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officer, was born to Thomas and Annie Waul near Statesburg, Sumter District, South
Carolina, on January 5, 1813. After three years at South Carolina College, he taught
for a time at Florence, Alabama, and then studied law in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was
admitted to the bar in 1835, and on November 15, 1837, he married America Simmons.
By 1850 they had moved to Gonzales County, Texas, where he established his practice
as well as a cotton plantation on the Guadalupe River. Waul ran unsuccessfully against
Andrew J. Hamiltonqv for the United States Congress in 1859 but was appointed by
the Secession Conventionqv to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States,
where he took his seat on February 19, 1861. Waul favored a broad range of
emergency legislation and introduced legislation designed to strengthen the frontier
defences of Texas. He also favored a constitutional guarantee of the right to import
slaves from any location except Africa. He ran for a seat in the Confederate Senate in
November 1861 but was defeated. Waul returned to Brenham and in the spring of
1862 recruited Waul's Legion,qv for which he was commissioned colonel on May 17. He
and his command were captured at the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, but he
was soon exchanged. Waul was promoted to brigadier general on September 18,
1863, and given command of the first brigade, formerly that of Brig. Gen. James M.
Hawes,qv of Maj. Gen. John G. Walker'sqv Texas Division, which he led during the Red
River campaignqv of 1864. After the battles of Mansfield (April 8, 1864) and Pleasant
Hill (April 9, 1864), Waul and his brigade were transferred to Arkansas, where, at the
battle of Jenkins' Ferry on April 30, 1864, they helped to repulse federal major general
Frederick Steele's attempted invasion of Texas and where Waul was wounded in
action. After returning to his Gonzales County plantation at the war's end, Waul was
elected to the state Constitutional Convention of 1866.qv Thereafter he practiced law
in Galveston before retiring to his farm near Greenville, Hunt County, in 1893. There he
died on July 28, 1903. He is buried in Fort Worth.
WAUL'S TEXAS LEGION. A legion is a military unit composed of infantry, cavalry, and
artillery components. Waul's Texas Legion, the only true legion of Texas troops in the
Confederate States army, was raised in and around Brenham in spring of 1862 by
Thomas Neville Waul.qv It originally consisted of twelve companies of infantry, six
companies of cavalry, and a six-gun battery of field artillery with a total complement of
2,000 men. The first infantry battalion was originally commanded by Lt. Col. Barnard
Timmons and the second by Lt. Col. James Wrigley. The cavalry battalion was first led
by Lt. Col. Leonodias Willis and the artillery battery by Capt. William Edgar. The legion
was assigned first to Arkansas and Louisiana. There, owing to the difficulty associated
with commanding mixed arms, it was stripped of its cavalry and artillery components.
In October 1862 the infantry companies were transferred to Mississippi and
reorganized into two battalions of six companies each. Attached to Gen. John C.
Pemberton's Army of Vicksburg, the legion played a stalwart role in that city's defense.
With the exception of a single company, then on detached duty, it was captured with
the fall of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. Paroled by mid-July, the members of the legion
reorganized in Houston and were assigned to duty protecting the Texas coast in the
region of Galveston. With Waul's promotion to brigadier general, Timmons was
promoted to colonel and assumed command of the legion, serving in that capacity until
the end of the war.
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