December 29, 2024 • 43 mins
Ed's New Book: Decisions of the Galveston Campaigns
The Twenty-One Critical Decisions That Defined the Operations: https://utpress.org/title/decisions-of-the-galveston-campaigns/
Watch on Youtube: https://youtu.be/V00bBPQJcLE
Exploring with Ed around the Strand: https://youtu.be/gUqIEIl9UUg
The Battle of Galveston With Ed Cotham: https://youtu.be/H7vg0FeYS68
Ed Cotham's Books: https://www.edcotham.com/
Mr. Ed Cotham retired in 2023 as the Chief Investment Officer of the Terry Foundation, the largest private source of scholarships at Texas universities. He holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Houston, a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Chicago, and a Law Degree from the University of Texas. Ed is an active member of various historical organizations, including the Houston Civil War Round Table, the Civil War Preservation Trust, and the Society of Civil War Historians. He has received several awards for his volunteer service and contributions to preserving Civil War heritage, including the Frank C. Vandiver Award of Merit and the Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize. Ed is also an accomplished author, with notable works such as "Battle on the Bay: the Civil War Struggle for Galveston" and "Sabine Pass: the Confederacy's Thermopylae." With his expertise and passion for history, Ed Cotham is a distinguished figure in the field of Civil War preservation and an engaging history presenter.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Virtually all of the major campaigns in Texas during
the Civil War were aimed eitherdirectly or indirectly at
Galveston, and so both sidesduring the Civil War viewed this
Galveston area as the key toTexas.
It was absolutely the key toeverything west of the
Mississippi and certainly thekey to Texas Now we're going.
Key to everything west of theMississippi and certainly the
(00:25):
key to Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now we're going to go explore, let's go explore,
let's do it.
Welcome to Galveston,Unscripted.
I am obviously not on GalvestonIsland because I have the Rocky
Mountains right behind me, butwhatever, just ignore that.
In this episode today, I satdown with Mr Edward T Cottom Jr
to further my understanding ofthe events of the Civil War in
(00:47):
Texas, which is all too timelybecause the anniversary of the
Battle of Galveston is onJanuary 1st.
Ed Cottom is an award-winningauthor with many books about the
Civil War in Texas, includingJuneteenth and the Battle of
Galveston.
This is Ed's third appearanceon the podcast and this time we
discuss some of those majordecisions that were made leading
up to the Battle of Galvestonand other major events during
(01:09):
the Civil War in Texas.
Be sure to check out Ed's newbook Decisions of the Galveston
Campaigns the 21 criticaldecisions that define the
operations.
Without further ado, let's hopright into this episode with Mr
Edward T Conham Jr.
Welcome to Galveston,Unscripted.
I told Lisa, my wife, I wassitting down with Ed today.
(01:34):
She goes, okay, I'll see youtonight.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Across the causeway.
You know, the Texas City Museumhas the Westfield stuff.
Yes, with the giant cannon andeverything Getting me or Andy
Hall or somebody over there totalk about that, we'll get both
of y'all over there.
Well, that too it would be funand that would be an interesting
thing, because nobody knowsabout that museum and it's all
this cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's a great museum, it's a great museum.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Not only that, the Texas City disaster, I mean,
there's just a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know I gotta bring this up I grew up in Texas
City, between Galveston andTexas City, and so growing up we
would always meet, you knowolder people in our church.
They were, you know, alive andprobably you know kids or
teenagers during the disaster.
And, you know, after a few yearspass, it's kind of like World
War II veterans.
You're like, well, you know,most of these people are gone.
We went to a train event theyhad a few or maybe a month and a
(02:31):
half ago with my son and we'resitting there and there's, of
course, the big anchor rightoutside the museum.
This lady goes do you know whatthat's from?
And we're like oh yes, ma'am,we do.
And we started talking to herand she lived right down the
street and was, I think, liketwo houses down from the house
she was in during the explosionin 47.
And we got to talking to herand her husband and my wife and
I, of course being like historylovers, we're just asking all
(02:51):
these questions.
You know, what was it like?
How did y'all end up in TexasCity, you know, and it's crazy
to think it's not that long ago.
It's like everything it'sreally not that long ago.
I'm really excited to sit hereand sit with you again, because
you're really a friend of theshow.
This is your third time onGalveston Unscripted.
We've talked about the Battleof Galveston in detail in
(03:12):
Juneteenth as well, and first ofall I just want to thank you
for all you do to one researchhistory and preserve history
here on Galveston Island and forTexas and the United States,
because a lot of the thingsyou're diving into in all of
your books is not just relatedto Galveston or Texas.
It's related and tied to thehistory of the United States.
(03:34):
So thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Thank you, always glad to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, why do you think people today are so
interested in Civil War history?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I think Civil War history kind of strikes a chord
in a lot of people because theysee an America that, frankly, is
divided in a lot of differentways and from time to time we
don't agree with each other andsometimes those differences are
regional, sometimes thosedifferences are religious or
social or cultural or whatever.
And you kind of wonder how dothose things ultimately get
(04:08):
resolved?
And the American Civil War isthe one real example you can
point to in our history wherethose things didn't get resolved
and it actually came to bulletsand cannonballs to decide how
we were going to live togetherand cannonballs to decide how we
were going to live together andeven indeed if we were going to
(04:29):
live together as a singlenation.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You know, when I sit back and think of history and
how we ended up here today, alot of times I'll think about
the wars and the politics andconflicts, but I don't always
think about the battles andmaybe the individual decisions
that won some of those battlesthat ended up leading to either
a victorious outcome or maybe ahorrendous defeat on either side
(04:56):
of whoever's fighting.
This book is in a series ofcritical decision Civil War
battles.
Right, it's a series.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, this is I think it's the 18th one in the series,
but this is the first time,interestingly, that they've ever
gone across the MississippiRiver and dealt with some of the
things that happened west ofthe Mississippi River.
It's also the first one wherethey've actually looked at more
than one battle and more thanone campaign.
And that was very importanthere, because Galveston, it
(05:27):
wasn't like Gettysburg, whereyou know three days and it's
over.
Galveston was under the guns ofone side or the other, and
occasionally both, for theentire course of the war, and
the maneuvering that went onconstantly during the period
from, say, the fall of 1862 tothe end of the war was something
(05:50):
that was very unique and veryspecial.
So I set out with this book toanswer a very basic question,
and the question was you know,at the end of the Civil War,
galveston is the last majorConfederate port anywhere.
War, galveston is the lastmajor Confederate port anywhere,
and in fact that's why we haveJuneteenth here is because it is
in many ways the ending pointof the American Civil War.
(06:11):
How is it that Galveston, ofall these Confederate ports
everywhere, ends up being thevery last one?
And when you think about it atfirst it almost doesn't make
sense, because Galveston is onan island.
In some ways it's the hardestConfederate city to defend that
there was, and there is verylittle precedent for cities on
(06:35):
islands to do.
Very well, you go all the wayback to the American Revolution.
George Washington tried todefend the island of Manhattan
and was completely unsuccessfulat that.
It's very hard to defend anisland and in fact the very
first Confederate commander ofTexas looked at the map, looked
at Galveston, kind of threw uphis hands and said, well, we
can't defend this place, let'sget out of here.
(07:00):
Making changed and the variousdecisions that were made all
along during the war that led tothat strange result of
Galveston being the mostsuccessful at the end of the war
.
It is sort of a puzzle andthat's what this book is
designed to put together is whatwere the decisions that were
made that led to this remarkableresult?
(07:22):
And a lot of them were not madein Galveston.
A lot of them were not evenmade in Texas.
They're made elsewhere, allaround the country, and yet they
have this tremendous influenceon the place we call home the 21
decisions that define theoperations of the Galveston
campaigns.
And when I say Galvestoncampaigns we're really talking
(07:44):
about something a little broaderthan Galveston itself, because
at the time of the Civil WarGalveston had become the largest
city in Texas.
But it had become the largestcity because it was this
incredible port on the Gulf ofMexico and it was really the
only Texas port that wouldaccommodate ships that you know
(08:05):
could travel the deep waters.
And the reason that all this wasso connected is you had to have
a big port in order to be asuccessful city at this time,
and to feed that port you neededa railroad system, and so the
railroad system kind of extended, you of extended from Galveston
up around Houston, and thenfrom Houston it extended kind of
(08:29):
like the fingers of a hand, inall directions around the state.
And so the location herebetween Galveston and Houston
was by far and away the mostimportant part of Texas.
And so both sides during theCivil War viewed this Galveston
area as the key to Texas.
(08:51):
It was absolutely the key toeverything west of the
Mississippi and certainly thekey to Texas.
