General John Bankhead Magruder was born in Winchester, Virginia, on the 15th of August, 1810. He came of not only a distinguished but a martial family. Singularly attractive in personality, he entered West Point and graduated from that institution in 1830.

Thirty-six years of age when the Mexican War began, he was not without a wide military experience, and on many battlefields had exhibited the superb courage which marked his entire career as a Confederate officer. He won fame at Palo Alto in the Mexican War, he earned a brevet at Cerro Gordo, and at Chapultepec and in the City of Mexico he added still more largely to his splendid reputation for gallantry and dash. Imbued with all the patriotic state pride and love of a native born Virginian, he early resigned his position in the United States army and took service under the Confederate government.

By March 16, 1861, he was colonel; ninety days later a brigadier general; less than four months afterward he was a major general; and, with probably one exception, when it was claimed he was tardy, he justified the opinion of his friends and superiors that he was a great soldier, an eminent strategist, with extraordinary aptitude for all phases and departments of war.

In the Virginia-Yorktown campaign in 1861, he fought the Battle of Big Bethel. He was then only a colonel, but there he ranked such men as D. H. Hill and others of great future renown.

Big Bethel was not much of a battle after all, but it served to stimulate and nourish Southern pride, and helped also to arouse Northern patriotism. With one man killed and seven wounded, it is with reluctance that it can be called a battle at all. The most that General Magruder could enumerate as a loss on the Federal side (with all the bias of a general anxious to promote hope in his countrymen), was from twenty-five to thirty killed and a hundred and fifty wounded.

On this field fell the first martyr to the Southern cause. He was a member of the 1st North Carolina Infantry, and volunteered with four others to cross the firing line and burn a house, from which it was supposed the Federals would have superior advantages in their assault on the Confederate position. When he fell, his companions were recalled.

North Carolina, with the noble impulses of a great state, and with commendable pride in its magnificent reputation in the Confederate War; has builded a monument to the first, not only of her sons, but all the South’s sons, who laid down their lives for the life of the Confederacy.

This young man was Henry L. Wyatt, only a private in the 1st North Carolina Regiment, yet he won imperishable fame by his service, which, while not more glorious than the thousands of others who later made the great sacrifice for their country, became preeminent because he was the first to shed out his blood for the Southland.

From this battle, so ably directed by General Magruder, comes North Carolina’s claim, “First at Bethel.”

Not only in the United States army, but in the Confederate army, General Magruder was known as “Prince John.” Careful of his person, inclined to stylishness in dress, even before the war, at Newport, Rhode Island, he was considered among the handsomest, as well as the most courteous and gracious of American soldiers.

In the seven days’ battle around Richmond, and at the sad finality of that wondrous campaign, Malvern Hill, Magruder bore a distinguished and valorous part.

In the fall of 1862, matters had reached almost a crisis in Texas. Jealousies, which calmer judgment now declares unfortunate though not unusual, among proud and patriotic men, had seriously affected the success of Confederate arms west of the Mississippi. A head was needed, and so, of the general officers in the East, General Magruder was selected by the government, not only as a successful soldier, but as a high grade organizer, to assume charge of the affairs of the great territory west of the Mississippi. This department had boundless possibilities. It had material for great soldiers. Its men, accustomed to hardships, trained to the highest physical endurance by their daily surroundings, and accustomed to danger and adventure, were ready to volunteer with readiest alacrity, and to fight without fear. The splendid achievements of the trans-Mississippi volunteers will stand the closest scrutiny, and the sharpest comparison with any of those heroes, who by their courage and endurance won renown for the armies of Tennessee and Northern Virginia. Their deeds, though not yet justly and fully chronicled, will, when truly recorded, add still more resplendence to the name of “Confederate Soldier.”

It was believed that the generals, hitherto operating with separate commands, would recognize General Magruder’s superior ability and justly earned reputation, and that under his guidance, wide experience and honorably won fame, would co-operate in the campaigns in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Missouri, and when massed under a man of General Magruder’s genius and skill would stay threatened Federal invasion and produce the results their fighting qualities might reasonably be expected to evolve.

After starting upon his journey, circumstances arose which recalled him temporarily; but toward the end of October, in 1862, he reached Texas.

