Palmito Ranch was a Civil War engagement fought in Texas, 1865. It was a Confederate victory.
Since March 1865, a gentleman's agreement precluded fighting between Union and Confederate forces on the Rio Grande. In spite of this agreement, Col. Theodore H. Barrett, commanding forces at Brazos Santiago, Texas, dispatched an expedition, composed of 250 men of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment and 50 men of the 2nd Texas Cavalry Regiment under the command of Lt. Col. David Branson, to the mainland, on May 11, 1865, to attack reported Rebel outposts and camps. Prohibited by foul weather from crossing to Point Isabel as instructed, the expedition crossed to Boca Chica much later. At 2:00 am, on May 12, the expeditionary force surrounded the Rebel outpost at White's Ranch, but found no one there. Exhausted, having been up most of the night, Branson secreted his command in a thicket and among weeds on the banks of the Rio Grande and allowed his men to sleep. Around 8:30 am, people on the Mexican side of the river informed the Rebels of the Federals' whereabouts. Branson promptly led his men off to attack a Confederate camp at Palmito Ranch. After much skirmishing along the way, the Federals attacked the camp and scattered the Confederates. Branson and his men remained at the site to feed themselves and their horses but, at 3:00 pm, a sizable Confederate force appeared, influencing the Federals to retire to White's Ranch. He sent word of his predicament to Barrett, who reinforced Branson at daybreak, on the 13th, with 200 men of the 34th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. The augmented force, now commanded by Barrett, started out towards Palmito Ranch, skirmishing most of the way. At Palmito Ranch, they destroyed the rest of the supplies not torched the day before and continued on. A few miles forward, they became involved in a sharp firefight. After the fighting stopped, Barrett led his force back to a bluff at Tulosa on the river where the men could prepare dinner and camp for the night. At 4:00 pm, a large Confederate cavalry force, commanded by Col. John S. "Rip" Ford, approached, and the Federals formed a battle line. The Rebels hammered the Union line with artillery. To preclude an enemy flanking movement, Barrett ordered a retreat. The retreat was orderly and skirmishers held the Rebels at a respectable distance. Returning to Boca Chica at 8:00 pm, the men embarked at 4:00 am, on the 14th. This was the last battle in the Civil War. Native, African, and Hispanic Americans were all involved in the fighting. Many combatants reported that firing came from the Mexican shore and that some Imperial Mexican forces crossed the Rio Grande but did not take part in the battle. These reports are unproven.
Many historians point to the clash at Palmito Ranch, sometimes called Palmito Hill, as the war's closing engagement. Fighting broke out on May 12 and 13, 1865, along the Rio Grande a short distance east of Brownsville, Texas, not far from the port of Los Brazos de Santiago at the state's southern edge. By this point more than a month had passed since Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, and word of that surrender had already reached both commanding officers present at Palmito. Yet the situation in the Trans-Mississippi remained unresolved: earlier in May, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith had turned down an offer from Union Major-General John Pope to lay down arms under the same conditions Grant had extended to Lee. It would not be until June 2, 1865, that Kirby Smith formally surrendered all Confederate troops within that department.
Since the start of 1865, an informal truce had held between opposing forces in southern Texas. That quiet was broken when Union Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, recently placed in charge of an all-black regiment and lacking any prior combat experience, sent troops to strike a Confederate encampment close to Fort Brown, though his motives remain unclear. His men managed to take several prisoners in the initial assault, but on the next day Confederate Colonel John Salmon Ford drove the Union force back near Palmito Ranch, securing a Confederate win. Adding to the Union's troubles, they encountered unexpected artillery fire, reportedly furnished by the French garrison stationed upriver in the Mexican town of Matamoros.
Reliable casualty counts from the fight do not exist, but Union Private John J. Williams, serving with the 34th Indiana Infantry Regiment, is generally regarded as the final soldier to die in the fighting, a distinction that has led some to call him the last man killed in the entire American Civil War.
Lieutenant Colonel David Branson, commanding Union forces, set his sights on the Confederate camps that Ford held at White and Palmito ranches, positions near Fort Brown just outside Brownsville. His command numbered 250 soldiers from the 62nd U.S.C.T., organized into eight companies, along with two companies drawn from the 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion serving the Union. This 2nd Texas unit, some 300 strong, mirrored the earlier 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment in that it drew heavily on Mexican-descended Texans who had stayed faithful to the United States. The column crossed from Brazos
Most historians agree that this engagement stands as the final land conflict between Union and Confederate forces, though certain sources point to a different encounter as the true closing skirmish. That alternative clash took place at Hobdy's Bridge, near Eufaula, Alabama, on May 19, 1865. According to Union records, Corporal John W. Skinner died in that fight, making him the final Northern soldier to fall in combat during the conflict. He served alongside three comrades who suffered wounds there, all members of Company C, 1st Florida U.S. Cavalry.
