24-25 September 1862
Sabine Paß
4. Oktober 1862 Galveston
1. Januar 1863 Galveston
20th Texas Infantry Regiment
For months the soldiers of the 20th Texas Infantry Regiment wondered
when they would finally taste battle. The regiment had been posted to
duty on the Texas coast. Detachments were detailed for garrison duty,
to guard military stores, to escort supply trains and provide other
necessary but mundane services. Now, in the pre-dawn darkness of
January 1,1863, troops from the 20th Texas were finally selected for a
daring assault. Confederate forces under General John B. Magruder were
to retake the Texas port of Galveston, which had been occupied by
Federal forces since October of 1862.
Magruder prepared a rare operation: a surprise Confederate army-navy
attack. Commandeering two civilian riverboats, he equipped them with
cotton bales for "armor" and fitted them with bow artillery. Aboard
were 300 sharpshooters. On shore, Magruder commanded a force of 1,500
troops and a dozen artillery field pieces. With this makeshift land-sea
force, he planned to launch a surprise attack on the Federal forces
holding Galveston which consisted of 260 troops in well-defended
fortifications and a powerful flotilla of Federal gunboats.
A Tremendous Discharge of Shell—Grape and Canister
Assigned to a 500-man Confederate storming party was a detachment from
the 20th Texas Infantry. At 4 a.m. on New Year's Day, Magruder launched
his attack. "The enemy did not hesitate long in replying to our
attack," Magruder reported. "He soon opened on us from his fleet with a
tremendous discharge of shell, which was followed with grape and
canister." The storming party made a courageous frontal assault on the
fortified Federal wharf, wading through the water with scaling ladders.
Magruder's land forces were beaten back, but his "navy" was more
successful. The sharpshooters poured fire into the U.S.S. Harriet Lane,
clearing the decks for a Confederate boarding action which captured the
warship. The Confederates then dispatched a flag of truce to the
Federal commander, demanding surrender. Mistaking Magruder's
cotton-bale boats for powerful Confederate ironclads, Commander William
B. Renshaw responded by ordering his squadron of ships out of Galveston
and abandoning the Northern troops on shore. The 20th Texas Regiment's
moment of glory — as part of Magruder's assault force
—
ended in victory.
Commanded by Colonel Henry M. Elmore, the 20th Texas Infantry Regiment
was organized in the Lone Star State in the spring of 1862. In May,
after it was mustered into Confederate service, it was assigned to the
Eastern District of Texas. Although the 20th served in the
Confederacy's Trans-Mississippi Department and the District of Texas,
New Mexico and Arizona, the regiment spent most of the war on the Texas
coast.
Except for its involvement in the Battle of Galveston on January
1,1863, the 20th Texas Infantry Regiment was assigned to routine duty.
Coastal fortifications needed garrisoning; bridges and railroads needed
guards; military supplies had to be protected. The duty was boring at
times, as well as mundane and taxing on regimental morale —
but
it was as necessary as combat. "Captain Clepper's company, Elmore's
regiment, escorted the train," noted a typical Confederate dispatch
about the 20th Texas, "and a detachment of 20 men and one commissioned
officer out of said company was to have been left at each depot to
guard the stores."
"Packed for Traveling"
Years of garrison assignments and guard duty were difficult for
Southern soldiers, who generally yearned to "see the elephant"
—
as initiation to combat was known in the ranks. While other Texans were
braving battle in the war's eastern and western theaters, the troops of
the 20th had been left in their home state. But after exposure to
battle at Galveston in early 1863, the troops of the 20th Texas found
it harder to go back to their routine of walking guard outside an
obscure fortification or standing guard over stores of hardtack. And
with so many at the front, troops in the backwaters of the war were in
short supply, so detachments were regularly dispatched from the 20th
Texas to complete routine duties apart from the regiment. By the fall
of 1864, morale among some of the regiment's soldiers was dismal
— and a threatened mutiny finally occurred.
