David E. Twiggs

• 1. Introduction

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  David Emanuel Twiggs surrendered the largest single chunk of the U.S. Army ever handed over to an enemy without a fight. On a February day in 1861, the 70-year-old commander of the Department of Texas signed away 20 military installations, 44 cannons, nearly 2,000 muskets, 400 pistols, 500 wagons, 950 horses, and property valued at $1.3 million. He did it before a single shot of the Civil War had been fired. Washington called it treachery. Twiggs called it the only honorable option left to him. The questions that follow are worth sitting with: how does a decorated veteran of three American wars end his career in disgrace? And what does a man who earned the nickname "Bengal Tiger" on Florida battlefields actually believe he owes his country when that country begins to break apart?

• 2. A Georgia Pedigree

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  Twiggs was born on the 14th of February 1790, at Good Hope plantation in Richmond County, Georgia. The plantation would bookend his life: he died there and was buried in its family cemetery. His father, John Twiggs, had served as a general in the Georgia militia during the Revolutionary War, and the senior Twiggs was significant enough in Georgia that an entire county bore his name. Through his mother, Ruth Emanuel, David was nephew to David Emanuel, who served as Governor of Georgia. He grew up surrounded by people for whom public duty and military service were not abstract ideals but inherited obligations.

• 3. Fort Builder

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  Twiggs's early military record reads as a catalog of remote postings and frontier construction. He volunteered as a captain during the War of 1812 and stayed in uniform when the fighting ended. In 1816, Major General Edmund P. Gaines ordered him south from Fort Montgomery to plant a new fortification on the boundary between the Alabama Territory and Spanish West Florida; the result was Fort Crawford. Later he commanded Fort Scott. By 1828, he had moved north to Wisconsin, where he led three companies of the First Infantry in building Fort Winnebago at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. That fort, anchored near what is now known as the Fort Winnebago Surgeon's Quarters at Portage, Wisconsin, became the staging base for operations during the Black Hawk War.

• 4. Bengal Tiger

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  His commission as Colonel of the 2nd U.S. Dragoons came in 1836, and it sent him to the Florida swamps and the long, grinding Seminole Wars. Soldiers and observers apparently found the right phrase for him: "Bengal Tiger." The nickname stuck, drawn from a temper fierce enough to be memorable on its own terms. Twiggs's tactical instinct in Florida was aggressive by deliberate choice. He pressed forward rather than waiting for the Seminole to strike first. The Seminole, rather than surrender, retreated deeper into the Everglades. They evaded U.S. forces successfully enough that the government eventually abandoned its campaign to remove them to Indian Territory.

• 5. Mexico and Glory

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  The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 gave Twiggs the stage that fixed his reputation. He led a brigade in the Army of Occupation at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and earned promotion to brigadier general in 1846. He commanded a division at Monterrey, then joined Winfield Scott's expedition to the capital, leading Scott's 2nd Division of Regulars through every major engagement from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was wounded at the assault on Chapultepec. After Mexico City fell, he was appointed military governor of Veracruz. Congress awarded him a ceremonial sword on the 2nd of March 1849. He also became an original member of the Aztec Club of 1847, the fraternal society formed by officers who had served in that war.

• 6. The Surrender

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  By 1861, Twiggs was one of only five general officers serving in the U.S. Army, alongside Winfield Scott, John Wool, Joseph E. Johnston, and William Harney. His command covered roughly 20 percent of the entire U.S. Army, stationed along the Mexican border. The institution had no mandatory retirement policy, and Twiggs, Scott, and Wool were all past 60, veterans of the War of 1812 half a century earlier. As Texas moved toward secession, Twiggs sought clarity from Washington. He told the War Department plainly: absent explicit orders, he would hand army property to Texas if the state seceded. On the 4th of February 1861, he met with a trio of Confederate commissioners in San Antonio, including Philip N. Luckett and Samuel A. Maverick. The War Department relieved him of command by order received February 15. The following day, already surrounded by Confederate forces, he completed the transfer: 20 installations, the U.S. Arsenal at the Alamo among them. He negotiated one condition for himself: all U.S. soldiers would keep their personal arms, sidearms, and regimental flags. The 160 soldiers in San Antonio and those in other Texas garrisons were permitted to leave the state by way of the coast.

• 7. Brief Confederate Command

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  The U.S. Army dismissed Twiggs on the 1st of March 1861, for "treachery to the flag of his country." The Confederate States Army accepted him immediately. On the 22nd of May 1861, he received a commission as major general. He was assigned to the Confederate Department of Louisiana, a jurisdiction that covered Louisiana, the southern half of Mississippi, and the southern half of Alabama. He never served a day in that role. He was past 70 and too ill to assume active duty, and he resigned before he could take the field. Mansfield Lovell took over command of New Orleans. Twiggs formally retired on the 11th of October 1861. He died of pneumonia in Augusta, Georgia, on the 15th of July 1862, and was buried back at Good Hope plantation, in Richmond County, on the land where he had been born.