Writing in 2013, historian Richard Gardiner offered his own perspective on events from May 10, 1865. He noted that a clash occurred at Palmetto Ranch, but by that point the Confederacy no longer existed as a functioning government. The former Confederate soldiers involved understood perfectly well that Lee had already surrendered and that hostilities had ceased. Gardiner argued that the Texas incident should instead be viewed as a clash occurring after the war's end, pitting federal troops against former Confederates acting outside any legitimate authority, essentially as outlaws.
Confederate forces emerged victorious in this fight, though the absence of any formal command structure among them left lingering questions about the extent of Union losses. Decades later, in 1896, the pensions granted to these Union veterans were reduced. This decision did not stand for long, as an appeal reached the commissioner of pensions and resulted in swift correction. The assistant secretary serving under the commissioner reversed the cut and formally established these men's status as the war's final Union casualties.
President Johnson moved to officially end the rebellion on April 2, 1866, though Texas remained an exception to this proclamation. A legal complication involving the unfinished process of establishing a new state government there blocked any declaration that hostilities had concluded within its borders. This gap was finally closed on August 20, 1866, when Johnson issued a proclamation declaring the insurrection over both in Texas and across the entire nation.
The Confederacy's government effectively collapsed on May 10, 1865, when Union forces captured and imprisoned President Jefferson Davis. That same day, President Andrew Johnson announced that organized rebellion had "virtually" reached its close. Historian James McPherson, alongside other scholars, argues that the war's true conclusion coincided with the dissolution of the Confederate government itself.
Not all Confederate forces laid down arms simultaneously, however. General Edmund Kirby Smith formally surrendered Confederate troops throughout the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865, though this did not include forces led by Brigadier General Stand Watie in Indian Territory. Watie, commanding the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles, held out until June 23, 1865, when he became the final Confederate general to yield his command, doing so at Doaksville in Indian Territory. Johnson lifted the naval blockade against the former Confederate states on that same date.
Rather than face capture, numerous high-ranking Confederate officers stationed in Texas, among them Smith, Walker, Slaughter, and Ford, crossed into Mexico along with troops and military supplies. Some speculation suggests these men hoped to join forces with French Imperial troops, or perhaps with the deposed Mexican leader Benito Juárez and his followers.
Between June and August, Major General Phillip H. Sheridan led the Military Division of the Southwest, renamed the Division of the Gulf after June 27, into Texas for occupation duty. This force combined the IV Corps, XIII Corps, and the XXV Corps composed of African-American troops, together with two cavalry divisions of 4,000 men apiece under Brigadier General Wesley Merritt and Major General George A. Custer. Altogether some 50,000 soldiers assembled along the Gulf Coast and the Rio Grande, both to discourage French involvement in Mexican affairs and to maintain order in the Reconstruction Department of Texas.
Legal fallout from the engagement emerged in July 1865, when Barrett brought charges against Morrison, accusing him of disobeying orders, neglecting his duties, abandoning his colors, and behaving in ways damaging to military discipline. This led to a court martial. Confederate Colonel Ford, who had come back from Mexico at Union General Frederick Steele's request to serve as parole commissioner overseeing the disbandment of Confederate units, testified for the defense and helped clear Morrison of blame for the loss at Palmito Ranch.
Accounts of this battle also preserve the experiences of Hispanic soldiers who fought for the Confederacy and reveal how Confederate troops in South Texas treated captured black soldiers. Hispanic Confederates fought both at Fort Brown near Brownsville and during the engagement at Palmito Ranch. Colonel Santos Benavides, the highest-ranking Hispanic officer serving in either army, commanded somewhere between 100 and 150 Hispanic troops during the Brownsville Campaign that May.
Among those captured were members of the Sixty-Second Colored Regiment, who had feared execution or a return to bondage should they fall into Confederate hands. Instead, they found themselves paroled and allowed to leave alongside the white prisoners, a turn of events that surprised them. Several of these men hailed from Austin and the surrounding area. Assured of treatment as legitimate prisoners of war, they encountered none of the vindictive cruelty they might have expected.
Following the surrender of his command after the Palmito Ranch campaign, Colonel Ford encouraged his soldiers to keep faith with their paroles, declaring firmly that "the negro had a right to vote."
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