Silently guarding the entrance to the Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historical Park in rural Freestone County near Mexia, Texas, the Model 1861 3-Inch Ordnance Rifle serves mostly as a backdrop for family picnic pictures.

A deteriorating plaque gives a brief description of the gun, but almost no background on the Confederate unit to which it was assigned. For most visi­tors to this old park in central Texas, the gun is like so many other aging Civil War cannon, just another relic left over from that distant war.

But this cannon has a unique story. It was a Confederate gun, but it was number 492 manufactured by Phoenix Iron Company. And it was proof tested by United States Army 2nd Lt. Clemens Clifford Chaffee on Oct. 25, 1862, according to the plaque.

Captured weapons were common­place during the Civil War. This Union gun was taken by a cavalry unit that fought the entire war—from New Mexico Territory to the Red River Campaign in Louisiana—solely with captured Union artillery.

It was a unit that was organized around captured 6 pdrs. and howitzers and apprenticed as artillerymen under the necessity of battle. And throughout the war, they identified themselves with their captured weapons.

They were known as the Val Verde Battery and this 3-Inch Ordnance Rifle is one of the captured weapons they refused to relinquish to the Union.

Buried for 20 years throughout Reconstruction and its aftermath, the battery's weapons were dug up in cel­ebration of Grover Cleveland's elec­tion in 1884. Only two pieces were salvageable: the ordnance rifle at Confederate Reunion Grounds and a sister gun, Phoenix M1861 number 528, 20 miles to the east at the Freestone County Courthouse in Fairfield.

The story of the Val Verde Battery begins high in the frozen Sangre de Cristo Mountains of what was then New Mexico Territory during the win­ter of 1861-62.

Concerned about Federal occupa­tion of New Mexico and Colorado sil­ver and gold mines and control of ac­cess to California's blockade-proof seaports, a Confederate Army of New Mexico launched an invasion from El Paso late in 1861.

On Feb. 21, 1862, the Southerners captured three 6 pdrs. and two 12 pdr. howitzers on the frozen sand dunes near Val Verde south of Albuquerque in ferocious close-quarter combat.

The captured guns were the only spoils of victory for the freezing and starving Confederates. Vowing to re­turn to Texas with their hard-won guns, a unit of 70 cavalrymen was formed and converted into artillery.
Continuing on to Albuquerque, the Confederates—and Val Verde Battery—occupied that abandoned city and then advanced to Santa Fe.

Deciding to attack Colorado's rich mining fields around Pike's Peak and Denver, the rebels ran into a fresh force of Union soldiers at Glorieta Pass high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

While the Confederates succeeded in driving the Union from the battle­field, an irregular U.S. force of Colorado Pike's Peakers performed a flanking movement—rappelling down a cliff face—and captured the meager Confederate supplies and destroyed all their horses and mules.

The Val Verde Battery retreated south to El Paso with their prized guns—using the mountains as a shield against raiding parties.

Mountain by mountain, the unit dis­assembled the artillery pieces, low­ered the guns by ropes down bluffs and cliffs, and reassembled them at the bottom. The Ordnance Rifle bar­rels were 73 inches long and weighed 816 pounds. After two grueling weeks they struggled back into El Paso with­out losing or abandoning a single gun.

At Fort Bliss, the Val Verde Battery was formally organized and dis­patched to the Texas gulf coast near Houston. After Union ships succeeded in occupying the strategic port at Galveston, the Val Verde unit assisted in retaking the city on New Year's Day of 1863.

With Texas ports secured, the bat­tery was sent to southern Louisiana in anticipation of a Federal invasion. In March 1863 the unit captured the gunboat Diana.

In April the Val Verde Battery fought in battles at Bisland and Vermilion Bayou—still manning the 6 pdrs. and howitzers from New Mexico. After the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the unit was dispatched back to Texas to guard against another Federal invasion along the gulf coast.

President Abraham Lincoln and his generals, however, decided to attack the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy up the Louisiana Red River and into northern Texas. The Val Verde Battery was recalled to northwest Louisiana in March 1864 and rede­ployed near the town of Mansfield.

By April the Red River Campaign was underway and Federal forces had advanced by river through Alexandria to Nachitoches where they disem­barked for a march on Shreveport. Directly between Shreveport and the invading army was the small town of Mansfield and the Val Verde Battery.

On April 7 the two armies clashed outside Mansfield. After a day of fighting, the Southern forces routed the Union army forcing a retreat back down the rivers and bayous toward the gulf.

Trailing the retreating Federals, the Val Verde Battery engaged them two days later at Pleasant Hill and, again, the Union soldiers were forced into re­treat—this time abandoning equip­ment and surrendering prisoners.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Pleasant Hill, the Val Verde Battery scrapped the two antiquated howitzers they had captured in New Mexico and carried across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In their place, the two captured 3-Inch Ordnance Rifles were assigned.

With more powerful and accurate guns, the battery continued to harass the withdrawing Union army and in May fought battles at Monett's Ferry and De Louch's Bluff in central Louisiana.

But while the Val Verde Battery and other Confederate units were suc­ceeding in repulsing the Northern Red River Campaign, the Civil War was being lost east of the Mississippi River. Surrender was only a matter of time.

In the spring of 1865 the Val Verde Battery fired its final shots in combat near Mansura then returned to Texas for one last stand.

But on April 9, Gen. Robert E.  Lee surrendered at Appomattox and May 26 terms of surrender stated that Confederate artillery be turned over to the United States government.

To the Val Verde unit, their cap­tured cannon had become the symbol of their battery. In defiance, they hauled their weapons one last trip into the heartland of Texas where they buried them under a buggy house near the town of Fairfield.

For nearly 20 years the guns re­mained there. In hopes that recon­struction had truly ended in Texas, the guns were dug up in 1884 to celebrate Grover Cleveland's election. The brass 6 pdrs. were in terrible condition and sold as scrap metal and the two 3-Inch Ordnance Rifles were restored.

The rifles were manufactured by Phoenix Iron Works of Phoenixville, Pa. in 1862. Records indicate that the Union manufactured nearly one thou­sand of the 3-inch Ordnance Rifles—the only wrought iron rifled cannon produced during the Civil War.

From the frozen mountains of New Mexico to the mosquito-infested bay­ous of Louisiana, the Val Verde Battery fought the entire Civil War with Union artillery pieces.

The ordnance rifles at Confederate Reunion Grounds and in Fairfield are lasting tributes to this unique Civil War artillery unit.

(About the Author: Gary Brown is a Texas government instructor and stu­dent of the Texas Revolution. His most recent article a year ago was about the New Orleans Greys.)