Arthur Fremantle - Traveling Through Texas

Traveling Through Texas

Fremantle entered the Confederacy through the Mexican town of Matamoros, Tamaulipas on 2 April on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS Immortalité to avoid being in violation of the Union blockade, and crossed the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas. Within three hours of his arrival in the Confederacy, Fremantle encountered 'frontier justice' for the first time, finding the body of a renegade, known as Montgomery, half-buried and stripped of flesh at the roadside. Spending almost two weeks in Brownsville, with occasional visits across the border to Matamoros and the village of Bagdad, Fremantle became acquainted with General Hamilton P. Bee and several merchants and diplomats who were facilitating the trade of cotton across the border with Mexico. Part of the reasoning for Fremantle's tenure in Brownsville may have been that he wished to meet General John B. Magruder, for whom he had a letter of introduction. However, Magruder was delayed, and Fremantle left Brownsville on 13 April in a carriage in the company of some of his merchant friends. Their driver and his assistant, Mr Sargeant and Judge Hyde, are particularly memorable figures from Fremantle's diary, in no small part due to Fremantle's astonishment that a member of the justiciary should be working on a stagecoach. Later, General Longstreet would recall meeting the same two men during his own service in Texas.

After finally meeting with General Magruder shortly after leaving Brownsville, Fremantle continued his journey across the Texan desert, dutifully recording in his diary his observations about the taste of polecat, the snuff habits of Texan women, and allusions to the coarse language of his drivers and travelling companions. He finally arrived in San Antonio, Texas on 24 April, where he sold most of his luggage, and from there travelled to Houston, Texas, where he arrived on 30 April. Here, he dined with General William Read Scurry, and observed that those Confederate officers he encountered were extremely complimentary about Great Britain and the Queen, even proposing toasts to her health and to the Empire. Fremantle now proceeded with haste across the remaining Texan countryside, as rumours concerning the fate of Alexandria, Louisiana began to reach him. Furthermore, the continuing siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi was another source of anxiety, as the capture of the city would make passage across the Mississippi River practically impossible.

Setting off for Galveston, Texas on 2 May, Fremantle found himself meeting Sam Houston, the father of Texan independence, though he found the elder statesman to be vain and egotistical, as well as bitter and uncouth in his mannerisms. This occurred less than three months before Houston's death, presumably making Fremantle one of the last foreign visitors to meet the general. The English observer finally left Texas on 8 May, arriving in Shreveport, Louisiana and partaking of the hospitality of General Edmund Kirby Smith and his wife.