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First Texas Cavalry, USA, embarks on Rio Grande campaign
On this day in 1863, the First Texas Cavalry, USA, left New Orleans for
South Texas as part of the Union effort to interdict the lucrative trade
between Confederate Texas and Mexico. The First was one of two regiments
of Unionist cavalry from Texas to serve in the Civil War; the Second was
formed in Brownsville after the Rio Grande campaign got underway.
Loyalty to the Union was anything but a major consensus in Texas during
the Civil War. A total of 1,915 Texas men served the Union cause, in
contrast to the many thousands who served the Confederacy. Brownsville
was a center of Unionist sentiment. Significant numbers of civilians who
supported the North fled to the lower Rio Grande, where a provisional
state government was set up under Andrew J. Hamilton, and where Edmund
J. Davis and others recruited cavalrymen for the North. Davis had formed
the First Texas Cavalry, USA, in New Orleans in 1862. In November 1864
the regiment was merged with the Second into the First Texas Volunteer
Cavalry. This new twelve-company regiment engaged in patrolling and
reconnaissance duties until the end of the war, and was mustered out of
service on November 4, 1865.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- FIRST TEXAS CAVALRY, USA
- RIO GRANDE CAMPAIGN
- CIVIL WAR
- DAVIS, EDMUND JACKSON
- HAMILTON, ANDREW JACKSON
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Abilene replaces Buffalo Gap as seat of Taylor County (1883)
- Plane crashes into religious shrine (1970)
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