SOCIALIFE
COMMUNITY HISTORY
Civil War on the Rio Grande PART 2: By Tom Fort, Senior Historian
Winter 1864.
Some 8,000 Union troops occupy the Rio Grande Valley and the southern coast of Texas. Intended mainly to choke off the Confederate cotton trade through Mexico, the Yankees’ invasion also “shows the flag” to French Imperialists out to conquer Mexico (and trampling the Monroe Doctrine in the process). But the “Rio Grande Expedition” is a failure. Texas cotton still pours through the Mexican port of Bagdad where foreign ships take on bales and unload cargoes for Rebel troops—and for Benito Juárez’ soldiers, still fighting the French invaders who occupy Mexico. Without letup, the lucrative cotton trade goes on. The reason is all too clear to U. S. Army commanders at Fort Brown: the Rio Grande. Its invisible international boundary frustrates Union strategy. Late in 1863, after seizing Brownsville, federal units marched west, seizing river crossing points such as Edinburgh (now Hidalgo) and Rio Grande City. Union cavalry rode north also, closing trails used by cotton trains. But the Yankees didn’t count on Rebel and Mexican resourcefulness. Barred from downriver crossings, the cotton wagons rolled further west to Laredo and Eagle Pass. Once safely in neutral Mexico, the wagon drivers turned east on river roads toward Camargo, Reynosa, and Matamoros.
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At Camargo, on the Rio San Juan, many bales went aboard steamboats operated by M. Kenedy & Company of Brownsville. Put under Mexican registry and flying the Eagle and Serpent flag, the loaded-down boats followed the winding Rio Grande, carefully staying south of the midchannel boundary, which kept the boats in Mexico’s sovereign waters and away from U.S. interference. Water transport was cheaper than wagon, and the longer wagon journeys were starting to run up the costs for cotton shippers. Nevertheless, by wagon and steamboat, thousands of bales kept flowing into Matamoros, and from there to Bagdad. Offshore, the fleet of merchant ships anchored in Mexican waters kept growing. By 1864, several hundred at a time were loading bales off Bagdad after delivering their cargoes of military weapons and gear along with medicines, liquors, and luxury goods. Frustrated U.S. Navy captains could watch (from their side of the line) but not interfere; should any Union blockader sail toward the anchorage, French and British warships were on hand to deter such meddling. The French Navy blockaded Mexico’s Gulf Coast to prevent military aid from reaching Benito Juárez’ forces. Meanwhile, England’s Royal Navy made sure that Bagdad remained open because British textile mills needed the Confederates’ cotton. But French mills also needed cotton, resulting in a confused situation in which the rival nations’ warships prevented the
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