And so for the Confederate sidethe whole story was about how
do we defend and maintainpossession of this place, and on
the Union side it was how do weget Galveston and how do we
then use that as a place to landa large force of troops that we
(09:12):
can then spread out around thestate and occupy the state of
Texas?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So the decisions for, for instance, the Union, would
be made in Washington and theymay not completely understand
the dynamic here in Texas.
They would say, okay, gocapture this, or here are your
goals now, made in Washington,and they may not completely
understand the dynamic here inTexas.
They would say, okay, gocapture this, or here are your
goals now.
And then the leadership inTexas would go and try to
essentially accomplish that,knowing that this may or may not
work out.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And again, every decision has consequences and
you never know exactly what theconsequences are going to be.
Sometimes decisions are madeand they end up being great for
reasons you didn't expect.
Sometimes you make a decisionand it turns out to be
catastrophic for reasons thatyou did not expect and could not
have known about.
(09:58):
Sometimes it's just a matter ofpure luck, and so that's what
you try to do.
This book isolates 21 decisionsand we go through the situation
before the decisions made, whatall the options were and what
the advantages and disadvantagesof each of the options were,
and then the decision that'smade and then what the wider
(10:22):
result of that decision was forthe course of the Galveston
campaigns.
This originated really for memany years ago because I used to
take young army officers onsome of my Civil War tours and
you put them in a place and youactually do this exercise.
It's very, very valuable.
(10:43):
You say you're Officer X hereand your options are, and you
list all the options and whatare the pros and cons of the
various options and what wouldyour decision be in these
circumstances here, and it wasso valuable, not only to the
officer that was looking at this, but for me as a historian to
(11:04):
try to analyze how thisdecision-making actually
happened on the ground and whatthe decision-making process was
like that led to these results.
And so over the years I startedactually not only for army
officers I started incorporatingthese kind of exercises into
(11:25):
virtually every tour I give forpeople from, you know, nine to
90.
It's useful to kind of sitthere and think about how do you
make an important decision andwhat makes it work or not work,
and that's valuable exercise forall of us.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Let's say, you show up on a battlefield, Civil War
battlefield, AmericanRevolutionary Battlefield
somewhere, and you get a littleblurb, a historical marker or
something that says this sidedid this.
And then they maneuvered thatway and you sit there and you're
like why did they do that?
Why would they actually takethat route or what was it.
So it's fascinating.
You're kind of breaking thatdown what was it?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So it's fascinating.
You're kind of breaking thatdown.
Virtually all of the majorcampaigns in Texas during the
Civil War were aimed eitherdirectly or indirectly at
Galveston.
So, for example, we do have theBattle of Galveston on January
1st of 1863, which is far andaway the largest and most
important battle in Texas.
But you also have the Battle ofSabine Pass in September of
1863, which you look at and yousay why in the world is somebody
(12:28):
wanting to invade at SabinePass?
Well, they really weren't tryingto get to Sabine Pass, they
were trying to get to Galveston.
But General Nathaniel Banks,over in New Orleans, who'd been
ordered to occupy some place inTexas, thought that the best way
to attack Galveston was not toattack it directly.
He wanted to start landing alarge force of army forces,
(12:52):
infantry, at Sabine Pass, andthen they were going to march
over the railroad system toHouston and take Houston,
because Houston was notfortified to any significant
degree at the time.
And then, once they had Houstonin their pocket, they could
kind of cut off Galveston andtake it from the rear.
So that was a very clever idea,that spectacularly failed.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So importantly, I do want to cover this.
These are decisions on theUnion side and the Confederate
side, from both angles.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The 21 decisions in my book are by both Union and
Confederate commanders, and infact some of these decisions are
made by people that aren't evendirectly in the military at all
.
Probably two of the mostimportant decisions that made
Galveston survive were made byAbraham Lincoln as commander
(13:44):
inchief of the Union, and by hiscounterpart, Jefferson Davis,
for the Confederacy.
This is your fifth book.
Sixth book.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is my sixth book , sixth book as you're writing
the previous books.
Of course you have the Battleof Galveston book on the Battle
of Galveston and Juneteenth.
How long would you say itactually took you to put all of
this together from beginning toend?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I've been researching the Civil War in Texas for more
than 40 years now and as I goalong I learn more and more
things that I mean I learnedsomething important last week.
You never know what you'regoing to find.
When I wrote the book on theBattle of Galveston I said, well
, this is pretty much it.
Nobody else is going to findany new sources.
(14:30):
This is pretty much the end ofthat inquiry.
And then we found the wreck ofthe USS Westfield, the principal
warship in the battle, and theprocess of raising that and
conserving it and putting it ina museum at Texas City has
really kind of redefined thatwhole experience for me.
And then you think, well, I'vefound every possible thing that
(14:52):
could be found about thesebattles.
And then in the Naval Academywe discovered 80-something
images by a naval surgeon who'dbeen on the USS Clifton,
including during the Battle ofGalveston.
So we have new images to put.
With these things you neverknow what you're going to find,
and you find something new allthe time.
(15:13):
A couple of weeks ago I cameacross a newspaper article and
this was not something I waslooking at for at all, it was
just out of the blue, literally.
I was looking in a Houstonnewspaper in January or so of
1900, and this is long after thewar, of course and a man had
written into the veterans columnthere and noted that he had
(15:36):
been a ship captain in Galvestonbefore and during the Civil War
and he was recalling some ofthe most interesting instances
that he had experienced duringthe war.
And one of them was somethingthat we had always heard about
but didn't know very much about,and it involved a group of men
that were serving on top of theHenley Building, which is at
(15:58):
20th Strand still today.
And if you look at the oldimages of the Henley Building
today and if you look at the oldimages of the Henley building,
you will see that there is awhite cupola, a little kind of a
storehouse, on top of thebuilding and that was used as an
observatory by a group of menwho had telescopes up there.
And they went up there at thevery beginning of the war, even
(16:19):
before the war technicallystarted, and kept a detailed
notebook logbook, and thatlogbook is preserved in the
Rosenberg Library.
It's a fabulous piece ofhistory.
And these men were called theJOLOs, j-o-l-o, and those were
strictly initials.
The notebook does not definewhat that means the people at
(16:42):
the time kind of called them thelookouts.
And so when people would ask mewhat did JOLO stand for in this
thing, I always would have said, well, it's probably something
like the Jolly Order of Lookoutsor something like that.
We were pretty confident.
Those last two letters stoodfor lookouts.
And then I'm looking again in aHouston newspaper in 1900, and
(17:03):
then I'm looking again in aHouston newspaper in 1900, come
across this comment by a guynamed Gearing.
And Gearing says that he knewthese men very well.
They were all steamboat menlike himself.
And he said that the name ofthe organization stood for the
Jolly Old Loafers Office, stoodfor the Jolly Old Loafers Office
(17:24):
.
And if you'd asked me in amillion years I would never have
guessed that that's what thoseinitials stood for.
And he not only said that itstood for Jolly Old Loafers
Office, but he said that the menwere so proud of this name that
they had gotten the initials ingold on a red square piece of
(17:45):
velvet and that was what theyput on their hats and that was
their only insignias.
So JOLO stood for Jolly OldLoafers Office, something I
never saw coming, but the more Ithought about it, the more.
It made sense to me.
We've always loved this notebookbecause it's not the standard
kind of military thing at all.
(18:06):
These guys will record doingfunny things, like one night,
they say, battle with mosquitoesongoing results doubtful.
Another night they issuedthemselves letters of mark,
which is what the privateers did, and so basically they then
became pirates and marched upand down the Strand seizing
(18:26):
random change from people, andthey actually found a water
cooler which they took back.
Another night they had seized apie for military purposes and
took it back to theirobservatory.
They were constantlycomplaining about the night
guards, because the night guardshad a tendency to get drunk,
and when they got drunk theydamaged the telescope.
(18:48):
But in between these kind ofcomedy lines that are in the
JOLO notebook, there's a lot ofserious content there too.
It records the weather, itrecords all the ship traffic and
then in July of 1861, when theUnion blockade starts, you
actually have the moment thatthis big steamer pulls into view
(19:10):
off the entrance to GalvestonHarbor and suddenly everything
is going to turn real for thesemen, because that's really the
start of the Civil War in.
Galveston.
So what does loafer mean?
So what does loafer mean?
I think they mean just loafingaround and kind of laying around
doing whatever they can to passthe time while they're waiting
for something to materialize,and they write down on a
(19:31):
notebook.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So, before the Union warships pull up off the coast,
it's all fun.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
and games, it's all fun and games, and it stops in
July of 1861.
And in fact the first battleoccurs the month after that,
very close to where the GalvestHotel is today.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Actually.
So I heard a funny story youtold on another show about that
battle right off the coast rightout here and how people were
kind of showing up and juststanding on the sand and they
thought it would be fun.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, the first battle in Galveston occurs in
August of 1861.
