Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
Officers of all grades of ability and every social background were sprinkled through the regiment, from elegant Captain Granville Ouray and the adventurous Charles de Montel to hardbitten Indian-fighting captains like Cater and Dunn. Matt Nolan was an ex–U.S. Army enlisted man, with long service on the border. John Littleton was invaluable because he knew the location of almost every ranch or farm. Captain Littleton procured most of the expedition's corn.
There were some old Army camels in San Antonio, but Ford left these behind when it was discovered they did not thrive on corn.
On March 17, 1864, the Cavalry of the West stood to horse; it mounted and rode through the sun-baked plaza in front of the Alamo, a long, strung-out column in various shades of gray. Ford was at the head, wearing his black hat, a sword sash, and well-worn boots. Behind him came men born in, or with ancestry from, a score of nations and states. They sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
They were more dangerous than they looked.
Ford drove the column fast. It was a terrible march. South of San Antonio the singing stopped; the cavalry choked in dust. The winter of 1863–64 was one of those terrible times of extended drouth in south Texas. The brush country burned dry; water holes and streams had disappeared. The column passed skeletons of cattle and other animals. Fortunately, Major Blücher was also dry and found the remaining grass and water with remarkable skill.
Within a week the Cavalry camped at Banquete. Here Ford received a courier from Santos Benavides. Benavides—supported mostly by his own numerous clan—was fighting off Yankees behind cotton bales in the streets of Laredo; he begged for ammunition. Ford now marched west, toward Laredo. He put Nolan's "riders" out to cover his flank to the east and south, and to reconnoiter a Union party that had landed at Corpus Christi. His main force pushed southwest, reaching Laredo on April 15.
At Brownsville, Herron knew Ford was in the field, but he had faulty intelligence of Texan numbers. Ford's strength was put at about 650.
Rip Ford, however, was more worried about events in Mexico than what Herron might do. Mexico was in political and military chaos, and this situation immediately affected his own. There was more than a Yankee–Confederate war going on along the Rio Grande; the conflict was actually four-cornered. There was civil war in Mexico, and interference in each conflict from both sides of the river. This imbroglio of Confederate-Union-Imperialist-French-
Republican policies and forces along the Rio Grande was incredibly complex.
After the war with the United States, Mexico continued in civil turmoil. The country was bitterly divided between the liberal, federalist, anticlerical faction and the conservative, centralist, ecclesiastic element—a controversy that in the 19th century at some time or other engaged the entire Hispanic world. In Mexico, as in other Spanish-speaking nations, the struggle continued for generations. In the 1850s, the liberals gained the upper hand, and in 1856 and 1857 a liberal Congress and constitutional convention separated Church and State. Under the new laws, civil or religious corporations were no longer permitted to hold real estate, and tenants of such property were to purchase it on easy terms. To understand the importance of, and the controversy caused by, this reform, it is necessary to understand that the Church, in Mexico, was immensely wealthy, owning more land than almost all smallholders combined. The measure was bitterly fought by the clergy. Some friars and high churchmen were exiled in reprisal.
The constitution of 1857 had a characteristically short life. It was suspended on December 1. President Ygnacio Comonfort fled to the United States. The liberal party installed the chief justice of Mexico, Benito Pablo Juárez, as President. At the same time, General Felix Zuloaga assumed leadership of the conservatives, declared himself President in honored
caudillo
fashion, and with the army drove Juárez and the liberals into Vera Cruz.
Zuloaga proceeded to annul all obnoxious liberal legislation. The liberals fought back with a revolution in the countryside. In eighteen months, seventy battles were fought. Conservatives won most of them, but they could not end the war. Mexico was again bankrupted, and both factions sought foreign aid. Juárez tried to secure a small loan from the United States in 1859 in return for concessions. This failed to go through, primarily because it drew ferocious Mexican, British, and French opposition.
The conservatives were, unfortunately for Mexico, more successful. Fifteen million dollars were acquired, on most unfavorable terms, from Britain and France.
