The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 205

Missouri's Confederate Capital in Marshall, Texas

one who 'pretends to be Governor of the State of Missouri.' The
Federals take the same view of my position; but he has the dis-
tinction of being the first man in our lines to publish his con-
currence with them in it."24 General Price requested a court
martial in order to clear his name and a court of inquiry was
convened at Shreveport on April 21, 1865. Before the proceed-
ings were completed, the news of Lee's surrender came from
the East.
On April 19, 1865, Major General John Pope, commanding
the Military Division of the Missouri, offered the same surrender
terms to Smith that Lee had accepted from Grant. On May 9
Smith declined those terms and summoned the governors to an-
other conference at Marshall. The times were highly confused;
some of the military leaders were for surrender, others were for
a defensive line along the Brazos, behind which refugees from
the eastern Confederacy could flee. In one day's issue of the
Marshall newspaper at that time there were appeals for law and
order; a report of Governor Pendleton Murrah's speech calling
for the people of Texas to continue to resist and for Texas to
become a rallying place; a report that General Smith had moved
his headquarters from Shreveport; a report that surrender terms
were being negotiated, and an announcement from Colonel A. W.
Terrell that he was receiving recruits for Terrell's Brigade of Texas
cavalry between Marshall and Waco and that he did not contem-
plate surrender.25 On May 13 the governors recommended that
General Smith surrender the department but not on the offered
terms. Reynolds did not vote, apparently only wishing time to
escape, and he wrote a memorandum saying that it was not the
place of Missourians to decide the question. If war was to con-
tinue they would fight, if the war was to end, they wanted time
and supplies enough to leave the country, he said.21 There were
plots and counterplots and finally on May 30o General Smith
wrote the federal officer conducting the negotiations that save
24Thomas C. Reynolds, "The Public," The Texas Republican (Marshall), De-
cember 17, 1864; Sterling Price, "A Card;" Thomas C. Reynolds, "Governor
Reynolds on General Price's Card," January 12, 1865, all in Edwards, Shelby and
His Men, 467-474.
25The Texas Republican (Marshall), May 19, 1865.
26Reynolds' Memorandum to the Marshall Conference, May lo, 1865, Official
Records, Series I, Vol. XLVIII, Pt. 1, 191.

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