US Civil War Battle at GALVESTON

January 1, 1863

A major part of the Union battle plan was to blockade Southern ports to prevent trade and gain control of the seaports. In Texas, the port targeted was Galveston.

In October, 1862, Union ships attacked and Galveston was easily captured by the Union forces.

When General John Bankhead Magruder replaced General Hebert as Commander of the Military Department in Texas, he decided to retake Galveston.

His plans were carefully and secretly drawn up. The Neptune and Bayou City, which were two steamboats, were converted to confederate “cottonclads.” This meant that bales of cotton were placed around the gunwales and decks for reinforcement. There were approximately 300 men placed on the two ships. Two smaller ships called “tenders” (which meant they carried the supplies and provisions) followed loaded with riflemen.

Magruder sent his land force of 1,000 men to Virginia Point, on the mainland opposite Galveston. He joined them on December 29, 1862.

Before sunrise on December 31, 1862 Magruder’s troops waded across to Galveston. At dawn, they attacked and drove the Union troops to the north end of the island. In the meantime, the Confederate cottonclads moved into the harbor. There were four Union ships. The Neptune sank under Union fire, but Bayou City was able to move in close and the riflemen on board swept over the Union vessels with a deadly attack. Two of the Union ships – the steamship and brig – were unable to escape and were captured. The gunboat and transport fled to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Union troops surrendered and General Magruder took 300 prisoners of war.Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, commended General Magruder and his

men. Although the Union continued to blockade the Southern coast, no attempts were made

to recapture Galveston.

QUESTIONS

1. Why did the Union consider blockading Southern ports so important?2. When and where did the Battle take place?3. What role did General Magruder play?4. Who won the Battle of Galveston?

US Civil War Battle at Sabine Pass

September 8, 1863

Failure to keep control of Galveston did not stop the Union from maintaining command of the Gulf of Mexico.

Union naval commanders drew up plans to seize Sabine Pass with the ultimate goal of seizing Beaumont and Houston. Thus the Union was gaining a foothold in Texas, such as the ones achieved in New Orleans and Mobile.

On September 8, 1863, four Union gunboats led 20 transport ships containing 5,000 men toward Sabine Pass. Major General William B. Franklin was in command of the Union forces.

Sabine Pass was guarded by Fort Griffin, a small Confederate post. The junior lieutenant, Dick Dowling, was in command in the absence of his senior officers. Forty –two men and several cannons were in the fort. A Confederate steamship and detachment of infantry were in the vicinity.

The attack began. The 5,000 Union troops held back as the Union gunboats moved up the channel and began to bombard the fort. The shelling lasted an hour and a half. The gunboats withdrew and came back again. They assumed the Confederate post would have withdrawn and the troops would begin their invasion.

However, Dowling had another plan in mind. During the gunboat attack, he ordered his men to withhold fire. When they returned the second time, Dowling waited until the warships were within 1200 yards. He ordered his men to start firing the cannons into each ship in turn. All of this was while they were under attack themselves.

The result was astounding. The Union navy was shocked and battered. Two ships were lost, 100 men were killed or injured, and 350 prisoners were taken. The remainder of the Union troops made their way back to New Orleans.

Lieutenant Dowling and his men had fought the most brilliant and decisive small action of the Civil War. Dowling and his men received Confederate War medals for their victory.

QUESTIONS

1. What was the Union’s goal in seizing the Sabine Pass area?2. What has the Battle of Sabine Pass been termed?3. When and where did the battle take place?4. Provide a BRIEF description of the battle5. What was the outcome? Who won?

US Civil War Red River Campaign

March 10-May 22 1864

Early in the Civil War, the Union troops moved into the Louisiana area. In March, 1864, Union commanders launched an attack to invade northeastern Texas. A force of over 25,000 Union troops was moving up the Red River and gathered at Mansfield, Louisiana. This group was led by General Nathan Banks and was supported by a fleet of ironclads. General Banks had hoped to link up with a smaller group of Union troops of about 15,000 men from the area around Poison Springs, Arkansas.

The Confederate troops were growing desperate by this time as they were losing the Civil War in the eastern areas. Food and supplies for the Confederate troops were very limited.

