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1. To Plant the Flag in Texas
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
During the Civil War, the year 1863 marked a turning point for Union armies on the battlefield. The two July victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the crushing Confederate defeat at Chattanooga marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. Pres. Abraham Lincoln had waited a long time for such victories to come. Perhaps the Union would be preserved after all. Despite the major victories of 1863, Lincoln worried about those things that might allow the Confederacy to continue the struggle. Although the Confederacy had been cut in two by the Union victories at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, states west of the Mississippi River still caused grave concern for him. The one state that presented the most problems was Texas. Despite the best efforts of the Union blockade, Lincoln could not stem the flow of cotton out of the Lone Star State. If one thing could keep the Confederacy alive, it would be its ability to export cotton. This vital commodity allowed the Confederacy to trade for war materials it desperately needed. Lincoln believed he had to stop this activity if he expected to hasten the end of the Civil War. The area where active cotton trading took place was in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and the two principal cities involved in the trade were Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, directly across the river. Located at the mouth of the river on the Mexican side was the town of Bagdad, the port of entry for goods assigned to northern Mexico. Used as early as 1780 as a port of entry, it never grew large until the Civil War transformed it into a bustling center of commerce. Bagdad offered tolerable anchorage and harbor facilities for the numerous vessels that crowded its waters . Many accounts indicated that a state of lawlessness existed in Bagdad, a characteristic common to many boomtowns. Once goods were unloaded at Bagdad, they were carted thirty miles west over bad roads to Matamoros. Many of these supplies were then ferried across the river to Brownsville. The One ToPlanttheFlaginTexas Mexican government levied a duty of 12.5 percent on all merchandise destined for export before it was allowed to be ferried to Brownsville. The primary Confederate export, cotton, would return to Bagdad by the same route, with the Mexican government collecting import duties this time. The twin cities of Matamoros and Brownsville were the major centers of the transMississippi cotton trade with Europe.1 One aspect of this region’s geography posed a difficult problem for Lincoln. Half of the mouth of the Rio Grande was Mexican territorial water and could not legally be blockaded since Mexico was a neutral country. As a result, Matamoros, like Bermuda and Nassau, became a sizable depot for exchanging European goods for cotton.2 This unique international situation and the commercial opportunities it presented were not lost on a Brownsville business called M. Kenedy and Company. Formed in 1850, this firm had a virtual monopoly on steamboat operations from Brownsville upriver to Rio Grande City by 1861, a distance of about one hundred miles.3 The company, led by Richard King, Miflin Kenedy, Charles Stillman, James O’Donnell, and Robert Penny, anticipated that the mouth of the Rio Grande would become the back door of the Confederacy, through which large quantities of cotton would flow. When the war broke out in 1861, the members of the company used their steamboats to aid the Confederate cause. In order for their boats to haul cargo for the Confederacy, the company placed their vessels under Mexican registry . Because of Mexico’s neutrality, this meant that Union blockaders could not seize their cargoes. When the Union naval vessel USS Portsmouth came to blockade the mouth of the Rio Grande, the steamboats hid behind a front of Mexican ownerships and registry that placed their titles in the names of some of the firm’s Mexican friends and business connections in Matamoros. M. Kenedy and Company, with offices in Matamoros, conducted business on both sides of the Rio Grande. Even though the Federal blockaders at the mouth of the Rio Grande were to check on all trade, they would not interfere with vessels flying the flag of a neutral country.4 Although M. Kenedy and Company eluded the grasp of Union blockaders, another problem emerged for this firm. The Rio Grande, or “Rio Bravo” as it was sometimes called, proved to be a difficult waterway for steamboat navigation . One foreign visitor made...