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The Galveston Campaigns: Critical Decisions That Defined The Civil War In Texas
Ed's New Book: Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns
The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations: https://utpress.org/title/decisions-of-the-galveston-campaigns/
Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/V00bBPQJcLE
Exploring with Ed around the Strand: https://youtu.be/gUqIEIl9UUg
The Battle of Galveston With Ed Cotham: https://youtu.be/H7vg0FeYS68
Ed Cotham's Books: https://www.edcotham.com/
Mr. Ed Cotham retired in 2023 as the Chief Investment Officer of the Terry Foundation, the largest private source of scholarships at Texas universities. He holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Houston, a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Chicago, and a Law Degree from the University of Texas. Ed is an active member of various historical organizations, including the Houston Civil War Round Table, the Civil War Preservation Trust, and the Society of Civil War Historians. He has received several awards for his volunteer service and contributions to preserving Civil War heritage, including the Frank C. Vandiver Award of Merit and the Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize. Ed is also an accomplished author, with notable works such as "Battle on the Bay: the Civil War Struggle for Galveston" and "Sabine Pass: the Confederacy's Thermopylae." With his expertise and passion for history, Ed Cotham is a distinguished figure in the field of Civil War preservation and an engaging history presenter.
Virtually all of the major campaigns in Texas during the Civil War were aimed either directly or indirectly at Galveston, and so both sides during the Civil War viewed this Galveston area as the key to Texas. It was absolutely the key to everything west of the Mississippi and certainly the key to Texas Now we're going. Key to everything west of the Mississippi and certainly the key to Texas.
Speaker 2:Now we're going to go explore, let's go explore, let's do it. Welcome to Galveston, Unscripted. I am obviously not on Galveston Island because I have the Rocky Mountains right behind me, but whatever, just ignore that. In this episode today, I sat down with Mr Edward T Cottom Jr to further my understanding of the events of the Civil War in Texas, which is all too timely because the anniversary of the Battle of Galveston is on January 1st. Ed Cottom is an award-winning author with many books about the Civil War in Texas, including Juneteenth and the Battle of Galveston. This is Ed's third appearance on the podcast and this time we discuss some of those major decisions that were made leading up to the Battle of Galveston and other major events during the Civil War in Texas. Be sure to check out Ed's new book Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns the 21 critical decisions that define the operations. Without further ado, let's hop right into this episode with Mr Edward T Conham Jr. Welcome to Galveston, Unscripted. I told Lisa, my wife, I was sitting down with Ed today. She goes, okay, I'll see you tonight.
Speaker 1:Across the causeway. You know, the Texas City Museum has the Westfield stuff. Yes, with the giant cannon and everything Getting me or Andy Hall or somebody over there to talk about that, we'll get both of y'all over there. Well, that too it would be fun and that would be an interesting thing, because nobody knows about that museum and it's all this cool stuff.
Speaker 2:It's a great museum, it's a great museum.
Speaker 1:Not only that, the Texas City disaster, I mean, there's just a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2:You know I gotta bring this up I grew up in Texas City, between Galveston and Texas City, and so growing up we would always meet, you know older people in our church. They were, you know, alive and probably you know kids or teenagers during the disaster.
Speaker 2:And, you know, after a few years pass, it's kind of like World War II veterans. You're like, well, you know, most of these people are gone. We went to a train event they had a few or maybe a month and a half ago with my son and we're sitting there and there's, of course, the big anchor right outside the museum. This lady goes do you know what that's from? And we're like oh yes, ma'am, we do. And we started talking to her and she lived right down the street and was, I think, like two houses down from the house she was in during the explosion in 47. And we got to talking to her and her husband and my wife and I, of course being like history lovers, we're just asking all these questions. You know, what was it like? How did y'all end up in Texas City, you know, and it's crazy to think it's not that long ago. It's like everything it's really not that long ago.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited to sit here and sit with you again, because you're really a friend of the show. This is your third time on Galveston Unscripted. We've talked about the Battle of Galveston in detail in Juneteenth as well, and first of all I just want to thank you for all you do to one research history and preserve history here on Galveston Island and for Texas and the United States, because a lot of the things you're diving into in all of your books is not just related to Galveston or Texas. It's related and tied to the history of the United States. So thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1:Thank you, always glad to be here with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why do you think people today are so interested in Civil War history?
