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Books by
Jeffery Robenalt
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in the fall of 1863, Union forces under the command of General Nathaniel
Banks occupied the lower Rio Grande valley, but the Federals had no
intention of using Brownsville
as a marshaling point to launch an invasion into the interior of Texas.
Rather the purpose of the occupation was to seal off the border between
Texas and the French-dominated Empire
of Mexico and disrupt the flow of Confederate cotton to Europe. Hundreds
of European ships stood ready off the mouth of the Rio Grande to transport
the valuable cotton, and neutral brokers in Matamoros held the badly
needed medical supplies, British Enfield rifles, and gold necessary
to keep the Confederacy afloat. Now the trade route had to be moved
far to the northwest through Eagle
Pass, adding an arduous three hundred miles to the journey. The
new trail lay through miles of desolate and dangerous country swarming
with Mexican bandits and hostile Indians, more than doubling the cost
and time of delivery. The intolerable situation eventually set off
a chain of events that was to once again bring the legendary John
Salmon Ford to the forefront of Texas affairs. |
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Rio Grande River
near Eagle
Pass
Wikimedia Commons |
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At nearly fifty,
Rip Ford had lived a picturesque career—doctor, lawyer, journalist,
two-term state senator, captain of the Texas Rangers and a veteran
of the Mexican American War. He arrived in Texas
from Tennessee in 1836 after a failed marriage, and over the next
five decades was to become one of the fantastic but nearly forgotten
figures of the old frontier. Restless, impatient, brilliant, sometimes
erratic, yet above all compulsively self-disciplined when it served
his purpose, Ford was a man who instinctively ended up in the middle
of the action. Profane in the extreme and a born gambler, he was
free with both “his money and his pistol,” a leader of renown and
a diplomat of considerable merit. Nicknamed “Rip” for rest in peace
by those who admired him and served with him during the war, John
Salmon Ford was truly the last of his line. He lived during legendary
times and died poor as did most of the great frontier captains.
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John
Salmon Ford
Wikimedia Commons |
| In 1861, the
Secession convention appointed Ford a colonel of state cavalry and
sent him south to the Rio Grande where he did good service until the
end of the year. With the border pacified, Ford was furloughed and
his command was dispersed to Colonel Earl Van Dorn’s troops. In April
1862, General Paul O. Hebert, the Confederate military commander of
Texas, offered him a commission as a
major, which for reasons of his own, Ford refused. Finally, he was
appointed as Superintendent of the Bureau of Conscription with responsibility
for running down draft dodgers, a task which he abhorred. Ford despised
the draft laws, believing that the good men had already volunteered,
and he felt that the exceptions made for petty office holders, slave
owners and men wealthy enough to buy their way out of the war were
unjust. Though Ford held no formal Confederate rank in his position
as Superintendent, General Hebert not only addressed him as “Colonel,”
but also saw that he was paid as a full colonel. |
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Confederate
General John Bankhead Magruder
Wikimedia Commons |
When
General John Bankhead Magruder replaced General Hebert in 1863, he
wrote Ford a confidential letter about again taking command of the
fight along the Rio Grande. As part of the offer, Magruder attempted
to secure Ford a regular commission in the Confederate army, but for
unknown reasons, the Confederacy refused his request. As a result,
the man who was to become one of the most famous Texas soldiers in
the Civil War was never carried on official Confederate military rolls,
and Magruder was unable to formally divert men from state or Confederate
forces to serve in Ford’s new command. Magruder did, however, conspire
with Ford to provide the veteran Texas Ranger with several small state
militia and paramilitary units that were serving on the southwestern
frontier. These units would serve as the nucleus of Ford’s regiment.
He drew the remainder of his men from draft-exempts—men too young
or too old to be draft eligible.
Since the new regiment did not have an official designation, Ford
dubbed it the Cavalry of the West. His personal “uniform” consisted
of a battered black cavalry fedora emblazoned with a CSA emblem. Calling
himself Colonel, Ford made it stick with pure bravado and somehow
managed to assemble a remarkable staff. A former Cotton Bureau man,
Captain C. H. Merritt, served as the regiment’s quartermaster, and
Captain W. G. M. Samuels rode down from north Texas
to serve as the ordinance officer—if Ford ever managed to round up
any artillery. Major Albert Walthersdorff, a huge German capable of
lifting an errant recruit off his feet with one hand and shaking him,
served as the regiment’s tactical officer, and Major Felix Blucher
was the regiment’s Chief of Staff. In addition, Blucher was a highly
skilled surveyor and geographer who knew the area south of the Nueces
River like the back of his hand.
