1861: Secession and Confederacy 

On February 1, 1861, Texas seceded from the Federal Union following a 171 - 6 vote by the Secession Convention. Governor Sam Houston was one of a small minority opposed to secession. The next day the Committee of Public Safety was directed to seize all federal property in Texas. February 16 saw the siezure of the US Army facility at San Antonio. Two days later US General David E. Twiggs surrendered all US military posts in Texas. On February 21 volunteers under the command of Col. John S. "Rip" Ford seized US property at Brazos Santiago in the Rio Grande Valley.

An article in the [Little Rock] Arkansas Daily True Democrat gives a snapshot of the early actions by Confederate forces in Texas:

"We extract from a private letter, just received from Brazos San Diego, Texas, the following extract. The writer is a member of a military company, recently organized at Galveston, for the purpose of assisting in the capture of the forts now occupied by the federal troops in that State. He says: "We arrived here on the 20^th inst., Col. Ford being commander-in-chief of our company. He is better known in the State as 'Old Rip,' and is said always to be in a bad humor unless he is engaged in a fight. He had scarcely gotten more than half way from the steamer to the barracks, before he ordered the American flag to be pulled down and the lone star, to be raised in its place. But after some time parlying [sic] he was persuaded by his brother officers to show the enemy a little more respect, and he accordingly gave them an hour to breathe. The United States flag was then struck in silence, no one seeming to exult over it. But when the lone star went up, a long deafening shout came up from Ford and his four hundred and fifty rangers.

"We have taken about fifty pieces of artillery, and will go over to the Rio Grande to-morrow for the purpose of attacking the fort at Brownsville. They are aware of our intentions, and are said to be busy in making preparation to give us a 'warm reception.' They have one hundred and forty field pieces and about three hundred and fifty soldiers, their position behind the fort giving them greatly the advantage. We received a dispatch this evening, informing us that they intended to resist to the death.

"Our men are nearly all armed with a Minnie rifle, a six-shooter, and a cutlass. You may look for interesting news by the next steamer."

March 2 saw the seizure of US revenue schooner Henry Dodge by authority of the Committee of Safety. Three days later the Texas secession convention passed an ordinance uniting Texas with the Confederate States of America.

On April 12, CSA forces fired on Ft. Sumter in the Harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The American Civil War had begun.

Five days later, on April 17, Confederate Col. Earl Van Dorn lead volunteers in capture of the Star of the West, off the coast near Indianola.

On the 20^th, customs officials at Aransas seized US Coast Guard schooner, Twilight.

On April 21 Confederate Col. Earl Van Dorn assumed military command of Texas.

April 28 saw the capture of the US 8th Infantry at San Antonio. Prisoners of war were taken.

Van Dorn, who served as commander of the Texas district from April to September 1861, organized defense companies, authorized the use of slave labor for building fortifications, and worked to secure heavy cannons for coastal defense.

May 5 saw the occupation of Forts Arbuckle, Cobb and Washita, in the Indian Territory (present Oklahoma) by Texans under Col. W. C. Young. There was the capture of US troops at Adams Hill near San Antonio on May 8. Additionally, aside from Union-Confederate conflicts erupting, this was the period of border unrest between Anglos and the Mexican national Juan Cortina.

On July 2, the USS South Carolina initiated the blockade of Galveston. From July 4-7, the South Carolina captured or destroyed 10 vessels off Galveston.

Despite popular belief, the Civil War did not immediately isolate the population along the Texas Coast. There was no permanent blockade at Sabine Pass for the first 18 months of the war. Blockade-runners could set sail in broad daylight with little risk of being captured. There was no blockade of the neighboring Calcasieu River for the first three years. After the blockade began, blockade-runners sailed after midnight of a moonless, foggy night, but the risk of striking a reef was greatly increased.

On August 14 General Paul 0. Hebert was appointed commander of Confederate forces in Texas. Hebert concluded that he would be unable to prevent a landing on the coast and determined to fight the enemy in the interior.

In November 1861 Union naval forces began a series of harassing activities along the Texas coast. On the 7^th and 8^th, two launches and 40 men from the U. S. frigate Santee, off Galveston, after being repulsed by the Confederate steamer General Rusk, surprised and cut out the Confederate privateer Royal Yacht.

The German soldier and duellist Augustus Buchel had joined the Texas Militia on the commencement of the Civil War. Late in 1861 he was made lieutenant colonel of the 3^rd Texas Infantry and served in south Texas.

Still, by the early winter of 1861, in other parts of the South, it was already noticeable that the North had the advantage in industry and supplies. Thomas Almond Ashby described the conditions facing the men of the 7^th Virginia Cavalry at this time in his memoirs, The Valley Campaigns: Being the Reminiscences of a Non-Combatant While Between the Lines in the Shenandoah Valley During the War of the States (1914).