And what happens is this theUnion steamer South Carolina had
been assigned to the blockade.
It had showed up in July.
It had been capturing a numberof smaller vessels just to help
aid in the blockading process,to keep the Confederates as much
(20:21):
as possible bottled up inGalveston Harbor, and so the
Confederates had built a smallfortification over on the beach.
And to give you an idea ofwhere the location of that fort
was, it's near the Galvest Hotel.
It's really kind of over wherethe Murdoch's bath complex or
shops are today, across there,you know, not too far from, say,
(20:44):
23rd and the seawall.
But there was a small fortthere.
There were a group of German menin the fort, the Confederate
fortification and one of theships that was helping the South
Carolina with the blockade camea little bit too close to the
Confederate fort and the guyswere kind of looking for an
(21:05):
excuse to fire their cannonsanyway, and so they said all
right, let's fire at this Unionship.
That's come a little too closein the morning.
So they fire at it and thisUnion ship just scurries off
behind the safety of the SouthCarolina, and at this point the
captain of the South Carolinadecides that he just cannot take
(21:26):
that kind of action, and so heis going to take the South
Carolina in later in theafternoon and show that
Confederate fort what some realguns could do under the hands of
men that are trained to usethem.
So the people of Galvestonrealize that a battle is about
to take place on the beach, andthey've never really seen a
(21:47):
battle like this, and so theysay, well, maybe we should go
look at this thing.
And so virtually everybody intown that was left in town came
over to the beach with a picniclunch and packed up everything
they needed and was waitingthere on the beach for this
battle to take place in theafternoon, everything they
needed and was waiting there onthe beach for this battle to
take place the afternoon.
Sure enough, late in theafternoon the South Carolina
(22:08):
does steam within range of theConfederate fort and both sides
start firing at each other.
And it's early in the war andreally neither side can hit the
broadside of a barn with theirweapons.
And so the weapons start firingrandomly in a number of
different directions.
And very little damage is doneto the fort no damage,
(22:30):
essentially, is done to theUnion's ship, and the people of
Galveston soon realized thatit's probably not an ideal thing
to witness a battle from closerange, and so they start
scurrying for safety as much asthey can.
At the end of the battle thereis one, and only one casualty,
(22:52):
and it turns out to be a poorPortuguese guy, a vendor, who
had come to the beach to try tosell things to the Galvestonians
that were witnessing the battle.
But he is the first and onlycasualty of that battle and, as
far as I can tell, he's thefirst Civil War casualty in all
of Texas.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Oh, wow, wow, Just trying to sell sandwiches on the
beach.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
It's a dangerous occupation probably still is
today.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Right, people were warned hey, you might want to
leave because, as you saidearlier, islands are pretty easy
to capture, you know, and ifthe Union sails down, they could
easily capture Galveston.
But did most Galvestoniansleave during the Civil War or
did, you know, only a few stay,or how did that work?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
In October of 1862, the Union Navy comes with a
large ship of warships and theybasically enter Galveston Harbor
and take the city without anyserious opposition at all.
At that point the Confederatesdecide that they will issue a
notice to the people ofGalveston saying you might want
(23:55):
to think about leaving, and thatnotice is still preserved in
the Rosenberg Library collection.
It's a really interesting thing.
Some citizens left, others didnot.
Probably most of the Galvestonresidents left at or right
around that time and in fact theGalveston newspaper moves to
(24:15):
Houston and is published inHouston for the rest of the war.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So these 21 decisions .
Was it difficult to come upwith 21 decisions?
Or was it difficult to come upwith 21 decisions?
Or was it difficult to paredown from maybe 30 or 40
different decisions?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It's hard to pare them down, really, but you have
to realize what a criticaldecision is in the terms of this
book.
You know, commanders makedecisions constantly.
You know, what am I going tohave for breakfast?
What are we going to do today?
It's not all.
Which particular force am Igoing to send, at which
particular angle, at whichparticular time?
(24:50):
They make decisions all thetime, huge, thousands and
thousands of decisions all thetime.
Only a few of those decisionsend up being important, meaning
that they have some influence onthe events that are going to
follow.
And yet, kind of like a pyramid, and then at the top of that
pyramid there are a few, andonly a few, decisions that
(25:13):
qualify as critical decisions,meaning that they are decisions
that basically affect everythingthat comes after them in a
serious and material way.
And when you start looking atthat and say, all right, what
are the decisions that were soimportant that, if they had been
made differently, would haveinfluenced events in a material
(25:36):
way, you start paring them downand paring them down.
And when I paired them all down, that's how I came up with
these 21 decisions.
I'll give you an example of oneof these decisions just to
understand how they happen.
A spoiler alert in my book, theBattle on the Bay of the Civil
(25:57):
War Struggle for Galveston, wetalk about this battle, this
crazy battle that happened onthe morning of January 1, 1863,
crazy battle that happened onthe morning of January the 1st
of 1863, in which theConfederates attacked by land
and sea and drove the Unionforces out of Galveston Harbor.
That battle plan was so unusualthat nobody else would have
(26:17):
done it other than a very uniquecommander, and the commander
that we had down here in Texasat the time was a guy named John
Bankhead Magruder.
Nobody but General Magruderwould have launched this kind of
crazy battle plan, particularlysince he had only come down to
Texas a month before this battlewas launched.
(26:40):
And so, when you look at it,one of the 21 decisions that
absolutely was critical toGalveston's success was when
Jefferson Davis made thedecision, which was very
controversial at the time, to goahead and send General Magruder
down to Texas and put him incommand of the forces here.
(27:02):
If that had not happened, I'mcertain there would not have
been a Battle of Galveston inJanuary of 1863, and I'm
virtually certain that Galvestonwould have remained in Union
hands for the entire remainderof the war.
The entire course of the warfor Texas would have been
drastically different ifJefferson Davis had not made
(27:26):
that particular decision.
On the other side of the coin,abraham Lincoln, in the fall of
1863, has an incrediblyimportant choice to make.
He's just won the Battle ofGettysburg and Robert E Lee is
forced out of Pennsylvania andback into the Confederacy.
(27:47):
Ulysses S Grant has capturedVicksburg and so he now has
control of the Mississippi River.
So, with those two campaignsending the way they do, he has
some spare forces that he coulddevote to a new campaign, could
devote to a new campaign.
And the question is do you comeout of the Mississippi River
(28:08):
and take those forces east andattack Mobile, which is
critically important to theConfederate war effort, or do
you take those forces west andattack Texas?
And again, texas didn't havenecessarily the military
strategic value that someplacelike Mobile and the central part
of Alabama had to theConfederacy, but it did have one
(28:30):
thing that was criticallyimportant at the time and that
was a border with Mexico,because the French were down in
Mexico at the time and there wassome serious thought that they
were fixing to launch a plan totry and separate Texas from the
Confederacy and ultimately theUnited States, and either make
(28:50):
it an independent republic thatwas sort of something they could
handle or possibly even annexit to what they hoped would be
the new French-dominated Mexico.
And Lincoln could not stand forthat to happen, and so, as a
result, he made the decision, inthe fall of 1863, to launch a
(29:12):
Texas campaign, and that wouldend up being the force that he
was trying to send it to SabinePass.
That would be defeated by DickDowling, an Irish saloon keeper
from Houston, with 38 men underhis command.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So when I think decisions, I think leadership
the key differences between someof the union leaders and
Confederate leaders that youfound during the research for
this book.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
It was surprising to me when I came up with my list,
my 21 decisions.
Surprising to me when I came upwith my list, my 21 decisions.
I was shocked at how many ofthem involve personnel and
actually who you appoint to aparticular position.
Because if General Magruder hadnot been here, the Confederate
battle plans that resulted inthe recapture of Galveston would
not have happened.
General Magruder again camedown to Texas and was going to
(30:03):
launch this wild plan thatinvolved a naval force.
He had no naval background atall.
There was only one Confederatenaval officer anywhere within
sight and he was unsuitable forthe role.
So Magruder had to make acritical decision.
Who he was going to appointnamed Leon Smith, who was a
friend of attacks on the USSHarriet Lane with the
Confederate cotton-clad steamers.
(30:50):
If he had not made thatdecision, the battle would
certainly have been lost.
And again, this was thedecision that Magruder made to
appoint Leon Smith to thatposition.
On the Union side, after theBattle of Galveston had happened
and Magruder had regainedcontrol of the city, the
question was how in the worldare you going to keep control of
(31:13):
it?
Because there was a reason thatit was given up in the fall of
1862, and that was that it wasso hard to fortify an island
city.
And Magruder now had the city,but he didn't have the
fortifications around it.
How in the world was he goingto buy enough time to build
those fortifications?