In thirty days, the Calvary of the West somehow managed to recruit
1,300 men and boys from the manpower-starved areas west and south
of San Antonio. There
was no upper age limit set on potential recruits, and the lower age
limit for recruitment was set at fifteen. However, Ford seldom questioned
any good-sized youngsters about their age. Two field guns were requested
but never sent, and the regiment’s method of supply was complicated.
Baled cotton was to be stored along the route from San
Antonio to the Nueces. The cotton would then be picked up and
hauled to the Rio Grande by the cavalrymen, where it would be sold
for the cash necessary to purchase supplies. When the Cavalry of the
West stood to horse in San
Antonio on March 17, 1864, Ford faced a regiment of mostly baldheads
and troopers who had yet to shave. Mounting, the regiment rode through
the crowded Plaza in a long, strung-out column with Ford at the head
wearing his black fedora, and the men and boys singing “The Yellow
Rose of Texas.”
Ford drove the regiment south without mercy, relentlessly pushing
the new recruits to the limit of their endurance in the already sweltering
heat of early spring. The winter of 1863-64 was a time of extended
drought in south Texas. The brush country was burned dry and many
of the streams and water holes had disappeared. Skeletons of cattle
and other unfortunate animals littered the trail and only the skill
of Major Blucher in locating what little grass and water remained
kept the regiment moving south. Within the week, the column was encamped
at Banquette where Ford received word from Santos Benavides, who with
the support of his own numerous clansmen, was fighting off the Yankees
from behind cotton bales in the streets of Laredo.
Putting out riders to secure his flanks, Ford pushed hard and relieved
the besieged Benavides on 15 April. The Cavalry of the West could
now muster nearly 1,800 men. The new Union commander at Brownsville,
General J. F. Herron, could deploy well over 6,000, supported by twelve
field pieces and sixteen heavy guns.
However, with Mexico currently embroiled in political and military
chaos, Rip Ford was far more concerned with events taking place south
of the border than he was with anything that Herron might do. The
conflict along the Rio Grande was much more than a war between the
North and the South. There was also an ongoing civil war in Mexico
between the liberal, federalist faction who were determined to separate
church and state, and the conservative, centralist faction who struggled
to maintain the status quo and thus their own power. In 1859, Benito
Juarez temporarily led the liberals to power and the United States
recognized him as the legitimate President of Mexico, but then in
1861 he made a serious mistake by suspending all payments to foreign
creditors and confiscating the property of foreign nationals. This
flawed policy eventually led Napoleon III of France to place Austrian
Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph on the throne of Mexico. |
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Map of the Rio
Grande Valley
Wikimedia Commons |
In
the midst of this political and military labyrinth, Ford now launched
the Cavalry of the West into the triangle that formed the southern
delta of the Rio Grande. He planned to lead his force in a classic
guerrilla campaign. Drought had rendered the pasture along the Rio
Grande scarce, and with hundreds of horsemen. Ford was rarely able
to assemble his entire unit at any one place. This situation, combined
with the fact that he had almost no regular source of supply, forced
him to scatter his command over hundreds of miles and depend mainly
on the Mexican side of the river to meet his military and forage needs.
Gathering a force of nearly 400 men under his personal command, Ford
began to roll up the Yankee garrisons one-by-one, as his Indian fighting
captains darted in and out of the heavy chaparral along the river,
cutting the Union line of supply and communications with a series
of daring, well-executed ambushes. Ford’s cavalry had the advantage
of mobility, while most of the Union army was bluecoat infantry, sweltering
in the burning, almost tropical heat of the lower Rio Grande.
During this time, The Cavalry of the West received practically no
assistance from the Confederate government. The Confederacy certainly
had adequate forces and supply available in south Texas, but Ford
got nothing from the establishment except trouble. Orders were even
issued taking some of his troops away. He certainly had General Magruder’s
support, but try as he might, Magruder could not make his own brigadiers
either like Ford or accept him. In fact, Generals Duff, Bee and Slaughter
despised Rip Ford and his whole ragtag outfit. In spite of the drawbacks,
Ford took the field again in June. Unfortunately, his old malaria
returned and he was burning up with fever and reeling in the saddle.
It took unrelenting willpower to go forward, but Rip Ford not only
held on, he won the love and respect of every common soldier in his
command. By 21 June, the Cavalry of the West was only thirty miles
from Brownsville.
Through supreme effort, they had driven the Federals back almost 200
miles.
On
19 July, Ford, so ill that he could not mount without assistance,
assembled his entire command of about 1500 men and advanced toward
Brownsville.
His ranks may well have been full of young teenagers and old men,
but they were all of a leather-tough, frontier-raised generation,
lean and muscled. Many of them were just as sick as Ford, but if Old
Rip could manage to stay in his saddle, they sure as hell could, too.