Despite these terrible odds, the Confederate troops, led by General Richard Taylor were able to stop the Union attack. On April 8, General Richard Taylor took the offensive and attacked the Union force outside of Mansfield, Louisiana. General Taylor had a force of about 9,000 men when the attack began. Turning the Union forces away from Texas and the important “seaport” of Jefferson, Texas, the Union army retreated into Mississippi without ever invading Texas.

QUESTIONS

1. What did the Union hope to do in the Red River campaign?2. How did the Confederates feel about the Civil War by this

time?3. Who led the Confederate troops in this campaign?

4. How did he win the battle?

US Civil War Battle at Palmito Ranch

May 13, 1865

In 1865, things were looking very bad for the Confederacy. The Union was winning the Civil War. Along the Rio Grande, many things were happening. In Mexico, they were facing invasion by the French.

President Lincoln sent General Wallace of the Union army to negotiate with the Confederates in the Rio Grande area. General Wallace felt that he could get them to rejoin the Union and together they could drive the French out of Mexico.

A truce was agreed upon with Colonel John S. “RIP” Ford, but an eager Union officer sent a Negro regiment to Palmito Ranch on May 12, 1865.

Encouraged by Confederate General E. Kirby Smith in the west to continue fighting, the remaining Confederate troops gathered near Brownsville. Fighting between the Confederate troops and the Union regiment broke out on May 13, 1865. The Union men were on foot when Colonel Ford’s cavalry attacked and complete chaos broke out. The Union troops were scattered and many were killed.

When the fighting stopped, over 220 Union soldiers lay dead on the battlefield. Colonel Ford and his men captured over 100 prisoners. The irony of this battle was that the Civil War had been over for a month. The Confederates led by General Robert E. Lee had already surrendered on April 9, 1865 to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

QUESTIONS

1. Why were the Confederates at an advantage during the battle?2. Provide a BRIEF description of the battle.3. Who won the battle at Palmito Ranch?

4. What was so ironic about this battle?

US Civil War Battle at Fort Sumter

April 12-13, 1861

When South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, United States army positioned themselves at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Just after the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1861, Anderson reported that he had only a six week supply of food left in the fort and Confederate patience for a foreign force in its territory was wearing thin.

On Thursday, April 11, 1861, Confederate Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard dispatched aides to Maj. Anderson to demand the fort’s surrender. Anderson refused. The next morning, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter and continued for 34 hours. The Civil War had begun!  The Union soldiers did not return the fire for the first two hours. At about 7:00 A.M. Union soldiers fired the first shot in defense of the fort.

The firing continued all day, although much less rapidly since the Union fired aimed to conserve ammunition. "The crashing of the shot, the bursting of the shells, the falling of the walls, and the roar of the flames, made a pandemonium of the fort," wrote Doubleday. The fort's large flag staff was struck and the colors fell to the ground and a brave lieutenant, Norman J. Hall, bravely exposed himself to enemy fire as he put the Stars and Stripes back up. That evening, the firing was sporadic with but an occasional round landing on or in Fort Sumter.

On Saturday, April 13, Anderson surrendered the fort. Incredibly, no soldiers were killed in battle. Carrying their tattered banner, the men marched out of the fort and boarded a boat that ferried them to the Union ships outside the harbor. They were greeted as heroes on their return to the North.

QUESTIONS

1. Who was involved?

2. What happened?

3. When did this battle occur?

4. Where did this battle take place?

US Civil War

The Emancipation ProclamationJanuary 1, 1863

As early as 1849, Abraham Lincoln believed that slaves should be emancipated (set free), advocating a program in which they would be freed gradually. Early in his presidency, still convinced that gradual emacipation was the best course, he tried to win over legistators. To gain support, he proposed that slaveowners be compensated for giving up their "property." His plan was not supported by lawmakers.

In September of 1862, after the Union's victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary decree stating that, unless the rebellious states returned to the Union by January 1, freedom would be granted to slaves within those states. The decree also left room for a plan of compensated emancipation. No Confederate states took the offer, and on January 1 Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. The proclamation allowed black soldiers to fight for the Union -- soldiers that were desperately needed. It also tied the issue of slavery directly to the war. 

