Final part of a five-part series. Continued from Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.
The first two serious Union attempts at penetration of the Texan coastal defenses did not involve cavalry actions; they emerged predictably on the sea. Once the United States captured New Orleans in 1862, and given the Confederacy's naval inadequacy, the proximate Texan coastline became a natural target for amphibious invasion by armadas of gunships and troop carriers. This development corresponded with an intermittent blockade of the Texan coast in an attempt to deprive the region of seaborne commerce.
On October 4, 1862, the U.S. Navy attacked the Island of Galveston. After a brief cannonade, the Confederate garrison withdrew, depriving Texas of a critical commercial port. Five hundred volunteer soldiers from Massachusetts then occupied the coastal town, while the Union command in New Orleans prepared to dispatch a reinforcement brigade of several regiments. Another strategically consequential coastal town, Corpus Christi, endured a short bombardment soon afterwards. Despite the attack, this valuable port remained occupied by stubborn Texan forces. Francis Lubbock, Governor of Texas, declared of the developing coastal emergency with dramatic flair as he sought to galvanize resistance: “The crisis of this war seems to be at hand in Texas, and we must prepare to defend our homes, or be driven from them with insult and degradation, and all the horrors of rapine and violence.” Capturing the state's historical reliance on rapid citizen mobilization, the governor called for 5,000 volunteers to immediately defend the coast.
On New Years Day of 1863 Texan forces counterattacked with a dual gunboat and ground offensive to repossess Galveston. A small fleet of brown-water vessels first engaged the unsuspecting Union squadron with a lightning attack in the dark of night. With diversion in effect, a Rebel ground force, comprised of veterans from the New Mexico campaign and local militia, assaulted the island. The coordinated attack proved successful and the Texans captured three Union ships and over 350 prisoners. The Confederates inflicted an additional 650 enemy casualties, marking the operation as a stunning victory. This expedition adeptly employed the element of surprise, a fundamental aspect of successful warfare since ancient times, to defeat a numerically superior force.
The next significant Union attempt at invasion occurred in September 1863. Called the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, the day belonged to a single Lone Star artillery battery stationed at Fort Griffin, which guarded the mouth of the Sabine River. The Texans first waited until a large seaborne invasion of 15,000 Union infantry, cavalry, and artillery, approached to within 1,200 yards of the fort. The Rebels then opened with a sudden, rapid-fire cannonade. After sinking one ship and severely damaging another, the Confederate company of just forty-four men, under the command of a lieutenant named Dick Dowling, forced the armada of fifteen ships to retreat. The battle resulted in an astounding economy-of-force victory for the Confederacy, and prevented a large-scale occupation of southeastern Texas. The Texas State Gazette subsequently boasted with poetic appeal after the fight: “The ball is again opened in Texas. We have met the enemy and they are again ours.”
The third major confrontation in Texas occurred in May 1865 as the Union Army launched a final offensive intended to seize territory in the Lone Star State. Unlike the previous two invasions, the Battle of Palmetto Ranch developed as a decisive land engagement by opposing army regiments. It also allowed frontier legend and veteran soldier John Ford to once again rise to prominence as a popular military leader. Though the Texans won a resounding victory over the invading Union regiment, it proved strategically inconsequential. The Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four weeks prior and the collapse of the Confederacy was imminent.
The Palmetto Ranch Campaign began on May 11 when Theodore Barrett, commander of the Federal regiment occupying the island of Brazos Santiago near Brownsville, ordered an incursion onto the Texan mainland. Despite that tacit ceasefire that had existed between Texan and Union opponents for several months, the commander ordered an attack for reasons only known to him. It has been speculated that he sought to requisition material, such as horses for his dismounted cavalry, or more likely, that he hoped to end the war with a victorious and career-enhancing engagement. Barrett later called it a “foraging expedition” at his court martial hearing over the matter.
The Federal attack comprised eight companies from the 62nd U.S. Colored Troops and two from the 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion (U.S.), which was largely populated by Unionist Texans. The improvised assault battalion totaled at approximately 300 soldiers. Additionally, the two cavalry companies did not possess horses, functionally making the corps a purely infantry formation. On the Rebel side, Ford commanded the lower Rio Grande defense with the 2nd Texas Cavalry and several understrength battalions of mounted volunteers. At the time of the attack, the Confederates maintained a volunteer cavalry battalion at Palmetto Ranch, near Fort Brown. The disparity in mobile capacity between the Southern and Northern opponents would prove decisive in the days to come.
