Confederate Biography :   CAL. CROZIER, Smith County, TX  

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Submitted by Susie McFarland Lemin slemin46@yahoo.com
Sept 21, 2001
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson, pg. 147   

Calvin Corzier, the brave Texan who gave his life in defense of a 
Southern woman, was born in Brandon, Miss., in August, 1840, and two 
years later his parents removed to the Republic of Texas and settled 
in Galveston, where he was reared and educated.  He enterd the 
Confederate service in Tyler in 1861, enlisting in Douglas' Texas 
Battery, and upon many a bloody field displayed conspicuous gallantry.  
After the surrender he started for his Texas home to see his aged
father and mother, from whom he had been separated for four years, and 
en route at Newberry, South Carolina, on the night of Sept. 7, 1865, 
was called upon at the railroad station to protect a young white woman 
temporarily under his charge from gross insults offered by a negro 
Federal soldier of the garrison stationed there.  A difficlty ensued in 
which the negor was slightly cut.  The infuriated soldiers seized a 
citizen of Newberry upon whom they were about to execute savage revenge,
when Cozier came promptly forward and avowed his own reponsiblity for 
the deed, thus refusing to accept safety by allowing a stranger to 
receive the violence intended for himself.  He was hurried in the 
night time to the bivouac of the regiment to which the soldier belonged, 
was kept under guard all night, was not allowed to communicate with any 
citizen, and condemed to die without even the form of a trial.  While 
they were deliberating upon his fate, one of the negro troops came to 
him and guaranteed that he would be released if he would deny that he 
was the man who did the stabbing, but Cal Crozier refused; his spirit 
of honor again impelled him to decline to escape the fate in store for 
him by permitting another man to suffer for his act.  And so the negro 
soliers about daylightt the following morning shot him to death for his 
chivalric defense of Southern womanhood, and mutilated his body!

The citizens of Newberry determined that his heroic deed and noble 
self-sacrifice should be perpetuated in enduring marble, and in 
pursuance of that design they have erected to his memory on one of the 
principal streets of the city a magnificent monumnent upon which they 
have caused to be inscribed the story of his devotion, which we have 
here reproduced almost verbatim, so that it may be an inspiration to
those who may read throughout all the coming years.  Upon one side of 
the monument is engraved the beautiful and appropriate line of the 
Southern poet, O'Hara:

		"Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead,
		   Dear is the blood you gave.
		 No impius footsteps her shall tread
		   The herbage of your grave.
             Nor shall your glory be forgot
               While Fame her record keeps,
		 Or Honor poins the hallowed spot
               Where Valor proudly sleeps."


In the city of Tyler, where Douglas' Texas Battery was organized and 
where young Crozier enlisted as a member, the camp of the Sons of 
Confederate Veterans is named in his honor; and other camps of the 
sons, and of the veterans, thoughout Texas bear his immortal name.