Sabine Pass II was a Civil War engagement fought in Texas, 1863. It was a Confederate victory.
About 6:00 am on the morning of September 8, 1863, a Union flotilla of four gunboats and seven troop transports steamed into Sabine Pass and up the Sabine River with the intention of reducing Fort Griffin and landing troops to begin occupying Texas. As the gunboats approached Fort Griffin, they came under accurate fire from six cannons. The Confederate gunners at Fort Griffin had been sent there as a punishment. To break the day-to-day monotony, the gunners practiced firing artillery at range markers placed in the river. Their practice paid off. Fort Griffin's small force of 44 men, under command of Lt. Richard W. Dowling, forced the Union flotilla to retire and captured the gunboat Clifton and about 200 prisoners. Further Union operations in the area ceased for about a month. The heroics at Fort Griffin-44 men stopping a Union expedition-inspired other Confederate soldiers.
On September 8, 1863, Confederate forces at Sabine Pass turned back a Union effort to push into Texas, an operation that came to be known as the war's second engagement at that location. Naval vessels from the Union backed the land forces in this push, but the campaign cost them dearly at sea: three gunboats were lost, with two falling into Confederate hands and a third wrecked outright.
Many regard this clash as the most lopsided win the Confederacy achieved during the entire conflict. Its significance was such that Jefferson Davis, writing in 1876, called it, in his own words, the most remarkable battle in military history.
France leaned toward the Confederate cause in the war's early years, yet that sentiment never translated into actual diplomatic recognition or military support. In the summer of 1863, French troops overcame M
On the afternoon of September
The victory at Sabine Pass earned the Davis Guard formal praise from the Confederate Congress, which passed a resolution thanking its officers and men. Citizens of Houston also took up a collection so that the unit's members could receive medals. Craftsmen fashioned these from silver Mexican pesos, first smoothing the coins down, then engraving and stamping one face with the battle's name and date and the other with a cross pattée alongside the letters "D G." Green ribbons held the medals, which went to the Guard's soldiers. A full year passed before the official Confederate silver medals were finally handed out, in a public ceremony.
In the larger scope of the Civil War, Sabine Pass carried only moderate weight, whether measured tactically or strategically. Its main consequence was pushing back, indefinitely, the overland invasion of Texas that Union forces had been expected to launch. Since the war's early days, the Confederacy had relied on a supply route running from Mexico through the Port of Bagdad, though control of that port remained with Mexican Republicans whose position grew ever more precarious. Imperial French and Mexican troops eventually seized Bagdad in 1864, but by then the fall of Vicksburg to Union forces in July 1863 had already rendered any supply line to Confederate territory east of the Mississippi impractical. As a result, the Confederacy had no choice but to keep depending on blockade runners for the materials and resources it desperately needed.
This page covers Sabine Pass II. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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