At its zenith in spring of 1864, Camp Ford stockade – near Tyler, Texas – contained some 6,000 Union troops-largest prisoner of war compound west of the Mississippi. It was fair to the prisoners until the influx of troops in the Red River Campaign doubled the size faster than provisions could be found.
A small group of determined Confederate artillerymen under leadership of Lt. Dick Dowling thwarted a Union invasion of four gunboats at Sabine Pass.
The Groce family plantation near Hempstead served as a wartime recruitment center and POW camp.
Nearly one out of every two Texans that went off to war never came home.
There were incomplete forts (works) of interest located at Galveston, Brazos, Santiago, Matagorda Bays at the start of the Civil War. Other important places of the time were Fort Brown and Lancasta, and the cities of Las Morcas, Tampico, and San Patricio, Texas.
The NYPD swarmed southern port cities with spies to find out who was shipping what to whom. This supposedly included Galveston. Quoting a Texas newspaper: “But, if their identity should be designed in the Southern cities just now, as in all likelihood it will be, they will be treated in a very summary manner.”
