  found it a criminal offense to even serve in the military of another.
It was after the Confederacy won it’s independence that it’s component states began tightening their racial laws. One legislature after another turned out what were virtual books of laws on the definitions of race and what that meant. Ironically, by the time of the war, none of these laws were active and most were completely forgotten about. It was not due to some progressive attitude. The reason was simply because the law makers discovered a horrifying fact that they wished to keep as quiet as possible. By many of these laws, which governed the status of not only blacks but, reds, browns, and whites as well, a great many people found out they were not the race they thought they were and this included more than a few influential people. By these laws, many people who had black skin were legally white and vice versa. Since no one would stand for this, the various state governments decided that if you couldn’t tell what race someone was then you were too stupid to worry about in the first place. The issue was allegedly, after all, black and white.
Such were the attitudes that Weatherford faced and he definitely harbored some resentment but, not enough to complicate or betray his cause. He released two regiments, from his small reserve, to Texas. They  consisted of the First Cherokee Infantry and the Ocmulgee Rifles. They were brigaded with the independent battalion under James that was now flying the nickname the Confederate Foreign Legion. After that, Weatherford washed his hands of the matter and the entire operation. No more support would be coming from Sequoia.
While the Legion was still designated as a battalion, the Missourians were anything but. In terms of size, the legion not only had the numbers but, the logistical support units to rate the designation of a brigade or, maybe, even a small division. It has been suggested that the unit designation was kept because no one wanted to give James a rank any higher than the one he already had. The arrival of the Sequoian units changed the situation and, subsequently, James was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General because his men nearly rioted. The majority refused to serve under the command of anyone with a darker skin color than their own. This seems a rather odd attitude when you considered that there were actually seventeen black men serving in the Legion (quite possibly they were the only unit in the Confederate Army who could officially claim this), one of whom was even a Company First Sergeant. It makes one wonder how much James had to do with the protests.