When Magruder wrote Ford confidentially about fighting on the Rio Grande, he then and later tried to secure Ford a commission. For reasons of its own, the Confederacy refused. The man who was to become Texas's best-known soldier in the Civil War—in his own time, that is, not later—was never carried on Confederate rolls.
Magruder could not suspend the conscription laws, nor divert men from the state or Confederate service to Ford officially. Exemptions were not granted for service in auxiliaries. This meant Ford had to recruit a sizable force in a thinly populated, manpower-drained west Texas from draft-exempts—men too old or too young. The nucleus of his force, however, was to be the inclusion of several state, militia, and paramilitary units on the southwestern frontier. Magruder and Ford conspired on this.
Ford could not give his new regiment an official name, so he called it the Cavalry of the West. He wore a battered black cavalry fedora, emblazoned with the CSA emblem. He called himself Colonel, and made it stick.
He raised the Lone Star flag and the Stars and Bars at San Antonio, nailed up placards, and sent couriers north, south, and west. His call reached from Burnet County to the Nueces. Men began to come in.
The many small militia and Indian-fighting units in the area would have marched under his orders. But only a few could be withdrawn. In Blanco and other counties above San Antonio, the Comanche danger was so acute that the frontier hung by a thread; as Ford wrote Magruder: "The withdrawal would result in an immediate abandonment of that part of the frontier."
Only units from Karnes and Guadalupe counties, to the southeast below San Antonio, were taken, along with Captain Tom Cater's company of men from Burnet, Williamson, and Travis counties. Walthersdorff's battalion and Dorbant's and Heermann's companies were left on the Balcones Scarp. Major Albert Walthersdorff himself, however, was detached to San Antonio to act as Ford's "tactician." The German officer was a huge man, who could lift a recruit and shake him with one hand.
Three things made west Texans pour into San Antonio. The seizure of Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley by the Federal XIII Army Corps under Major General Dana had aroused the state. When the 19th Iowa unfurled its colors on Brazos Island and splashed across the shallow arm to Texas soil, the fear of invasion, with all the horrors Northern armies were bringing to the South, became acute.
Colonel James Duff's 33rd Texas Cavalry fell back from Brownsville. Some of Duff's state troops, including one whole company, deserted into Mexico. The "butcher of Fredericksburg" moved back across the Nueces. Colonel Santos Benavides, a prominent Laredoan who had declared for the South, defended above Rio Grande City with a small force. Generals H. P. Bee and James E. Slaughter, the ranking Confederate officers in south Texas, had neither forces nor inclination to engage the battle-hardened Iowa and Illinois regiments. Meanwhile, Union cavalry—Colonel E. J. Davis's 1st Texas—rode reconnaissances in force. They pushed Benavides back upon Laredo, and galloped a hundred miles north, raiding the King ranch headquarters and running off beef cattle. The appearance of these bluebellies in a region remote from the war caused understandable alarm across the underpopulated frontier.
But two other factors ignited the spirit of resistance. Davis's force was composed of Mexicans and traitors to the state, as Unionists were called. The U.S. XIII Army Corps also contained two Negro regiments. Thus Ford cannily called for volunteers to fight "mongrel abolitionists and perfidious renegades." Resentful Texans poured in. Dozens of European immigrants, remote in region and feeling from the Southern heart of Anglo-Texas, arrived. Young boys stole horses and guns and made for San Antonio. Confederate cavalry had to provide its own horses; Ford could only supply his men with corn. He got this, at times rather brutally, by sequestration if farmers refused his copious supplies of paper money.
One of Ford's officers, scandalized, said, "Fifty-seven children have joined my battalion." Ford merely stated he would enlist any man he could without violating "law and propriety." His view of both was broad. He set the lower age of enlistment at fifteen, but did not question good-sized youngsters about their age. In some thirty days, the Cavalry of the West recruited 1,300 boys and men.
Major Walthersdorff faced a brigade of baldheads and troopers who had not learned to shave. He did the best he could.
Ford asked for two field guns; these were never sent. He needed tether-ropes, but had no hard money to buy any. His official plan of supply was horrifyingly complicated: baled cotton was being stored along his route to the Nueces; he was to pick it up and haul it to the Rio Grande. The cotton would then be sold for cash, and cash would buy the Cavalry of the West whatever it might need in Mexico.
