by Philip Leigh
On October 3, 1863, Archduke Maximilian accepted on condition that he be approved by a “vote of the whole country,” which he may not have realized was a foregone conclusion under the glittering bayonets of the occupying French army.7
Maximilian's response propelled French columns into the countryside seeking signatures on petitions, which begged the Archduke to rule over Mexico. The soldiers went to…all the chief cities in Mexico, and they destroyed anyone who stood in their way…. A column would appear outside a town and, if there were any opposition, throw a few shells into it, accept its surrender and be hailed as the liberators of the country. Lines of men and women would offer thanks for the coming of the French. Then their signatures…would be affixed to the petitions addressed to Maximilian.8
It was evident to everyone except perhaps the archduke and his wife that he would have no power without the presence of the French army. Soon it was apparent he was a puppet monarch of Napoleon III's.
Maximilian did not arrive in Mexico City until June 1864. Prior to that he consulted with many dignitaries to formulate and communicate his policies. One of the first was a Mr. de Haviland, an acquaintance of Jefferson Davis's from Washington who was visiting Trieste on mysterious business. In a letter to John Slidell, who was the Confederate minister to Paris, de Haviland wrote in November 1863: “Maximilian expressed the warmest possible interest in the Confederate cause. He said he considered it identical with that of the new Mexican Empire…that he was particularly desirous that his sentiments upon this subject should be known to the Confederate President.”9
Since Maximilian did not propose to adopt slavery, it is likely that the “identical” cause was that of independence and free trade. (Lincoln's government had adopted import tariffs of nearly 50 percent to finance the war and promote the interests of Northern industrialists and their ecosystem.)
After reading the letter, Slidell visited the Mexican mission in Paris, where he was told de Haviland's remarks were valid. At the Foreign Office, he was informed that Maximilian “attached the greatest importance” to official diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by European governments. Confederate propagandist James Wilson met several times with Maximilian, who spoke of desiring that France recognize the Confederacy before he was crowned in Mexico City.10
But it was not to be. Before embarking for Mexico, Maximilian visited Louis-Napoleon in Paris in March 1864, and the two concluded it was not a good idea to recognize the Confederacy before the Civil War was settled. Immediate recognition ran the risk of war with the United States, whereas a hypothetical future Southern victory would permit Mexico to recognize the Confederacy without provoking a fight with the United States. While temporarily visiting Paris, the French minister to Washington told Slidell that Lincoln was overheard to say “[Maximilian's] government would be recognized in Washington if the Mexican monarchy declined to recognize the Confederacy.”11 That did not happen either, although the rumor was also reported in the London Globe newspaper about the same time.12
More alarming to Washington were reports that Napoleon III was interested in Texas. Such rumors had circulated among Lincoln's informers for almost a year. In January 1863, an Austrian diplomat claimed Confederates were dismayed to learn that French consuls in Galveston and Richmond suggested to Texans that they should withdraw from the Davis government. In July, Secretary of State Seward told other cabinet members, “Louis-Napoleon is making an effort to get Texas.” In September, a Vienna newspaper presumptively reported, “The French government is supposed to have arranged with the Southern American states for the cession of Texas.”13
Less than a month after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Lincoln asked Secretary of War Stanton, “Can we not renew the effort to organize a force to go to west Texas?…I believe no local object is now more important.”14 It had been only fifteen years since the end of the Mexican-American War. If the Mexican vassal government could be made to covet the return of Texas, there were worries that it might also seek to reacquire the state of California or territories included in the present states of Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico.15 Some rumors even suggested that the French would seek to annex Louisiana as well.16
Confederate War Department clerk John B. Jones also learned of the Texas and Louisiana rumors in January 1863. He believed them to be genuine. “The Emperor of France is charged with a design to seize Mexico…and to recognize Texas separately, making [it] a dependency from which cotton may be [supplied]. [It is said] the French…are endeavoring to detach Texas from the Confederacy…. I have no doubt of its genuineness…. If Texas leaves us so may Louisiana.”17
Consequently, in January 1864, California senator James McDougall proposed a congressional resolution stating that French intervention in Mexico was “an act unfriendly to the republic of the United States.” It called on the French to withdraw by March 15 and threatened war if they didn't. After the resolution was tabled in February, McDougall softened the language to read, “the occupation of Mexico…by the Emperor of France…or by…[the] Emperor of Mexico, is an offense to the people of the republic of the United States.” On March 23, Seward sent a copy of the less bellicose decree to the US mission in Paris while Maximilian was visiting the city. The following month, the US House unanimously approved a resolution stating, “The Congress of the United States are unwilling…to leave…the impression that they are indifferent…[to] the deplorable events…in Mexico and…declare that it does not…acknowledge any monarchial government erected on the ruins of any republican government in America under the auspices of any European power.”18