However, by 1859, Juárez seemed to have again put the liberals in control. The United States recognized him as the legitimate President. On July 12, Juárez issued a church confiscation decree, giving the following rationale: the Church had been Royalist in the revolution against Spain; it opposed all liberal ideas; and the clergy were determined to hold not only religious but civil supremacy. The order nationalized all church property, reduced priests to voluntary fees, and dissolved all religious orders. This was so radical that it threw more Mexicans on the side of the Church, and Juárez was not able to reenter the City of Mexico until 1861.
Whatever the value of the religious decrees, Juárez made a dangerous error. He suspended all payments to foreign creditors and also confiscated property belonging to foreign nationals. France, Britain, and Spain jointly seized the port of Vera Cruz. Juárez was able to pay the Spanish and British, and these nations withdrew. The French government, meanwhile, under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, had succumbed to a new vision of Gallic grandeur. Napoleon III proceeded to attempt the conquest of Mexico, taking advantage of the civil war and the immobilization of the United States in its own domestic conflict.
The French proclaimed a Mexican monarchy. This caused the Conservative Party to ally with the French; Conservatives became Imperialists. The great
majority of wealthy and well-born in Mexico supported the Imperial cause; the official Church did likewise.
The French had planned an easy conquest, but the protectorate was harder to establish than they hoped. On May 5, 1862, an obscure Mexican general named Porfirio Díaz routed the French general Lorencez at Puebla. The
Cinco de Mayo
provoked French escalation. Napoleon III dispatched a much larger army of French, seized the capital, and through a
Junta
appointed by General Forey, offered the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Austria the throne.
Maximilian, who had to drop his hated first name in Mexico, was a descendant of Charles V, and thus had a strong appeal to traditionalist aristocrats. He arrived in Mexico on May 28, 1864, accompanied by his wife, the daughter of the King of the Belgians and Louise of Orléans, and contingents of Austrian and Belgian troops. The British approved his elevation. Now began a terrible, bloody civil war, that because of the tragic aspects of the unstable Empress Charlotte's futile efforts to save her husband, took on romantic colorations in the United States.
This war arrived on the Rio Grande. It was preceded by much purely local fighting in 1861. In Matamoros, Cipriano Guerrero and Jesus de la Serna, flying yellow and red flags, battled for the control of Tamaulipas. The
Crinolinos
took Matamoros in September, driving hundreds of Serna
Rojos
into refuge in Brownsville. A standard pattern now began—combatants crossed back and forth across the river, either for refuge or to secure a base to launch a new campaign.
When the Union recaptured Brownsville, most Confederates immediately crossed to Mexico, and plotted against the invasion from the neutral side.
The Reds crossed back to Matamoros late in 1861. Now was fought the bloodiest battle in Tamaulipas history; beautiful buildings were gutted and destroyed; dozens of men on both sides were stood against the arsenal wall. Hundreds of Mexican-Americans and some Anglo-Americans participated in this warfare, which was a continual menace to Brownsville, not only from firing but from deserters prowling the riverbanks.
The person in power in Matamoros changed rapidly, from the conservative Santiago Vidaurri, to liberal General Manuel Ruíz to Maximilianist General José Cobos. Cobos's rule was short. Three days after crossing from Brownsville he was shot by his own second-in-command, Juan Nepomuceño Cortinas, who declared for the liberal Juárez government. Cortinas released Ruíz from prison, but Ruíz sensibly fled to Brownsville, not waiting to see what further vagaries politics held.
General Cortinas was now somewhat reluctantly accepted by the beleaguered Juárez government as their governor in Tamaulipas. A far better than average politico, Don Juan still held this post in 1864, though he was growing apprehensive as the French moved into northern Mexico, and he was thinking of turning Imperialist. One immense complication here was that Cortinas was a former resident of the Texas side, and he had been driven into Mexico by Rip Ford and the Rangers in 1859.