On the march to the river, Ford was also to assimilate and take command of certain Confederate forces in the region—Major Matt Nolan's riders at Corpus Christi, Ware's battalion at San Patricio, Giddings's battalion at Eagle Pass, and Benavides's regiment at Laredo. The titles of these units should not be misconstrued—some "battalions" consisted of two tiny companies, and companies rarely exceeded the strength of a modern platoon. A full company of horse was 50 men.
If Ford gathered in every unit, he could muster perhaps 1,800 men. Against this force, the new commander at Brownsville, General J. F. Herron, deployed some 6,479, supported by twelve field pieces and sixteen heavy guns.
Ford was delayed at San Antonio until mid-March. He explained his problems in a letter to an officer of Magruder's staff: "I regret not having been able to take the field. . . . I had serious obstacles to surmount. Exhausted resources, a population almost drained of men subject to military duty, oppositions from rivalry, and the nameless disagreeable retardations incident to an undertaking of this character . . ." The oppositions came from one Lieutenant Colonel S. B. Baird, commanding the remnants of the 4th Arizona Cavalry, which despite its name was made up of Texans. The Arizona outfit was assigned to Ford's command. Baird held a regular commission in the Confederate army, and refused to serve under a rankless officer. Magruder supported Ford, and Baird was transferred. Command of the unit fell to
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Showalter, who, "when not under the influence of liquor was as chivalrous a man as ever drew a sword." Dan Showalter agreed to obey Rip Ford.
The Colonel did assemble a remarkable staff. Captain C. H. Merritt was quartermaster; he was a cotton man released by the Cotton Bureau. Captain W. G. M. Samuels rode down from north Texas to be ordnance officer—if and when the Cavalry of the West got ordnance. Major Walthersdorff was tactical officer. Major Felix Blücher, grandnephew of the Prussian co-victor at Waterloo, was made chief of staff. Blücher was a skilled surveyor and geographer and knew Texas south of the Nueces as only a German geographer could. He had command of five languages and no command of an alcohol problem. He was later cashiered.
Officers of all grades of ability and every social background were sprinkled through the regiment, from elegant Captain Granville Ouray and the adventurous Charles de Montel to hardbitten Indian-fighting captains like Cater and Dunn. Matt Nolan was an ex–U.S. Army enlisted man, with long service on the border. John Littleton was invaluable because he knew the location of almost every ranch or farm. Captain Littleton procured most of the expedition's corn.
There were some old Army camels in San Antonio, but Ford left these behind when it was discovered they did not thrive on corn.
On March 17, 1864, the Cavalry of the West stood to horse; it mounted and rode through the sun-baked plaza in front of the Alamo, a long, strung-out column in various shades of gray. Ford was at the head, wearing his black hat, a sword sash, and well-worn boots. Behind him came men born in, or with ancestry from, a score of nations and states. They sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
They were more dangerous than they looked.
Ford drove the column fast. It was a terrible march. South of San Antonio the singing stopped; the cavalry choked in dust. The winter of 1863–64 was one of those terrible times of extended drouth in south Texas. The brush country burned dry; water holes and streams had disappeared.
The column passed skeletons of cattle and other animals. Fortunately, Major Blücher was also dry and found the remaining grass and water with remarkable skill.
Within a week the Cavalry camped at Banquete. Here Ford received a courier from Santos Benavides. Benavides—supported mostly by his own numerous clan—was fighting off Yankees behind cotton bales in the streets of Laredo; he begged for ammunition. Ford now marched west, toward Laredo. He put Nolan's "riders" out to cover his flank to the east and south, and to reconnoiter a Union party that had landed at Corpus Christi. His main force pushed southwest, reaching Laredo on April 15.
At Brownsville, Herron knew Ford was in the field, but he had faulty intelligence of Texan numbers. Ford's strength was put at about 650.