Although Massachusetts senator Sumner blocked the resolution from the Senate floor, Seward also sent a copy to the US legation in Paris with a note expressing the informed opinion that it reflected the sentiments of the Northern people. At Lincoln's nomination for a second term in June, the Baltimore convention adopted a declaration stating, “The people of the United States can never regard with indifference the attempt of any European power to overthrow… the institutions of any republican government on the Western continent and…they shall view as menacing to the peace…any efforts…to obtain new footholds for monarchial governments…in close proximity to the United States.” Although Lincoln's public statements softened the party's position, he told Major General John M. Thayer he wanted to fight only one war at a time and would address Mexico after the Confederacy was defeated. He added presciently, “When the [French] army is gone, the Mexicans will take care of Maximilian.”19
Not knowing that Louis-Napoleon and Maximilian had agreed during their March 1864 Paris meeting that the Mexican monarch should decline to recognize the Confederacy, Davis was eager to establish an alliance because of the archduke's earlier, more favorable remarks. In January 1864, he designated the former US minister to Spain, William Preston, as envoy to the Mexican court even though Maximilian would not arrive for five months. Preston first went to Havana, from which he could more quickly reach Mexico City when the new emperor arrived. But he grew impatient and went to London and Paris, where he gradually realized that an alliance was unlikely.20
After the June 1863 French occupation of Mexico City, Lincoln followed up on his comments that a federal military presence should be established in Texas with August 1863 letters to Generals Banks and Grant. To Banks in New Orleans he wrote, “recent events in Mexico render early action in Texas more important than ever.” His letter to Grant said, “in view of recent events in Mexico I am greatly impressed with the importance of reestablishing national authority in Western Texas as soon as possible.” The letters would lead to three military operations that historians generally conclude prolonged the war. For example, Bruce Catton claimed that the movements against Texas were “a substantial error” and “a move in the wrong direction.”21
If Grant and Banks had advanced against Mobile in August or September, Confederate General Polk and his fifteen thousand soldiers would have been unable to reinforce General Bragg to help win the battle of Chicka
mauga in late September 1863. Moreover, the reinforcements actually received by Bragg from Lee's Virginia army might have been split between Bragg and Polk. If so, Bragg would have lost his numerical advantage against Union General Rosecrans at Chickamauga and may thereby have failed to win a victory that delayed the Union offensive against Atlanta by six months.
The first move prompted by Lincoln's wish to occupy part of Texas was a September 8, 1863, attack on Sabine Pass on the coastline at the Louisiana-Texas border. General Banks sent an amphibious force, including five thousand infantry, to the pass. It was the starting point of a clever plan to seize the railroad at Beaumont and make a quick descent on Houston and Galveston before any Rebel army could respond. The only opposition was a small fort at Sabine Pass manned by fewer than fifty soldiers who were former Irish dockworkers. But without the loss of a single soldier, the Rebels, under twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant Richard Dowling, surprisingly repulsed the federal attack.22
In November 1863, Banks dispatched another amphibious force, including six thousand infantry under Major General Napoleon Dana, to capture Brownsville in an effort to put an end to the Matamoros trade. He seized the town, thereby forcing caravans to and from Matamoros to cross the Rio Grande hundreds of miles farther upstream at Laredo or Eagle Pass. After securing Brownsville, Dana moved up the Texas coast, capturing towns such as Corpus Christi and the railheads at Indianola and Port Lavaca. Owing to a sectional dispute dating to the Mexican-American War, the federals occupying Brownsville discovered they had an ally in Mexican warlord Juan Cortina, who temporarily controlled Matamoros. Nonetheless, even though Cortina was hostile to Confederates, he permitted trade to continue, albeit with higher tariffs.
Shortly after occupying Brownsville, Union officers tried to convince Matamoros officials to confiscate Confederate cotton for the benefit of the United States. While negotiations were in progress, an officer named Herbert, who was connected with the Lincoln-selected military governor of Texas, concluded a potentially lucrative private trade deal for himself with the governor of the Mexican state in which Matamoros was located. Although Herbert was court-martialed, Washington authorities released him on a technicality.23
Banks's west Texas offensive appeared to be progressing toward an eventual Rebel capitulation of Galveston, but it was interrupted by orders from Washington. General in Chief Halleck wanted Banks to ascend Louisiana's Red River to capture Kirby Smith's headquarters at Shreveport and move into Texas from the east. Halleck ordered that the west Texas federals abandon their offensive. Except for a small force to hold Brownsville, he directed the rest to return to New Orleans to join Banks for a more powerful push up the Red River. Ultimately Halleck's order would lead to a frenzy of corrupted cotton trade.24
While Banks was launching his Red River campaign in March 1864, the soldiers remaining at Brownsville under Major General Francis Herron moved up the Rio Grande to further disrupt Matamoros trade. They temporarily occupied Laredo but were driven out by Confederate partisans who were mostly of Mexican ancestry under the leadership of Colonel Santos Benavides. In July 1864, regular Confederate cavalry under Colonel “Rip” Ford recaptured Brownsville, thereby once again enabling the town to become a thriving import-export center. Herron's federals withdrew to Brazos Island, where they held an insignificant stretch of Texas beach until the end of the war. The Yankee-allied Mexican warlord Cortina was driven out of Matamoros by the French army in September 1864, as Confederate troops helped the Frenchmen by taking a few potshots across the Rio Grande at Cortina's men.25
