Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
revealed their presence to watchers on the opposite shore, did they move on. Later
in the morning, they met a few enemy cavalry, followed them several miles west to
their camp at a place called Palmetto Ranch, and drove them from it. At this point,
the expedition had marched some seventeen miles inland from Brazos Santiago.
The approach at midafternoon of “a considerable force of the enemy,” as Branson
called it, made him order his men back to White’s Ranch, where they spent the
night again. 17
The Confederate officer commanding at Brownsville, Col. John S. Ford, was
a Texan of nearly thirty years’ residence and a man renowned throughout the state
for his service with the Texas Rangers during the Mexican War and the years after
it. A former state senator besides, Ford was able to rally the few hundred soldiers
who still remained at their posts within a day’s ride of Brownsville. A sixty-man
cavalry picket downstream from the town sent word on 12 May that its men had
exchanged shots with a force of three hundred Union troops. Late the next morning,
Ford led two hundred cavalry troopers and a battery of six mismatched cannon
served by thirty gunners—five or six of them French volunteers from across the
river—to meet the invaders. 18
Meanwhile, Colonel Barrett had come ashore with two hundred men of the
34th Indiana. They reached Branson’s camp at White’s Ranch about daylight on
13 May. Assuming command of the entire force, Barrett ordered an advance with
the 62d USCI in the lead. A march of an hour or two brought the force to Palmetto
Ranch again—Barrett’s report recorded their arrival “by 7 or 8 a.m.”—where the
troops finished their interrupted work of destroying the Confederate camp. Sporadic
firing had occurred during the advance. Perhaps in order to discover its source,
Barrett ordered two companies of the 34th Indiana to seize the only nearby hill,
which stood in a bow in the river a mile or two south of the ranch. When they
met resistance in the underbrush along the river, he sent the 62d USCI to their assistance.
There the regiment suffered its first casualty of the expedition, one man
wounded. All the while, Barrett seemed uncertain of his purpose, asking one company
commander, 2d Lt. Charles A. Jones, “What do you think should be done?”
Breaking off the action about midafternoon, he told Jones, who had helped to take
the hill a little while earlier, “Well, if you think best, we will [retire] and eat supper.”
Such remarks did not infuse Barrett’s subordinates with confidence. 19
The Confederates neared the field about 3:00 p.m., as Barrett’s men were disengaging
from the skirmish that had occupied them all day. By this time, Barrett
had apparently decided that his force would return to the coast. His reason for this
decision is as obscure as his reason for undertaking the expedition in the first place.
Ford, for his part, decided that the best chance of defeating his opponents was to
catch them on the march before they reached their goal. He ordered some of his
horsemen and two cannon forward to block the road at Palmetto Ranch ahead of
17 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 267–68; Case of Lt Col R. G. Morrison (MM–2967), transcript,
p. 20, Entry 15A, General Court Martial Case Files, RG 153, Rcds of the Judge Advocate General’s
Office, NA; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 58–59; Townsend, Yankee Invasion, p. 127.
18 Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 7–8, 62–63, 82, 171.
19 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 1, pp. 266–68; Hunt, Last Battle, pp. 68–71, 73 (“What do you”), 79
(“Well, if you”).