Rip Ford, however, was more worried about events in Mexico than what Herron might do. Mexico was in political and military chaos, and this situation immediately affected his own. There was more than a Yankee–Confederate war going on along the Rio Grande; the conflict was actually four-cornered. There was civil war in Mexico, and interference in each conflict from both sides of the river. This imbroglio of Confederate-Union-Imperialist-French-
Republican policies and forces along the Rio Grande was incredibly complex.
After the war with the United States, Mexico continued in civil turmoil. The country was bitterly divided between the liberal, federalist, anticlerical faction and the conservative, centralist, ecclesiastic element—a controversy that in the 19th century at some time or other engaged the entire Hispanic world. In Mexico, as in other Spanish-speaking nations, the struggle continued for generations. In the 1850s, the liberals gained the upper hand, and in 1856 and 1857 a liberal Congress and constitutional convention separated Church and State. Under the new laws, civil or religious corporations were no longer permitted to hold real estate, and tenants of such property were to purchase it on easy terms. To understand the importance of, and the controversy caused by, this reform, it is necessary to understand that the Church, in Mexico, was immensely wealthy, owning more land than almost all smallholders combined. The measure was bitterly fought by the clergy. Some friars and high churchmen were exiled in reprisal.
The constitution of 1857 had a characteristically short life. It was suspended on December 1. President Ygnacio Comonfort fled to the United States. The liberal party installed the chief justice of Mexico, Benito Pablo Juárez, as President. At the same time, General Felix Zuloaga assumed leadership of the conservatives, declared himself President in honored caudillo fashion, and with the army drove Juárez and the liberals into Vera Cruz.
Zuloaga proceeded to annul all obnoxious liberal legislation. The liberals fought back with a revolution in the countryside. In eighteen months, seventy battles were fought. Conservatives won most of them, but they could not end the war. Mexico was again bankrupted, and both factions sought foreign aid. Juárez tried to secure a small loan from the United States in 1859 in return for concessions. This failed to go through, primarily because it drew ferocious Mexican, British, and French opposition.
The conservatives were, unfortunately for Mexico, more successful. Fifteen million dollars were acquired, on most unfavorable terms, from Britain and France.
However, by 1859, Juárez seemed to have again put the liberals in control. The United States recognized him as the legitimate President. On July 12, Juárez issued a church confiscation decree, giving the following rationale: the Church had been Royalist in the revolution against Spain; it opposed all liberal ideas; and the clergy were determined to hold not only religious but civil supremacy. The order nationalized all church property, reduced priests to voluntary fees, and dissolved all religious orders. This was so radical that it threw more Mexicans on the side of the Church, and Juárez was not able to reenter the City of Mexico until 1861.
Whatever the value of the religious decrees, Juárez made a dangerous error. He suspended all payments to foreign creditors and also confiscated property belonging to foreign nationals. France, Britain, and Spain jointly seized the port of Vera Cruz. Juárez was able to pay the Spanish and British, and these nations withdrew. The French government, meanwhile, under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, had succumbed to a new vision of Gallic grandeur. Napoleon III proceeded to attempt the conquest of Mexico, taking advantage of the civil war and the immobilization of the United States in its own domestic conflict.
The French proclaimed a Mexican monarchy. This caused the Conservative Party to ally with the French; Conservatives became Imperialists. The great
majority of wealthy and well-born in Mexico supported the Imperial cause; the official Church did likewise.
The French had planned an easy conquest, but the protectorate was harder to establish than they hoped. On May 5, 1862, an obscure Mexican general named Porfirio Díaz routed the French general Lorencez at Puebla. The Cinco de Mayo provoked French escalation. Napoleon III dispatched a much larger army of French, seized the capital, and through a Junta appointed by General Forey, offered the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria the throne.
Maximilian, who had to drop his hated first name in Mexico, was a descendant of Charles V, and thus had a strong appeal to traditionalist aristocrats. He arrived in Mexico on May 28, 1864, accompanied by his wife, the daughter of the King of the Belgians and Louise of Orléans, and contingents of Austrian and Belgian troops. The British approved his elevation. Now began a terrible, bloody civil war, that because of the tragic aspects of the unstable Empress Charlotte's futile efforts to save her husband, took on romantic colorations in the United States.