On the night of May 11 the Union task force crossed to the Texan mainland under concealment of darkness. They then proceeded to march against a suspected enemy outpost at White's Ranch, near the Rio Grande. When they found the station abandoned, the Federals spent the night under cover, and in the morning moved against the now confirmed enemy battalion stationed at Palmetto Ranch. After initially skirmishing with 190 local cavalrymen, both sides withdrew. Barrett then reinforced his expedition with 200 additional infantrymen from the island base and assumed personal command of the offensive.
The next day, on May 12, the Federal force, now 500-strong, attacked and dislodged the Palmetto Ranch defenders. Barrett pursued one mile west of the ranch and established a temporary camp. Though the massed infantry rifles prevailed in the skirmish, the maneuver subsequently suffered from the expedition's lack of horses and the resulting inability to conduct reconnaissance or pursuit actions.
That afternoon Ford arrived to the scene of battle and assumed command of the Confederate counterattack. In addition to leading his own cavalry regiment, the legacy structure of the 2nd Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, the forces of several volunteer horse units augmented his counterattack. When combined with the original Palmetto Ranch garrison, he now commanded approximately 400 men, nearly all horsemen. In addition to the mounted companies, the Texans brought a horse-drawn battery consisting of six field guns.
Skirmishing had re-commenced between the Palmetto garrison and the Union regiment while Ford deployed his force from Fort Brown. According to the veteran Indian Fighter, upon arrival he first “made reconnaissance and determined to attack.” Barrett had let himself be caught in open and flat terrain that suited cavalry warfare, and Ford accordingly chose to maximize his superiority in mobility. The aging ranger intended to accomplish this by utilizing his artillery “in advance of the line,” while enveloping the Union formation with “enfilading fire” on the right, and finally using dispatching another cavalry wing to “turn the enemies right flank.” Despite the audacious nature of the plan, it held great risk for the Texans as they would be charging against massed infantry who had conceivably achieved some measure of entrenchment.
Contrary to his outward confidence, Ford worried about the size of the opposing force, which he grossly overestimated. The Texan mentioned of the risk of attacking ranks of foot soldiers when he wrote that, “this may be the last fight of the war and from the number of Union men I see before me, I am going to be whipped.” Regardless of his private concerns, Ford initiated the assault with cannon fire along his center-front. He then followed the barrage with the 2nd Texas in the center, while simultaneously double-enveloping the Federal left and right with detachments of volunteer horse. The colonel described the action by his larger corps on the left, which he intended to deliver the decisive blow: “Very soon Captain Robinson charged with impetuosity. As was expected the Yankee skirmishers were captured and the enemy troops were retreating at a run.”
The intensity of the artillery and flank assaults placed the Union battalion in an untenable position, and the attack soon forced Barrett to retreat back to the coast. The Texans “pursued at the gallop” and harassed the Federal retrograde, which proved so unorganized that two marching Union columns physically crashed into each other, causing further chaos. The defeated commander eventually deployed a detachment from the 62nd U.S.C.T. to screen his main force's movement to safety. By the day's end, the bluecoats lost approximately 30 soldiers dead, over 100 soldiers captured, and suffered the disgraceful loss of two “battle flags” belonging to the 34th Indiana Volunteer Regiment.
Texan maneuvers during final battle of the Civil War offered a veritable display of the advantages of well armed cavalry when used properly on the 19 th century battlefield. This demonstration first manifested when Ford exploited the increased movement pace offered by mounted soldiers to mobilize and reinforce the Texan garrison at Palmetto Ranch with a rapid march. He next utilized the speed unique to cavalry organizations to envelop the Federal position, though risky due to the potential degradation by of massed infantry rifles. In the culmination of the battle, the same mobility facilitated a rapid charge of the Union line, which, along with mobile artillery effects, compelled the Federal retreat. He finally utilized mounted pursuit and harassment to complete his victory, leading to the capturing several Union companies and additional casualties.