"The necessities of the situation, the surroundings, and the character of the men who made up his command made an efficient organization an almost impossible task; for at that time of the war the cavalry service was poorly equipped with military saddles and the comforts of the camp, was armed with double-barrel shot guns and old pistols and rifles, and many of the men were without sabers or had those of a very indifferent kind."

Another writer to recall those first Confederate cavalry units in Virginia was Jubal Anderson Early. In his Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War Between the States (1912), he wrote:

"The cavalry regiment, consisting of nine companies, was armed principally with double-barrelled shot guns, and sabres of an old pattern which had been collected in the country from old volunteer companies. The State had very few arms of any kind, and those furnished the infantry had been borrowed from North Carolina. There were no cavalry arms of any value."

At another point he noted:

"Our cavalry consisted of one organized regiment of nine companies, and a number of unattached companies. This cavalry was armed principally with shot guns and very inferior sabres, and was without the discipline and drill necessary to make that arm effective in a charge."

By the end of 1861, 25,000 Texans were in the Confederate army. Two-thirds of these were in the cavalry, the branch of service preferred by Texans. 

1862: Swords Hanging on the Wall

The Civil War was a war of artillery and firearms. The sword, however, still carried with it the very personification of military duty and the price in exacted. This symbolism was not at its most potent when the weapon was polished and the side of its owner, but solitary, on the wall in the home of the owner's survivors. There is an exchange between two women described on Myrta Lockett Avary's, A Virginia Girl in the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903).

"I called on another widowed friend. Her husband - a captain, too - had been sent home, his face mutilated past recognition by the shell that killed him. Her little ones were around her, and the captain's sword was hanging on the wall. When I spoke to her of it as a proud possession, her eyes filled. His little boy said with flashing eyes:

"It's my papa's s'ode. I wants to be a man. An' I'll take it down and kill all the Yankees!"

"H-sh!" his mother put her hand over his mouth. "God grant there may be no war when you are a man!" she said fervently.

"Amen!" I responded.

"Oh, Nell," she said, "when it's all over, what good will it do? It will just show that one side could fight better than the other, or had more money and men than the other. It won't show that anybody's right. You can't know how it is until it hits you, Nell I'm proud of him, and proud of his sword; I wouldn't have had him out of it all. I wouldn't have had him a coward. But oh, Nell, I feel that war is wrong! I'm sorry for every Northern woman who has a circle like this around her, and a sword like that hanging on her wall."

Still further in the book, the author describes a visit at the home of a man she calls Bolling in Virginia:

"The night we spent at this old Virginia homestead was repetition of a night previously described, with variations. Here were the same old-fashioned mahogany furniture with claw feet and spindle legs, and wax lights in brass and silver candelabra, and rare old china, and some heirlooms whose history we were interested in. Several of these had come with the first Bollings from England. There was a sword which had come down from the War of the Roses, and on the wall, in a place of special honor, hung the sword of a Bolling who had distinguished himself in the Revolution. Mr. Bolling took it down and laid it in Milicent's outstretched hands with a smile.

"I am a believer in State's rights, and I am a Secessionist, I suppose," said the old man with a sigh, as he hung the sword back in its place. "But - I hate to fight the old flag. I hate that."

"Above the sword was the portrait of the Bolling who had worn the sword, a soldierly looking fellow in the uniform of a Revolutionary colonel.

"He saved the old flag once at the cost of his life," the aged man said, sighing again. "He is buried out yonder in the graveyard, wrapped in the folds of the very flag he snatched from the hands of the British. If we were to open his grave tonight, we would find his bones and ashes wrapped in that flag he died to save. Yes, I am sorry to fight the old flag."

"Then," I said innocently and without thinking, "it is well that you are exempted from service in the field."

"His eyes flashed.

"Ah, no, my dear! Since fighting there is, I wish I could be in it. If I were young enough and strong enough I'd take that sword down and follow Robert Lee. Virginia is invaded."

These were the sentiments and contradictions of war as personified to Southerners by the sword. This is not to say that Union officer were not also capable of using the sword to make romantic and chivalric gestures. Thomas Almond Ashby included such an account in his memoirs, The Valley Campaigns: Being the Reminiscences of a Non-Combatant While Between the Lines in the Shenandoah Valley During the War of the States (1914).

"When General Duryee was taking leave of my mother he delivered to her care a very handsome dress sword in a gold-mounted scabbard, with Damascus steel blade. He told her that in 1859 this sword had been presented to him by the State of Virginia on the occasion of the unveiling of the Henry Clay monument in the Capitol grounds at Richmond, when he was colonel of a New York regiment that was being entertained by the citizens of Richmond. He explained that as he was now in arms against the State of Virginia he desired to leave this sword with a citizen of Virginia until the war was ended, when he would request its return. He handed my mother a note with the sword explaining how it came into her possession. This sword remained in our home until after the war when it was returned to General Duryee at his request."