This war arrived on the Rio Grande. It was preceded by much purely local fighting in 1861. In Matamoros, Cipriano Guerrero and Jesus de la Serna, flying yellow and red flags, battled for the control of Tamaulipas. The Crinolinos took Matamoros in September, driving hundreds of Serna Rojos into refuge in Brownsville. A standard pattern now began—combatants crossed back and forth across the river, either for refuge or to secure a base to launch a new campaign.
When the Union recaptured Brownsville, most Confederates immediately crossed to Mexico, and plotted against the invasion from the neutral side.
The Reds crossed back to Matamoros late in 1861. Now was fought the bloodiest battle in Tamaulipas history; beautiful buildings were gutted and destroyed; dozens of men on both sides were stood against the arsenal wall. Hundreds of Mexican-Americans and some Anglo-Americans participated in this warfare, which was a continual menace to Brownsville, not only from firing but from deserters prowling the riverbanks.
The person in power in Matamoros changed rapidly, from the conservative Santiago Vidaurri, to liberal General Manuel Ruíz to Maximilianist General José Cobos. Cobos's rule was short. Three days after crossing from Brownsville he was shot by his own second-in-command, Juan Nepomuceño Cortinas, who declared for the liberal Juárez government. Cortinas released Ruíz from prison, but Ruíz sensibly fled to Brownsville, not waiting to see what further vagaries politics held.
General Cortinas was now somewhat reluctantly accepted by the beleaguered Juárez government as their governor in Tamaulipas. A far better than average politico, Don Juan still held this post in 1864, though he was growing apprehensive as the French moved into northern Mexico, and he was thinking of turning Imperialist. One immense complication here was that Cortinas was a former resident of the Texas side, and he had been driven into Mexico by Rip Ford and the Rangers in 1859.
All through the 19th century, prominent Mexican families on the Texas side took their U.S. citizenship lightly or not at all. They were Mexican citizens also, by Mexican law. They entered vigorously into Mexican politics. Quite frequently, a Texas "Mexican bandit" or "notorious cattle thief" was a prominent general or patriot on the southern shore.
Addie Ford, the Colonel's third wife, meanwhile entered Mexico, down from San Antonio to Matamoros via the stage from Eagle Pass. Addie Ford's mother was in Brownsville, and she hoped to visit. Her sister Lu, however, got word to her that the Federals were watching for her. Now, Ge
neral Cortinas, who was a professional gringo-hater but gentlemanly in private life, and his half-brother, Don Sabas Cavazos, called on Mrs. Ford and offered her money and aid.
As Governor of Tamaulipas Cortinas also secured her a safe conduct into Brownsville through friends in the Union forces. In this weird four-sided war, there were certain general patterns. United States troops favored the Juáristas, unless they happened to be Irish Catholics. Washington still recognized the Juárez regime. Confederates of all persuasions preferred the Imperialists. This was an alliance of convenience purely; many Texans, like Ford himself, detested foreigners and kings. There was to be much mutual assistance across the Rio Grande among all four armies.
Cortinas did not follow any pattern. He had a general bias against all gringos for running him out of Texas. He rather scrupulously avoided offending whatever power was ascendant on the northern bank at any time.
Certain, through his wife, that he would not be attacked or harassed from the Mexican shore, Ford now launched the Cavalry of the West into the southern triangle that formed the delta of the Rio Grande. Tall, hard, ruddy-faced, and handsome, wearing a short gray beard beneath his dark hat, he led his odd force into a classic guerrilla campaign. There is an enormous amount of fragmentary material, but few real known facts concerning this border warfare. Ford's memoirs were written after twenty years; other accounts, like so much Texas history, rested on old men's tales. As Ford himself said, "Texians proved themselves good soldiers, but they were not willing writers." It is almost impossible to find two matching accounts or to separate legend from history, while an enormous amount of fascinating data was allowed to disappear. But the over-all picture is clear.
The terrible drouth had made pasture scarce along the river. Ford had a horde of horsemen, but he could not assemble them in one place at any time. At the start, he had almost no supply. He was forced to scatter his command over hundreds of miles, and depend on the countryside, above all Mexico, for his military and forage needs. He gathered a small force, not more than 400 horse, and with this began to roll up the Yankee garrisons.
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