War is full of ironies, not the least of which is that infantrymen are asked to spill blood for the sake of occupying a piece of earth that wouldn’t be worth a glance on any other day.
“We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name,” complains a captain marching off to war in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it.”
So it was with an unremarkable patch of salt prairie to the east of Brownsville, where on May 12 and 13, 1865, a Union advance was beaten back by Confederate artillery fire. About 800 troops were involved at what came to be called the Battle of Palmito Ranch.
Fights for otherwise useless ground were common during the American Civil War, but the Battle of Palmito Ranch stands out for several reasons. For one, it took place 34 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia and 29 days after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination—in other words, about a month after the war had effectively ended.
Furthermore, the clash on the open coastal plain was a decisive rout for the Confederates. The last gasp of the rebellion was a victorious scream.
May will mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, near Brownsville, a battle derided by historian Bruce Catton as a “final, lonely, meaningless little spatter.”
This was also a battle that featured a confusing array of French nationals, Yankees, African Americans, Tejanos and hardcore insurrectionists fighting each other for reasons that were hazy to most everyone concerned. No other land battle of the war was fought so close to an international border, and none was as racially diverse.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Palmito Ranch was that the final land battle of the Civil War was fought in Texas, a teenage state whose relationship with the Confederate States of America was never especially strong, and whose role in the four-year conflict was mainly logistical.
May will mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, a battle derided by the eminent historian Bruce Catton as a “final, lonely, meaningless little spatter.” The sesquicentennial will likely pass unnoticed by all but the most diligent of Civil War fanboys.
Curious about the largely forgotten spot east of Brownsville and its status as an unlikely footnote in American history, I went to visit the property one day in the company of Wilson Bourgeois, an easygoing IT technician and ex-Navy man who also happens to be the chair of the Cameron County Historical Commission.
Bourgeois pointed to some trees that concealed the north bank of the Rio Grande. “Those small rises over there? That’s where you had the first skirmishing,” he said, then turned toward open field to the east. “Now that,” he continued, “was where the Confederates were coming on the road from Brownsville. As you see, there’s no cover. The Union had to stay hiding in the chaparral. Then the Confederate artillery came out and rained hell on the Union.”
A modern observer can, in fact, easily see how the rebels won this final engagement of the war. The battlefield has remained practically untouched since 1865, because its value as farmland—or anything else—is virtually nil. It sits today square in the middle of the South Texas Refuge Complex managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and is further protected under the National Register of Historic Places. Texas can therefore boast not just the scene of the war’s conclusion, but an unusually well-preserved battlefield unobscured by marble obelisks or Waffle Houses.
Bourgeois is a methodical historian who wrote a master’s thesis on Palmito Ranch and once walked every inch of the battlefield with his legs tied together with a 2-foot cord so as to maintain the exact stride of a 19th-century infantryman. He is also waging a campaign to celebrate the upcoming sesquicentennial with the huzzah it deserves. A symposium and a battlefield ceremony have been planned. But the governor’s office declined a gubernatorial appearance and the Fish and Wildlife Service said no to a uniformed reenactment—too much possibility of introducing invasive plant species via horse dung, according to the agency. So the reenactment will take place on an ersatz battlefield behind a former shopping mall called Amigoland on the other side of Brownsville.
Perhaps the small-scale remembrance is appropriate, because the slaughter was wholly unnecessary to begin with, and was almost certainly hatched as a vanity project by a hotheaded Union colonel eager for some 11th-hour valor and undiscriminating about where to pick a fight.
Courtesy Southern Methodist University DeGolyer Library
John Salmon “Rip” Ford (1815-1897), photographed near the end of the Civil War in the uniform of a Confederate colonel.
A 30-year-old Minnesotan named Theodore Barrett had been given command of the 62nd Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops—composed of free blacks and former slaves—and ordered to stand guard, along with a regiment of Indiana soldiers, on Brazos Island at the mouth of the Rio Grande. There wasn’t much to do on Brazos Island in the spring of 1865 except count the days and swat mosquitos. The war’s end was a certainty. An unwritten truce along the Texas coast had already been brokered by Union Gen. Lew Wallace.