And so Admiral David GlasgowFarragut, over in New Orleans,
(31:36):
knew he needed to send somebodyto come over here and retake
Galveston before theConfederates could fortify it.
And the question he had wasshould he come himself or should
he appoint someone else?
And if he needed to appointsomeone else, who would it be?
And so Farragut finally decidedalthough he wanted very, very
(31:56):
badly to come over here andteach the Confederates a lesson,
because he thought the Battleof Galveston was the most
shameful incident in the entirehistory of the US Navy.
But he decided well, hecouldn't leave and come over
here and leave things over thereon the Mississippi River the
way they were.
He had to stay there.
So he had to send somebody hetrusted.
(32:17):
And the guy he trusted wasCommodore Bell, who was a friend
of his and also an older navalofficer.
And he sent Bell over here torecapture Galveston.
And he was exactly the wrongman for the job, because Bell
was more timid than Farragut andhe waited around and waited
around and in the meantime,while he waited around, the
(32:40):
Confederate steamer Alabamashowed up out of the blue and
sunk the Hatteras and put such awrench into the Union plans to
retake Galveston that they heldoff, and that gave Magruder just
enough time to build thefortifications he needed to
continue to defend the city.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This is the third time you've been on the podcast.
This is the third time you'vebeen on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
One thing that is pretty consistent is that these
Confederate plans and ideas ofnot just in Galveston but all
over Texas.
They're pretty audacious natureof the personality of General
John MacEd McGrooter.
He's sent here in Texas andhe's known in the Army as Prince
John McGrooter because he'ssuch a crazy character.
(33:31):
He had all these theatricalmannerisms.
He never wore a conventionaluniform Up in Virginia.
He was known for doing wildthings to keep the Union Army at
bay.
He would have units marchingback and forth in circles.
He would have enslaved peoplemarching around, beating drums
randomly.
They would light many morecampfires than the men needed,
(33:54):
just so the opposing Union Armywould see these things and think
they were much larger numbers.
He was the absolute master atdoing more with less, absolute
master at doing more with less.
And so in some ways that wasthe brilliant decision that
Jefferson Davis made was to sendMagruder down to a place like
Texas where, again, there werevery limited resources.
(34:16):
Here you would have to make themost of them in order to do
anything.
And so Magruder arrives here inNovember of 1862 and he has two
important decisions to make.
The first timing he knows thathe has to get control of
Galveston back if he's going tocontrol Texas at all.
(34:36):
But how do you do it?
When and how do you do it?
The first question is when?
Because at the time he arrivesin Texas the Union Navy is in
control of Galveston, but it's anaval force.
There are no troops at all,really land troops until
(34:56):
Christmas Eve of 1862.
But Magruder knows it won'tstay that way.
He knows that there's a largeUnion force seemingly on the
horizon, destined for Galveston.
He is convinced that he willstand virtually no chance if he
waits until that force lands andcontrols all of the resources
(35:20):
they're going to be able tocontrol.
So he decides very quickly thathe has to attack, you know, as
soon as he can, within a month.
And then the second question isall right, you've made the
decision to attack.
Now how are you going to do it?
Are you going to do it a simpleattack?
Are you going to do it a littlecomplicated?
Are you going to go all the way, crazy complicated?
(35:42):
And he goes through all theresources and considers all the
options and he says the onlyplan that stands a chance of
working is the really, reallycrazy plan.
We're going to launch asimultaneous attack by land and
sea in the middle of the night.
(36:03):
He has no naval force whatsoeverAt the time he makes this
decision.
He really doesn't have any armyforce of any size.
He has some few old cannon, butthey're over on the mainland,
he has nothing to do these with.
But he makes this incredibledecision that he's going to
immediately launch a plan thatis the wildest battle plan of
(36:23):
the entire civil war, and I saythat with experience and looking
at virtually every battle andevery campaign in the American
Civil War.
It's the wildest one ever.
Most of it doesn't work, mostof it spectacularly fails, and
yet at the end of this battlethe Confederates recapture
(36:45):
Galveston.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I understand you have like a walking and driving tour
, pretty much kind of breakingdown like where you should go
and what you should see.
Is that right?
That's right.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Typically these books have had things like you know,
kind of breaking down where youshould go and what you should
see.
Is that right, that's right.
Typically these books have hadthings like if they'll do one on
critical decisions of theBattle of Shiloh, they'll have a
battlefield tour and say you goto this place and look over
there and that's where this guywas and that's where he was when
he made these decisions.
That's really hard to do in thecontext of the Galveston
(37:14):
campaigns, just because so manyof the decisions are not made on
the ground.
Of course I could put somepeople around the Henley
building and show them wherethings were around there, and I
do that, but you want to do morethan that.
So what I put in the back of mybook was I realized that a lot
of people that would read thisbook were not necessarily Texans
(37:35):
and were not necessarilyfamiliar with what was really
going on in Texas, and so I havesome information in there about
all the Civil War places andthings around Galveston.
Some of the things around theTexas City Museum where the
Westfield is Texas City Museumwhere the Westfield is We've got
(37:58):
the main battleground really inTexas is preserved at Sabine
Pass.
So the Sabine Pass Battleground, a historic site which is
interesting just because I thinkit's probably the least visited
Civil War battlefield inAmerica.
And in fact it was funny, thefunny the, the head of the uh
national park surface, the headhistorian for national park
(38:18):
service, got him Ed bars, who'slegendary the business uh, came
to me one time and said I wantto go with you over to Sabine
pass and he said he admitted tome that it was the only major
battlefield he had never been toin America, the only civil war
battlefield of any consequencehe had never been to in America,
the only Civil War battlefieldof any consequence he had never
been to in America.
So I got to give a battlefieldtour to the guy who basically
(38:42):
has a statue of him givingbattlefield tours.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
That's amazing.
So this is the first book inthis series that is west of the
Mississippi River, that'scorrect.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
The area west of the Mississippi River was called the
Trans-Mississippi, and theCritical Decisions Campaign has
focused before now pretty muchon the eastern campaigns,
primarily Gettysburg,fredericksburg, chancellorsville
, those sorts of things, andit's only now that they're
starting to step across and lookat some of the action over here
(39:17):
.
The next book in this series ison the Red River campaign over
in Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
So why do you think the West of the Mississippi has
kind of been underappreciated inCivil War history?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
When I talk to people about the Civil War in Texas,
many people are surprised tolearn that there was any Civil
War activity in Texas.
They associate the Civil Warwith places like Gettysburg or
Vicksburg or big actions overthere that have big national
park battlefields, and of coursewe don't have any of that here
in Texas.
But what happened west of theMississippi River was important
(39:50):
and in fact some of the keyarmies, forces that are used
over in the eastern and westerncampaigns east of the
Mississippi River involve Texans.
And you think to yourself well,how did the Texans get there?
How do the supplies thatfurnish those people get there?
What are those Texas people inthose armies going to fight if
(40:10):
they know their homes are beinginvaded?
The things that happened overhere in Texas were a lot more
important than most evenhistorians had assumed until
fairly recently and we're onlynow getting to explore those
stories in detail.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, I guess it's easy to cover the big major
battles with lots of casualtiesand major decisions, like on the
front in between the borderstates bordering the north and
south, but when you get overhere I guess it's harder to kind
of pinpoint, you know, the bigthings that actually tied into
the grand outcome of the CivilWar.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
One of the things I really like about talking about
the Civil War in Texas is thatit's such a broad area.
I mean, if I was east of theMississippi and focusing on one
of the campaigns there, it'sgotten to be really very
specialized.
Nobody wants another book onthe Battle of Gettysburg and so,
as a result, people are doingvery, very small things.
(41:05):
It's going to be the secondminute on the second day on the
left side of the parkway overhere in this one activity, or
you're doing something, you'retaking a tiny little action, a
cavalry skirmish, and calling itthe Gettysburg of Southeast
Ohio or something.
(41:26):
You have to really get creativein order to make those things
sound interesting.
I never have that problem overhere west of the Mississippi and
particularly in Texas, andthat's largely because a lot of
these things have beenunderexplored.
But when you tell people aboutthe things that happened over
here, people are astonished.
When I tell people that, yes,at Sabine Pass, 41 men, mainly
(41:51):
Irish dock workers, under thecommand of a 26-year-old Irish
saloon keeper named Dick Dowling, held off an invasion force
that consisted of more than 20Union ships and 6,000 men.
It's a wild story.
And then you talk aboutGalveston and this crazy battle
plan launched in the middle ofthe night that nobody had any
(42:13):
serious thought could possiblysucceed the way it did, and it
ends up being the action thatkeeps Galveston in the war as
the last major Confederate port.
All of these things are veryunique stories and people are
fascinated when you really getthem to study them.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah Well, thank you so much, man.
I really appreciate you comingin now.