Speaker 1:I think Civil War history kind of strikes a chord in a lot of people because they see an America that, frankly, is divided in a lot of different ways and from time to time we don't agree with each other and sometimes those differences are regional, sometimes those differences are religious or social or cultural or whatever. And you kind of wonder how do those things ultimately get resolved? And the American Civil War is the one real example you can point to in our history where those things didn't get resolved and it actually came to bullets and cannonballs to decide how we were going to live together and cannonballs to decide how we were going to live together and even indeed if we were going to live together as a single nation.
Speaker 2:You know, when I sit back and think of history and how we ended up here today, a lot of times I'll think about the wars and the politics and conflicts, but I don't always think about the battles and maybe the individual decisions that won some of those battles that ended up leading to either a victorious outcome or maybe a horrendous defeat on either side of whoever's fighting. This book is in a series of critical decision Civil War battles. Right, it's a series.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is I think it's the 18th one in the series, but this is the first time, interestingly, that they've ever gone across the Mississippi River and dealt with some of the things that happened west of the Mississippi River. It's also the first one where they've actually looked at more than one battle and more than one campaign. And that was very important here, because Galveston, it wasn't like Gettysburg, where you know three days and it's over. Galveston was under the guns of one side or the other, and occasionally both, for the entire course of the war, and the maneuvering that went on constantly during the period from, say, the fall of 1862 to the end of the war was something that was very unique and very special. So I set out with this book to answer a very basic question, and the question was you know, at the end of the Civil War, galveston is the last major Confederate port anywhere. War, galveston is the last major Confederate port anywhere, and in fact that's why we have Juneteenth here is because it is in many ways the ending point of the American Civil War. How is it that Galveston, of all these Confederate ports everywhere, ends up being the very last one? And when you think about it at first it almost doesn't make sense, because Galveston is on an island. In some ways it's the hardest Confederate city to defend that there was, and there is very little precedent for cities on islands to do. Very well, you go all the way back to the American Revolution. George Washington tried to defend the island of Manhattan and was completely unsuccessful at that. It's very hard to defend an island and in fact the very first Confederate commander of Texas looked at the map, looked at Galveston, kind of threw up his hands and said, well, we can't defend this place, let's get out of here.
Speaker 1:Making changed and the various decisions that were made all along during the war that led to that strange result of Galveston being the most successful at the end of the war. It is sort of a puzzle and that's what this book is designed to put together is what were the decisions that were made that led to this remarkable result? And a lot of them were not made in Galveston. A lot of them were not even made in Texas. They're made elsewhere, all around the country, and yet they have this tremendous influence on the place we call home the 21 decisions that define the operations of the Galveston campaigns.
Speaker 1:And when I say Galveston campaigns we're really talking about something a little broader than Galveston itself, because at the time of the Civil War Galveston had become the largest city in Texas.
Speaker 1:But it had become the largest city because it was this incredible port on the Gulf of Mexico and it was really the only Texas port that would accommodate ships that you know could travel the deep waters.
Speaker 1:And the reason that all this was so connected is you had to have a big port in order to be a successful city at this time, and to feed that port you needed a railroad system, and so the railroad system kind of extended, you of extended from Galveston up around Houston, and then from Houston it extended kind of like the fingers of a hand, in all directions around the state. And so the location here between Galveston and Houston was by far and away the most important part of Texas. And so both sides during the Civil War viewed this Galveston area as the key to Texas. It was absolutely the key to everything west of the Mississippi and certainly the key to Texas. And so for the Confederate side the whole story was about how do we defend and maintain possession of this place, and on the Union side it was how do we get Galveston and how do we then use that as a place to land a large force of troops that we can then spread out around the state and occupy the state of Texas?
