The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 336
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
of the previous year had occurred, voted by a margin of 741 to
237 votes for secession. Tarrant County, in which Bewley had been
executed at Fort Worth, followed the lead of Dallas by a vote of
462 to 127.
In spite of this split among the counties in the Forks of the
Trinity area, public opinion appeared to be unified there in
support of the Confederacy, once the two sections of the nation
were plunged into war. Notwithstanding the heavy registration
of opposition to secession in Cooke and adjoining counties, most
of the men of fighting age rallied to the armed defense of their
state and the Confederacy. Many of those who had been most
pronounced against secession took up arms against the Union.
After the firing upon Fort Sumter in April, 1861, the state
government at Austin moved to put Texas on a war footing. In
May, Colonel William C. Young, a veteran of the Mexican War
and a Cooke County planter living in the Sivil's Bend area along
the Red River, was ordered to raise a regiment of i,ooo men
from ten North Texas counties, including Cooke, Grayson,
Collin, and Denton counties. Designated for the protection of the
northern border, Young's ix th Texas Cavalry moved shortly into
the Indian country to capture the United States outposts of Forts
Washita, Cobb, and Arbuckle, thus becoming the occupying force
that held the area between Kansas and Texas.
By December, 1861, the Texas legislature passed a general act
providing for the internal security of the state. Thirty-three
brigade districts were created by the act. District Number 1 com-
prised Cooke, Montague, Wise, Denton, Jack, and thirteen other
north and northwestern counties, with headquarters at Gaines-
ville. As commanding officer of the district, William Hudson, a
forty-year-old native of South Carolina and a longtime resident
in Cooke County, was appointed brigadier general.
It is significant that although Confederate state authorities took
for granted that North Texans were united in loyalty to the new
government, the military units raised in the area were officered
primarily by those with long-held Southern sentiments. This
policy extended from the commanding general at Gainesville
through the companies raised in each county. Thus in and from
Cooke County were such undoubted Southern spokesmen as336
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963, periodical, 1963; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101196/m1/360/?rotate=180: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.