We're going to go explore let'sgo explore, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Thanks, man and so jr , and are now in our own kind of
letters of mark piracy activityalong the strand, trying to to
find things to support theeffort here.
But this is where the actionwas in 1861.
So, so, but just give me anidea.
Okay, so this guy was aconfederate officer.
This is where the action was in1861.
So just to give you an ideaokay, so this guy was a
Confederate officer.
This is Moody's Moody buildingand this he was a Confederate
(42:59):
officer.
You have the right down in theon the other side of the street
was the largest slave marketwest of the Mississippi, and you
could actually see the cannonspoking out of this building from
the second floor, a piece ofarchitecture that's been damaged
.
Virtually all of the major campaigns in Texas during
the Civil War were aimed eitherdirectly or indirectly at
Galveston, and so both sidesduring the Civil War viewed this
Galveston area as the key toTexas.
It was absolutely the key toeverything west of the
Mississippi and certainly thekey to Texas Now we're going.
Key to everything west of theMississippi and certainly the
(00:25):
key to Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now we're going to go explore, let's go explore,
let's do it.
Welcome to Galveston,Unscripted.
I am obviously not on GalvestonIsland because I have the Rocky
Mountains right behind me, butwhatever, just ignore that.
In this episode today, I satdown with Mr Edward T Cottom Jr
to further my understanding ofthe events of the Civil War in
(00:47):
Texas, which is all too timelybecause the anniversary of the
Battle of Galveston is onJanuary 1st.
Ed Cottom is an award-winningauthor with many books about the
Civil War in Texas, includingJuneteenth and the Battle of
Galveston.
This is Ed's third appearanceon the podcast and this time we
discuss some of those majordecisions that were made leading
up to the Battle of Galvestonand other major events during
(01:09):
the Civil War in Texas.
Be sure to check out Ed's newbook Decisions of the Galveston
Campaigns the 21 criticaldecisions that define the
operations.
Without further ado, let's hopright into this episode with Mr
Edward T Conham Jr.
Welcome to Galveston,Unscripted.
I told Lisa, my wife, I wassitting down with Ed today.
(01:34):
She goes, okay, I'll see youtonight.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Across the causeway.
You know, the Texas City Museumhas the Westfield stuff.
Yes, with the giant cannon andeverything Getting me or Andy
Hall or somebody over there totalk about that, we'll get both
of y'all over there.
Well, that too it would be funand that would be an interesting
thing, because nobody knowsabout that museum and it's all
this cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It's a great museum, it's a great museum.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Not only that, the Texas City disaster, I mean,
there's just a ton of stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know I gotta bring this up I grew up in Texas
City, between Galveston andTexas City, and so growing up we
would always meet, you knowolder people in our church.
They were, you know, alive andprobably you know kids or
teenagers during the disaster.
And, you know, after a few yearspass, it's kind of like World
War II veterans.
You're like, well, you know,most of these people are gone.
We went to a train event theyhad a few or maybe a month and a
(02:31):
half ago with my son and we'resitting there and there's, of
course, the big anchor rightoutside the museum.
This lady goes do you know whatthat's from?
And we're like oh yes, ma'am,we do.
And we started talking to herand she lived right down the
street and was, I think, liketwo houses down from the house
she was in during the explosionin 47.
And we got to talking to herand her husband and my wife and
I, of course being like historylovers, we're just asking all
(02:51):
these questions.
You know, what was it like?
How did y'all end up in TexasCity, you know, and it's crazy
to think it's not that long ago.
It's like everything it'sreally not that long ago.
I'm really excited to sit hereand sit with you again, because
you're really a friend of theshow.
This is your third time onGalveston Unscripted.
We've talked about the Battleof Galveston in detail in
(03:12):
Juneteenth as well, and first ofall I just want to thank you
for all you do to one researchhistory and preserve history
here on Galveston Island and forTexas and the United States,
because a lot of the thingsyou're diving into in all of
your books is not just relatedto Galveston or Texas.
It's related and tied to thehistory of the United States.
(03:34):
So thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Thank you, always glad to be here with you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, why do you think people today are so
interested in Civil War history?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I think Civil War history kind of strikes a chord
in a lot of people because theysee an America that, frankly, is
divided in a lot of differentways and from time to time we
don't agree with each other andsometimes those differences are
regional, sometimes thosedifferences are religious or
social or cultural or whatever.
And you kind of wonder how dothose things ultimately get
(04:08):
resolved?
And the American Civil War isthe one real example you can
point to in our history wherethose things didn't get resolved
and it actually came to bulletsand cannonballs to decide how
we were going to live togetherand cannonballs to decide how we
were going to live together andeven indeed if we were going to
(04:29):
live together as a singlenation.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You know, when I sit back and think of history and
how we ended up here today, alot of times I'll think about
the wars and the politics andconflicts, but I don't always
think about the battles andmaybe the individual decisions
that won some of those battlesthat ended up leading to either
a victorious outcome or maybe ahorrendous defeat on either side
(04:56):
of whoever's fighting.
This book is in a series ofcritical decision Civil War
battles.
Right, it's a series.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, this is I think it's the 18th one in the series,
but this is the first time,interestingly, that they've ever
gone across the MississippiRiver and dealt with some of the
things that happened west ofthe Mississippi River.
It's also the first one wherethey've actually looked at more
than one battle and more thanone campaign.
And that was very importanthere, because Galveston, it
(05:27):
wasn't like Gettysburg, whereyou know three days and it's
over.
Galveston was under the guns ofone side or the other, and
occasionally both, for theentire course of the war, and
the maneuvering that went onconstantly during the period
from, say, the fall of 1862 tothe end of the war was something
(05:50):
that was very unique and veryspecial.
So I set out with this book toanswer a very basic question,
and the question was you know,at the end of the Civil War,
galveston is the last majorConfederate port anywhere.
War, galveston is the lastmajor Confederate port anywhere,
and in fact that's why we haveJuneteenth here is because it is
in many ways the ending pointof the American Civil War.
(06:11):
How is it that Galveston, ofall these Confederate ports
everywhere, ends up being thevery last one?
And when you think about it atfirst it almost doesn't make
sense, because Galveston is onan island.
In some ways it's the hardestConfederate city to defend that
there was, and there is verylittle precedent for cities on
(06:35):
islands to do.
Very well, you go all the wayback to the American Revolution.
George Washington tried todefend the island of Manhattan
and was completely unsuccessfulat that.
It's very hard to defend anisland and in fact the very
first Confederate commander ofTexas looked at the map, looked
at Galveston, kind of threw uphis hands and said, well, we
can't defend this place, let'sget out of here.
(07:00):
Making changed and the variousdecisions that were made all
along during the war that led tothat strange result of
Galveston being the mostsuccessful at the end of the war
.
It is sort of a puzzle andthat's what this book is
designed to put together is whatwere the decisions that were
made that led to this remarkableresult?
(07:22):
And a lot of them were not madein Galveston.
A lot of them were not evenmade in Texas.
They're made elsewhere, allaround the country, and yet they
have this tremendous influenceon the place we call home the 21
decisions that define theoperations of the Galveston
campaigns.
And when I say Galvestoncampaigns we're really talking
(07:44):
about something a little broaderthan Galveston itself, because
at the time of the Civil WarGalveston had become the largest
city in Texas.
But it had become the largestcity because it was this
incredible port on the Gulf ofMexico and it was really the
only Texas port that wouldaccommodate ships that you know
(08:05):
could travel the deep waters.
And the reason that all this wasso connected is you had to have
a big port in order to be asuccessful city at this time,
and to feed that port you neededa railroad system, and so the
railroad system kind of extended, you of extended from Galveston
up around Houston, and thenfrom Houston it extended kind of
(08:29):
like the fingers of a hand, inall directions around the state.
And so the location herebetween Galveston and Houston
was by far and away the mostimportant part of Texas.
And so both sides during theCivil War viewed this Galveston
area as the key to Texas.
(08:51):
It was absolutely the key toeverything west of the
Mississippi and certainly thekey to Texas.
And so for the Confederate sidethe whole story was about how
do we defend and maintainpossession of this place, and on
the Union side it was how do weget Galveston and how do we
then use that as a place to landa large force of troops that we
(09:12):
can then spread out around thestate and occupy the state of
Texas?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So the decisions for, for instance, the Union, would
be made in Washington and theymay not completely understand
the dynamic here in Texas.
They would say, okay, gocapture this, or here are your
goals now, made in Washington,and they may not completely
understand the dynamic here inTexas.
They would say, okay, gocapture this, or here are your
goals now.
And then the leadership inTexas would go and try to
essentially accomplish that,knowing that this may or may not
work out.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And again, every decision has consequences and
you never know exactly what theconsequences are going to be.
Sometimes decisions are madeand they end up being great for
reasons you didn't expect.
