Review - "Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War" by William Nelson Fox

[Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War by William Nelson Fox (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, 2024). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:101/159. ISBN:978-1-4671-5561-8. $24.99]

Early on in the conflict, the Confederate government in Richmond determined that the ultimate protection of its vast lands and people west of the Mississippi comprising the states of Texas, Arkansas, and much of Louisiana was best guaranteed by sending the bulk of their available manpower to the Confederacy's heavily outnumbered primary field armies. Something of an exception to the much-maligned cordon defense strategy maintained by the Davis administration until forced out of it by a string of major military disasters over the early months of 1862, the thought was that territory lost in the trans-Mississippi by designating it a tertiary theater would be readily recovered after the defeat of principal Union armies elsewhere. Predictably, such a policy of temporary abandonment was not popular among those most burdened with the sacrifices made necessary by it, but, as historian Charles Grear concluded in his 2010 study Why Texans Fought in the Civil War, large numbers of Texans were highly motivated to fight east of the Mississippi in defense of the extended family and friend networks they left behind when they migrated to the Lone Star State. In consequence of that, however, Texas was rendered highly vulnerable to direct attack, particularly along its extensive coastline.

When it comes to reading about Texas coastal operations during the Civil War, modern options are actually quite numerous and qualitatively strong. For example, interested readers will find unsurpassed coverage of a pair of stunning Confederate victories in Edward Cotham's Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae (2004) and Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (1998). Covering another part of the coastal war, Stephen Dupree's Planting The Union Flag In Texas: The Campaigns of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks in the West (2008) provides a big-picture view of Union intentions while Stephen Townsend's The Yankee Invasion of Texas (2006) offers a solid overview of the 1863-64 Rio Grande Expedition. Supplementing Townsend's treatment are some extensive Southwestern Historical Quarterly journal articles that address land and naval operations conducted along the string of Texas barrier islands that protected a series of bays and secondary ports. The network of earthen fortifications that finally forced a major operational pause in Union progress up the coast in 1863-64 is discussed in both B.J. McKinney's Confederates on the Caney: An Illustrated Account of the Civil War on the Texas Gulf Coast (1997-rev) and Martha Doty Freeman and Elton Prewitt's book-length 1994 Sargent Beach Project report. For a glimpse into the international dimensions of the Texas coastal war, we have Rodman Underwood's Waters of Discord: The Union Blockade of Texas During the Civil War (2008). Additionally, scholarly works such as Norman Delaney's The Maltby Brothers' Civil War (2013) explore Texas coastal operations on a more intimate level. While all of that is great, it is also recognized that not everyone interested in learning about the topic has the time or inclination to embark on such a series of deep dives. For those individuals, William Nelson Fox's slender volume Texas Coastal Defense in the Civil War is a more than suitable introductory-level tool.

In roughly one-hundred pages of principal narrative, Fox impressively manages to explore the entire length and breadth of the Texas coastal war, from the appearance of the first blockading warship off Galveston in 1861 to the war's ill-advised and entirely unnecessary May 1865 coda fought near the mouth of the Rio Grande. In between, he recounts the broader contest for Galveston, the Union naval blockade and coastal harassment campaigns, the unlikely Confederate triumph at Sabine Pass, and the Rio Grande Expedition. In constructing his concise chronicling of coastal war affairs, Fox employs a strongly diverse collection of sources, including archival materials, government records, newspapers, books, and articles. Though some of the miniaturized maps reproduced in the volume are difficult to make out without the assistance of a magnifying lens, the volume is well stocked with photographs, ship drawings, and contemporary artistic renderings of events. A helpful timeline of the coastal war's most prominent happenings is also featured.

As mentioned earlier, Fox makes the most of the limited space available when it comes to describing events both large and small in scale. Land and naval figures little known to general readers but significant in the struggle over the Texas coast (officers such as Union naval lieutenant John W. Kittredge) are frequently featured in the text. In an unusual practice for books of this type, Fox consistently provides small-unit order of battle details in his discussions of events. Additionally, though the title suggests a study written primarily from the Confederate side of things, the narrative does incorporate both Union and Confederate perspectives.

Though the confrontation with the Caney Creek fortifications ended the 'easy' phase of the 1863-64 Rio Grande expedition's seemingly inexorable advance up the coast, Fox agrees with Thompson that Texas was still vulnerable to being knocked out of the war at that time. Both are persuasive in determining that it was primarily a lack of will (a combination of conflicting military/civilian leadership personalities and strategic priorities) on the Union side that saved the heart of Texas's capacity for making war.

For those seeking a well-researched overview of Civil War operations that unfolded up and down the entire length of Texas's contested Gulf coast, this new study, which can be read in a single sitting, deserves top-level consideration.