American Historical Ephemera & Photography

7 x 4 7/8 in. partly-printed document (some toning, brown stains, old central crease). Signed by Chief Justice Maberry and R.G. Pidcocke, the county court clerk. 

G. J. Buck enlisted on 1 April 1862 as a private and was mustered into Company D of the 21st Texas Cavalry. The regiment was organized in the spring when George Washington Carter was permitted to recruit a regiment of lancers, a unique regiment to the Confederacy and a popular prospect in south central Texas. He successfully raised a brigade of lancers originally designated as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Texas Lancers, but would later be designated as the 21st, 24th, and 25th Texas Cavalry as the lances never arrived. 

Company D of the 21st mostly drew men from Bell and Milam counties. The 21st served in the Trans-Mississippi theater, participated in General Maramduke's invasion of Missouri in the spring of 1863 and served in picket and scout duty in south Arkansas. They would see action again during General Nathaniel Banks's 1864 invasion of Louisiana, particularly at the Battle of Yellow Bayou (18 May 1864). They afterward returned to Arkansas before returning to Texas at the end of the war. It was here that Buck signed the Oath of Amnesty.