Texas Before The Civil War Essay

THE PRIDE OF TEXAS

Before the Civil War, most Texans felt a strong attachment to the union they had joined in 1845. Concern arose because of attacks on southern lifestyles by Northern politicians would be detrimental to their prosperity. Although only five percent of Texans owned slaves, Texas citizens opposed interference with slavery because the success of Texas was dependent on it. Cotton production was the main source of the economy, and Texans would do anything to protect it and their way of life. Texas voted to secede from the union in February 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America. Governor Sam Houston declined to take an oath of allegiance to the new government; President Lincoln wanted to send troops to help support Houston

if he would contest the convention, but Houston refused the offer because he did not want to start a civil conflict in Texas. He retired to his home in Huntsville, where he later died on July 26, 1863.
Texas acted quickly to secede, not waiting for an official vote, a Texas militia group led by Ben McCulloch and John Ford seized the federal military fort headquartered in San Antonio.

They demanded the surrender of all us Army installations and supplies to Texas forces. This action could have been the first battle of the war except that Major General Twiggs in San Antonio was commander of all US military posts in Texas and was a southerner supporter as well. He quietly turned command over to the Texans without any equivocation. With this acquisition, Texas and the South controlled ten percent of the military forces and equipment of the United States without an act of aggression by either party.

Jefferson Davis’s request for volunteer troops provided 25,000 soldiers by the end of 1861, and over the course of the war, approximately 90,000 Texans served in the southern army. Men signed up and served in units such as Terry’s Texas Rangers; this regiment fought in every major battle east of the Mississippi River. Texas military forces like John Bell Hood’s Brigade fought as part of Robert E Lee’s Army of Virginia. General Lee is quoted stating that "Texas soldiers were among his finest and most fierce

soldiers.”
The North enacted a plan to restrain the Confederacy by using a blockade of ships that would cut off supplies to the Confederate troops and would stop the shipment of cotton to England. By late 1861 the Union Navy closed off the Atlantic sea, and in the fall of 1862, the war reached Texas. Union ships had been blockading the island ports of Galveston, but in October 1862 Union soldiers occupied the city. The Confederates needed to take the city back as it was a vital shipping port for feeding supplies to the other southern states. General John Magruder, the group commander of the Texas Confederate forces, made plans to take Galveston back. The Confederates allocated two steamboats designed to carry cargo called the "Neptune" and "The Bayou City" and turned them into warships. The decks of each boat were lined with cotton bales for protection against Union fire with places for soldiers to stand and fire their weapons. January 1, 1863, Joe McGruder gave orders to move 300 soldiers to cross and wade through the shallow waters of the bay to reach the island of Galveston. Union forces were caught by surprise and took cover under the protection of their gunboats. The Confederates used these “cotton-clad” steamboats to bombard and rammed the Union ships. Sharpshooters fired on the Union forces as the Neptune moved into ram the ship the Harriet Lane. The Union never tried to retake Galveston after they were defeated and forced out of the bay.
The North maintained the naval blockade by stopping all shipping in and out of the Gulf of Mexico. On September 5, 1860, the union tried again to invade Texas, this time at Sabine Pass. Major General William Franklin left New Orleans with a military force of 5000 troops to land at Sabine Bay in hopes of capturing Beaumont and Houston. The mission was to shut down the production of military supplies and halt shipments to the Confederate forces. On the morning of September 8, 1863, a Union fleet of gunboats and troop transports sailed into Sabine Pass ready to take Fort Griffin and begin to invade Texas. This Fort was earlier abandoned, except for a small force of Confederate soldiers that were sent there for punishment. As the fleet approached Fort Griffin, they came under fire from six cannons on the river bank. "Fort Griffin’s small force of 44 men, under the command of Lt. Richard W. Dowling, forced the Union flotilla to retire and captured the gunboat Clifton and about 200 prisoners."1
As the blockage in the Gulf continued, Texas cotton made its way down the El Camino Real to Mexico.

The cotton made its way onto ships just south of Brownsville headed to the European markets. Since the ships were sailing under the Mexican flag, the Union gunboats were not allowed to stop these ships. This trade helped the Confederates support the war effort for a while longer but eventually comes to an end with a Union mounted a campaign to stop the traffic of cotton into Mexico and close down the entire Texas coast. Texans maintained the thought that states should be able to make their own political, economic and social decisions with minimal federal government interference especially when it came to slavery. Texans thought that slavery was vital to the economy as it was an imperative need that the farmers believed that they could not make money without slaves harvesting

crops.
Rip Ford defeated Union troops in the battle of Palmito Ranch, near Brownsville, on May 13, 1865, the last battle of the war after the surrender of Robert E. Lee in April 1865. The first and final military action of the civil war started and ended in Texas.