Sometimes you make a decisionand it turns out to be
catastrophic for reasons thatyou did not expect and could not
have known about.
(09:58):
Sometimes it's just a matter ofpure luck, and so that's what
you try to do.
This book isolates 21 decisionsand we go through the situation
before the decisions made, whatall the options were and what
the advantages and disadvantagesof each of the options were,
and then the decision that'smade and then what the wider
(10:22):
result of that decision was forthe course of the Galveston
campaigns.
This originated really for memany years ago because I used to
take young army officers onsome of my Civil War tours and
you put them in a place and youactually do this exercise.
It's very, very valuable.
(10:43):
You say you're Officer X hereand your options are, and you
list all the options and whatare the pros and cons of the
various options and what wouldyour decision be in these
circumstances here, and it wasso valuable, not only to the
officer that was looking at this, but for me as a historian to
(11:04):
try to analyze how thisdecision-making actually
happened on the ground and whatthe decision-making process was
like that led to these results.
And so over the years I startedactually not only for army
officers I started incorporatingthese kind of exercises into
(11:25):
virtually every tour I give forpeople from, you know, nine to
90.
It's useful to kind of sitthere and think about how do you
make an important decision andwhat makes it work or not work,
and that's valuable exercise forall of us.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Let's say, you show up on a battlefield, Civil War
battlefield, AmericanRevolutionary Battlefield
somewhere, and you get a littleblurb, a historical marker or
something that says this sidedid this.
And then they maneuvered thatway and you sit there and you're
like why did they do that?
Why would they actually takethat route or what was it.
So it's fascinating.
You're kind of breaking thatdown what was it?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So it's fascinating.
You're kind of breaking thatdown.
Virtually all of the majorcampaigns in Texas during the
Civil War were aimed eitherdirectly or indirectly at
Galveston.
So, for example, we do have theBattle of Galveston on January
1st of 1863, which is far andaway the largest and most
important battle in Texas.
But you also have the Battle ofSabine Pass in September of
1863, which you look at and yousay why in the world is somebody
(12:28):
wanting to invade at SabinePass?
Well, they really weren't tryingto get to Sabine Pass, they
were trying to get to Galveston.
But General Nathaniel Banks,over in New Orleans, who'd been
ordered to occupy some place inTexas, thought that the best way
to attack Galveston was not toattack it directly.
He wanted to start landing alarge force of army forces,
(12:52):
infantry, at Sabine Pass, andthen they were going to march
over the railroad system toHouston and take Houston,
because Houston was notfortified to any significant
degree at the time.
And then, once they had Houstonin their pocket, they could
kind of cut off Galveston andtake it from the rear.
So that was a very clever idea,that spectacularly failed.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So importantly, I do want to cover this.
These are decisions on theUnion side and the Confederate
side, from both angles.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
The 21 decisions in my book are by both Union and
Confederate commanders, and infact some of these decisions are
made by people that aren't evendirectly in the military at all
.
Probably two of the mostimportant decisions that made
Galveston survive were made byAbraham Lincoln as commander
(13:44):
inchief of the Union, and by hiscounterpart, Jefferson Davis,
for the Confederacy.
This is your fifth book.
Sixth book.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is my sixth book , sixth book as you're writing
the previous books.
Of course you have the Battleof Galveston book on the Battle
of Galveston and Juneteenth.
How long would you say itactually took you to put all of
this together from beginning toend?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I've been researching the Civil War in Texas for more
than 40 years now and as I goalong I learn more and more
things that I mean I learnedsomething important last week.
You never know what you'regoing to find.
When I wrote the book on theBattle of Galveston I said, well
, this is pretty much it.
Nobody else is going to findany new sources.
(14:30):
This is pretty much the end ofthat inquiry.
And then we found the wreck ofthe USS Westfield, the principal
warship in the battle, and theprocess of raising that and
conserving it and putting it ina museum at Texas City has
really kind of redefined thatwhole experience for me.
And then you think, well, I'vefound every possible thing that
(14:52):
could be found about thesebattles.
And then in the Naval Academywe discovered 80-something
images by a naval surgeon who'dbeen on the USS Clifton,
including during the Battle ofGalveston.
So we have new images to put.
With these things you neverknow what you're going to find,
and you find something new allthe time.
(15:13):
A couple of weeks ago I cameacross a newspaper article and
this was not something I waslooking at for at all, it was
just out of the blue, literally.
I was looking in a Houstonnewspaper in January or so of
1900, and this is long after thewar, of course and a man had
written into the veterans columnthere and noted that he had
(15:36):
been a ship captain in Galvestonbefore and during the Civil War
and he was recalling some ofthe most interesting instances
that he had experienced duringthe war.
And one of them was somethingthat we had always heard about
but didn't know very much about,and it involved a group of men
that were serving on top of theHenley Building, which is at
(15:58):
20th Strand still today.
And if you look at the oldimages of the Henley Building
today and if you look at the oldimages of the Henley building,
you will see that there is awhite cupola, a little kind of a
storehouse, on top of thebuilding and that was used as an
observatory by a group of menwho had telescopes up there.
And they went up there at thevery beginning of the war, even
(16:19):
before the war technicallystarted, and kept a detailed
notebook logbook, and thatlogbook is preserved in the
Rosenberg Library.
It's a fabulous piece ofhistory.
And these men were called theJOLOs, j-o-l-o, and those were
strictly initials.
The notebook does not definewhat that means the people at
(16:42):
the time kind of called them thelookouts.
And so when people would ask mewhat did JOLO stand for in this
thing, I always would have said, well, it's probably something
like the Jolly Order of Lookoutsor something like that.
We were pretty confident.
Those last two letters stoodfor lookouts.
And then I'm looking again in aHouston newspaper in 1900, and
(17:03):
then I'm looking again in aHouston newspaper in 1900, come
across this comment by a guynamed Gearing.
And Gearing says that he knewthese men very well.
They were all steamboat menlike himself.
And he said that the name ofthe organization stood for the
Jolly Old Loafers Office, stoodfor the Jolly Old Loafers Office
(17:24):
.
And if you'd asked me in amillion years I would never have
guessed that that's what thoseinitials stood for.
And he not only said that itstood for Jolly Old Loafers
Office, but he said that the menwere so proud of this name that
they had gotten the initials ingold on a red square piece of
(17:45):
velvet and that was what theyput on their hats and that was
their only insignias.
So JOLO stood for Jolly OldLoafers Office, something I
never saw coming, but the more Ithought about it, the more.
It made sense to me.
We've always loved this notebookbecause it's not the standard
kind of military thing at all.
(18:06):
These guys will record doingfunny things, like one night,
they say, battle with mosquitoesongoing results doubtful.
Another night they issuedthemselves letters of mark,
which is what the privateers did, and so basically they then
became pirates and marched upand down the Strand seizing
(18:26):
random change from people, andthey actually found a water
cooler which they took back.
Another night they had seized apie for military purposes and
took it back to theirobservatory.
They were constantlycomplaining about the night
guards, because the night guardshad a tendency to get drunk,
and when they got drunk theydamaged the telescope.
(18:48):
But in between these kind ofcomedy lines that are in the
JOLO notebook, there's a lot ofserious content there too.
It records the weather, itrecords all the ship traffic and
then in July of 1861, when theUnion blockade starts, you
actually have the moment thatthis big steamer pulls into view
(19:10):
off the entrance to GalvestonHarbor and suddenly everything
is going to turn real for thesemen, because that's really the
start of the Civil War in.
Galveston.
So what does loafer mean?
So what does loafer mean?
I think they mean just loafingaround and kind of laying around
doing whatever they can to passthe time while they're waiting
for something to materialize,and they write down on a
(19:31):
notebook.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So, before the Union warships pull up off the coast,
it's all fun.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
and games, it's all fun and games, and it stops in
July of 1861.
And in fact the first battleoccurs the month after that,
very close to where the GalvestHotel is today.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Actually.
So I heard a funny story youtold on another show about that
battle right off the coast rightout here and how people were
kind of showing up and juststanding on the sand and they
thought it would be fun.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, the first battle in Galveston occurs in
August of 1861.
And what happens is this theUnion steamer South Carolina had
been assigned to the blockade.
It had showed up in July.
It had been capturing a numberof smaller vessels just to help
aid in the blockading process,to keep the Confederates as much
(20:21):
as possible bottled up inGalveston Harbor, and so the
Confederates had built a smallfortification over on the beach.
And to give you an idea ofwhere the location of that fort
was, it's near the Galvest Hotel.
It's really kind of over wherethe Murdoch's bath complex or
shops are today, across there,you know, not too far from, say,
(20:44):
23rd and the seawall.
But there was a small fortthere.
