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History of the Grimes County Greys

At the outbreak of the War Between the States several men from Grimes County, Texas volunteered for the service of their newly formed country. On July 19, 1861 the men from Grimes County were officially formed as a company (Company G.) and mustered into the 4th Texas Volunteer Infantry which was sent to Richmond, Virginia. Received in Richmond on September 30th the 4th Texas Volunteer Infantry Regiment was one of three Texas Regiments forming the Texas Brigade. The Texas brigade was an important part of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Company G quickly came to be known as the Grimes County Greys since most of the men in the company were from Grimes County.

Contrary to the prevailing custom, the Texans were not allowed to elect their own field officers but had them appointed by the Confederate War Department. The first commander of the regiment was Robert T. P. Allen, former superintendent of the Bastrop Military Academy. Because of his harsh discipline he was extremely unpopular and was forced to resign his position in October. Allen was replaced by Texan John Bell Hood, who was assigned to command the 4th with the rank of Colonel.

At the beginning of the war the Texas Brigade was under the command of Brigadier General Louis T. Wigfall. In March of 1862 Colonel Hood was promoted to command of the Texas Brigade.

The regiment first saw combat on the Virginia peninsula on May 7, 1862, at Eltham's Landing, but its introduction to real battle came on June 27, 1862, at the battle of Gaines' Mill. Here both the Texas Brigade and the 4th Texas established their reputation for hard fighting by successfully breaking the Union line on Turkey Hill, which had resisted all previous Confederate attempts to do so.

The 4th Texas was not engaged again until the battle of Second Manassas on August 30, 1862. Under the command of Lt. Col. B. F. Carter it participated in the Confederate attack on the second day of the fighting, taking a federal battery of artillery in the process.

On September 14, 1862, the regiment was engaged in combat at the battle of South Mountain, where it had six men killed and two wounded in the delaying action before the battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam), fought on September 17, 1862. At Antietam the Fourth Texas was involved in some of the stiffest fighting on the Confederate left flank and suffered its greatest number of losses for any single battle of the war, losing 210 men (57 killed, 130 wounded, and 23 captured).

The regiment was only marginally engaged at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 and was not present with Lee's army during the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. After that, however, it took part in every major action of the Army of Northern Virginia during the rest of the war as well as in the battle of Chickamauga, during the temporary transfer of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps to the Confederate Army of Tennessee in September 1863. At Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, the 4th Texas participated in the attack against the Union left flank and in the fighting for Little Round Top.

At Chickamauga, Georgia, on September 19 and 20, 1863, the regiment was part of the Confederate force that broke the Federal line on the second day of fighting and helped to rout the Union Army of the Cumberland.

Upon the unit's return to Virginia in April 1864 with the rest of Longstreet's corps, the Texans once again acquitted themselves admirably, by plugging a gap torn in the Confederate line at the battle of the Wilderness, May 7, 1864. Here the regiment took part in the famous "Lee to the rear" episode and suffered 124 casualties (twenty-six killed, ninety-five wounded, and three captured) out of only 207 men engaged.

Subsequently, the Fourth was marginally involved in the fighting at Spotsylvania and helped to repel the Union attack at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864. During the fall and winter of 1864-65 the regiment fought around Petersburg and Richmond before taking part in the Southern retreat that ended in the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

Throughout its existence 1,343 men were assigned to the Fourth Texas Infantry. Of that number 256 (19 percent) were killed or mortally wounded in battle. Another 486 men (35.9 percent) were wounded, many more than once, for the total number of wounds suffered by the regiment in four years of fighting amounted to 606. The total number of battle casualties suffered by the Fourth Texas Infantry was 909 (67.7 percent). The number of prisoners lost by the regiment was 162 (12 percent). Of the regiment, 161 died of diseases (11.9 percent), 251 (18 percent) were discharged due to sickness, wounds, etc., and 51 deserted (3 percent). At the time of its surrender the Fourth Texas mustered only fifteen officers and 143 men. Despite such heavy losses, or perhaps because of them, the Fourth Texas Infantry and its parent Texas Brigade won a reputation as one of the hardest fighting and most reliable units in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.