Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

South Texas, 1864–1867 431
Magruder had his headquarters at Houston. The port of Galveston was closed by
the Union blockade, he told General E. Kirby Smith, who commanded the Confederate
Trans-Mississippi Department, at the end of April.
We have thus left only the Rio Grande as our outlet, and the occupation of
Brownsville . . . becomes a prime necessity. As long as we can receive supplies
by that route, and as long as the door is left open for us to co-operate with
Mexico against the United States, our army will possess a moral influence very
disproportioned to its numbers. . . . Our relations with the Imperial authorities
are of the most cordial nature. 14
One week after Magruder wrote, the last Confederate Army east of the Mississippi
River surrendered. General Smith’s troops in Arkansas and Louisiana, many
of them Texans, began to desert in droves, simply heading home and taking their
weapons with them. Along the way, they helped themselves to whatever they found
at military supply depots or could take by force from farmers and townspeople.
Some officers with better-disciplined commands, such as the cavalry force led by
Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby, began to ponder a move to Mexico. Meanwhile, the
small Confederate garrisons on the lower Rio Grande waited to see what would
happen. 15
The Union commander at Brazos Santiago, Col. Theodore H. Barrett, made
the next move. On 8 May, he ordered Colonel Branson with eleven officers and 250
men of the 62d USCI to the mainland. Barrett’s reasons remain unclear; neither his
nor Branson’s report offers an explanation. It may have begun as a raid to gather
mounts for the 2d Texas Cavalry, two officers and fifty men of which went along
on foot. It may have been, as Barrett later described it, “a foraging expedition.”
One of his detractors later asserted that he merely wanted “to establish for himself
some notoriety before the war closed.” It was true that Barrett’s previous service
had been unremarkable, consisting mostly of frontier duty in Minnesota after the
Sioux uprising of 1862; but an impulse to distinguish himself during the last days
of the war should have prompted him to accompany the 62d USCI to the mainland
in command of the expedition, rather than to send it and stay behind. 16
Whatever Barrett’s reasoning, foul weather and the mechanical failure of a
steamboat that was supposed to ferry the troops kept them confined to Brazos
Santiago for most of 8 May. It was 9:30 p.m. before they all reached the mainland.
Moving off the beach, Branson had led them about six miles toward Brownsville
by 2:00 a.m., as far as White’s Ranch, near the Rio Grande. There, finding no Confederates,
they lay down on the riverbank to rest. Not until 8:30, well after daylight
14 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, pp. 64, 187, 1289 (quotation).
15 Brad R. Clampitt, “The Breakup: The Collapse of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army in
Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 108 (2005): 498–534; Carl H. Moneyhon, Texas After the
Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004),
p. 6; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During Reconstruction, 1865–1870 (College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 1987), p. 13.
16 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 265–69; NA M594, roll 212, 62d USCI; Jeffrey W. Hunt, The
Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 54–59
(quotations, p. 57).