On January 15, 1862 Confederate Major General Mansfield Lovell, at the request of CSA Secretary of War Benjamin, took over 14 steamers at New Orleans. These were to be armed and used to bolster defenses in the area. The plan was to outfit the steamships with iron rams to attack the Union river gunboats. Secretary of War Benjamin wrote, "Each Captain will ship his own crew, fit up his own vessel, and get ready within the shortest possible delay. It is not proposed to rely on cannons, which these men are not skilled in using, nor on firearms. The men will be armed with cutlasses."

The war moved to the Texas Coast. On February 22, the US Navy attacked Aransas Pass.

April 25 saw the capture of US troops at Matagorda Island and the surrender of US forces at Indianola. On the same day Federal forces captured New Orleans.

Martial law was declared in Texas on May 30.

Through the period of August 16-18 the US Navy bombarded Corpus Christi, but attempts to capture the city were repulsed.

On September 24-25, the U.S.S. Rachael Seaman and the Kensington attacked Sabine Pass, Texas, capturing the Confederate fortifications.

On the 26^th federal troops burned a railway depot near Sabine City.

On October 1, 1862, a Union flotilla sailed into Galveston Bay. On October 4, encountering only slight resistance, a Union mortar flotilla captured the defenses of the island. They established a tighter blockade of the Port Galveston on October 6. Aided by a Union Army detachment, the flotilla captured Galveston on October 8.

Confederate General John Bankhead Magruder arrived in Texas on October 10, 1862, and assumed command on November 29. From his headquarters in Houston, Magruder ably administered his department and was generally popular with the citizens of the region, despite occasional clashes with the governor, especially over the enforcement of conscription laws.

"Prince John," thrice promoted in the Mexican War for "gallant and meritorious conduct," had become a Mason in San Diego Lodge (No. 35) while stationed in California after the Mexican War, but his advancement was stopped due to a duel with the Lodge Treasurer.

On October 29 Confederate forces attacked the US Steamer Dan at Sabine City. 

On October 31 Union forces bombarded Port Lavaca.

November 20 saw further US Naval action near Matagorda.

By November 30^th, Texas Governor Francis Lubbock pledged to support the efforts of General Magruder. Magruder was assembling a naval force in Buffalo Bayou comprised of "two old channel steamboats, the Bayou City and the Neptune, lined with protective walls of cotton bales" and dubbed "cottonclads." Magruder also reorganized an old cavalry brigade. These men, armed with bowie knives, shotguns and cutlasses, were converted into horse marines and prepared to take on the 32-gun Union fleet stationed in Galveston Bay.

In December Union forces stepped up the pressure. On December 12 the US Navy attacked the Confederates on Padre Island. On Christmas Day, Union forces landed at Galveston.  

1863: The Clash of Sabres  

On January 1, 1863 a large Confederate force of infantrymen and river steamers attacked the small Union contingent at Galveston, Texas. The U.S.S. Harriet Lane resisted mightily in a bloody battle fought with guns and cutlasses. During the fierce hand to-hand combat, the commanding officer, Captain J. M. Wainwright, was killed. The executive officer, Lieutenant Edward Lea, mortally wounded, died in the arms of his father, confederate Major A. M-Lea - one of the officers in charge of the confederate boarding party.

The Union forces surrendered or withdrew after much bloody combat.

Leon B. Smith, in a January 1895 letter to the Galveston News, decades after this battle, provided an interesting coda to the death of Captain Wainwright of the Harriet Lane. Smith, whose father, Coomodore Leon Smith, had been on the Confederate side of that conflict, noted that an article about the death of Captain Wainwright and his sword stirred his own memories and that quizzed his mother as to some details. He wrote:

"Upon reading same, I at once recollected quite a different story in regard to this, and immediately saw my mother, who is now in Houston, and without showing her the article, questioned her carefully as to who received the sword of Captain Wainright after the war, to which she gave me the following history, saying:

‘Your father received the sword of Captain J. W. Wainright immediately after the battle, and at the surrender on the decks of the Harriet Lane. The sword was handed him by an officer then in command, who surrendered the entire fleet to him. After investigation, he found that Captain Wainright was a brother Mason, and he at once placed in safety the sword, will and other papers necessary to be delivered to the relatives of Captain Wainright, and then proceeded to give the remains of his Masonic brother burial under the rites of that order.