There were a group of German menin the fort, the Confederate
fortification and one of theships that was helping the South
Carolina with the blockade camea little bit too close to the
Confederate fort and the guyswere kind of looking for an
(21:05):
excuse to fire their cannonsanyway, and so they said all
right, let's fire at this Unionship.
That's come a little too closein the morning.
So they fire at it and thisUnion ship just scurries off
behind the safety of the SouthCarolina, and at this point the
captain of the South Carolinadecides that he just cannot take
(21:26):
that kind of action, and so heis going to take the South
Carolina in later in theafternoon and show that
Confederate fort what some realguns could do under the hands of
men that are trained to usethem.
So the people of Galvestonrealize that a battle is about
to take place on the beach, andthey've never really seen a
(21:47):
battle like this, and so theysay, well, maybe we should go
look at this thing.
And so virtually everybody intown that was left in town came
over to the beach with a picniclunch and packed up everything
they needed and was waitingthere on the beach for this
battle to take place in theafternoon, everything they
needed and was waiting there onthe beach for this battle to
take place the afternoon.
Sure enough, late in theafternoon the South Carolina
(22:08):
does steam within range of theConfederate fort and both sides
start firing at each other.
And it's early in the war andreally neither side can hit the
broadside of a barn with theirweapons.
And so the weapons start firingrandomly in a number of
different directions.
And very little damage is doneto the fort no damage,
(22:30):
essentially, is done to theUnion's ship, and the people of
Galveston soon realized thatit's probably not an ideal thing
to witness a battle from closerange, and so they start
scurrying for safety as much asthey can.
At the end of the battle thereis one, and only one casualty,
(22:52):
and it turns out to be a poorPortuguese guy, a vendor, who
had come to the beach to try tosell things to the Galvestonians
that were witnessing the battle.
But he is the first and onlycasualty of that battle and, as
far as I can tell, he's thefirst Civil War casualty in all
of Texas.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Oh, wow, wow, Just trying to sell sandwiches on the
beach.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
It's a dangerous occupation probably still is
today.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Right, people were warned hey, you might want to
leave because, as you saidearlier, islands are pretty easy
to capture, you know, and ifthe Union sails down, they could
easily capture Galveston.
But did most Galvestoniansleave during the Civil War or
did, you know, only a few stay,or how did that work?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
In October of 1862, the Union Navy comes with a
large ship of warships and theybasically enter Galveston Harbor
and take the city without anyserious opposition at all.
At that point the Confederatesdecide that they will issue a
notice to the people ofGalveston saying you might want
(23:55):
to think about leaving, and thatnotice is still preserved in
the Rosenberg Library collection.
It's a really interesting thing.
Some citizens left, others didnot.
Probably most of the Galvestonresidents left at or right
around that time and in fact theGalveston newspaper moves to
(24:15):
Houston and is published inHouston for the rest of the war.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So these 21 decisions .
Was it difficult to come upwith 21 decisions?
Or was it difficult to come upwith 21 decisions?
Or was it difficult to paredown from maybe 30 or 40
different decisions?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It's hard to pare them down, really, but you have
to realize what a criticaldecision is in the terms of this
book.
You know, commanders makedecisions constantly.
You know, what am I going tohave for breakfast?
What are we going to do today?
It's not all.
Which particular force am Igoing to send, at which
particular angle, at whichparticular time?
(24:50):
They make decisions all thetime, huge, thousands and
thousands of decisions all thetime.
Only a few of those decisionsend up being important, meaning
that they have some influence onthe events that are going to
follow.
And yet, kind of like a pyramid, and then at the top of that
pyramid there are a few, andonly a few, decisions that
(25:13):
qualify as critical decisions,meaning that they are decisions
that basically affect everythingthat comes after them in a
serious and material way.
And when you start looking atthat and say, all right, what
are the decisions that were soimportant that, if they had been
made differently, would haveinfluenced events in a material
(25:36):
way, you start paring them downand paring them down.
And when I paired them all down, that's how I came up with
these 21 decisions.
I'll give you an example of oneof these decisions just to
understand how they happen.
A spoiler alert in my book, theBattle on the Bay of the Civil
(25:57):
War Struggle for Galveston, wetalk about this battle, this
crazy battle that happened onthe morning of January 1, 1863,
crazy battle that happened onthe morning of January the 1st
of 1863, in which theConfederates attacked by land
and sea and drove the Unionforces out of Galveston Harbor.
That battle plan was so unusualthat nobody else would have
(26:17):
done it other than a very uniquecommander, and the commander
that we had down here in Texasat the time was a guy named John
Bankhead Magruder.
Nobody but General Magruderwould have launched this kind of
crazy battle plan, particularlysince he had only come down to
Texas a month before this battlewas launched.
(26:40):
And so, when you look at it,one of the 21 decisions that
absolutely was critical toGalveston's success was when
Jefferson Davis made thedecision, which was very
controversial at the time, to goahead and send General Magruder
down to Texas and put him incommand of the forces here.
(27:02):
If that had not happened, I'mcertain there would not have
been a Battle of Galveston inJanuary of 1863, and I'm
virtually certain that Galvestonwould have remained in Union
hands for the entire remainderof the war.
The entire course of the warfor Texas would have been
drastically different ifJefferson Davis had not made
(27:26):
that particular decision.
On the other side of the coin,abraham Lincoln, in the fall of
1863, has an incrediblyimportant choice to make.
He's just won the Battle ofGettysburg and Robert E Lee is
forced out of Pennsylvania andback into the Confederacy.
(27:47):
Ulysses S Grant has capturedVicksburg and so he now has
control of the Mississippi River.
So, with those two campaignsending the way they do, he has
some spare forces that he coulddevote to a new campaign, could
devote to a new campaign.
And the question is do you comeout of the Mississippi River
(28:08):
and take those forces east andattack Mobile, which is
critically important to theConfederate war effort, or do
you take those forces west andattack Texas?
And again, texas didn't havenecessarily the military
strategic value that someplacelike Mobile and the central part
of Alabama had to theConfederacy, but it did have one
(28:30):
thing that was criticallyimportant at the time and that
was a border with Mexico,because the French were down in
Mexico at the time and there wassome serious thought that they
were fixing to launch a plan totry and separate Texas from the
Confederacy and ultimately theUnited States, and either make
(28:50):
it an independent republic thatwas sort of something they could
handle or possibly even annexit to what they hoped would be
the new French-dominated Mexico.
And Lincoln could not stand forthat to happen, and so, as a
result, he made the decision, inthe fall of 1863, to launch a
(29:12):
Texas campaign, and that wouldend up being the force that he
was trying to send it to SabinePass.
That would be defeated by DickDowling, an Irish saloon keeper
from Houston, with 38 men underhis command.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So when I think decisions, I think leadership
the key differences between someof the union leaders and
Confederate leaders that youfound during the research for
this book.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
It was surprising to me when I came up with my list,
my 21 decisions.
Surprising to me when I came upwith my list, my 21 decisions.
I was shocked at how many ofthem involve personnel and
actually who you appoint to aparticular position.
Because if General Magruder hadnot been here, the Confederate
battle plans that resulted inthe recapture of Galveston would
not have happened.
General Magruder again camedown to Texas and was going to
(30:03):
launch this wild plan thatinvolved a naval force.
He had no naval background atall.
There was only one Confederatenaval officer anywhere within
sight and he was unsuitable forthe role.
So Magruder had to make acritical decision.
Who he was going to appointnamed Leon Smith, who was a
friend of attacks on the USSHarriet Lane with the
Confederate cotton-clad steamers.
(30:50):
If he had not made thatdecision, the battle would
certainly have been lost.
And again, this was thedecision that Magruder made to
appoint Leon Smith to thatposition.
On the Union side, after theBattle of Galveston had happened
and Magruder had regainedcontrol of the city, the
question was how in the worldare you going to keep control of
(31:13):
it?
Because there was a reason thatit was given up in the fall of
1862, and that was that it wasso hard to fortify an island
city.
And Magruder now had the city,but he didn't have the
fortifications around it.
How in the world was he goingto buy enough time to build
those fortifications?
And so Admiral David GlasgowFarragut, over in New Orleans,
(31:36):
knew he needed to send somebodyto come over here and retake
Galveston before theConfederates could fortify it.
And the question he had wasshould he come himself or should
he appoint someone else?
And if he needed to appointsomeone else, who would it be?
And so Farragut finally decidedalthough he wanted very, very
(31:56):
badly to come over here andteach the Confederates a lesson,
because he thought the Battleof Galveston was the most
shameful incident in the entirehistory of the US Navy.
But he decided well, hecouldn't leave and come over
here and leave things over thereon the Mississippi River the
way they were.
He had to stay there.
So he had to send somebody hetrusted.
