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The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865

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The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865 THE RIO GRANDE EXPEDITION 1863-1865 Stephen A. Townsend, B. A., M. S. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2001 APPROVED: Richard Lowe, Major Professor William Painter, Committee Member Richard Ruderman, Committee Member Ronald Marcello, Committee Member Randolph B. Campbell, Committee Member Todd Smith, Committee Member Richard Golden, Chair of the Department of History C. Neal Tate, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................... iii PREFACE ....................................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1. TO PLANT THE FLAG IN TEXAS ............................................................ 1 2. THE FINEST CAMPAIGN OF THE WAR................................................. 39 3. FALL BACK AND SAVE THE COTTON.................................................. 79 4. THE RED RIVER BECKONS1 ................................................................... 21 5. THE CAVALRY OF THE WEST................................................................ 167 6. TROUBLES SOUTH OF THE BORDER.................................................... 192 7. THE WAR ENDS IN TEXAS ...................................................................... 220 8. WAR AND THE LOWER RIO GRANDE VALLEY ................................. 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 267 ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Map showing cotton routes to the Rio Grande.......................................................... 7 2. Map of the Texas coast.............................................................................................. 42 3. Map of the middle Texas coast ................................................................................. 47 4. Map showing the Marine District of Matagorda....................................................... 111 5. Front page of the first edition of the Loyal National Union Journal......................... 158 iii PREFACE In October 1863 the United States Army launched the Rio Grande Expedition from New Orleans. The third of four Federal campaigns against Confederate Texas, this expedition was led by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. He had been ordered by President Abraham Lincoln to plant the flag in Texas as a warning to the French in Mexico. He was also to stop the export of cotton through Brownsville, Texas. By December, Union forces controlled the Texas coast from Brownsville to the Matagorda Peninsula. By January 1864, however, the expedition ground to a halt as Banks prepared for the fourth and final attempt to invade Texas, the Red River campaign. This dissertation tells the story of the Rio Grande Expedition. It examines not only the military activities of Union and Confederate forces, but also the fear generated within the civilian population of Texas as Union invaders threatened to overrun the state. It also examines the impact that Federal troops had on events in Mexico, both during and after the war. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Richard Lowe for his direction of this dissertation and to the other members of my committee (Ray Stephens, J. B. Smallwood, Robert LaForte, William Painter, and Richard Ruderman) for their scholarly advice over the years. iv CHAPTER I TO PLANT THE FLAG IN TEXAS During the Civil War, the year 1863 marked a turning point for Union armies on the battlefield. The two July victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the crushing Confederate defeat at Chattanooga marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln had waited a long time for such victories to come. Perhaps the Union would be preserved after all. Despite the major victories of 1863, Lincoln worried about those things that might allow the Confederacy to continue the struggle. Although the Confederacy had been cut in two by the Union victories at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, states west of the Mississippi River still caused grave concern for Lincoln. The one state that presented the most problems was Texas. Despite the best efforts of the Union blockade, Lincoln could not stem the flow of cotton being exported from Texas. If one thing could keep the Confederacy alive, it was its ability to export cotton. This vital commodity allowed the Confederacy to trade for war materials which they desperately needed. Lincoln believed he had to stop the flow of cotton out of Texas if he expected to hasten the end of the Civil War. The area where active cotton trading took place was in the lower Rio Grande Valley. The two principal cities involved in the trade were Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, directly across the river. Located at the mouth of the river on the Mexican side was the town of 1 2 Bagdad, the port of entry for goods assigned to northern Mexico. Used as early as 1780 as a port of entry, it never grew large until the Civil War transformed it into a bustling center of commerce. Bagdad offered tolerable anchorage and harbor facilities for the numerous vessels that crowded its waters. Many accounts indicated that a state of lawlessness existed in Bagdad, a common characteristic in many boom towns. Once goods were unloaded at Bagdad, they were carted thirty miles west over bad roads to Matamoros. Many of these goods were ferried across the river to Brownsville. The Mexican government levied a duty of 12 1/2 percent on all goods exported before the goods were allowed to be ferried across to Brownsville. The primary Confederate export, cotton, would return to Bagdad by the same route, with the Mexican government collecting import duties. The twin cities of Matamoros and Brownsville were the major centers of the trans-Mississippi cotton trade with Europe.1 One aspect of this region's geography posed a difficult problem for Lincoln. Half of the mouth of the Rio Grande was Mexican territorial water and could not be legally blockaded since Mexico was a neutral country. As a result, Matamoros, like Bermuda and Nassau, became a large depot for exchanging European goods for cotton.2 This unique international situation and the commercial opportunities it presented were not lost 1William Watson, Adventures of a Blockade Runner or Trade in Time of War (London: T. Fisher Unwin, Paternoster Square, 1898), 20-21; James Daddysman, The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy and Intrigue (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 18-20; Bill Winsor, Texas in the Confederacy: Military Installations, Economy and People (Hillsboro, Tex.: Hill Junior College Press, 1978), 82. 2Bern Anderson, By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1977), 228-29. 3 on a Brownsville business called M. Kenedy and Company. Formed in 1850, this steamboat company had a virtual monopoly on steamboat operations from Brownsville upriver to Rio Grande City by 1861, a distance of about 100 miles.3 This company, led by Richard King, Miflin Kenedy, Charles Stillman, James O'Donnell, and Robert Penny, anticipated that the mouth of the Rio Grande would become the back door of the Confederacy through which large quantities of cotton would flow. When the war broke out in 1861, the members of the company used their steamboats to aid the Confederate cause. In order for their boats to haul cargo for the Confederacy, the company placed their steamboats under Mexican registry. This meant that Union blockaders could not seize their cargoes because of Mexico's neutrality. When the Union naval vessel U.S.S. Portsmouth came to blockade the mouth of the Rio Grande, the steamboats hid behind a front of Mexican ownerships and registry that placed titles in the names of some of the firm's Mexican friends and business connections in Matamoros. M. Kenedy and Company, with offices in Matamoros, conducted business on both sides of the Rio Grande. Even though Federal blockaders at the mouth of the Rio Grande were to check on all trade, they would not interfere with vessels flying the flag of a neutral country.4 3Pat Kelley, River of Lost Dreams (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 45. 4Tom Lea, The King Ranch, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1957), 1:183-86; John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford's Texas, ed. Stephen B. Oates (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 463-65; Chauncey D. Stillman, Charles Stillman, 1810-1875 (New York: Chauncey D. Stillman, 1956), 27; Kelley, River of Lost Dreams, 45. 4 Although M. Kenedy and Company eluded the grasp of Union blockaders, another problem emerged for this company. The Rio Grande, or "Rio Bravo" as it was sometimes called, proved to be a difficult river for steamboat navigation. One foreign visitor made these comments about the Rio Grande: Many of the turns were so sharp that the steamer, though of no great length, could not be steered round them, but often had to butt up against the banks, which caused her head to bound off and pushed her round, and by backing and repeating this several times, she succeeded in getting round the corners.5 The river, about eighty yards wide, had a depth of about seven to nine feet. The depth at the mouth of the river, however, was only three feet. This meant that large ocean-going vessels from Europe could not sail up the river to Matamoros without running aground. They preferred to stay at the mouth of the river and let the shallow-draft
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