‘After the general surrender and break up of the war your father and myself went to Havana, Cuba, taking with us the papers and sword of Captain Wainright. I left your father in Havana, and went to New York City, he giving me instructions to send for S. M. Wainright, a citizen of New York, and brother of the deceased Federal commander, which I did, and delivered to him in person the papers, etc.

‘Your father, however, stated to me that he would never deliver the sword to anyone except the son of Captain Wainright. Later on we went to San Francisco, California, and after remaining there some time. Your father, after returning to the Occidental Hotel one evening, seemed delighted, and said to me that he had found the young son of Captain Wainright, who was killed at Galveston, and sent him word that he wished to see him that evening at the hotel. He called; he was presented to me and we afterward became well acquainted.

‘Your father, in the presence of some of your relatives and our friends in California with a few words appropriate to the occasion, presented the son (who was then an ensign in the United States Navy, and named Jonah M. Wainright) with the sword with which his father gallantly commanded the Harriet Lane in one of the shortest and most decisive naval engagements during the war, and which was in his hands when he fell.?'

"I have in my possession at this date a clipping from a San Francisco paper which was sent to my mother some years after the war, the dates of which have been torn off, which says:

‘The late Jonah M. Wainright, U. S. N., the gallant young ensign who fell in the affair with the pirate Forward was a native of New York, and entered the navy in July, 1863. He was one of the most popular officers in the service, brave and efficient in the discharge of duty, kind and gentle towards his friends. His death is lamented not only by those who were his associates in the service, but by every member of the society in which he moved. Ensign Wainright had served three years on this coast. His master's commission was awaiting him at Panama and he was on his way to that port to be relieved when the bullet found him foremost in the attack. His brave father in 1862 was shot on the deck of the Harriet Lane off Galveston, a vessel which he commanded during a portion of the war. He died sword in hand, and Commodore Leon Smith, into whose hands his effects fell, on meeting young Wainright in California, presented him with the sword. Strangely enough, when the son was mortally wounded by the Mexican fire, the father's sword was in his hand. Truly the United States Navy may well be proud of such hereditary gallantry, and the memory of both father and son will be long preserved by those who serve under the flag.'

"I have been approached on this subject by a great many of my father's old friends, and no doubt, there are living today many such men who were present personally in the engagement and could corroborate these statements, besides the proof which I hold in my possession.

"After leaving California, my father, mother and myself went to Fort Wrangle, Alaska, where my father was killed by an Indian in ambush on Christmas Day, 1869. Shortly after this, my father's remains, myself and mother, were transported on the United States steamer, Newbern, thru the courtesy of the government, to San Francisco, California, where my father now lies. I have been induced to make this statement of facts in vindication of a cherished hope on the part of my father, which was to deliver this sword in person to Captain Wainright's son. Very Truly Yours, Leon B. Smith"

Galveston returned to the Confederacy, but the situation did not stay quiet. On January 11 there was a naval engagement off Galveston between the Hatteras (Union) and the Alabama (Confederate). The Hatteras was sunk and 100 of its crew captured.

On January 21, Confederate gunboats Josiah H. Bell and Uncle Ben captured the Union warships Morning Light and Velocity off Sabine Pass.

On April 18 a Federal landing party was captured at Sabine Pass.

Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle of Her Majesty's Coldstream Guards visited the Confederacy at this time and wrote of his observations in Three Months in the Southern States: April, June 1863 (Mobile: S. H. Goetzel.1864.) Among those was his April 1863 encounter with Augustus Buchel.

"Lieutenant-colonel Buchel is the working man of the corps, as he is a professional soldier. The men were well clothed, though great variety existed in their uniforms. Some companies wore blue, some gray, some had French képis, others wide-awakes and Mexican hats. They were a fine body of men, and really drilled uncommonly well. They went through a sort of guard-mounting parade in a most creditable manner. About a hundred out of a thousand were conscripts. (During all my travels in the South I never saw a regiment so well clothed or so well drilled as this one, which has never been in action, or been exposed to much hardship.)

"After the parade, we adjourned to Colonel Luckett's to drink prosperity to the 3d regiment.

"We afterwards had a very agreeable dinner with General Bee; Colonels Luckett and Buchel dined also. The latter is a regular soldier of fortune. He served in the French and Turkish armies, as also in the Carlist and the Mexican Wars, and I was told he had been a principal in many affairs of honor; but he is a quiet and unassuming little man, and although a sincere Southerner, is not nearly so violent against the Yankees as Luckett."

In May of 1863, the First Texas Confederate Cavalry Regiment was organized with a merging of the Third and Eighth Cavalry Regiments with Colonel Buchel as the commander. The regiment was a part of the First Brigade of the First Cavalry Division under the command of Major General Hamilton Bee. They saw service on the Texas Coast. Regimental commanders, Augustus Buchel and William Yager, placed their emphasis on precise discipline and gentlemanly conduct. Their training methods taught soldiers the valuable lessons of cavalry and Infantry maneuvers as well as saber combat and the proper care of horses and equipment. Many commanders maintained lax rules of propriety and organization, but the 1st Texas Mounted Rifles remained a cohesive and loyal unit, disbanding only under the proper orders. Even as the Confederacy fell around them, the troops remained steadfastly loyal to their fellows.

Texas was notorious within the Confederacy for being a fertile field from which to recruit cavalry units, but a place from which it was nigh on to impossible to recruit infantry. No Texan wished to go into battle without a horse. Yet the era of the effectiveness of cavalry was nearing an end.

On May 30 a US naval attack was made at Port Isabel.

That summer, far from Texas, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the bloodiest battle of the war would be fought. Confederate General John Brown Gordon, in his memoirs, Reminiscences of the Civil War (1904), recalled the spectacle and carnage of the cavalry charges at Gettysburg and appreciated the fading of an age.

"The introduction of gunpowder and bullets and of long-range repeating rifles has, in modern warfare, greatly lessened the effectiveness of cavalry in general battle with infantry, and deprived that great arm of the service of the terror which its charges once inspired. In wars of the early centuries, the swift horsemen rode down the comparatively helpless infantry and trampled its ranks under the horses' feet. For ages after the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, it was the vast bodies of cavalry that checked and changed the currents of battles and settled the fate of armies and empires. This is not true now--can never be true again; but a cavalry charge, met by a countercharge of cavalry, is still, perhaps, the most terrible spectacle witnessed in war. If the reader has never seen such a charge, he can form little conception of its awe-inspiring fury. Imagine yourself looking down from Gettysburg's heights upon the open, wide-spreading plain below, where five thousand horses are marshalled in battle line. Standing beside them are five thousand riders, armed, booted and spurred, and ready to mount. The bugles sound the "Mount!" and instantly five thousand plumes rise above the horses as the riders spring into their saddles. In front of the respective squadrons the daring leaders take their places. The fluttering pennants or streaming guidons, ten to each regiment, mark the left of the companies. On the opposite slope of the same plain are five thousand hostile horsemen clad in different uniforms, ready to meet these in countercharge. Under those ten thousand horses are their hoofs, iron-shod and pitiless, beneath whose furious tread the plain is soon to quiver. Again on each slope of the open field the bugles sound. Ten thousand sabres leap from scabbards and glisten in the sun. The trained horses chafe their restraining bits, and, as the bugle notes sound the charge, their nostrils dilate and their flanks swell in sympathetic impulse with the dashing riders. "Forward!" shouts the commander. Down the lines and through the columns in quick succession ring the echoing commands, "Forward, forward!" As this order thrills through eager ears, sabres flash and spurs are planted in palpitating flanks. The madly flying horses thunder across the trembling field, filling the air with clouds of dust and whizzing pebbles. Their iron-rimmed hoofs in remorseless tread crush the stones to powder and crash through the flesh and bones of hapless riders who chance to fall. As front against front these furious riders plunge, their sweeping sabres slashing edge against edge, cutting a way through opposing ranks, gashing faces, breaking arms, and splitting heads, it is a scene of wildest war, a whirling tempest of battle, short-lived but terrible."

In his Sketch of Cobb Legion Cavalry and Some Incidents and Scenes Remembered (1901, Wiley C. Howard wrote:

"Speaking of Hampton reminds me of an incident illustrating his cool courage and high sense of honor, even when hard pressed by three or four adversaries in personal combat at Gettysburg the last day, where our cavalry under Stuart fought a desperate and protracted battle lasting several hours on our extreme left with the enemy's cavalry under Pleasanton, where Hampton was severely wounded. Being hard pressed and partially disabled, while protecting himself with saber from a furious onslaught of three of the enemy and cornered against a fence, another came up in his rear and shot him in the back. An eye witness who with others was flying to his relief, said that while he parried manfully the blows being rained on his devoted head by his antagonists in front, he turned his head with those snapping eyes flashing upon the man who shot him and said, "You dastardly coward - shoot a man from the rear!" and continued to fight the foes in front until rescued from his perilous position by three men of his old brigade, belonging to the Jeff. Davis Legion of Georgia, who wounded and drove off his assailants."

