Company D, 14th Texas Cavalry
In the fall of 1861 Middleton Tate Johnson of Johnson's Station, Tarrant County, Texas, raised a cavalry regiment known as "Johnson's Mounted Volunteers" for Confederate service. Johnson was a planter and the largest land and slave owner in Tarrant County. The men that comprised his regiment of ten companies were primarily from North and East Texas. After its organization, the regiment was sent into Arkansas and then to Corinth, Mississippi. During this time, more than 100 men in the regiment died from disease before ever firing a shot at United States troops.
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The Fourteenth Texas Cavalry was dismounted in March 1862 at Little Rock, Arkansas, and served the duration of the war as infantry. On May 8, 1862, the regiment was reorganized, and John Lafayette Camp, a Georgia-born graduate of the University of Tennessee and a lawyer from Gilmer, Texas, was elected colonel. For lieutenant colonel, the men elected Abram Harris, who had been the sergeant major of the Sixth U. S. Infantry, stationed at Fort Worth, before the war. The regiment's first action against the Union Army was a rear-guard action at Farmington, Mississippi, on May 28, 1862.
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The Fourteenth Texas Cavalry was placed in Brig. Gen. Joseph Lewis Hogg's brigade, which also contained the Tenth, Eleventh, and Thirty-second Texas Cavalry regiments, Douglas's Texas Battery, and McCray's Arkansas Battalion. Hogg died and was succeeded eventually by Brig. Gen. Matthew D. Ector. The Fourteenth Texas Cavalry remained in Ector's Brigade for the remainder of the war.
On August 30, 1862, the Fourteenth fought at Richmond, Kentucky, which some historians have assessed as the South's most complete victory of the war. Casualty numbers in the Fourteenth Texas were not known but considered light.
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On October 5, 1864, the Fourteenth Texas Cavalry assaulted the Union works at Allatoona. The Atlanta campaign had reduced the regiment to only eighty-seven officers and men. Fighting without the benefit of bayonets, the Fourteenth participated in some of the most desperate fighting in the war as they assailed the Federals in their trenches and forced them back into their stronghold. Colonel Camp, "one of the best officers in the service," according to his commanding officer, was shot in the thigh and captured. Total losses in the regiment were four killed and forty-five wounded.
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On May 9, 1865, as a part of Gen. Richard Taylor's army, the Fourteenth Texas Cavalry was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi. The regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Abram Harris, had twelve officers and eighty-eight enlisted men present—a mere 10 percent of those who had served in the regiment at one time or another.
Unit Contact:
1LT David Childs
775-790-5865