Sabine
Pass: The Confederacy's
Thermopylae
by Edward T. Cotham, Jr.
288 pages, published 2004
ISBN: 0292705948 (softcover), price $21.95
For a .pdf of this article, click here
THE STORY
The canons were too hot to touch. After nearly an hour of relentless firing, the fifty-man Confederate artillery company posted at a raised mud fort in a backwater swamp called Sabine Pass had just beaten off the Union Army invasion of Texas. Confederate Lieutenant Dick Dowling and his Davis Guards would soon take the formal surrender of two riddled Union gunboats and begin accepting more than 300 incredulous prisoners of war. The Federal invasion force of some 6,000 Union infantry troopers turned its transports towards the Gulf of Mexico back to Louisiana. The Confederate artillerists did not suffer one combat casualty. Within hours, the proud victors would begin receiving thanks from almost every level of the Confederate government.
*
When the Civil
War started the towns along the Texas gulf coast found
themselves to be actors in a grand struggle for the
successful supply of the the new Confederate states. From
the outset, the Union plan for the rebel seaboard was to
deprive the Confederacy of the free flow of supplies to its
ports. The Union plan for the coastal blockade was part of
what was known as the Anaconda Plan. The large constricting
snake was the symbolic vision of the Union intent. Of
course, the Confederate strategy was to maintain possession
of key port cities and to find ways around and through the
blockade line.
For the first
year of the war the Federal navy had too few ships and the
Confederacy too many ports for the plan to have full effect
on the Confederate war effort, but over time important port
cities fell into Union hands. Outright capture and
occupation of rebel port cities was a far more effective
way of executing a blockade plan than patrolling the ports
from offshore, and eventually this technique found its way
to the Texas coast.
It was with the
strategy in mind that Union soldiers and gunboats began
capturing Texas coastal ports during the late summer of
1862. Although the August attempt to capture Corpus Christi
failed, Sabine Pass was captured by an aggressive attack in
September and Galveston was taken in October 1862.
By the Fall of
1862 the Union blockade of the Texas coast was proceeding
with speed and success. Both Fort Sabine and the
fortifications at Galveston had been paper tigers,
under-garrisoned and under-armed by the thin Confederate
forces in Texas. However, despite the quick success of
Union efforts, Federal forces did not have the leadership
in place to maintain control of the captured ports. By the
beginning of 1863 the Union effort in Texas had been
completely reversed. The Texas coastline had returned as an
important source of supply for the Confederacy.
As 1863 proceeded
and Union plans to restrict the flow of supplies into the
Confederacy gained momentum, the Texas coast returned to
the spotlight. Increasingly, both Union and Confederate
commanders understood the importance of the Texas coastline
to the future of the war effort and both sides developed
plans that would result in the climactic battle of Sabine
Pass.
For the
Confederate side, two serious-minded European engineers
turned their attention to the Texas defenses in the region.
After fortifying Galveston, the team of Colonel Valery
Sulowski and Colonel Julius Kellersberg began work on a
novel design for a new fort at Sabine Pass in the far
southeast corner of the Texas coast near the Louisiana
border. These men lent an engineer's eye to the defensive
opportunities presented by the unusual topography of the
pass. The placement and design of what was called Fort
Griffin would come to symbolize an effort that made the
most of the human and material resources at hand.
As the new fort
took shape by the hands of commandeered slave labor, Union
plans were developing to find a suitable site for nothing
less than the wholesale invasion of Texas. Although many
sites were considered for the initial assault, Sabine Pass
became the eventual target of Union plans.
The Union
invasion was to be a combined service effort employing
naval gunboats and infantry transports spearheading an
amphibious landing. The gunboats were to sail up the narrow
river channel of the pass approaching the Confederate fort
and then engage the enemy battery. While receiving cover
from the gunboats, 6,000 Union troopers were to disembark
and capture the rebel position. The victorious landing
party would then move further inland using captured rail
resources.
For a variety of
reasons the September 1863 Union invasion of Texas through
Sabine Pass encountered the perfect storm. The loss of
surprise in the Union battleplan; an accurate, well-trained
rebel artillery battery; a perfectly designed fort, a
problematic waterway, poor Union coordination and
decision-making, and an aborted infantry landing all
combined to deliver a shocking reverse to what had been
considered a simple Union operation that was to conclude in
easy victory.
The small company
of Irish Confederate gunners handed the combined Union
forces perhaps the most improbable, yet most thorough
defeat of the Civil War. Within days the event had gained a
legendary cachet, capturing the imagination of rebel forces
badly in need of good news. Dick Dowling, the Irish
bartender turned Confederate artillery lieutenant who
commanded the battery at Fort Griffin, became a Texas hero
who has been repeatedly honored with memorials both in
America and Ireland. Indeed, there are at least six
monuments to Dowling's Davis Guards and their victory at
the battle of Sabine Pass; an array of honors perhaps
unequalled to our own day for such a small combat unit and
such a soldier of modest rank.