He further noted:

"The day before this happened, when we returned to the vicinity of Gettysburg, near a place called Hunterstown, I think, our command had a thrilling experience and while charging a body of cavalry down a lane leading by a barn, ran into an ambuscade of men posted in the barn who dealt death and destruction upon us. Within five minutes some four or five officers were killed and wounded and about fifteen men were slain or wounded. Col. DeLoney leading the charge on his prancing bay Marion was unhorsed, his charger being shot, fell upon him so that with great difficulty he extricated himself from his prostrate position. Our men had passed him meantime, driving and routing the force in front, when three Yankees seeing his almost helpless position and that he was an officer of note, dashed upon him to subdue, capture him or kill him, shooting and cutting him from their horses. But this superb fighter, with his Hugunot [sic] blood boiling, raised himself on one knee and with his dexterous and wiry arm fenced and parried their blows, Charley Harris who was helping him, being wounded, until Bugler H. E. Jackson of Company C, Cobb Legion, who was coming up from the rear, spurred his horse to the fray and to DeLoney's aid, fencing with these daring assailants, at last by a dexterous movement successfully thrust one man through the side, the others escaping with saber wounds from DeLoney's shimmering blade as he rose to his feet. Jackson's bugle, coat and shirt were cut through with saber blows and his sword, which I brought home for him from the surrender at Greensboro, N. C., has four or five distinct gashes along its edge made there by these valiant foes in that desperate rencounter."

In this era of single-shot muskets and rifles, it took very little time for a battle to become intimate. David Emmons Johnston described the infighting in his memoirs, The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War (1914), thus, "Men fired into each other's faces; there were bayonet thrusts, cutting with sabres, hand-to-hand contests, oaths, curses, yells and hurrahs."

September 8 saw the Battle of Sabine Pass. A small unit led by Lt. Dick Dowling, a Houston saloonkeeper, repulsed Federal forces under Gen. William B. Franklin.

While conducting the business of war was enough to keep most Texans of a fighting spirits busy, a few of the more passionate still had to seek to avenge their honor, as well. Albert Gallatin Hervey was a Navarro County resident off fighting for the Confederacy with a Texas regiment. On September 13, 1863 he wrote home about his recent combat experiences. He also reported:

"...this is the general sentiment of Texians in the army, General Marmaduke commanded the Cavalry in the fight below L. Rock & still in the rear[.] he killed General Marsh Walker (in Ark, Brigadier) a few days ago in a Duel, he was under arrest but I suppose was released for the emergency..."

To an officer, circumstances might mean everything. Thomas Almond wrote in his memoirs of a Union officer, a Col. J. R. Kenly:

"For the Federals had put up a manly fight and only yielded when overcome by vastly superior numbers. Many of them were captured because they were too manly to make their escape. This was especially true of Colonel Kenly, their commander, who rallied his men, making them fight like tigers, until while riding among his soldiers, who were mixed in with the Confederates all about them, he was wounded in the head with a cavalry saber, unhorsed, and captured."

Almond accompanied his father, a doctor, to treat the captured colonel.

"He did not care for the wound nor feel unpleasant over his capture, but he did resent the way in which he was wounded. It seems that in the cavalry charge the men were much mixed up. Darkness was coming on. Distinctions were not easily made and he had been struck with a saber by a private cavalryman before his surrender was demanded. Having been an officer in the old army, he was punctilious about etiquette and thought he had been treated with brutality. In a general melee, such as was going on, men do not show good manners; every man is looking after himself and has little consideration for the other fellow. So the cavalryman that inflicted the wound most probably did not know that he was making an assault upon an officer of high rank."

On November 2-6 combined federal army and navy operation resulted in the occupation of Brazos Island and Brownsville.

On November 15^th, Union and Confederate troops battled for control of Corpus Christi Pass.

Two days later Union forces captured the Confederate battery at Aransas Pass.

There was skirmish at Cedar Bayou in Matagorda County on November 22.

On November 29 the US Navy attacked and captured Ft. Esperanza at Matagorda Island.

There was another skirmish on December 16 between Union and Confederate forces at Matagorda Bay. The US Navy attacked Pass Covallo.

Public entertainment regressed because the prosecution of the war was all-important between 1861-1865. Nevertheless, there was some effort to entertain Confederate soldiers in the area as well as the public. In December 1863, the Sabine Pass "Military Corps Dramatique" presented an "entertainment, which was well-patronized, and the audience seemed to be well pleased."

A bit further down the coast, Buchel's 1^st Texas Cavalry participated in a skirmish with Union forces on December 29^th and 30^th at Matagorda Peninsula.

1864: Sabre Cuts  

Slowly, the Union naval blockade managed a strangle hold on the ports of the South. By 1864 the South was feeling its practical encirclement as never before. The Union navy held it fast at every point but three--Wilmington, Charleston, and Mobile; and round these three the blockading ships grew stronger daily.