QUESTIONS

1. Who was involved?

2. What happened?

3. When did this event occur?

4. Where did this event take place?

US Civil War

The End of the War – SURRENDER!April 9, 1865

Approximately 9,000 men under Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee deployed in the fields west of the village before dawn and waited.  The attack, launched before 8:00 a.m. and led by General Bryan Grimes of North Carolina, was initially successful.  The outnumbered Union cavalry fell back, temporarily opening the road.  But it was not to be.  Union infantry began arriving from the west and south, completing Lee’s encirclement.  Meanwhile, Longstreet’s troops were being pressed from the rear near New Hope Church, three miles to the east.  General Ulysses S. Grant’s goal of cutting off and destroying Lee’s army was close at hand.

Bowing to the inevitable, Lee ordered his troops to retreat through the village and back across the Appomattox River.  Small pockets of resistance continued until flags of truce were sent out from the Confederate lines between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m.  Rather than destroy his army and sacrifice the lives of his soldiers to no purpose, Lee decided to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.

The surrender of Lee’s Confederate Army set the stage for the end of the Civil War.  Through the lenient terms, Confederate troops were paroled and allowed to return to their homes while Union soldiers were ordered to refrain from overt celebration or taunting.  These measures served as a blueprint for the surrender of the remaining Confederate forces throughout the South.  Although a formal peace treaty was never signed by the combatants, the submission of the Confederate armies ended the war and began the long and difficult road toward reunification.

QUESTIONS

1. Who was involved?

2. What happened?

3. When did this event occur?

4. Where did this event take place?

US Civil WarSTATISTICS

(write down 4 facts in complete sentences, including Juneteenth)

Q. When was the Civil War fought?The war began when Confederate warships bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.  The war ended in Spring, 1865.  Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.  The last battle was fought at Palmito Ranch, Texas, on May 13, 1865.  Click here for a Civil War timeline.

Q. How many soldiers fought in the Civil War?t the beginning of the war the Northern states had a combined population of 22 million people. The Southern states had a combined population of about 9 million. This disparity was reflected in the size of the armies in the field. The Union forces outnumbered the Confederates roughly two to one.

Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War?Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War. This number comes from an 1889 study of the war performed by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. Both men fought for the Union. Their estimate is derived from an exhaustive study of the combat and casualty records generated by the armies over five years of fighting.  A recent study puts the number of dead as high as 850,000.

Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War as compared to other American wars?Roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation's wars--620,000 in the Civil War and 644,000 in all other conflicts.  It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the amount of American deaths in foreign wars eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War.

Q. When did TEXAS secede from the Union?Texas - February 1, 1861

Q. What were the bloodiest battles of the Civil War?

Q. What caused casualties during a battle?

Q. How much were soldiers paid?A white Union private made thirteen dollars a month; his black counterpart made seven dollars until Congress rectified the discrepancy in 1864.  A Confederate private ostensibly made eleven dollars a month, but often went long stretches with no pay at all.

Q. When were slaves official set free in Texas?Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States.  Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19ththat the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. 

Name: Pd:Battles of the Civil War that took place in TEXAS

Red River Campaign:

1. What did the Union hope to do in the Red River campaign?

2. How did the Confederates feel about the Civil War by this time?

3. Who led the Confederate Troops during this campaign?

4. How did he win the battle?

Battle at Palmito Ranch:

1. Why were the Confederates at an advantage during the battle?

2. Provide a BRIEF description of the battle.

3. Who won the battle at Palmito Ranch?

Battle at Sabine Pass:

1. What was the Union’s goal in seizing the Sabine Pass area?

2. What has the Battle of Sabine Pass been termed?

3. When and where did the battle take place?

4. Provide a BRIEF description of the battle

Battle at Galveston:

1. Why did the Union consider blockading Southern ports so important?

2. When and where did the battle take place?

3. What role did General Magruder play?

4. Who won the Battle at

Name: Pd:Civil War in the United States

STATISTICS:

SURRENDER!

Who:

What: (what happened?)

When:

Where:

Battle of Fort Sumter:

Who:

What: (what happened?)

When:

Where: