RARE, UNIQUE & IMPORTANT LATE WAR PATRIOTIC TEXASCONFEDERATE IMPRINT BROADSIDE

 RARE, UNIQUE & IMPORTANT LATE WAR PATRIOTIC TEXASCONFEDERATE IMPRINT BROADSIDELEFT HANDED WEATHERBY MARK V BOLT ACTION RIFLE

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May 10, 1865, Proclamation to Brave Soldiers of Texas to continue to fight from General “Prince John” Magruder who would never surrender and had lifetime of military leadership.
Not found listed in Crandall, Harwell, or Parrish & Willingham. 8.75” x 5.75” very rare and unrecorded Confederate broadside, “HEADQUARTERS, District of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, HOUSTON May 10, 1865. Soldiers! I am told that an impression prevails among you that military news is suppressed at these headquarters. That is not true…An officer of the Confederate States brought me a verbal message from Federal General Banks, commanding at New Orleans…a proposition to surrender the state of Texas, which in that case should not be invaded. I declined sending it to General commanding department [Gen Edmund Kirby Smith] and arrested the officer who brought it. Soldiers once more, I say let us be united, determined, and defiant. Our president is doubtless on way to the Trans-Mississippi Department. The flag of the Confederacy will be kept proudly flying. Brave men from every Confederate state will rally to its support and swell your ranks…wage a battle, which will force the enemy’s troops from this department, to recover the territory which he occupied, but has not conquered. But he will return, escorted by the gallant army of Texas, which he will not have been able to overcome. Your own state will thus be redeemed, and the war will be renewed with greater vigor than ever, upon the soil of Virgina, South Carolina, and sister states made sacred by the blood of one hundred thousand brave men, shed in the noblest & holiest cause—that freedom and right against oppression and wrong! … Soldiers stand firmly to your colors…and you will save your noble wives, and innocent children, from a fate, far worse than death in any form.
J. BANKHEAD MAGRUDER, Maj. Gen’l. Comd’g Dist. Texas”.
Maj. General Magruder rallies his troops to continue fighting. Magruder & General Edmund Kirby Smith would formally surrender the 20,000 men of trans-Mississippi on June 2nd aboard the USS Fort Jackson in Galveston Harbor. General “Prince John” Magruder along with 300 men would flee to Mexico where he served under Emperor Maximillian’s short lived Mexican monarchy in hope of establishing Confederate colonies.
Rarely are new imprints discovered especially such an important unknown Texas imprint in fine displayable format, few printed and this may be the only documented surviving copy
PROVENANCE: direct family provenance from last descendent of Sargent Garrett E. Van Benthuysen, 1st Texas Heavy Artillery & Confederate Marine. NON-GUN