The Texas Coast was another matter. The Sabine Pass and Galveston also remained in Southern hands. The border town of Matamoros still imported contraband. These three points, however, were closely watched. The material that did get through them now stayed mostly in Texas, which had been completely severed from the eastern South by the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The Union navy now held the whole line of the Mississippi and held all the tributary streams: Ohio; Cumberland; and Tennessee.

January 8 saw naval action at the mouth of Caney Creek in Matagorda County.

On February 11 the US Navy bombarded and destroyed the town of Lamar in Aransas County.

There were further naval actions near Indianola on February 23.

On March 10 Federal troops evacuated Indianola.

On March 12, 1864, the Texas 1^st Cavalry was transferred to Louisiana and ordered to report to General Taylor in Alexandria, Louisiana. Also on March 12, Confederate forces evacuated Ft. McIntosh at Laredo.

On March 17 Confederate forces attacked Federals at Corpus Christi.

On March 19 Federal forces attacked Laredo.

On March 21 a Union blockade ship attacked at Velasco.

Federal forces under Texan E. J. Davis were defeated near Laredo on March 22.

April 8, 1864 saw the opening of the Mansfield engagement, also called the Battle of the Sabine Crossroads. Among those on the Confederate side were the German Carl Augustus Buchel and General Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac, a French aristocrat. General Alfred Mouton was one of the first Confederates to fall in the fighting. His place in the front line was immediately handed to his brigadier, General de Polignac, whose upraised sword waved the soldiers onward up the hill. Confederate General Taylor then ordered General Walker's infantry and General Tom Green's cavalry to attack the left flank as the melee progressed, after which the Union line broke and their infantry fled pell-mell to the rear. Union General Banks rode up and down the Union ranks during the panic, begging his men to turn around and fight, but utterly to no avail.

Like Buchel, De Polignac was a professional soldier. General de Polignac, a nobleman who had commanded French troops in the Crimean War, for some unknown reason chose to fight for the Confederate States. General DePolignac was a handsome man, who sported a well-trimmed beard and a spiked mustache. W. P. Doran, a war correspondent for the Houston Telegraph, wrote,

"Polignac was a true type of a Frenchman. He was about forty-five years of age, medium size with a long sharp nose, and he resembled Napoleon Bonaparte's portraits. He spoke the French and English languages fluently, and when in camp, was no better dressed than one of his orderlies. Those not knowing him would take him for a common soldier."

He continued,

"He ordered battalions and regiments to the different points specified on his map with the ease of a chess player."

"Polignac was every inch a soldier, and although a (French) volunteer on the Southern side, he went at it with a vim, and throughout that memorable campaign, displayed great heroism and great soldierly qualities. Before the troops became acquainted with him, they daily ridiculed him; but when they saw his skill as an officer, commanding in the field, admiration of (Gen.) Polignac soon followed."

Despite how beloved and respected General de Polignac became to the men of Mouton's division, they could not cope with his long French name, and they soon bestowed upon him the shorter sobriquet of  "Prince Polecat."

On April 9, 1864, Col. Augustus Buchel was struck by seven bullets and mortally wounded at the Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana.

There was a skirmish near Eagle Pass on June 18.

There was another skirmish, this time at Las Rucias in Cameron County on June 25.

There was a Union naval expedition to Galveston Bay on July 7.

On July 30 Confederate forces re-occupied Brownsville.

The southern Gulf Coast heated up with military operations conducted off Brazos Santiago Island by federal forces from August 4-15.

On August 17, 1864, General Magruder was transferred to the command of the Department of Arkansas and was superseded in Texas by General John G. Walker.

There was a skirmish at Port Isabel on August 19.

There was another skirmish at Boca Chica, near Brownsville, on October 14.

In spite of the prevalence of ever-improving firearms, the sword continued to have its place in a soldier's arsenal, especially in the cavalry. It could, however, be stymied and its victim protected by more mundane objects. W. R. Houghton and M. B. Houghton, in their memoirs, Two Boys in the Civil War and After (1912), describe an encounter one Texas soldier had in the fall of 1864 while fighting in Virginia.

"Afterwards, on a scout, about a dozen federal cavalry suddenly charged on this Texan and four companions. They stood their ground in the road, and my handsome friend got a saber cut on the head and a horse knocked him into the corner of the fence. His thick wool hat and the fortunate blow from the horse's shoulder doubtless saved his life. He picked himself up and was ready for the fray again within the time that a modern dude could brush his hair or wax his moustache."

The sabre's use in cavalry encounters may be noted in two accounts from Charles Colcock Jones' The Siege of Savannah in December, 1864, and the Confederate Operations in Georgia and the Third Military District of South Carolina During General Sherman's March from Atlanta to the Sea (1874). In the first, he wrote,

"In every rout of their cavalry, and in the many fights, which ensued, they continued to fly, refusing to surrender notwithstanding the demands of my men in close pursuit. Consequently, no alternative was left but to shoot or sabre them to prevent escape."

