The Second Battle of Sabine Pass (September 8, 1863) was a failed Union Army attempt to invade the Confederate state of Texas during the American Civil War. The Union Navy supported the effort and lost three gunboats during the battle, two captured and one destroyed.
Often credited as the war's most one-sided Confederate victory, the battle led Jefferson Davis to write in 1876 that he 'considered the [second] battle of Sabine Pass the most remarkable in military history.
France was openly sympathetic to the Confederate States of America early in the Civil War, but never matched its sympathy with diplomatic or military action. After Mexican forces were defeated by French forces in summer 1863, Mexican president Benito Juárez escaped the capital, and the French installed Austrian Maximilian as "Emperor". With a de facto French government bordering Texas on the south across the Rio Grande, the Confederates hoped to establish a formal route between Texas and Mexico by way of which the Confederacy could obtain much-needed supplies.
United States President Abraham Lincoln was well aware of Confederate intentions and sent an expedition to establish a military presence in Texas and to discourage Maximilian from opening trade with the Confederacy. The military Federal force was commanded by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, a political general with little discernible command ability. Banks's original intent was to launch a combined Army–Navy campaign in northwest Louisiana. The Union plan was to send Union Navy warships from the Mississippi up the tributary Red River, which was navigable upstream as far as where the boundaries of the Confederate states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas came together. The Union had effected its Capture of New Orleans on May 1, 1862, and after the July 3, 1863 surrender of Confederate Vicksburg, the Union military had better control of both the east and west banks and of the mouth of the Mississippi. Unusually low water in the Red River at this time, however, prevented even relatively low-draft Union gunboats from operating effectively, and the anticipated overland Union invasion of Texas was further delayed.
Consequently, General Banks ordered his subordinate Major General William B. Franklin to coordinate with the U.S. Navy, to enter the Sabine River from the Gulf of Mexico and defeat the small Confederate detachment at "Fort Sabine" on the river's west bank (Texas side) at Sabine Pass. about 2 miles (3.2 km) upstream of the river mouth. The key U.S. Navy target in the First Battle of Sabine Pass was the original earthworks thrown up on the Texas bank of the Sabine River about three miles (4.8 km) south of Sabine City, a tiny town with some wharfs on the east side of its main street.
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.
This page covers Sabine Pass Texas Second. 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:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Wikipedia source.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.