John Bankhead Magruder by Thomas Settles

Author:Thomas Settles [Settles, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9780807149638
Google: XX6d6z44y4EC
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2009-06-01T03:20:16+00:00

Whereas the undersigned has succeeded in capturing and destroying a portion of the enemy’s fleet and in driving the remainder out of Galveston harbor and beyond the neighboring waters and thus raising the blockade virtually, he therefore proclaims to all concerned that the harbor of Galveston is open for trade to all friendly nations, and their merchants are invited to resume their usual intercourse with this port.

Done at Galveston this fifth day of January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three.

J. BANKHEAD MAGRUDER

Major-General, Commanding49

Magruder so completely removed the blockade from Galveston waters that when the Union transport Cambria arrived off the bar with the remainder of the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, there was no Federal vessel to warn it that the port had been recaptured by the Confederates. Anticipating such an event, Magruder had ordered the United States flag to remain flying over the customhouse and at the mastheads of the ships in the harbor.50 Thus, completely unaware that the Confederates possessed the town, the captain of the Cambria signaled for a pilot, but receiving none, dispatched a boat containing the notorious Thomas “Nicaragua” Smith and five of his crew to secure instructions for entering the port. When the boat reached shore, Smith and the five sailors were immediately made prisoners by the Confederates. Smith, who had defected to the Federals on August 5, 1862, after leaving his duty post at Pelican Spit in Galveston Harbor, was court-martialed immediately after his capture. On the following day he was executed by a firing squad.51

In the meantime Magruder learned that the Cambria carried heavy siege guns, railroad flatcars, and two locomotives, in addition to the remainder of the 42nd Massachusetts Regiment and a small number of the 1st (Union) Texas Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Edmund J. Davis.52 Because the Harriet Lane was badly damaged and the cotton clads were not sturdy enough to venture into the rough seas beyond the bar, Magruder decided to capture the Cambria by trickery. Accordingly, a call for volunteers was made and was quickly answered by Captain John Payne, a well-known and skilled river captain who held a Confederate commission as captain of a gunboat on the Sabine River.53 Captain Payne and a small crew boarded the recently captured pilot schooner Lecompte and departed for the Cambria. When the Lecompte reached the Union transport, Payne volunteered to guide the vessel ashore. But at this point some of the Texans of the 1st Cavalry Regiment recognized him. Payne boarded the transport, nervously attempting to carry out his bluff, but when he was told that he must pilot the vessel in safely or “his brains would be blown out upon the spot,” he confessed that Galveston had been recaptured by the Confederates.54 The crew of the Cambria immediately demanded that Payne be hanged. Payne replied that he expected them to shoot him as soon as they discovered that they were being made prisoners through him. But at the same time he reminded the irate Federal sailors that there were six hundred of their own men, captured in the battle, who would receive the same punishment.

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