(32:17):
And the guy he trusted wasCommodore Bell, who was a friend
of his and also an older navalofficer.
And he sent Bell over here torecapture Galveston.
And he was exactly the wrongman for the job, because Bell
was more timid than Farragut andhe waited around and waited
around and in the meantime,while he waited around, the
(32:40):
Confederate steamer Alabamashowed up out of the blue and
sunk the Hatteras and put such awrench into the Union plans to
retake Galveston that they heldoff, and that gave Magruder just
enough time to build thefortifications he needed to
continue to defend the city.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
This is the third time you've been on the podcast.
This is the third time you'vebeen on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
One thing that is pretty consistent is that these
Confederate plans and ideas ofnot just in Galveston but all
over Texas.
They're pretty audacious natureof the personality of General
John MacEd McGrooter.
He's sent here in Texas andhe's known in the Army as Prince
John McGrooter because he'ssuch a crazy character.
(33:31):
He had all these theatricalmannerisms.
He never wore a conventionaluniform Up in Virginia.
He was known for doing wildthings to keep the Union Army at
bay.
He would have units marchingback and forth in circles.
He would have enslaved peoplemarching around, beating drums
randomly.
They would light many morecampfires than the men needed,
(33:54):
just so the opposing Union Armywould see these things and think
they were much larger numbers.
He was the absolute master atdoing more with less, absolute
master at doing more with less.
And so in some ways that wasthe brilliant decision that
Jefferson Davis made was to sendMagruder down to a place like
Texas where, again, there werevery limited resources.
(34:16):
Here you would have to make themost of them in order to do
anything.
And so Magruder arrives here inNovember of 1862 and he has two
important decisions to make.
The first timing he knows thathe has to get control of
Galveston back if he's going tocontrol Texas at all.
(34:36):
But how do you do it?
When and how do you do it?
The first question is when?
Because at the time he arrivesin Texas the Union Navy is in
control of Galveston, but it's anaval force.
There are no troops at all,really land troops until
(34:56):
Christmas Eve of 1862.
But Magruder knows it won'tstay that way.
He knows that there's a largeUnion force seemingly on the
horizon, destined for Galveston.
He is convinced that he willstand virtually no chance if he
waits until that force lands andcontrols all of the resources
(35:20):
they're going to be able tocontrol.
So he decides very quickly thathe has to attack, you know, as
soon as he can, within a month.
And then the second question isall right, you've made the
decision to attack.
Now how are you going to do it?
Are you going to do it a simpleattack?
Are you going to do it a littlecomplicated?
Are you going to go all the way, crazy complicated?
(35:42):
And he goes through all theresources and considers all the
options and he says the onlyplan that stands a chance of
working is the really, reallycrazy plan.
We're going to launch asimultaneous attack by land and
sea in the middle of the night.
(36:03):
He has no naval force whatsoeverAt the time he makes this
decision.
He really doesn't have any armyforce of any size.
He has some few old cannon, butthey're over on the mainland,
he has nothing to do these with.
But he makes this incredibledecision that he's going to
immediately launch a plan thatis the wildest battle plan of
(36:23):
the entire civil war, and I saythat with experience and looking
at virtually every battle andevery campaign in the American
Civil War.
It's the wildest one ever.
Most of it doesn't work, mostof it spectacularly fails, and
yet at the end of this battlethe Confederates recapture
(36:45):
Galveston.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I understand you have like a walking and driving tour
, pretty much kind of breakingdown like where you should go
and what you should see.
Is that right?
That's right.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Typically these books have had things like you know,
kind of breaking down where youshould go and what you should
see.
Is that right, that's right.
Typically these books have hadthings like if they'll do one on
critical decisions of theBattle of Shiloh, they'll have a
battlefield tour and say you goto this place and look over
there and that's where this guywas and that's where he was when
he made these decisions.
That's really hard to do in thecontext of the Galveston
(37:14):
campaigns, just because so manyof the decisions are not made on
the ground.
Of course I could put somepeople around the Henley
building and show them wherethings were around there, and I
do that, but you want to do morethan that.
So what I put in the back of mybook was I realized that a lot
of people that would read thisbook were not necessarily Texans
(37:35):
and were not necessarilyfamiliar with what was really
going on in Texas, and so I havesome information in there about
all the Civil War places andthings around Galveston.
Some of the things around theTexas City Museum where the
Westfield is Texas City Museumwhere the Westfield is We've got
(37:58):
the main battleground really inTexas is preserved at Sabine
Pass.
So the Sabine Pass Battleground, a historic site which is
interesting just because I thinkit's probably the least visited
Civil War battlefield inAmerica.
And in fact it was funny, thefunny the, the head of the uh
national park surface, the headhistorian for national park
(38:18):
service, got him Ed bars, who'slegendary the business uh, came
to me one time and said I wantto go with you over to Sabine
pass and he said he admitted tome that it was the only major
battlefield he had never been toin America, the only civil war
battlefield of any consequencehe had never been to in America,
the only Civil War battlefieldof any consequence he had never
been to in America.
So I got to give a battlefieldtour to the guy who basically
(38:42):
has a statue of him givingbattlefield tours.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
That's amazing.
So this is the first book inthis series that is west of the
Mississippi River, that'scorrect.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
The area west of the Mississippi River was called the
Trans-Mississippi, and theCritical Decisions Campaign has
focused before now pretty muchon the eastern campaigns,
primarily Gettysburg,fredericksburg, chancellorsville
, those sorts of things, andit's only now that they're
starting to step across and lookat some of the action over here
(39:17):
.
The next book in this series ison the Red River campaign over
in Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
So why do you think the West of the Mississippi has
kind of been underappreciated inCivil War history?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
When I talk to people about the Civil War in Texas,
many people are surprised tolearn that there was any Civil
War activity in Texas.
They associate the Civil Warwith places like Gettysburg or
Vicksburg or big actions overthere that have big national
park battlefields, and of coursewe don't have any of that here
in Texas.
But what happened west of theMississippi River was important
(39:50):
and in fact some of the keyarmies, forces that are used
over in the eastern and westerncampaigns east of the
Mississippi River involve Texans.
And you think to yourself well,how did the Texans get there?
How do the supplies thatfurnish those people get there?
What are those Texas people inthose armies going to fight if
(40:10):
they know their homes are beinginvaded?
The things that happened overhere in Texas were a lot more
important than most evenhistorians had assumed until
fairly recently and we're onlynow getting to explore those
stories in detail.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, I guess it's easy to cover the big major
battles with lots of casualtiesand major decisions, like on the
front in between the borderstates bordering the north and
south, but when you get overhere I guess it's harder to kind
of pinpoint, you know, the bigthings that actually tied into
the grand outcome of the CivilWar.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
One of the things I really like about talking about
the Civil War in Texas is thatit's such a broad area.
I mean, if I was east of theMississippi and focusing on one
of the campaigns there, it'sgotten to be really very
specialized.
Nobody wants another book onthe Battle of Gettysburg and so,
as a result, people are doingvery, very small things.
(41:05):
It's going to be the secondminute on the second day on the
left side of the parkway overhere in this one activity, or
you're doing something, you'retaking a tiny little action, a
cavalry skirmish, and calling itthe Gettysburg of Southeast
Ohio or something.
(41:26):
You have to really get creativein order to make those things
sound interesting.
I never have that problem overhere west of the Mississippi and
particularly in Texas, andthat's largely because a lot of
these things have beenunderexplored.
But when you tell people aboutthe things that happened over
here, people are astonished.
When I tell people that, yes,at Sabine Pass, 41 men, mainly
(41:51):
Irish dock workers, under thecommand of a 26-year-old Irish
saloon keeper named Dick Dowling, held off an invasion force
that consisted of more than 20Union ships and 6,000 men.
It's a wild story.
And then you talk aboutGalveston and this crazy battle
plan launched in the middle ofthe night that nobody had any
(42:13):
serious thought could possiblysucceed the way it did, and it
ends up being the action thatkeeps Galveston in the war as
the last major Confederate port.
All of these things are veryunique stories and people are
fascinated when you really getthem to study them.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah Well, thank you so much, man.
I really appreciate you comingin now.
We're going to go explore let'sgo explore, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Thanks, man and so jr , and are now in our own kind of
letters of mark piracy activityalong the strand, trying to to
find things to support theeffort here.
But this is where the actionwas in 1861.
So, so, but just give me anidea.
Okay, so this guy was aconfederate officer.
This is where the action was in1861.
So just to give you an ideaokay, so this guy was a
Confederate officer.
This is Moody's Moody buildingand this he was a Confederate
(42:59):
officer.
You have the right down in theon the other side of the street
was the largest slave marketwest of the Mississippi, and you
could actually see the cannonspoking out of this building from
the second floor, a piece ofarchitecture that's been damaged
.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.