The Lincoln administration wanted control of eastern Texas, not only for its extensive cotton but to stop illicit trade between that state and French-controlled Mexico. General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck had originally ordered Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks to move his Army of the Gulf up the Red River and invade Texas from Shreveport, Louisiana. However, Banks was a politician, and he feared that failure would damage his political career. Thus, the Federal high command agreed to allow Banks to take a supposedly safer route.
Banks had originally envisioned a two-pronged offensive in which a Federal force would move overland into Texas while another moved via naval transports down the Texas coast. But the overland contingent had been stopped at Opelousas in October, leaving just the coastal force to act alone. Banks personally led this effort, which consisted of a 3,500-man division under Major-General Napoleon J.T. Dana. The troops left New Orleans and steamed west, intending to capture Brazos Santiago at the mouth of the Rio Grande. The gunboats U.S.S. Monongahela, Virginia, and Owasco escorted the troop transports.
The convoy braved a harsh storm along the way that forced the men to “throw overboard mules, provisions and ordnance, to escape being wrecked.” The Federals landed unopposed on November 2, though some drowned in the process. Banks triumphantly reported, “The flag of the Union floated over Texas today at meridian precisely. Our enterprise has been a complete success.” A reporter for the New York Herald wrote, perhaps prematurely, “From that moment Texas was ours.”
From this foothold, Banks continued inland and seized the area around the island of Boca Chica. Federals noted the lack of enemy presence as “sand-hills meet the eye in every direction; and for miles there is no covering from the rays of the burning sun by day, nor the heavy chilly dews by night.”
The next day, Banks directed the captain of the steamer T.A. Scott to bombard Bagdad, a Mexican village known as “a kind of smuggler town… carrying on a lucrative business at Uncle Sam’s expense.” The bombardment ended when the French flag was raised over the town; the captain regretted “the slight mistake of firing upon their vessels while engaged in a contraband trade with the rebels on the Texan shore.”
Federal forces advanced on Brownsville on the 4th. Brigadier-General Hamilton P. Bee, commanding the Confederates at nearby Fort Brown, notified his superior, Major-General John B. Magruder, of the threat and ordered a withdrawal. The Confederates burned anything useful to the Federals, including “all cotton which was liable to fall into the hands of the enemy.” Bee’s force fell back to Corpus Christi as the Federals entered Brownsville. A southerner wrote of the loss in his diary, “I cannot say that I’m grieved at the news, since the capturing of Brownsville may put a stop to the great swindle of the cotton agents of the Confederacy.”
The Federals were now positioned about 30 miles inland opposite Matamoras (now spelled “Matamoros”), where the bulk of the trading was being done with Mexico. Banks notified Texas’s Unionist governor, Andrew Hamilton, who had awaited the Federal arrival near Texas’s southern tip. Banks then returned to his New Orleans headquarters, leaving Dana to continue the expedition. Dana’s objective was to capture all key coastal points from the Rio Grande to the Sabine River.
The Federals expanded their occupation zone on the 16th by capturing Corpus Christi, which had been abandoned by Bee’s Confederates. The next day, about 1,000 troops and two sailor-manned artillery batteries landed on Mustang Island at Aransas Pass, supported by the Monongahela. The Federal howitzers bombarded the Confederate garrison into surrender. The U.S.S. Granite City seized the Confederate schooner Amelia Ann and the Spanish bark Teresita.
Dana next targeted Fort Esperanza on Matagorda Island, which the Confederates abandoned after a one-week bombardment. This gave the Federals control of Matagorda Bay. Federal gunboats now controlled about 300 miles of the Texas coast, from the Rio Grande to Port Lavaca. But Dana would not risk another defeat by approaching Galveston or Sabine Pass.
Meanwhile, a portion of Dana’s force moved overland about 100 miles up the Rio Grande and captured Rio Grande City. These Federal victories restricted the contraband trade coming through Mexico via Matamoras. However, since the Mississippi River was already in Federal hands, it only restricted trade with the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy, which was insignificant compared to the east. Also, trading continued farther inland at Laredo, and the operation did nothing to scare the French into leaving Mexico.
The Federal presence in southern Texas merely kept Banks’s army busy when it could have been more useful elsewhere, such as threatening the key the Confederate port at Mobile Bay.
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