Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

South Texas, 1864–1867 437
cleared up and the mesquit trees with the wild grass under them, looked exactly
like an old orchard of half-dead apple trees in a field of half-ripe oats.
To a Northern eye, the vegetation seemed to be either not quite mature or long
past ripeness, and “take it all in all, I would not live in this country if I could own
a whole county.” 31
This view was widespread among Union troops. Capt. James H. Rickard of the
19th USCI thought that southern Texas offered “some of the hardest soldiering I
have ever seen & in the meanest part of the world. [N]othing grows here except a
few short stunted brush covered with thorns & the cactus in its different varieties.”
It was a view shared by 1st Lt. Warren Goodale of the 114th USCI. “All vegetable
life seems thorny, & insect & reptile life venomous,” he told his children. Soldiers
had expressed such sentiments since the Army first marched to the Rio Grande in
1846, at the start of the Mexican War, and would continue to do so for decades. 32
In overall command of southern Texas was Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele, who
had seen action during the war in Arkansas and, in April 1865, at Mobile. General
Grant’s instructions to Steele were to “occupy as high up [the Rio Grande] as your
force and means of supplying them will admit of.” With two brigades at Indianola
and Corpus Christi and the balance of the XXV Corps camped near the mouth of
the river, Steele ordered the reoccupation of prewar forts that had not seen a federal
garrison since the spring of 1861. The principal sites were Ringgold Barracks, at
Rio Grande City, some one hundred miles upriver from Brownsville; Fort McIntosh,
at Laredo, another hundred miles farther on; and Fort Duncan, at Eagle Pass,
roughly three hundred miles above Brownsville. Troops also established posts at
the little settlement of Roma, some fifteen miles west of Ringgold Barracks; Edinburg,
a town about sixty-five miles west of Brownsville; and White’s Ranch, on
the Rio Grande between Brazos Santiago and Brownsville. Light-draft steamboats
carried supplies up the river as far as Ringgold Barracks. 33
In order to move those supplies eleven miles inland from the saltwater port at
Brazos Santiago to a wharf on the Rio Grande at White’s Ranch, thus bypassing a
treacherous bar at the mouth of the river, troops of the XXV Corps began in July to
lay track for a rail line. Weitzel had thought about bringing civilian laborers from
Virginia, but Grant overruled the idea. “There are plenty of negroes in Texas,” he
told General Weitzel, but Grant was thinking of the agricultural part of the state,
far from the Rio Grande. Instead, the work fell to soldiers. With details that varied
from four hundred fifty to six hundred fifty men a day, they finished the line by the
end of the year. While they did this, troops at Indianola repaired an existing fortymile
line between that port and the inland town of Victoria to get supplies across
31 Norton, Army Letters, pp. 271, 275.
32 J. H. Rickard to Dear Friends, 2 Jul 1865, J. H. Rickard Papers, American Antiquarian
Society (AAS), Worcester, Mass.; Goodale to Dear Children, 4 Jul 1865. For an example of Army
officers’ opinions of the lower Rio Grande, see Thomas T. Smith et al., eds., The Reminiscences of
Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854–1876 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2007), pp.
11, 426; Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas,
1821–1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), pp. 53–62.
33 OR, ser. 1, vol. 48, pt. 2, p. 525. Brig Gen R. H. Jackson to Lt Col D. D. Wheeler, 23 Jul 1865,
Entry 517, XXV Corps, LR; Maj Gen H. G. Wright to Maj Gen G. Weitzel, 18 Sep 1865, Entry 518;
both in pt. 2, RG 393, NA.