The Battle of Mustang Island (November 17, 1863) was fought in Texas during the American Civil War. It was part of a campaign by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks to occupy positions along the Texas coast. One of Banks's forces attacked a Confederate fort, capturing its small garrison.
Following the Battle of Brownsville, the Union army consolidated a garrison there under Major General Napoleon J. T. Dana. General Banks planned to move against Corpus Christi. Banks directed Brigadier General Thomas E. G. Ransom on an expedition against a Confederate earthen fortification on Mustang Island known as Fort Semmes. The Confederate garrison, of less than 100 men, was composed of detachments from the 3rd Texas State Militia under Major George O. Dunaway and the 8th Texas Infantry under Captain William N. Maltby.
Ransom's men made a forced march against Fort Semmes which was occupied by men from the 8th Texas Infantry and 3rd Texas State Militia. The Union advance encountered Confederate skirmishers on November 17. Ransom's men fired one volley causing the Texas skirmishers to retreat back into Fort Semmes. Ransom deployed the 20th Iowa, 13th Maine and 15th Maine Infantry Regiments in line of battle while the USS Monongahela fired into the fort from offshore. The small garrison of Fort Semmes was not prepared for open battle and the fighting was over shortly after the attack commenced. Major Dunaway decided upon an unconditional surrender of the entire garrison rather than making an attempt to fight their way back to the mainland.
Major General Cadwallader C. Washburn arrived at the head of the Union expedition on the Texas Coast. Washburn next led Union forces to capture Fort Esperanza on November 30, 1863.
Banks, Raymond H. (2025). General Nathaniel Prentice Banks: The War Years (Southern Texas coast section). Orlando: R.H. Banks. p. 778. ISBN 979-8-218-83208-7.
Dupree, Stephen A. (2008). Planting the Union Flag in Texas. College Station: Texas A & M University Press. p. 293. ISBN 978-1585446414.
Frazier, Donald S. (2020). Tempest over Texas: The Fall and Winter Campaigns of 1863-1864. Kerrville: State House Press. p. 505. ISBN 978-1-933337-83-8.
Howell, Kenneth Wayne, ed. The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas During the Civil War, University of North Texas Press, 2011
Townsend, Stephen A., The Yankee Invasion of Texas, Texas A&M University Press, 2006
Barnes, J.D. Campaigns of the 20th Iowa Infantry with Personal Reminiscences of the War.Iowa City, Iowa: Camp Pope Publishing, 2016, 87–89.
Shorey, Henry Augustus. The Story of the Fifteenth Maine. Bridgton, Maine: Press of the Bridgton News, 1890. 59–61.
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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