Texas History Minute

He was called “Prince John,” but he was far from royalty He was part of two losing wars but was popular among his troops Gen John Magruder, a Virginia-born

Confederate general, took charge of Texas defenses from late 1862 onward, and led a series of colorful adventures along the way

John Bankhead Magruder was born in 1807 in Port Royal, Virginia, a small port city not far from Washington, DC His father was a planter and attorney, but he fell into bankruptcy and lost everything by 1820 He began attending the University of Virginia in 1825 and soon received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point

He enrolled at West Point in 1826 Magruder was an able cadet, graduating fifteenth out of forty-two in his class in 1830 The newly commissioned lieutenant was then assigned to the 7th Infantry and soon transferred into artillery It was a quiet time for the army, and he went from post to post He found time to study law and became a licensed attorney In 1845, he was transferred to General Zachary Taylor’s forces in Corpus Christi as the United States prepared for the admission of Texas into the Union and to enforce American claims on the Rio Grande War with Mexico erupted a few months later, and Magruder served ably in the Mexican War, and slightly wounded in 1847 He served alongside many other officers who would lead armies in the Civil War some fifteen years later

After the war ended in 1848, he was assigned to a post in California where he managed to also become a popular attorney, real estate speculator, saloon owner, and also ran a railroad while still tending to his army duties

As Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency in 1861, Magruder was assigned to a post in Washington, DC When Virginia seceded in April, Magruder chose to defend Virginia and joined the Confederate army as a colonel Given his extensive knowledge of military defenses in the area, he was put in charge of the Arm of the Peninsula east of Richmond. Popular among his troops, it was said by one friend, “he could fight all day and dance all night ” With successful efforts against Union incursions into the area, Magruder was rewarded with promotion to major general later that summer

By spring 1862, Gen George McClellan attacked the eastern peninsula of Virginia Magruder was outnumbered nine-to-one, but managed to use the bogs and thick forests to his advantage He managed to fool McClellan into believing Confederate forces were stronger than they were, and delayed the Union advances for several critical days However, as Robert E Lee took command and attempted to reorganize Confederate forces into a counteroffensive by late June, Magruder was bogged down by poor communication and poor coordination He was accused of being drunk, and faced the charge without resorting to character attacks against his critics In the end, the charges never stuck

He was transferred to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in October 1862 By this point, the Union Navy had just seized Galveston He organized a counterattack of artillery and Confederate gunboats Magurder attacked on New Year’s Eve By the next day, he had captured three Union ships and forced the rest to flee Galveston remained in Confederate hands for the remainder of the war

Magruder maintained his headquarters in Houston while directing officers throughout Texas to enforce the draft and maintain order Working with Confederate units in Louisiana and Arkansas, he managed to keep Union forces from invading Texas After Lee surrendered in Virginia in April 1865, Magruder , along with Gen Kirby Smith, tried to hold out against Union forces but realized all was lost

On June 2, they formally surrendered But he understood how leaders in the losing side of uprisings and civil wars had been treated historically Fearing for his life, as did many other Confederate officers and officials, Magruder fled to Mexico

Magruder offered his services to Emperor Maximilian, the puppet king installed by the French after they seized control of Mexico in 1862 France had used the pretense of Mexico’s immense foreign debt owed to France as a pretense for invasion and the distraction of the American Civil War as a cover The everunpopular Maximilian found himself the target of increased uprisings in 1865 and welcomed the services of a respected general

But Magruder soon realized just how perilously close to the abyss that Maximilian had become The United States had made it quite clear that French intervention in Mexico would not be tolerated With unrest growing, the French pulled their army out of Mexico in 1866 and urged their puppet king to leave as well Convinced he was beloved by the people, he decided to stay instead As rebel armies advanced and Maximilian’s armies crumbled, Magruder read the writing on the wall He fled back to the United States in early 1867 Not long afterward, Maximilian was overthrown, captured, and executed by firing squad

The one-time Confederate soldier and Mexican advisor found a general amnesty for Confederate officers in the United States and capitalized on his wartime adventures He spent the next several years off-and-on the lecture circuit making a tidy living regaling audiences with his tales. Magruder died at his home in Houston in 1871

Dr Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com.

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Advice on rolling my 401(k) into an IRA?

Hey Taylor - I’m leaving my job where I’ve got a fully vested 401(k) and wondering where I should roll the money I know I want an IRA, but how do I pick the provider? - Don

Hey Don - Great question, and glad you got that 401(k) vested!