On 22 July, the Confederates tore into the Yankees at Ebonal with
a shrieking rebel yell, driving the Union screening forces back into
Brownsville,
but Ford had once again outrun his supply line. The Mexicans refused
to do business so close to the Federal guns, so Ford waited patiently,
throwing out a cavalry screen until supplies could be purchased further
upriver. He had no intention of charging directly into the Union trenches
and the muzzles of the Yankee big guns.
Ford once again ordered an advance on 25 July, this time with his
dismounted Arizonians leading the way on foot. An impasse soon arose
with little damage inflicted by either side, but Ford still refused
to order a charge into the face of the deadly Union guns and the Federals
refused to leave the protection of their trenches. With the Confederate
success, civilians began to cross the river to bolster Fords forces—one
old man was a veteran of San Jacinto.
On 30 July, the Arizonians made a reconnaissance of the outskirts
of Brownsville
and found things strangely quiet. The cavalry quickly mounted and
rode in, finding the town in possession of a group of armed Confederate
civilians. The Federals had hastily departed, leaving only a trail
of scattered equipment that led off from Fort Brown toward the coast.
Ford immediately detached a small force to pursue and harass the retreating
Yankees, and they managed to drive the Union rearguard in upon the
main body before breaking off the brief skirmish. Reaching the Gulf,
the Union troops splashed across Boca
Chica to the safety of Brazos Island, a sandy strip some four
miles long.
Without fighting a major engagement and with few casualties, Rip Ford
and his Cavalry of the West had driven a far superior Federal force
out of the lower Rio Grande valley. Most of the Union troops were
embarked on waiting ships, leaving only 1,000 soldiers under the command
of Colonel H. M. Day to occupy Brazos Island. Ford managed to see
the Stars and Bars hoisted over Brownsville
before he collapsed in a dead feint, so ill that for the next several
days he commanded the regiment from his sickbed. The first official
communication Ford received from his district commander, General Thomas
Drayton, arrived in the form of a complaint. The Confederate government
had offered full pardons to deserters who fled to Mexico and allowed
returning soldiers to join the regiment of their choice. Drayton was
angry because so many of the returnees chose to join the Calvary of
the West, a fact that hardly improved Ford’s relations with Drayton
and the other Confederate brigadiers of the district. In November
1864, Brigadier James E. Slaughter established his Western Sub-District
Headquarters in Brownsville.
Ford remained in command of the Brownsville
area, but the relationship between him and Slaughter was uneasy at
best. |
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Confederate
General James E. Slaughter
Wikimedia Commons |
| During
the next few months, the population of the lower Rio Grande valley
exploded. Brownsville
grew to 25,000, Matamoros to 40,000, and the makeshift town of Bagdad
swelled to nearly 15,000. Cotton
was flowing once again and times were flush, with common laborers
earning as much as five to ten dollars a day in silver when workers
in St Louis made no more than twenty cents an hour. In the midst of
all this prosperity, the Calvary of the West rode picket duty with
threadbare uniforms and underfed bellies. Ford and his men had gone
unpaid since departing from San
Antonio. |
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Union
General Lew Wallace
Wikimedia Commons |
| On 6 March, 1865,
Union General Lew Wallace, who was later to author the classic Ben-Hur,
arrived on the Rio Grande with a fantastic scheme, whereby the Confederate
troops under Ford and Slaughter would surrender and be permitted to
rejoin the Union. This force would then be joined with Mexican troops
under President Juarez to drive the French out of Mexico. On 11 March,
the parties met at Point Isabel under a flag of truce. Both Ford and
Slaughter realized the Confederacy was tottering on the brink and
they were at least willing to discuss terms, but everything collapsed
when dispatches referencing the discussions fell into the hands of
Confederate Major General J. G. Walker. Walker was an officer of the
“last ditch school” who was determined to fight on to the bitter end.
He severely reprimanded Slaughter and Ford for even considering such
an offer, and the project came to an abrupt halt. |
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Theodore
H. Barrett
Wikimedia Commons |
In
mid-April, Colonel Theodore H. Barrett of the 62nd Infantry (Negro)
took command of the Union forces occupying Brazos de Santiago. Barrett
also commanded some additional troops, including the veteran 34th
Indiana, and was well equipped with artillery. Soon after taking command,
he requested permission from department headquarters to make a demonstration
in force against the Confederates occupying Palmito Hill, but his
request was refused. Politically ambitious and determined to gain
notoriety before the war was over, Barrett ignored the decision of
his higher headquarters and ordered the 62nd Infantry regiment to
march at sunup on 12 May. Near dusk, the Union advance was halted
when the bluecoats came under heavy fire from the Confederate battalion
commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Giddings. When word of the
fighting reached Brownsville,
General Slaughter was ready to order a general retreat, but an angry
Ford was determined to fight. “You can retreat and go to hell if you
wish,” he yelled at Slaughter. “These are my men and I am going to
fight!”
