Review - "Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA" by McCaslin & Stewart

[Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA by Richard B. McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart (Texas State Historical Association, 2025). Paperback, maps, photos, illustrations, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:viii,119/189. ISBN:978-1-62511-090-9. $29.95]

While upwards of 70,000 men joined Confederate forces during the Civil War, an estimated 2,000 Texans volunteered instead to serve in the Union Army, the majority of those enlisting in the First and Second Texas Cavalry (U.S.). For a variety of reasons, both regiments struggled mightily to fill their ranks to regulation strength, and the First only reached its full complement after the Second was merged into it in September 1864. Though some of its activities are fairly well documented within a number of modern campaign studies, the First Texas Cavalry still lacks a dedicated regimental history of its own. Among prominent Texas Unionist leaders, Edmund J. Davis (the First's colonel and later a brigadier general) is the subject of a 2010 biography by Carl Moneyhon. Another general officer, Andrew Jackson Hamilton, was appointed military governor of Texas by President Lincoln. Authored by John Waller, Hamilton's only book-length biography was published way back in 1968 by Texas Western Press. Another noteworthy Texas Unionist military officer and political figure is Francis Asbury Vaughan. His life, Civil War service, and postwar political career are explored in Richard McCaslin and J. Wayne Stewart's biography titled Texan in Blue: Captain Francis Asbury Vaughan of the First Texas Cavalry, USA.

The book opens with discussion of Vaughan's early life, and the migratory movements of his extended family are also surveyed, the common emphasis being on southern geographical and cultural roots. When the Civil War broke out, everything in Francis Vaughan's family background suggests that Confederate service was most likely to be in his immediate future, but that did not turn out to be the case. A record of antebellum voting patterns is absent (and it is not revealed in the book, if such information exists, who Francis voted for in the 1860 presidential election), but the slaveholding Vaughan family had a kinship network located across multiple southern states. As historian Charles Grear explains in his book Why Texans Fought in the Civil War (2010), it was that kind of extended geographical family network that bound a great many Texans to the Confederate movement and inspired them to defend not only Texas but other states on the other side of the Mississippi. Most pertinent to Francis were the twenty-one brothers and cousins spread between Texas and Mississippi who joined either state or Confederate units. According to the authors, the Texas branch seemed more lukewarm toward the Confederacy than the family's Mississippi branch, but Francis was the only open Unionist among them. Nevertheless, in regard to depth of commitment, excellent recent work from Edwin Rutan and Alexandre Caillot on late-war Union recruits usefully reminds us to exercise caution before making too many assumptions about the loyalties and motives of those who weren't early-war volunteers, and the same might be true for the other side. Echoing the views of a great many fellow Southern Unionists, Francis himself described joining the Union Army as a means to "defend our famlys and our homes & our country from the roothless hands of the Rebels who would sink the Country with the honest part of the Community to the deps of Pardision for the sake of establishing an Aristocratic government" (pg. 141).

Vaughan's early-war experiences consisted of a dangerous month-long (July 1862) journey across South Texas and northern Mexico, beginning at his home in Prairie Lea (northeast of Seguin) and ending at Matamoros, his arrival at the Mexican port preparatory to a voyage across the Gulf to New Orleans. Arriving in Union-occupied New Orleans, Vaughan enlisted in the First Texas Cavalry, drilling with the new regiment and getting promoted to Second Lieutenant. All of this is detailed in Vaughan's own account as written in his travel 'memorandum,' which was transcribed from the original document by Stewart and reproduced in this volume's appendix section for readers to peruse. Vaughan's escape from Confederate patrols and his travel group's harrowing experiences in Mexico (where their reception by local authorities was at all times uncertain and potentially life-threatening) are the lengthiest, and arguably most colorful and interesting, part of Vaughan's memorandum. Unfortunately for us, Vaughan's account abruptly ends with his regimental detachment's approach to Galveston by sea in January 1863, everyone onboard initial unaware that the city had been recaptured by the Confederates on New Year's Day. While Vaughan's wartime memorandum comes to a frustratingly early end, it is a precious document given the rarity of surviving firsthand accounts of any kind from Texas Unionists.

Other sources are brought on board to assist with the volume's chapter-length summary of the remaining war service of Vaughan and his regiment in Louisiana and Texas. Subsequent to the aborted landing at Galveston, members of the First participated in Louisiana operations against Camp Moore and other sites supporting the Confederate garrison at Port Hudson. The regiment also joined other Union forces for the Bayou Teche operation, Sabine Pass, the Fall 1863 Texas Overland Expedition, and Nathaniel Banks's Rio Grande Expedition. During the summer of 1864, the First was consolidated with the Second regiment, and Vaughan was promoted to captain. Remaining active service was largely spent conducting raids in Louisiana and Mississippi before being mustered out in November 1865 while on occupation duty in their home state. It is beyond the scope of McCaslin and Stewart's book to provide more than a brief overview of the First Texas Cavalry's activities, but the quality and extent of that service, along with status as the war's premier Texas Unionist military unit, mark the First as being sorely in need of a full regimental history.

The final two chapters trace Vaughan's postwar years, from Reconstruction through his 1896 passing. Those sections, plus the Afterword, compile an abundance of information regarding Vaughan's family relationships and activities of his descendants. They also fully explore Vaughan's postwar political engagement. For more than two decades, Vaughan was active in Republican Party politics. In addition to being a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention, he held elective offices on a local level and secured a number of federal patronage appointments. He was also a lawyer and businessman. As noted in the book, trust and personal regard for Vaughan among his fellow Texans crossed party lines. This is evidenced by his cultivation of business partnerships with ex-Confederates and the fact that, after his death, newspapers across the political spectrum praised Vaughan's character in their eulogies.

With just a few individuals among the Civil War's Texas Unionist military and political leadership grabbing the lion's share of attention, this new biography is a breath of fresh air. While not holding the same lofty military rank or political clout of an Edmund Davis or Andrew Jackson Hamilton, Francis Asbury Vaughan, as documented in the pages of McCaslin and Stewart's Texan in Blue, nevertheless managed to establish a Texas historical footprint significant in its own right.