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A center of patriotism especially committed to the Southern cause. After the Nov. 1860 presidential election, citizens lowered the Stars and Stripes and ran up the Texas flag on the Courthouse. Early in 1861 influential men beat drums on the Square to recruit soldiers for the Confederacy. Some 450 Navarro County men enlisted. These included two officers who made outstanding records, Cols. Roger Q. Mills and Clinton M. Winkler. In the Courthouse, county commissioners appropriated funds for arms and ammunition and for support of soldiers' families. In 1864, civilians -- including old men, women and children -- helped stock a Confederate Quartermaster Depot which was located in a store building on this corner. After the Confederate surrender in 1865, Federal troops under Lt. A. R. Chaffee camped on this corner to enforce peace terms. One civilian resisting the troops was John Wesley Hardin, then only 16, and not yet a celebrated gunman. But he notched his pistol in a fight with soldiers 10 miles south of town. The Texas Democratic Convention met in Corsicana in 1872, after Federal troops withdrew, and made plans whereby military despotism was replaced by civilian control of state government by bona fide Texans. |
