Battle of Palmito Ranch - Background

Background

Early in 1865, both sides in south Texas honored a gentlemen's agreement that there was no point to further hostilities. After July 28, 1864, most of the 6,500 Union troops pulled out of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, including Brownsville, which they had occupied on November 2, 1863, for other campaigns. The Confederates sought to protect their remaining ports for cotton sales to Europe, as well as importation of supplies. Mexicans tended to side with the Confederates due to a lucrative smuggling trade.

Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace proposed a negotiated end of hostilities in Texas between his forces and those of Confederate Brig. Gen. James E. Slaughter, and met with Slaughter's subordinate Col. John Salmon Ford at Port Isabel in March 1865. Despite Slaughter's and Ford's concurrence that further combat would prove tragic, the negotiations were repudiated by their superior, Confederate Maj. Gen. John G. Walker, in a scathing exchange of letters with Wallace. Despite this, both sides appeared to honor a tacit agreement not to advance on the other without prior notice in writing.

A brigade of 1,900 Union troops commanded by Col. Robert B. Jones of the 34th Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry were on blockade duty, and garrisoned at the Port of Brazos Santiago, on the mouth of the current ship channel of the Port of Brownsville. The 34th Indiana, 400 strong, was an experienced infantry regiment that had seen combat in the Vicksburg campaign and had been reorganized in December 1863 as a "Veteran" regiment, re-enlisting veteran troops of several regiments whose original enlistments had expired. It deployed to the Port of Los Brazos de Santiago on December 22, 1864, replacing the 91st Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which returned to New Orleans. The brigade also included the 87th and 62nd United States Colored Infantry Regiments ("United States Colored Troops", or U.S.C.T.), with a combined strength of approximately 111,100. Shortly after Walker rejected the armistice proposal, Jones resigned his commission to return to Indiana, replaced in command of the 34th Indiana by its lieutenant colonel, Robert G. Morrison, and at Los Brazos de Santiago by Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, commander of the 62nd U.S.C.T.

Barrett had been an officer since 1862, but was without combat experience. Eager to advance in rank, he had volunteered to command one of the newly raised "colored" regiments in 1863 and was appointed colonel of the 1st Missouri Colored Infantry, which in March 1864 was federalized in Louisiana as the 62nd U.S.C.T. Barrett contracted malaria in the summer of 1864, and while he was on convalescent leave, the 62nd was posted to Brazos Santiago, where Barrett rejoined it in February 1865.

Why the battle happened remains something of a mystery. The French Foreign Legion was occupying neighboring Matamoros, Mexico at the time, and was said to have reinforced the Confederate forces in Brownsville. Barrett's detractors among the brigade suggested soon after the battle that he had desired "a little battlefield glory before the war ended altogether." Others theorized that Barrett needed horses for the 300 dismounted cavalry in his brigade and for other purposes. Historian Louis J. Schuler, in a 1960 pamphlet entitled The last battle in the War Between the States, May 13, 1865: Confederate Force of 300 defeats 1,700 Federals near Brownsville, Texas, asserts that Brig-Gen. Egbert B. Brown of the U.S. Volunteers ordered the expedition with the object of seizing for sale as contraband 2,000 bales of cotton stored in Brownsville. However, Brown was not appointed to command at Brazos Santiago until later in May.