Madison Monroe Templeman

He enlisted in Polk County, TX on 20 August 1861 and mustered as a Private in Company H, 5th Texas Infantry. He was "detailed as a Guerilla" on 20 November 1861, and was known for particularly vicious fighting, to the extent that a bounty of $4000 was put on his head by Federals by early 1862. He was assigned as a scout to Brigadier General Hood on 5 June 1862.

By August he was one of 2 spies working for General Longstreet posing as soldiers in Federal General Burnside's Corps. During their return to their own army to report, on the night of 21-22 August, they captured a Federal spy in Confederate uniform named Mason who had previously delivered false orders to Longstreet and afterward killed a Confederate courier. He was tried in the Confederate camp and hanged that day.

On 28 August, during the 2nd Manassas Campaign, Templeman was given a Federal prisoner to escort to the rear, but instead took him a couple of miles and shot him, at Thoroughfare Gap, VA.

He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Sharpsburg. From General Hood's Report:

I would be wrong in not acknowledging the valuable services rendered during the several engagements, in transmitting orders, of the following couriers of this command: M. M. Templeman, T. W. C. Lake, J.P. Mahoney, James Malone, W. E. Duncan, J. A. Mann, W. J. Barbee, W. G. Jesse, J. I. Haggerty, and J. H. Drake.

He was absent, recovering, to about February 1863 and was killed in action in a skirmish at Thoroughfare Gap, VA on 1 May 1863, very near the spot where he'd killed his prisoner the year before. Memorist Robert Campbell of his regiment later paraphrased a quote from the Bible (Genesis 9:5,6) he found appropriate to the event:

Thou who lives by Blood shall by Blood die.

His service from Polley,1 Schmutz,2 thanks to descendant Karen Durst, and his Compiled Service Records,3 online from fold3. The story of his shooting a prisoner is in Robert Campbell's 1869 memoir published in Lone Star Confederate: A Gallant and Good Soldier of the 5th Texas Infantry (2003, George Skoch, ed.); Campbell was in Company A, 5th Texas Infantry. Details about Templeman's reputation, and the bounty, from Susannah J. Ural's Hood's Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families ... (2017), citing a soldier's 1862 letter and another post-War memoir, published in the Crocket (TX) Courier (1897). His birth information from the 1850 US Census for Saltlick Township, Perry County, OH.

c. 1838 in OH

05/01/1863; Thoroughfare Gap, VA