RED RIVER COTTON
Although the Red River campaign in spring 1864 was represented as an offensive to free Louisiana and Arkansas of Rebel armies and plant the US flag in Texas as a warning to Louis-Napoleon and Maximilian, there were additional motivations. One was a Northern craving for cotton. A second was to buttress political support for Lincoln. The president wanted to establish loyal governments in Louisiana and Arkansas so that the two states could send Lincoln supporters to the 1864 presidential nominating convention set for Baltimore in June and provide Lincoln-faithful voters for the general election later in the year.26
Late in 1863, more than one hundred five thousand bales of cotton owned by the Confederate Treasury were crowding the wharves of the Ouachita and Red rivers in the District of Western Louisiana. Given that the average New York price of upland middling cotton was over one dollar a pound in 1864, such inventories were worth over $50 million, which translates to almost $800 million in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars.27 (The price of cotton actually rose to a high of $1.90 a pound in 1864.)28 And there was considerably more cotton in the same district owned by private growers and their merchants.29 A 10 percent tax-in-kind authorized in Richmond fell due on March 1, 1864, that would give the Confederate government title to one-tenth of the Trans-Mississippi's 1863 cotton crop. Such cotton could be legally confiscated.30
Origins of the Red River campaign date to 1861, when mill owner Edward Atkinson distributed his pamphlet proposing to transform Southern agriculture by settling a portion of Texas with free Northern white laborers. He predicted his system would produce three times as much cotton and would eventually force the South to abandon slavery.31 General Butler joined in the chorus but, as discussed, was first given the opportunity to become rich by trading with the enemy in New Orleans. In October 1862, the New York Times editorialized, “Texas alone is capable…of producing more cotton annually than all the South ever exported by the aid of its four million slaves.”32 Once Mississippi River navigation was cleared with the capture of Vicksburg, a combination of diplomatic, political, and mercenary factors converged to give birth to the Red River campaign, as planning began in January 1864.
Interest in upper Louisiana cotton and an expedition up the Red River was reignited that month by the arrival of three thousand bales in New Orleans from upriver Natchez, Mississippi. Michael Hahn, who would soon be elected governor of a Lincoln-loyal Louisiana state government, wrote the president that the arrival from Natchez “produced such a sensation as to cause a large number of persons to take the oath of allegiance in order to resume their business.” Within a few months, a US marshal in Louisiana wrote Lincoln, “Commerce is still King. You have it in your power to reduce the price of gold, pacify the clamor for cotton from abroad, make friends for yourself and country and put into the exchequer from this department some $30–$40 million.”33
On January 23, 1864, General Banks replied to a letter from General in Chief Halleck that Banks had completely accepted Halleck's views regarding the merits of an advance up the Red River. Earlier that month, Banks learned that two Confederate officers were willing to be bribed in order to ensure that massive quantities of cotton were not burned ahead of an advancing Union army, as otherwise required by Confederate law. Banks was an ambitious politician with eyes on the White House. He knew that if he could deliver sizable quantities of cotton to New England, powerful politicians would be influenced to look favorably on a Banks candidacy.34
Since he was disconnected from Richmond after the fall of Vicksburg, Kirby Smith organized a Trans-Mississippi Cotton Bureau in August 1863, at his Shreveport headquarters. Formation of the bureau was tantamount to the presumption of military control over a major sector of the civilian economy in a manner that was not practiced east of the Mississippi. It was the first important step toward “Kirby Smithdom,” the informal label applied to the nearly dictatorial domain in which Smith assumed sweeping powers over nearly all military and many civilian aspects of life in the Trans-Mississippi. As described by author Robert Kerby:
After the first few hesitant months, there was nothing very subtle about the way [intersectional commerce] was conducted. Whenever a river steamboat churned from Shreveport or Alexandria, Louisiana, with a cargo of cotton consigned to New Orleans it was fairly obvious that responsible people were permitting trade across the lines. Rebel customs officials collected the duties due on smuggled shipments of contraband, while New York financie
rs openly dealt in shares of Confederate cotton. Swarms of Northern cotton buyers, bearing licenses signed by Lincoln himself, endured the rude hospitality of Shreveport, while agents dispatched by Kirby Smith…became accustomed to the amenities of New Orleans and Washington. The trade even reunited families rent apart by passions of the war.35
Since much Trans-Mississippi trade earlier in the war was across the Rio Grande, in 1862 the Confederate War Department designated a single man as the region's exclusive purchasing agent. He was Major Simeon Hart of San Antonio, who had excellent connections in Mexico and Richmond. Hart was expected to become the prime supplier of munitions and supplies for Trans-Mississippi armies.
However, he was hindered by an inability to pay market prices for cotton, which was the only “international currency” native to the territory. Soon his suppliers—overseas and in the North—were demanding cotton for items previously delivered and unpaid for, as well as for future shipments. Trans-Mississippi Rebel armies badly needed supplies. In summer 1863, one-third of Arkansas enlisted men were without arms. A few months later, Kirby Smith estimated that ten thousand soldiers in his entire command were unarmed. In spring 1864, he complained that “one large battle…would leave us without powder and but little lead.”36