Before noon the following day, Ford’s cavalrymen were assembled on
the parade ground at Fort Brown, including the French artillery he
had borrowed from the Foreign Legionnaires headquartered in Matamoros.
Ford mounted and led the Cavalry of the West southeast toward the
sound of the guns. Four hours of hard riding brought the column to
Palmito Hill, now wreathed in a halo of powder smoke from the heavy
fighting. Barrett had thrown the entire Union strength into the advance,
but his Indiana and New York regiments were nearing exhaustion in
the humid heat after a long nighttime forced march. Lieutenant Jones
immediately unlimbered the Confederate guns on Palmito Hill and opened
fire, blasting the Union advance with both solid shot and canister.
Meanwhile, Ford sent some infantry to threaten the Union left and
circled his cavalry to the right under the cover of some thick brush.
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Quickly putting
his horsemen on line, Ford rode to the front on his anxious, prancing
stallion and called out, “Men, we have whipped the enemy in all previous
fights. We can do it again.” The cheering of the troops alerted the
Yankees and they began to fire into the brush. Ford yelled, “Charge!”
and led 300 screaming cavalrymen into the exposed Union flank. The
shrill rebel yell could be heard above the roar of the guns as the
Confederate horsemen shattered the Union skirmish line. Nothing was
more terrifying for infantry than to be scattered to the winds and
left to the mercy of a thundering cavalry charge, and the veteran
Hoosiers and New Yorkers never had a chance. Colonel Barrett called
for a retreat, but fear and the confusion of battle caused him to
forget the Hoosiers on his extended picket line and the Rebels rode
them down without mercy. During the long retreat to Brazos de Santiago,
Barrett tried several times to halt his fleeing men and form them
into defensive line, but convincing the men to make a stand once they
were running was nearly impossible.
The Yankees were stumbling from exhaustion when they finally reached
the waters of the Boca Choa, firing wildly in all directions at the
circling Confederate cavalrymen and frantically trying to splash their
way across the narrow straight to safety. Suddenly, General Slaughter
galloped up to Ford in the fading light of the day at the head of
Carrington’s battalion and demanded that Ford launch an attack on
Brazos Island. Ford refused to attack in the dark. The furious Slaughter
then splashed his horse into the shallow water and emptied his revolver
at the fleeing Yankees—now more than 300 yards away. The men of the
Cavalry of the West looked on in amazement and disgust. That night,
Ford withdrew his force to Palmito Hill. Casualty counts vary wildly,
but one study found 4 Union dead, 12 wounded and 101 captured. None
of Ford’s men had been killed although a number were wounded. |
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Private John L. Williams (last soldier to die in the Civil War)
Wikimedia Commons |
Palmito Hill
was the last pitched battle of the Civil War, having taken place over
a month after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Within a few days, General
Kirby-Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department and Ford
dismissed his men and took his family across the border. He returned
in July when the Union offered paroles and declared a general amnesty,
but there were a few diehards in the Cavalry of the West who refused
to surrender on any terms. Instead they chose to encase the regiment’s
colors, bury them in the sandy soil along the Rio Grande and ride
south to join Maximilian’s army. Ultimately, many of these brave and
stubborn men fought with distinction in the French Foreign Legion
and left their bones scattered across fields of honor from Mexico
to Europe.
© Jeffery
Robenalt
"A Glimpse of Texas Past"
June 1, 2013 Column
References › |
References
for "The Cavalry of the West"
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Buenger, Walter
L., Secession and the Union in Texas, Austin: University
of Texas Press (1984).
Fehrenbach,
T. R., Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans, Da Cappo
Press (2000).
Ford, John
S., Memoirs (MS, John Salmon Ford Papers), Dolph Briscoe
Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
Hunt, Jeffery
William, “Palmito Ranch, Battle of,” Handbook of Texas Online
(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/article/qfp01, accessed
11 Mar 13.
Kurtz, Henry
L., “Last Battle of the War,” Civil War Times Illustrated,
April 1962 (Vol. 1, No. 1).
Marvel, William,
“Last Hurrah at Palmetto Ranch,” Civil War Times, January
2006 (Vol. XLIV, No. 6).
Trudeau, Noah
Andre, Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June
1865. Boston: Little, Brown & Company (1994).
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