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(1836 - 1870)
Home State: Texas
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 4th Texas Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
A 25 year old bookkeeper, he enrolled on 19 July 1861 as 2nd Lieutenant of Company G of the 4th Texas Infantry at Harrisburg, Texas. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in September 1861 and appointed Adjutant 2 October. He was on recruiting duty in Texas February - April 1862 and was promoted to Captain on 29 June 1862.
On the Campaign
He led his Company in action at Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September and at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.
The rest of the War
He was injured in the shoulder while in command of the regiment in action at Chickamauga, GA on 19 September 1863 when a ...
... bombshell struck in the fork of a big red oak tree about twenty feet from the ground and split it wide open. It came crashing down among the men, breaking limbs off the nearby trees, and crushing everything in its reach. A large limb from half of the falling tree struck Captain Bassett on the shoulder, injuring him so badly that he was never able to rejoin his command ...He resigned and was discharged for disability on 25 June 1864.
After the War
He returned to Grimes County, TX and had a law practice. He died relatively young at age 34, possibly from the effects of his Chickamauga injury.
References & notes
Service information from Davis1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 via fold3. The quote above from Giles.3 Personal details from family genealogists. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Sarah Lane "Sallie" Scott (1843-1914) in March 1862 and they had 2 children. Firstborn, son Robert died at 8 months old in 1864.
Sallie's brother Garrett was also in Company G and was killed at Sharpsburg.
Birth
03/16/1836; Natchitoches Parish, LA
Death
04/05/1870; burial in Odd Fellows Cemetery, Anderson, TX
1 Davis, Rev. Nicholas A., The Campaign from Texas to Maryland, Houston: Telegraph Book and Job Establishment, 1863, pp. 159 - 161 [AotW citation 1828]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 26711]
3 As quoted in Edward B. Williams' Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War (2012).
Giles, Valerius Cincinnatus, and Mary Lasswell, editor, Rags and Hope: The Recollections of Val C. Giles, Four Years with Hood's Brigade Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861-1865, New York: Coward-McCann Publishing, 1961 [AotW citation 26712]