THE BOOK
I love books like this one. An
author who lives near the events of the story delves into
an exciting, little known drama and comes up with a gold
nugget of a book. Mr. Cotham is an attorney and it shows.
Like a prosecutor assembling a cold case, each piece of the
puzzle is carefully fit into place. Suddenly, a story that
seems like a miracle becomes an inevitability. This is the
beauty of the book.
Having noted that
Mr. Cotham is an attorney, and that the book is built with
care and confidence, I must also say that the story is
drawn taught with drama. Mr. Cotham is a good writer and
each sentence flows purposefully and logically from the
last. To every degree possible, each chapter reveals the
backstory of the causal events. Its not until after you've
finished the book that you realize the importance of each
piece that made up the whole. The chapter on Union Admiral
Farragut's gunboat tactics against shoreline fortifications
initially seems off the point, until you realize that
Farragut's preferred combat tempo was openly adopted by the
Union gunboats at Sabine Pass (with disastrous effect). The
reader might also wonder why the engineering background of
the Confederate mud fort is worthy of so much attention,
until you later realize that the placement and design of
the fort put in place a strategic advantage that was
grossly underestimated by the Union attackers. And on it
goes. The second time through the book is where the reader
sees it all coming (and enjoys it all the more).
Following
is a short e-interview with the author of
Sabine
Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae, conducted January 19,
2009:
RM: When was the
first time you heard about the battle at Sabine Pass and
how did it effect you at the time? Did you think
immediately, "I've got to write about this."
Mr. Cotham: I grew up
out in West Texas and had never heard of the Battle of
Sabine Pass until the late 1960's when we moved to Houston.
I had heard of Dowling street here in Houston and knew Dick
Dowling was a Civil War figure but did not know much about
him. But one day I read a reference work that mentioned
that Jefferson Davis had called the Battle of Sabine Pass
the most amazing military victory of all time. I was
hooked. The more I read, the more amazing it seemed. When I
discovered that there had never been a scholarly history
written on the battle I knew I had found the subject for a
book I wanted to write.
RM: Books like this
often have the effect of revealing new information from
private sources after the book is published and comes to
the attention of those possessing private information like
letters, etc. Has that happened since your book has come
out? Any new information you can add to this incredible
tale?
Mr. Cotham: Yes, I have
been contacted by descendants of men who fought on both
sides of the battle, who have offered me copies of letters
and photographs. Nothing earth-shattering. Just material
that helps flesh out the story a little. Historians live in
fear of something coming out that changes the whole picture
but fortunately nothing like that has ever happened to me.
We have recently formed a Friends group for the Sabine Pass
Battleground and I hope to publish some of this new
material in our newsletter.
RM: Do you see a trend
in Civil War writing toward the examination of smaller
events like Sabine Pass or the battle at Galveston? Many
historians, like yourself, live in an area and use that
area as a springboard to explore regional Civil War
history. Being close to the locations and sources it seems
like a natural evolution for those doing private
scholarship. Please comment.
Mr. Cotham: Yes. It
seems like there are three trends going on in Civil War
books. The first is to take a small battle or skirmish and
try to build it into something larger (call it "the
Gettysburg of East Texas" etc). The second trend is to
write about a big battle but to concentrate on only a small
part of it (e.g., "The last five minutes of the Battle of
Antietam"). The third trend is to take a minor figure and
write a biography that will catch a reader's attention
(e.g., "the Stonewall Jackson of Texas"). I try not to be
guilty of these sins. The battles I have written about are
indeed small by Eastern standards but I think they have
genuine significance. Sabine Pass is unique because of its
outcome and the fact that 40 men prevented an invasion of
Texas. Galveston was important because it was the only
major port recaptured by the Confederates. I think there is
a real place for books that study a little known military
conflict, even if it is small in scope. But the author has
to be careful not to exaggerate the importance of the
subject, which is a natural tendency. It is interesting
that writing the first two books put me on the trail of a
third book (recently published) which covered a Civil War
Marines's journey all along the Gulf Coast and up and down
the Mississippi. So by studying two relatively small
battles I was led into a larger area of research that is
still bearing fruits today.
My thanks to Mr.
Edward T. Cotham, Jr. If you are looking to buy a copy of
Sabine Pass, go
here.
Mr. Cotham is
also the author of two other Civil War books,
Battle on the Bay: The
Civil War Struggle for Galveston