Speaker 2:So the decisions for, for instance, the Union, would be made in Washington and they may not completely understand the dynamic here in Texas. They would say, okay, go capture this, or here are your goals now, made in Washington, and they may not completely understand the dynamic here in Texas. They would say, okay, go capture this, or here are your goals now. And then the leadership in Texas would go and try to essentially accomplish that, knowing that this may or may not work out. That's right.
Speaker 1:And again, every decision has consequences and you never know exactly what the consequences are going to be. Sometimes decisions are made and they end up being great for reasons you didn't expect. Sometimes you make a decision and it turns out to be catastrophic for reasons that you did not expect and could not have known about. Sometimes it's just a matter of pure luck, and so that's what you try to do. This book isolates 21 decisions and we go through the situation before the decisions made, what all the options were and what the advantages and disadvantages of each of the options were, and then the decision that's made and then what the wider result of that decision was for the course of the Galveston campaigns.
Speaker 1:This originated really for me many years ago because I used to take young army officers on some of my Civil War tours and you put them in a place and you actually do this exercise. It's very, very valuable. You say you're Officer X here and your options are, and you list all the options and what are the pros and cons of the various options and what would your decision be in these circumstances here, and it was so valuable, not only to the officer that was looking at this, but for me as a historian to try to analyze how this decision-making actually happened on the ground and what the decision-making process was like that led to these results. And so over the years I started actually not only for army officers I started incorporating these kind of exercises into virtually every tour I give for people from, you know, nine to 90. It's useful to kind of sit there and think about how do you make an important decision and what makes it work or not work, and that's valuable exercise for all of us.
Speaker 2:Let's say, you show up on a battlefield, Civil War battlefield, American Revolutionary Battlefield somewhere, and you get a little blurb, a historical marker or something that says this side did this. And then they maneuvered that way and you sit there and you're like why did they do that? Why would they actually take that route or what was it. So it's fascinating. You're kind of breaking that down what was it?
Speaker 1:So it's fascinating. You're kind of breaking that down. Virtually all of the major campaigns in Texas during the Civil War were aimed either directly or indirectly at Galveston. So, for example, we do have the Battle of Galveston on January 1st of 1863, which is far and away the largest and most important battle in Texas. But you also have the Battle of Sabine Pass in September of 1863, which you look at and you say why in the world is somebody wanting to invade at Sabine Pass?
Speaker 1:Well, they really weren't trying to get to Sabine Pass, they were trying to get to Galveston. But General Nathaniel Banks, over in New Orleans, who'd been ordered to occupy some place in Texas, thought that the best way to attack Galveston was not to attack it directly. He wanted to start landing a large force of army forces, infantry, at Sabine Pass, and then they were going to march over the railroad system to Houston and take Houston, because Houston was not fortified to any significant degree at the time. And then, once they had Houston in their pocket, they could kind of cut off Galveston and take it from the rear. So that was a very clever idea, that spectacularly failed.
Speaker 2:So importantly, I do want to cover this. These are decisions on the Union side and the Confederate side, from both angles.
Speaker 1:The 21 decisions in my book are by both Union and Confederate commanders, and in fact some of these decisions are made by people that aren't even directly in the military at all. Probably two of the most important decisions that made Galveston survive were made by Abraham Lincoln as commander inchief of the Union, and by his counterpart, Jefferson Davis, for the Confederacy. This is your fifth book. Sixth book.
Speaker 2:This is my sixth book, sixth book as you're writing the previous books. Of course you have the Battle of Galveston book on the Battle of Galveston and Juneteenth. How long would you say it actually took you to put all of this together from beginning to end?
Speaker 1:I've been researching the Civil War in Texas for more than 40 years now and as I go along I learn more and more things that I mean I learned something important last week. You never know what you're going to find. When I wrote the book on the Battle of Galveston I said, well, this is pretty much it. Nobody else is going to find any new sources. This is pretty much the end of that inquiry. And then we found the wreck of the USS Westfield, the principal warship in the battle, and the process of raising that and conserving it and putting it in a museum at Texas City has really kind of redefined that whole experience for me. And then you think, well, I've found every possible thing that could be found about these battles. And then in the Naval Academy we discovered 80-something images by a naval surgeon who'd been on the USS Clifton, including during the Battle of Galveston. So we have new images to put. With these things you never know what you're going to find, and you find something new all the time.
