Texas During the Civil War

The American Civil War began in 1861 when eleven southern slave states declared secession from the United States and form the so called Confederacy which was led by Jefferson Davis. In January 1861, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. His well known adversity towards slavery led to the secession of South Carolina and then of six other states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. In March same year Lincoln declared that he will not abolish slavery but he also said that he will not accept secession hoping and willing that the national crisis should be resolved in peace. On April 12th the Confederate States start the Civil War with the attack of South Carolina over Fort Sumter.

The Union was the name of the federal government of the United States that reunited 25 states, also called The North. Opposed to the Southern Confederacy, the Union was highly industrialized and far more developed. The population was much bigger: 23 million in the North to 5 million in the South. These advantages were significant in the Union’s Victory over the Confederacy.

The Civil War Battles were fought between 1862 and 1865 in 23 states. Their most common names are: Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, the, Trans-Mississippi Theater, the Pacific Coast Theater ,and the Lower Seaboard Theater. Texas did not experience significant battles during the war even if the Union had tried to capture it since 1862. Texas and Louisiana were referred to as the “back-door” of the Confederacy as for the time during the war, the two states exported cotton crops to Europe in exchange for supplies. The Union tried several times but still unsuccessfully to end this trade. The most important battle that took place in Texas was in 1863, the Battle of Sabine Pass when 46 Confederates defeated a much larger Union force from New Orleans. The victory was declared by CSA President Jefferson Davis as “the greatest military victory in the history of the world”.