All through the 19th century, prominent Mexican families on the Texas side took their U.S. citizenship lightly or not at all. They were Mexican citizens also, by Mexican law. They entered vigorously into Mexican politics. Quite frequently, a Texas "Mexican bandit" or "notorious cattle thief" was a prominent general or patriot on the southern shore.
Addie Ford, the Colonel's third wife, meanwhile entered Mexico, down from San Antonio to Matamoros via the stage from Eagle Pass. Addie Ford's mother was in Brownsville, and she hoped to visit. Her sister Lu, however, got word to her that the Federals were watching for her. Now, General Cortinas, who was a professional
gringo
-hater but gentlemanly in private life, and his half-brother, Don Sabas Cavazos, called on Mrs. Ford and offered her money and aid.
As Governor of Tamaulipas Cortinas also secured her a safe conduct into Brownsville through friends in the Union forces. In this weird four-sided war, there were certain general patterns. United States troops favored the Juáristas, unless they happened to be Irish Catholics. Washington still recognized the Juárez regime. Confederates of all persuasions preferred the Imperialists. This was an alliance of convenience purely; many Texans, like Ford himself, detested foreigners and kings. There was to be much mutual assistance across the Rio Grande among all four armies.
Cortinas did not follow any pattern. He had a general bias against all
gringos
for running him out of Texas. He rather scrupulously avoided offending whatever power was ascendant on the northern bank at any time.
Certain, through his wife, that he would not be attacked or harassed from the Mexican shore, Ford now launched the Cavalry of the West into the southern triangle that formed the delta of the Rio Grande. Tall, hard, ruddy-faced, and handsome, wearing a short gray beard beneath his dark hat, he led his odd force into a classic guerrilla campaign. There is an enormous amount of fragmentary material, but few real known facts concerning this border warfare. Ford's memoirs were written after twenty years; other accounts, like so much Texas history, rested on old men's tales. As Ford himself said, "Texians proved themselves good soldiers, but they were not willing writers." It is almost impossible to find two matching accounts or to separate legend from history, while an enormous amount of fascinating data was allowed to disappear. But the over-all picture is clear.
The terrible drouth had made pasture scarce along the river. Ford had a horde of horsemen, but he could not assemble them in one place at any time. At the start, he had almost no supply. He was forced to scatter his command over hundreds of miles, and depend on the countryside, above all Mexico, for his military and forage needs. He gathered a small force, not more than 400 horse, and with this began to roll up the Yankee garrisons.
The Indian-fighting captains ranged through the thick border
monte
, or brush. They laid ambushes in the
ebonal
. They popped in and out of the chaparral; they cut Union communications and supplies. Ford had the advantage of position, and greater mobility. Too much of the Union army was sweating, bluecoat infantry, fighting in a burning, almost tropical country. The Union cavalry—Davis's small force, and Vidal's partisans, the last deserters from the gray—fought well, but were both outnumbered and outclassed.
In April, torrential rains fell. This did not at once improve the grass, but it turned the Rio Grande Valley into a steaming hell. Wet and hungry, tired and sodden, Ford's cavalry lived in the brush; for ten solid days of rain they pushed their way toward Ringgold Barracks. They took Los Angeles, Los Ojuelos, and Comitos. The Federals evacuated Rio Grande City without a fight.
Now, Ford consolidated, while a cavalry screen protected his front and eastern flank. He rode into Mexico to make sure his other flank was secure. He seized cotton he found and sold it for coin. The silver bought food. He established working relations with Mexican commandants around Camargo, and thus closed the border to Vidal's raiders, who used the river as a shield. He put liaison officers with Cortinas, including a man who had served as a lieutenant colonel in Juárez's army. He employed another officer to purchase guns from Union deserters south of the border. With Granville Ouray, he visited Matamoros personally and dickered with Cortinas for cannon.
During this time, he got no support from the Confederacy. A thread of discord is visible even after a hundred years. The Confederate establishment had arms, men, and supply in south Texas; Waul's Legion, under Steele, ran an encampment at Gonzales. But Ford got nothing from Duff, or Bee, or Slaughter, except trouble.