Speaker 1:A couple of weeks ago I came across a newspaper article and this was not something I was looking at for at all, it was just out of the blue, literally. I was looking in a Houston newspaper in January or so of 1900, and this is long after the war, of course and a man had written into the veterans column there and noted that he had been a ship captain in Galveston before and during the Civil War and he was recalling some of the most interesting instances that he had experienced during the war. And one of them was something that we had always heard about but didn't know very much about, and it involved a group of men that were serving on top of the Henley Building, which is at 20th Strand still today. And if you look at the old images of the Henley Building today and if you look at the old images of the Henley building, you will see that there is a white cupola, a little kind of a storehouse, on top of the building and that was used as an observatory by a group of men who had telescopes up there. And they went up there at the very beginning of the war, even before the war technically started, and kept a detailed notebook logbook, and that logbook is preserved in the Rosenberg Library. It's a fabulous piece of history.
Speaker 1:And these men were called the JOLOs, j-o-l-o, and those were strictly initials. The notebook does not define what that means the people at the time kind of called them the lookouts. And so when people would ask me what did JOLO stand for in this thing, I always would have said, well, it's probably something like the Jolly Order of Lookouts or something like that. We were pretty confident. Those last two letters stood for lookouts.
Speaker 1:And then I'm looking again in a Houston newspaper in 1900, and then I'm looking again in a Houston newspaper in 1900, come across this comment by a guy named Gearing. And Gearing says that he knew these men very well. They were all steamboat men like himself. And he said that the name of the organization stood for the Jolly Old Loafers Office, stood for the Jolly Old Loafers Office. And if you'd asked me in a million years I would never have guessed that that's what those initials stood for. And he not only said that it stood for Jolly Old Loafers Office, but he said that the men were so proud of this name that they had gotten the initials in gold on a red square piece of velvet and that was what they put on their hats and that was their only insignias. So JOLO stood for Jolly Old Loafers Office, something I never saw coming, but the more I thought about it, the more. It made sense to me.
Speaker 1:We've always loved this notebook because it's not the standard kind of military thing at all.
Speaker 1:These guys will record doing funny things, like one night, they say, battle with mosquitoes ongoing results doubtful. Another night they issued themselves letters of mark, which is what the privateers did, and so basically they then became pirates and marched up and down the Strand seizing random change from people, and they actually found a water cooler which they took back. Another night they had seized a pie for military purposes and took it back to their observatory. They were constantly complaining about the night guards, because the night guards had a tendency to get drunk, and when they got drunk they damaged the telescope. But in between these kind of comedy lines that are in the JOLO notebook, there's a lot of serious content there too. It records the weather, it records all the ship traffic and then in July of 1861, when the Union blockade starts, you actually have the moment that this big steamer pulls into view off the entrance to Galveston Harbor and suddenly everything is going to turn real for these men, because that's really the start of the Civil War in.
Speaker 1:Galveston. So what does loafer mean? So what does loafer mean? I think they mean just loafing around and kind of laying around doing whatever they can to pass the time while they're waiting for something to materialize, and they write down on a notebook.
Speaker 2:So, before the Union warships pull up off the coast, it's all fun.
Speaker 1:and games, it's all fun and games, and it stops in July of 1861. And in fact the first battle occurs the month after that, very close to where the Galvest Hotel is today.
Speaker 2:Actually. So I heard a funny story you told on another show about that battle right off the coast right out here and how people were kind of showing up and just standing on the sand and they thought it would be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first battle in Galveston occurs in August of 1861. And what happens is this the Union steamer South Carolina had been assigned to the blockade. It had showed up in July. It had been capturing a number of smaller vessels just to help aid in the blockading process, to keep the Confederates as much as possible bottled up in Galveston Harbor, and so the Confederates had built a small fortification over on the beach. And to give you an idea of where the location of that fort was, it's near the Galvest Hotel. It's really kind of over where the Murdoch's bath complex or shops are today, across there, you know, not too far from, say, 23rd and the seawall. But there was a small fort there.
Speaker 1:There were a group of German men in the fort, the Confederate fortification and one of the ships that was helping the South Carolina with the blockade came a little bit too close to the Confederate fort and the guys were kind of looking for an excuse to fire their cannons anyway, and so they said all right, let's fire at this Union ship. That's come a little too close in the morning. So they fire at it and this Union ship just scurries off behind the safety of the South Carolina, and at this point the captain of the South Carolina decides that he just cannot take that kind of action, and so he is going to take the South Carolina in later in the afternoon and show that Confederate fort what some real guns could do under the hands of men that are trained to use them. So the people of Galveston realize that a battle is about to take place on the beach, and they've never really seen a battle like this, and so they say, well, maybe we should go look at this thing.
Speaker 1:And so virtually everybody in town that was left in town came over to the beach with a picnic lunch and packed up everything they needed and was waiting there on the beach for this battle to take place in the afternoon, everything they needed and was waiting there on the beach for this battle to take place the afternoon. Sure enough, late in the afternoon the South Carolina does steam within range of the Confederate fort and both sides start firing at each other. And it's early in the war and really neither side can hit the broadside of a barn with their weapons. And so the weapons start firing randomly in a number of different directions.
Speaker 1:And very little damage is done to the fort no damage, essentially, is done to the Union's ship, and the people of Galveston soon realized that it's probably not an ideal thing to witness a battle from close range, and so they start scurrying for safety as much as they can. At the end of the battle there is one, and only one casualty, and it turns out to be a poor Portuguese guy, a vendor, who had come to the beach to try to sell things to the Galvestonians that were witnessing the battle. But he is the first and only casualty of that battle and, as far as I can tell, he's the first Civil War casualty in all of Texas.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, wow, Just trying to sell sandwiches on the beach.
Speaker 1:It's a dangerous occupation probably still is today.
Speaker 2:Right, people were warned hey, you might want to leave because, as you said earlier, islands are pretty easy to capture, you know, and if the Union sails down, they could easily capture Galveston. But did most Galvestonians leave during the Civil War or did, you know, only a few stay, or how did that work?
Speaker 1:In October of 1862, the Union Navy comes with a large ship of warships and they basically enter Galveston Harbor and take the city without any serious opposition at all. At that point the Confederates decide that they will issue a notice to the people of Galveston saying you might want to think about leaving, and that notice is still preserved in the Rosenberg Library collection. It's a really interesting thing. Some citizens left, others did not. Probably most of the Galveston residents left at or right around that time and in fact the Galveston newspaper moves to Houston and is published in Houston for the rest of the war.
Speaker 2:So these 21 decisions. Was it difficult to come up with 21 decisions? Or was it difficult to come up with 21 decisions? Or was it difficult to pare down from maybe 30 or 40 different decisions?
Speaker 1:It's hard to pare them down, really, but you have to realize what a critical decision is in the terms of this book. You know, commanders make decisions constantly. You know, what am I going to have for breakfast? What are we going to do today? It's not all. Which particular force am I going to send, at which particular angle, at which particular time? They make decisions all the time, huge, thousands and thousands of decisions all the time. Only a few of those decisions end up being important, meaning that they have some influence on the events that are going to follow. And yet, kind of like a pyramid, and then at the top of that pyramid there are a few, and only a few, decisions that qualify as critical decisions, meaning that they are decisions that basically affect everything that comes after them in a serious and material way. And when you start looking at that and say, all right, what are the decisions that were so important that, if they had been made differently, would have influenced events in a material way, you start paring them down and paring them down. And when I paired them all down, that's how I came up with these 21 decisions. I'll give you an example of one of these decisions just to understand how they happen.
