U.S. Second Cavalry: Its Last Days in Texas 1861

If you have read my last historical novel, Lee: His Last Days in Texas, you will discover that this is a sequel. Many of my readers of the Lee story have asked me what happened to the troops at Fort Mason after Lee left. So I felt compelled to answer their questions as best I could.

Once again this story begins at Fort Mason. I have tried to make it as historically accurate as I can and still retain your interest. Readers who like narrative prose will again enjoy the use of this form in telling an interesting story that has been neglected. In it, there are many mysteries, some of which I have tried to answer.

There could have been as much as $44,000 in United States gold and silver specie on hand when Lee departed. This would be approximately one and a half million dollars in today's funds. If this specie were found today the numismatic market value could exceed twenty million dollars.

The bulk of the narrative concerns the over two hundred men, women, and children of Fort Mason, and their attempt to obey orders of the new Texas government to abandon the fort.

Approximately 15% of the entire United States Army consisting of twenty-eight hundred men and officers were trapped in Texas at eighteen active military posts in the spring of 1861.

And so the story begins, and some of the mystery unravels page by page after almost one hundred and fifty years.

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