A bit later he writes,

"I would therefore most respectfully call the attention of the general commanding to the gallant conduct of Captain Clinch, who, when summoned to surrender by a Federal captain, responded by dealing him a severe blow on the head with his sabre. (Captain Clinch had previously received two gun shot wounds in the arm). Immediately a hand to hand fight ensued. Federal privates came to the assistance of their officer, but the fearless Clinch continued the unequal contest until he fell bleeding from eleven wounds (three sabre wounds, six bayonet wounds, and two gun shot wounds), from which, after severe and protracted suffering, he has barely recovered. His conduct was so conspicuous, and his cool bravery so much admired, as to elicit the praise of the enemy and even of General Sherman himself."

1865: Defeat   

Civil War naval actions largely revolved around artillery, but edged weapons and small arms had their part to play in. On January 4, 1865 U. S. Rear Admiral Porter, laying meticulous plans for the second Fort Fisher attack, ordered each of his commanding officers to "detail as many of his men as he can spare from the guns as a landing party." Armed with cutlasses and revolvers, the sailors and Marines were to hit the beach when the assault signal was made "and board the fort in a seaman-like way. The marines will form in the rear and cover the sailors. While the soldiers are going over the parapets in front, the sailors will take the sea face of Fort Fisher."

On January 21 the USS Penguin chased the steamer Granite City ashore off Velasco. The blockade-runner was under the protection of Confederate shore batteries. The Union commander reported that he was "of the opinion that the steamer could not be got off, and would eventually go to pieces, as there was a heavy sea rolling in and continually breaking over her, I did not think it was prudent to remain longer under the enemy's fire, as their guns were of longer range than ours."

In one of the final battles of the war, a confederate survivor, David Emmons Johnston recounts how quickly combat could become up close and personal.

"Then came a lull in the firing in front, and I heard a noise behind us; looking around, I saw a column of Federal cavalry close behind us, one of whom had boldly dashed up behind our regiment, seized the colors, and with drawn saber compelled Torbett, the color bearer, to surrender the same. Such was the character and bravery of the men we had to fight. Some one just then cried, "Fire!" and a portion of our regiment delivered its fire into the faces of the enemy in front. In a moment began an indiscriminate fight with clubbed muskets, flagstaffs, pistols and sabers. In a few moments all was over. We had met the enemy and we were theirs. This final struggle was most tragic. We were now marched out and surrounded by a cordon of cavalry." (The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War, 1914)

The United States Civil War effectively ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia on April 9, 1865. Various Confederate commanders surrender to their Union counterparts there. Confederate General John Brown Gordon surrendered his men to Union General Joshua Chamberlain. The incredible tension of the moment was occasionally dissipated by gestures on both sides.

As Gordon recalled in his memoirs, Reminiscences of the Civil War (1904),

"One of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal army, General Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine, who afterward served with distinction as governor of his State, called his troops into line, and as my men marched in front of them, the veterans in blue gave a soldierly salute to those vanquished heroes--a token of respect from Americans to Americans, a final and fitting tribute from Northern to Southern chivalry."

General Chamberlain describes this incident in the following words:

"At the sound of that machine-like snap of arms, General Gordon started, caught in a moment its significance, and instantly assumed the finest attitude of a soldier. He wheeled his horse, facing me, touching him gently with the spur, so that the animal slightly reared, and, as he wheeled, horse and rider made one motion, the horse's head swung down with a graceful bow, and General Gordon dropped his sword-point to his toe in salutation."

On May 13, however, news had not reached every corner of the war. That day saw skirmishing and fighting at Palmito Ranch (near Brownsville), in what became the last land battle of the Civil War.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis had returned Magruder to the command of the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, but only in time to witness Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith's surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department at Galveston on June 2, 1865.

After the war Magruder offered his sword to the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. Magruder became a major influence in the development of a Confederate colony in Mexico named for Maximillian's empress, Carlota. Among the residents of the colony were such Southern politicians as the former Governor of Texas, Pendleton Murrah.

Later, after the collapse of the imperial forces, Magruder returned to Texas to make his home in Houston.  According to John N. Edwards, with whom he traveled Mexico,

"Magruder was a born soldier...He would fight all day and dance all night. He wrote love songs and sang them, and won an heiress rich beyond comparison."

Magruder spoke with a lisp. He was six feet tall and "in full regimentals" was said to have been "the handsomest soldier in the Confederacy."

On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to begin the Federal occupation of Texas. His first act was to proclaim the emancipation of the slaves. June 19 would be celebrated ever after as "Juneteenth."

Approximately 90,000 Texans saw military service in the war.