Speaker 1:A spoiler alert in my book, the Battle on the Bay of the Civil War Struggle for Galveston, we talk about this battle, this crazy battle that happened on the morning of January 1, 1863, crazy battle that happened on the morning of January the 1st of 1863, in which the Confederates attacked by land and sea and drove the Union forces out of Galveston Harbor. That battle plan was so unusual that nobody else would have done it other than a very unique commander, and the commander that we had down here in Texas at the time was a guy named John Bankhead Magruder. Nobody but General Magruder would have launched this kind of crazy battle plan, particularly since he had only come down to Texas a month before this battle was launched. And so, when you look at it, one of the 21 decisions that absolutely was critical to Galveston's success was when Jefferson Davis made the decision, which was very controversial at the time, to go ahead and send General Magruder down to Texas and put him in command of the forces here. If that had not happened, I'm certain there would not have been a Battle of Galveston in January of 1863, and I'm virtually certain that Galveston would have remained in Union hands for the entire remainder of the war. The entire course of the war for Texas would have been drastically different if Jefferson Davis had not made that particular decision.
Speaker 1:On the other side of the coin, abraham Lincoln, in the fall of 1863, has an incredibly important choice to make. He's just won the Battle of Gettysburg and Robert E Lee is forced out of Pennsylvania and back into the Confederacy. Ulysses S Grant has captured Vicksburg and so he now has control of the Mississippi River. So, with those two campaigns ending the way they do, he has some spare forces that he could devote to a new campaign, could devote to a new campaign. And the question is do you come out of the Mississippi River and take those forces east and attack Mobile, which is critically important to the Confederate war effort, or do you take those forces west and attack Texas?
Speaker 1:And again, texas didn't have necessarily the military strategic value that someplace like Mobile and the central part of Alabama had to the Confederacy, but it did have one thing that was critically important at the time and that was a border with Mexico, because the French were down in Mexico at the time and there was some serious thought that they were fixing to launch a plan to try and separate Texas from the Confederacy and ultimately the United States, and either make it an independent republic that was sort of something they could handle or possibly even annex it to what they hoped would be the new French-dominated Mexico. And Lincoln could not stand for that to happen, and so, as a result, he made the decision, in the fall of 1863, to launch a Texas campaign, and that would end up being the force that he was trying to send it to Sabine Pass. That would be defeated by Dick Dowling, an Irish saloon keeper from Houston, with 38 men under his command.
Speaker 2:So when I think decisions, I think leadership the key differences between some of the union leaders and Confederate leaders that you found during the research for this book.
Speaker 1:It was surprising to me when I came up with my list, my 21 decisions. Surprising to me when I came up with my list, my 21 decisions. I was shocked at how many of them involve personnel and actually who you appoint to a particular position. Because if General Magruder had not been here, the Confederate battle plans that resulted in the recapture of Galveston would not have happened. General Magruder again came down to Texas and was going to launch this wild plan that involved a naval force. He had no naval background at all. There was only one Confederate naval officer anywhere within sight and he was unsuitable for the role. So Magruder had to make a critical decision. Who he was going to appoint named Leon Smith, who was a friend of attacks on the USS Harriet Lane with the Confederate cotton-clad steamers. If he had not made that decision, the battle would certainly have been lost. And again, this was the decision that Magruder made to appoint Leon Smith to that position.
Speaker 1:On the Union side, after the Battle of Galveston had happened and Magruder had regained control of the city, the question was how in the world are you going to keep control of it? Because there was a reason that it was given up in the fall of 1862, and that was that it was so hard to fortify an island city. And Magruder now had the city, but he didn't have the fortifications around it. How in the world was he going to buy enough time to build those fortifications? And so Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, over in New Orleans, knew he needed to send somebody to come over here and retake Galveston before the Confederates could fortify it. And the question he had was should he come himself or should he appoint someone else? And if he needed to appoint someone else, who would it be?
