The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State

1. Texas, Jefferson Davis, and Confederate National Strategy

1 Texas, Jefferson Davis, and Confederate National Strategy Joseph G. Dawson III Historians have devoted increasing attention to the Confederacy’s TransMississippi region.1 Especially since 1960, they have treated a range of Trans-Mississippi military, political, economic, and social topics. In studies of strategy in the Civil War, however, Texas is not mentioned or only gets passing notice.2 Texas held a complex place in Confederate strategy. First, in 1861 Pres. Jefferson Davis decided that the Confederacy ought to expand into the West. His background and strategic outlook played important parts in his decision to initiate a western offensive. Davis authorized that Texas serve as a base for the offensive and selected a general to command the campaign. But all other strategic matters related to the state ranked below the western offensive and national expansion, as far as the president was concerned. Second, nine of the thirteen Confederate states, including Texas, had a coastline , and Davis’s national strategy called for defending the coasts. The Confederacy’s list of strategic assets included the port of Galveston, and Texas 1 coastal defense became an issue of contention between the state government and the Davis administration. Galveston was significant economically and politically, but like New Orleans, due to other demands neither the state nor the national government filled the needs for the island’s defense. In general, by necessity and choice defending the coast was underfunded and downplayed for Texas and the entire Confederacy. Third, Confederate leaders relegated most of the frontier and border defense of Texas to the state. Indian attacks and Mexican outlaws crossing the Rio Grande presented no strategic threat to the Confederacy. Likewise, diplomacy and trade relations with Mexico slipped among national priorities, even to the point of leaving some official diplomatic matters to the Trans-Mississippi Department commander or Texas officials. Many Texans concluded that the Confederacy let down its citizens by neglecting the state’s borders. Other factors might have risen to national significance, such as the status of railroads and transporting cattle and cotton, but became regional and state matters after August 1863. Meeting in the state capital of Austin, a town of around 3,500 people, a special convention announced in favor of secession on February 1, 1861, and Texas soon joined the Confederate States of America (CSA). The Lone Star State offered the possibility of contributing significantly to the new Southern nation. Although it ranked only ninth in population among the first eleven Confederate states, Texas showed great economic potential in cotton and cattle. Vast herds of livestock, deemed capable of feeding large armies, were prospective strategic and logistical assets.3 Merchants stood ready to ship a bountiful cotton crop from Galveston. Welcoming large, deep-draft, slow ocean-going ships, Galveston’s heavy traffic ranked it fifth among ports in the South. Although a railroad connected the port to the town of Houston (population about 4,800), limited railroad mileage in the state and a lack of locomotives, railcars, and materials to lay new tracks restricted sending Texas beef to the East. Galveston and San Antonio, two attractive cities that in 1860 contained around 7,000 and 8,000 people, rivaled the size of Atlanta, Georgia (8,000), and were about the same size or larger than other Southern states’ capital cities, including Jackson, Mississippi (4,000); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (5,000); Raleigh, North Carolina (5,000); Columbia, South Carolina (8,000); and Montgomery, Alabama (8,000), the Confederacy’s first capital.4 In Montgomery on February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis took the oath as provisional president of the Confederate States of America. The new nation comprised six states, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, soon joined by Texas. In ringing tones Davis asserted in his inaugural address that the Confederacy was “moved by no interest or passion to invade the rights of others.” Contemporary Americans from North, East, South, or West 2 Joseph G. Dawson III could have interpreted his remarks to mean that, as commander in chief, he did not intend to use an army or navy to force any state to join the new nation.5 Naturally Davis wanted other states to join the Confederacy, and territories might be annexed as permitted by the provisional constitution.6 As in the United States, the Confederacy’s president took primary responsibility for formulating national strategy, which always involved political choices. Strategy required decisions to allocate human and...