On May 11, Barrett ordered a detachment to the mainland to “round up cattle.” For reasons unexplained to this day, those troops began marching toward Brownsville, where they encountered a line of Confederate cavalry. Shooting started early on the morning of May 12, and Union soldiers advanced slowly through the gunfire to a ranch, where they burned buildings and made camp.
Word of the skirmish reached the rebel commander in Brownsville, a leathery former Indian fighter named John Salmon Ford, who as a Texas Ranger had earned the nickname “Rip” for signing so many death notices with the initials R.I.P. He was also a frontier newspaper editor who loved a good brawl. That night at dinner, his commanding officer, James Edwin Slaughter, told him he saw no point to resisting the Union advance, preferring a retreat into the interior to prevent useless bloodshed. Copies of the New Orleans newspaper, The Picayune, containing news of Lee’s surrender had made their way to Brownsville, though no official orders had yet materialized.
“You can retreat and go to hell if you wish,” Ford told Slaughter, according to books by historians Jeffrey Hunt and Phillip Thomas Tucker. “These are my men and I am going to fight. I have held this place against heavy odds. If you lose it without a fight the people of the Confederacy will hold you accountable for a base neglect of duty.”
In those days, duty and honor were important virtues to men. The Dept of Texas C.S.A. had not issued orders to lay down arms, surrender or go home. Until they did, Col. Ford was going to discharge his duty until the very last.
Slaughter was never much of one for a fight but he did trail along in the rear. When the Yanks were in the water rowing for all they were worth, he rode his horse into the surf at Boca Chica and discharge his pistol in their general direction. That was his contribution to the affair.
John S. Ford was a true man of honor who did his duty, even though some may have preferred that he did not.
There will be no reenactment due to a variety of factors, but there will be a memorial service at the Palmitto overlook at 9 am on Tuesday May 12. It will be a time to remember men of honor who wore both the blue and the grey on that day 150 years ago.
Folks today are pragmatic and practical and therefore to some the battle was nothing of consequence. However for men of honor, it was a thing of consequence. Such things don't count for much these days.
Warfare is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
Why would anyone be upset with the article?!? The article is well written and above all it tells the story of the men who fought in the last battle of the American Civil War. It may not be 100% accurate, but then again, it is impossible to give history that kind of accuracy.
To put it bluntly, it seems like the writer and the few mentioned are the only ones that are trying to educate the masses about the an event that seems to be have been forgotten by history. Kudos to them!
5 comments:
In those days, duty and honor were important virtues to men. The Dept of Texas C.S.A. had not issued orders to lay down arms, surrender or go home. Until they did, Col. Ford was going to discharge his duty until the very last.
Slaughter was never much of one for a fight but he did trail along in the rear. When the Yanks were in the water rowing for all they were worth, he rode his horse into the surf at Boca Chica and discharge his pistol in their general direction. That was his contribution to the affair.
John S. Ford was a true man of honor who did his duty, even though some may have preferred that he did not.
There will be no reenactment due to a variety of factors, but there will be a memorial service at the Palmitto overlook at 9 am on Tuesday May 12. It will be a time to remember men of honor who wore both the blue and the grey on that day 150 years ago.
Folks today are pragmatic and practical and therefore to some the battle was nothing of consequence. However for men of honor, it was a thing of consequence. Such things don't count for much these days.
tony zavaleta will be upset at this story!
Slavery forever !! It keeps the Economy going .
Warfare is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
Your article is very well done, a good read.
Why would anyone be upset with the article?!? The article is well written and above all it tells the story of the men who fought in the last battle of the American Civil War. It may not be 100% accurate, but then again, it is impossible to give history that kind of accuracy.
To put it bluntly, it seems like the writer and the few mentioned are the only ones that are trying to educate the masses about the an event that seems to be have been forgotten by history. Kudos to them!
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