Speaker 1:And so Farragut finally decided although he wanted very, very badly to come over here and teach the Confederates a lesson, because he thought the Battle of Galveston was the most shameful incident in the entire history of the US Navy. But he decided well, he couldn't leave and come over here and leave things over there on the Mississippi River the way they were. He had to stay there. So he had to send somebody he trusted. And the guy he trusted was Commodore Bell, who was a friend of his and also an older naval officer. And he sent Bell over here to recapture Galveston. And he was exactly the wrong man for the job, because Bell was more timid than Farragut and he waited around and waited around and in the meantime, while he waited around, the Confederate steamer Alabama showed up out of the blue and sunk the Hatteras and put such a wrench into the Union plans to retake Galveston that they held off, and that gave Magruder just enough time to build the fortifications he needed to continue to defend the city.
Speaker 2:This is the third time you've been on the podcast. This is the third time you've been on the podcast.
Speaker 1:One thing that is pretty consistent is that these Confederate plans and ideas of not just in Galveston but all over Texas. They're pretty audacious nature of the personality of General John MacEd McGrooter. He's sent here in Texas and he's known in the Army as Prince John McGrooter because he's such a crazy character. He had all these theatrical mannerisms. He never wore a conventional uniform Up in Virginia. He was known for doing wild things to keep the Union Army at bay. He would have units marching back and forth in circles. He would have enslaved people marching around, beating drums randomly. They would light many more campfires than the men needed, just so the opposing Union Army would see these things and think they were much larger numbers. He was the absolute master at doing more with less, absolute master at doing more with less. And so in some ways that was the brilliant decision that Jefferson Davis made was to send Magruder down to a place like Texas where, again, there were very limited resources. Here you would have to make the most of them in order to do anything. And so Magruder arrives here in November of 1862 and he has two important decisions to make. The first timing he knows that he has to get control of Galveston back if he's going to control Texas at all. But how do you do it? When and how do you do it? The first question is when?
Speaker 1:Because at the time he arrives in Texas the Union Navy is in control of Galveston, but it's a naval force. There are no troops at all, really land troops until Christmas Eve of 1862. But Magruder knows it won't stay that way. He knows that there's a large Union force seemingly on the horizon, destined for Galveston. He is convinced that he will stand virtually no chance if he waits until that force lands and controls all of the resources they're going to be able to control. So he decides very quickly that he has to attack, you know, as soon as he can, within a month.
Speaker 1:And then the second question is all right, you've made the decision to attack. Now how are you going to do it? Are you going to do it a simple attack? Are you going to do it a little complicated? Are you going to go all the way, crazy complicated? And he goes through all the resources and considers all the options and he says the only plan that stands a chance of working is the really, really crazy plan. We're going to launch a simultaneous attack by land and sea in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:He has no naval force whatsoever At the time he makes this decision. He really doesn't have any army force of any size. He has some few old cannon, but they're over on the mainland, he has nothing to do these with. But he makes this incredible decision that he's going to immediately launch a plan that is the wildest battle plan of the entire civil war, and I say that with experience and looking at virtually every battle and every campaign in the American Civil War. It's the wildest one ever. Most of it doesn't work, most of it spectacularly fails, and yet at the end of this battle the Confederates recapture Galveston.
Speaker 2:I understand you have like a walking and driving tour, pretty much kind of breaking down like where you should go and what you should see. Is that right? That's right.
Speaker 1:Typically these books have had things like you know, kind of breaking down where you should go and what you should see. Is that right, that's right. Typically these books have had things like if they'll do one on critical decisions of the Battle of Shiloh, they'll have a battlefield tour and say you go to this place and look over there and that's where this guy was and that's where he was when he made these decisions. That's really hard to do in the context of the Galveston campaigns, just because so many of the decisions are not made on the ground. Of course I could put some people around the Henley building and show them where things were around there, and I do that, but you want to do more than that. So what I put in the back of my book was I realized that a lot of people that would read this book were not necessarily Texans and were not necessarily familiar with what was really going on in Texas, and so I have some information in there about all the Civil War places and things around Galveston.
