The Battle of Brownsville took place on November 2–6, 1863 during the American Civil War. It was a successful effort on behalf of the Union Army to disrupt Confederate blockade runners along the Gulf Coast in Texas. The Union assault precipitated the capture of Matamoros by a force of Mexican patriots, led by exiled officers living in Brownsville.
During the first half of the war, the Union Navy had successfully blockaded many Southern ports along the Gulf Coast. Cotton trade was a major economic asset for Texas and the whole Confederacy. Initially cotton was transported to Brazos Santiago Pass at the delta of the Rio Grande and exported from Port Isabel. Union forces captured this port and trade was moved inland to Brownsville, Texas. From Brownsville goods were transported across the border to Matamoros and from there to neutral ports along the Mexican coast.
The U.S. government was also anxious to show Union presence along the Mexican border since the French army had just invaded Mexico and installed Maximillian as emperor. Following the Union debacle at the second Battle of Sabine Pass, the U.S. government demanded General Nathaniel P. Banks, commanding the Department of the Gulf, to make another attempt at invading Texas.
Nathaniel Banks assembled 6,000 soldiers from three brigades in Napoleon J. T. Dana's XIII Corps. The Confederate forces in the area were commanded by General Hamilton P. Bee. Bee's forces consisted of a mere 4 companies from the 33rd Texas Cavalry under Colonel James Duff and another 2 companies of 3 month volunteers. All other Confederates along the coast had been called elsewhere in the wake of the Union attack at Sabine Pass. The total Confederate force amounted to roughly 150 men stationed at Fort Brown. One company of volunteers under Captain Adrian I. Vidal defected, killing a private and wounding another from the 33rd Texas.
Banks landed the expedition at the mouth of the Rio Grande on November 2, 1863. Bee dispatched two companies of his cavalry to observe and report on the Union landing. Company A under Captain Richard Taylor arrived at the mouth of the Rio Grande while company under Captain Henry Davis arrived at Point Isabel further north. On November 2 Captain Taylor informed General Bee the Union forces had landed cavalry while Bee made preparatory orders for the evacuation of Brownsville. Colonel William M. Dye's brigade led the Union advance. After chasing off Taylor's Confederate cavalry, Dye's men entered the Brownsville around 10:00am on November 6, 1863. General Bee quickly ordered the evacuation of the city and abandoned Fort Brown. He personally supervised the burning of what military supplies and cotton he could. Inside the fort was 8,000 pounds of condemned explosives which caused a great explosion much to the terror of the local citizens.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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