These qualities exemplified the most effective aspects, as pertains to tactical manifestations, of Texas's predilection for mounted warfare during the Civil War. It also revealed that the historical Lone Star strength of rapid mobilization by interested volunteers still retained relevancy. Ford, as veteran of the Texian Army, the Mexican War, and numerous Texas Ranger assignments, had absorbed these lessons throughout thirty years of fighting on the Texas frontier. As demonstrated by the fight at Palmetto Ranch, this combat experience had uniquely prepared him to counter the Union threat with superior versatility. Since the Lone Star State had begun the war with the mobilization of Mounted Rifles under one Texas Ranger icon, Ben McCulloch, it was only fitting that the state would finish the war with Texas Cavalry under another, John Salmon Ford.
The defense of the Texan homeland against both Amerindian and Union incursion, even as the state deployed thousands of soldiers to fight in far flung theaters, revealed structural challenges in their reliance on both militia and active forces for coordinated defense. Traditional Texan inadequacies with logistical support and sustained recruitment again plagued their attempts to establish a long-term and robust mounted presence on the frontier. The expanded use of citizen conscription for specialized ranger service also diluted the defenders' specialized capabilities. Yet in contrast to the struggling northwestern defense, the cavalry responses to the Union incursions along the Gulf coast, specifically at Brownsville, proved successful as they relied upon historical Texan strengths: rapid and limited duration mobilization, aggressive strikes, and mobile superiority.
Ultimately, when the Union Army deployed to conquer Texas as the Mexico had attempted in decades past, Lone Star society responded with an unprecedented cavalry mobilization that reflected its historical predilection for mounted warfare. Whether fighting as Napoleonic light cavalry abroad or as irregular rangers at home, the rebel horsemen of Texas sought to of emulate their forbearers who had won fame at San Jacinto and across the Comanche frontier. This movement, which captured the imagination of the entire state, revealed a deeply engrained societal ethos that associated masculinity with armed horsemanship. The resulting quantity of Texan cavalrymen who served in grey remained unmatched throughout the Civil War by any contemporary state, Confederate or Union, marking the depth of the frontier society's commitment to mounted warfare.
Despite this epic mobilization, there would be no victory for the Lone Star State. The scale of the resulting defeat for both Texas and the South proved epic in both material and human destruction. The Confederacy lost over 200,000 soldier dead, and the Lone Star people suffered the death or incapacitation of a quarter of their productive manpower. While the eastern focus of the war spared Texas the direct territorial devastation experienced by states such as Virginia and Georgia, four years of frontier defense, massive force projection, agricultural atrophy, naval blockades, and financial indebtedness wrecked the state socially and economically.
Yet despite the tectonic experience that destroyed the lives of thousands of Texas soldiers and families, and shattered entire states, a silver lining emerged from the unprecedented scope of cavalry mobilization. Mounted fighting from New Mexico to Georgia and across Texas's Indian Frontier, by tens of thousands of volunteer horsemen, produced an unanticipated benefit for the broken state. Four years of concentrated and constant combat, across a wide variance of combat theaters and environments, trained a new generation horsemen in the hard lessons of warfare. As the rebellion ended, and stalwarts like Ford retired from their final commands, new leaders prepared to assume leadership of Texas's martial tradition.
This revitalization would center on the reemergence of the Texas Rangers as the Lone Star State's most effective security force as the U.S. Army failed to pacify the volatile Indian Frontier and the troubled Rio Grande Valley. Personified by Civil War veterans who later rose as frontier captains, these cavalrymen employed the tactical expertise they gained as Confederate officers to command highly effective, and controversially brutal, mounted constabulary companies against Anglo outlaws, Hispanic raiders, and Amerindian foes on the Great Plains. Under these leaders, the legacy of cavalry mobilization during the War of Rebellion transitioned and flourished as the premier law enforcement order of the American West. The explosion of Texan mounted arms for the Civil War was over, but the reign of the iconic Texas Ranger had only begun.
Nathan Jennings is a Cavalry officer serving as a history instructor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. He holds a Master of Arts in American History from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on warfare in 19th century Texas.
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