You’re going to have endless IRA options - lots of those options are great, many are not My advice is to find a company you like that doesn’t charge relentless fees, and here are a few ways to go about finding such a company

1 Ask about fees before you do anything else Naturally, banks and mutual fund companies want to talk about everything other than what they charge when luring new clients That’s why you should start with these questions and fight to get straight answers Lots of brokerage firms have very few extra fees (probably fewer than your old 401(k) provider) and they’ll be happy to promote that Other companies charge trading fees, fund manager fees, advisor fees and pretty much any other noun you can put in front of the word “fee ” If an account manager has a pitch that sounds too good to be true and then you see some strange numbers in the fine print, you probably don’t want your money with that company

2 Think about how you want to invest You can take a lot of control over your IRA. Some people love that option, other people don’t trust themselves to make the right financial choices You might spend a little to have

Living with children

someone build an inv strategy for you, whic more up front but deli better returns than a s mutual fund There ar insurance and brokera that have been offerin forever and sometime impersonal in their str Other companies do a job of trying to meet y individual needs and goals If there are stocks and commodities that interest you, pass that info along to your advisor or broker to make sure everyone is on the same page It’s your money and you should have a say in how it gets invested

3 Ask around When you open an IRA, you give someone else the chance to make money off of your money This means everyone wants to have your account, and they will make it sound like a very, very smart choice for you to invest with them If you aren’t sure who to trust, ask some friends who have investment accounts and see how their funds are doing Compare stories and see how you feel about different companies and advisors after hearing from average investors like yourself who are just trying to save for retirement

To dig a little deeper, head to NerdWallet or another financial review site and get specifics about the fees different companies charge Having a frame of reference will make it easier to sort through the options Happy investing, Don!

In an opinion piece recently featured on FoxNews com , Jonathan Pokluda explicates his Ten Habits of Extraordinary Parents Pokluda, a teaching pastor at a megachurch in

Texas, and his wife are in the midst of what he terms “the parenting experiment” with three young children

In the introduction to his Ten Habits, Pokluda says that according to his observations, extraordinary young people come from extraordinary parents I don’t know where he’s making his observations, but tales abound of extraordinary people whose children have gone off the proverbial deep end and never made it back Likewise, tales abound of fine, upstanding people who were raised by parents who fell far short of extraordinary The very false notion that extraordinary people are raised by extraordinary people does nothing but set a good number of people up for paralyzing guilt

Pokluda asserts that “if there was a parenting scoreboard, spending time with our kids is how we’d earn points ” That’s the postmodern parenting standard, for sure Being a millennial, raised after the psychological parenting revolution of the late 1960s/1970s, Pokluda doesn’t know that the mental health of children in the 1950s, before “parenting” was even a word and when parents did not feel a compulsion to spend lots of time and be involved – when, in other words, the raising of children was a minimalistic proposition – was ten times better than the mental health of today’s kids In today’s parenting lexicon, the word “involvement” is a euphemism for micromanaging, which never works for anyone concerned

Today’s “parenting” is all about establishing and maintaining a wonderful relationship Fifty-plus years ago, when kids as a group were much, much happier than they are today, parents understood that their first and foremost responsibility was to provide leadership and that proper leadership led, slowly but surely, to proper relationship Put relationship first and discipline will be difficult, stressful, and often lead to regretful outbursts from parents, which is, I suspect, is why Pokluda lists asking for forgiveness from one’s kids among his Ten Habits Wrong By definition, extraordinary parents don’t have to ask for forgiveness They know what they’re doing and they do it with authoritative confidence

But Pokluda’s most glaring error is that of omitting Extraordinary Parents Are Husband and Wife First, Mom and Dad Second He and his wife and obviously completely immersed in the roles of Mommy and Daddy With every intention of helping them before that can gets kicked too far down the road, that is the Single Biggest of All Parenting Errors. The following is an unarguable fact: NOTHING PUTS A MORE SOLID FOUNDATION OF SECURITY AND WELL BEING UNDER A CHILD’S FEET THAN THE KNOWLEDGE HIS PARENTS ARE IN AN ACTIVE, COMMITTED (it does not have to be, nor will it be, perfect) RELATIONSHIP.

A strong marriage, not lots of involvement, is the greatest gift parents can give children Within that state of grace, children do not clamor for attention; they thrive, in fact, on being allowed the freedom that comes from not being the center of attention – an idol Because it is obvious that their parents love one another, they feel more than adequately loved Because their parents are on the same page (the natural result of creating a marriagecentered family), they obey, and make no mistake, the best research has found what common sense will affirm: the more obedient the child, the happier the child

Children leave someday, which is why it is so important to take care, in the meantime, of that which remains – or is supposed to, at least

Family psychologist John Rosemond: johnrosemond com, parentguru com

John Rosemond has worked with families, children, and parents since 1971 in the field of family psychology In 1971, John earned his masters in psychology from Western Illinois University and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society