Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 11.djvu/245

Rh Colonel Bagby s gallantry alluded to in the reports of both Taylor and Magruder that it is certain that the rank of brigadier-general, which was conferred upon him during 1863, seldom if ever was bestowed upon one more worthy of the honor. During the Red river campaign, before, during and after the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, his services were very great. The high esteem in which he was held by his superior officers is shown by the fact that after the surrender of Lee and Johnston, but before the final submission of the Trans-Mississippi department, he was in Gen. Kirby Smith’s general orders promoted to major-general, May 16, 1865. After the war he went back to his law business, continuing to reside in Texas, his adopted State.

Brigadier-General Hamilton P. Bee was born at Charleston, S. C., July 22, 1822, the son of Col. Barnard E. Bee. A younger son of the latter bore the father’s name and fell at Manassas after giving "Stonewall&quot; Jackson his immortal name. Colonel Bee was one of the earliest and most noted of the Texas pioneers, and his wife and son Hamilton joined him at Galveston in 1837. Two years later Hamilton P. Bee was appointed secretary, on the part of Texas, to the commission which established the line between Texas and the United States, and in 1846 he was elected secretary of the first senate of Texas, but soon resigned to enlist as a private in Capt. Ben McCulloch’s company of cavalry. Later he served at Laredo in the rank of first lieutenant. In 1854 he was married to Mildred Tarver, of Alabama. In addition to his public service in the ante-Confederate period, which has been mentioned, he acted as clerk to Governor Lubbock when the latter was comptroller of the Texas republic, and was speaker of the third house of representatives of the State. During 1861 he was in command of State troops on the coast as brigadier-general in the provisional army of Texas, and in March, 1862, when he was com-