Speaker 1:Some of the things around the Texas City Museum where the Westfield is Texas City Museum where the Westfield is We've got the main battleground really in Texas is preserved at Sabine Pass. So the Sabine Pass Battleground, a historic site which is interesting just because I think it's probably the least visited Civil War battlefield in America. And in fact it was funny, the funny the, the head of the uh national park surface, the head historian for national park service, got him Ed bars, who's legendary the business uh, came to me one time and said I want to go with you over to Sabine pass and he said he admitted to me that it was the only major battlefield he had never been to in America, the only civil war battlefield of any consequence he had never been to in America, the only Civil War battlefield of any consequence he had never been to in America. So I got to give a battlefield tour to the guy who basically has a statue of him giving battlefield tours.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's amazing. That's amazing. So this is the first book in this series that is west of the Mississippi River, that's correct.
Speaker 1:The area west of the Mississippi River was called the Trans-Mississippi, and the Critical Decisions Campaign has focused before now pretty much on the eastern campaigns, primarily Gettysburg, fredericksburg, chancellorsville, those sorts of things, and it's only now that they're starting to step across and look at some of the action over here. The next book in this series is on the Red River campaign over in Louisiana.
Speaker 2:So why do you think the West of the Mississippi has kind of been underappreciated in Civil War history?
Speaker 1:When I talk to people about the Civil War in Texas, many people are surprised to learn that there was any Civil War activity in Texas. They associate the Civil War with places like Gettysburg or Vicksburg or big actions over there that have big national park battlefields, and of course we don't have any of that here in Texas. But what happened west of the Mississippi River was important and in fact some of the key armies, forces that are used over in the eastern and western campaigns east of the Mississippi River involve Texans. And you think to yourself well, how did the Texans get there? How do the supplies that furnish those people get there? What are those Texas people in those armies going to fight if they know their homes are being invaded? The things that happened over here in Texas were a lot more important than most even historians had assumed until fairly recently and we're only now getting to explore those stories in detail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it's easy to cover the big major battles with lots of casualties and major decisions, like on the front in between the border states bordering the north and south, but when you get over here I guess it's harder to kind of pinpoint, you know, the big things that actually tied into the grand outcome of the Civil War.
Speaker 1:One of the things I really like about talking about the Civil War in Texas is that it's such a broad area. I mean, if I was east of the Mississippi and focusing on one of the campaigns there, it's gotten to be really very specialized. Nobody wants another book on the Battle of Gettysburg and so, as a result, people are doing very, very small things. It's going to be the second minute on the second day on the left side of the parkway over here in this one activity, or you're doing something, you're taking a tiny little action, a cavalry skirmish, and calling it the Gettysburg of Southeast Ohio or something. You have to really get creative in order to make those things sound interesting.
Speaker 1:I never have that problem over here west of the Mississippi and particularly in Texas, and that's largely because a lot of these things have been underexplored. But when you tell people about the things that happened over here, people are astonished. When I tell people that, yes, at Sabine Pass, 41 men, mainly Irish dock workers, under the command of a 26-year-old Irish saloon keeper named Dick Dowling, held off an invasion force that consisted of more than 20 Union ships and 6,000 men. It's a wild story. And then you talk about Galveston and this crazy battle plan launched in the middle of the night that nobody had any serious thought could possibly succeed the way it did, and it ends up being the action that keeps Galveston in the war as the last major Confederate port. All of these things are very unique stories and people are fascinated when you really get them to study them.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate you coming in now. We're going to go explore let's go explore, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Thanks, man and so jr, and are now in our own kind of letters of mark piracy activity along the strand, trying to to find things to support the effort here. But this is where the action was in 1861. So, so, but just give me an idea. Okay, so this guy was a confederate officer. This is where the action was in 1861. So just to give you an idea okay, so this guy was a Confederate officer. This is Moody's Moody building and this he was a Confederate officer. You have the right down in the on the other side of the street was the largest slave market west of the Mississippi, and you could actually see the cannons poking out of this building from the second floor, a piece of architecture that's been damaged.