General Magruder early realized the necessity of holding the line of the Rio Grande, which for more than twelve hundred miles was the boundary between the Confederate states and the Republic of Mexico. Along so many hundreds of miles of waterway, and a line which presented a great many military difficulties, it was impossible for the United States, without a base on the Gulf of Mexico, to interrupt or prevent the transportation and sale of cotton and the return of supplies through Mexico, which at that time were almost absolutely necessary to maintain an organized army in Texas. The preservation of this territory was a military necessity. It divided the Federal forces and kept a great number of men engaged in defending the flanks of the armies operating along the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

Up to the time of Magruder’s coming, those in command in Louisiana and Texas had practically conceded that a full defence of the Texan coast was impracticable. Galveston, by reason of its peculiar topographical position, had been abandoned. A small Federal force was quartered on the wharves, close to the limits of the city, while the Federal fleet, outside, prevented egress and ingress to the harbor, and only waited reinforcements to make a more permanent and extensive occupation and by closing the avenues to Mexico, make complete the blockade of the entire borders of the Confederacy.

General Magruder was considered one of the best strategists in the Confederate army. By quick movements and the rapid disposition of troops, he had delayed General McClellan’s march along the Yorktown Peninsula several weeks, and he was now resolved to rid the coast of Texas of Federal invasion and to restore Galveston to Confederate control. He had but few of the more powerful resources of military arts at his command; his artillery was limited; he had no gunboats and no material from which to make a gunboat that could ride the ocean storms; but his coming with a magnificent past of military achievement, and his personal confidence and courage, quickly inspired the people in the proximity of Galveston with the highest opinions of his talents and gallantry, and created hope where the surroundings declared there could be no hope.

It is fifty miles from Houston to Galveston, and the Brazos River, together with the bayous, afforded communication with the Gulf, through the harbor at Galveston to that city. Prompt in action and resolute of purpose, General Magruder reconnoitered the situation at Galveston, and determined to re-take the place. He only proposed to make this attempt after a very careful survey and an equally careful arrangement of his plans. The Federal fleet blockading Galveston was not very extensive, yet was so out of proportion to anything that the Confederates could bring to bear upon it, that an attack on it was considered absolutely foolhardy.

General Magruder had brought with him from Virginia a few hundred Enfield rifles. These proved of tremendous value in the operations he was to undertake at Galveston. Shotguns and ordinary hunting rifles were not very satisfactory, unless at very close range, and while General Magruder may not have anticipated such service as they should render at Galveston, it was deemed by his followers extremely fortunate that he had the foresight to introduce, with his coming to his new field of operation, these English guns.

Among Federal vessels blockading the port at Galveston was the Harriet Lane, commanded by Captain Wainwright; she carried four heavy guns and two twenty-four-pounders. The Westfield, mounting eight guns, was a large propeller, and the flagship of Commodore Renshaw, in command of the blockading fleet. The Owasco, another propeller, carried eight heavy guns; the Clifton, a propeller with four heavy guns and an armed schooner were among the vessels which composed the fleet which General Magruder, with the most inadequate means, proposed to attack and destroy, or put to flight.

As early as the beginning of 1863, the Confederate cavalry had been taught to be ready for any service, whether in scouting, raiding, assaulting infantry or defending forts. In the demands upon cavalry, the Confederate authorities were no respecter of persons, and that a man belonged to the cavalry gave him no exemption from any service that infantry or artillery could perform.

By the 1st of November, 1862, General Magruder issued a call for volunteers. Hand bills were distributed throughout the city of Houston, calling for enlistments. It had been given out that Captain Leon Smith would have charge of the operations by water. These calls received few responses. Some said it was the hazard of the expedition, others were unwilling to volunteer under Captain Smith, a stranger. Call after call fell on deaf ears, and incredible minds and unwilling hearts, so far as the citizens and the sailors about Houston were concerned.

General Magruder’s plans seemed doomed to failure, when Lieutenant Colonel Bagby of the cavalry suggested to General Magruder that Colonel Tom Green was a man of boundless courage and also of unlimited resources. The history of General Green’s intrepidity, fortitude, and superior ability in extricating his brigade from New Mexico a few months before had spread abroad through Texas, and after this superb performance, many people thought there was nothing that General Green could not accomplish.

General Magruder promptly sent for General Green and unfolded to him his plan of attack on Galveston, and suggested to him to take three hundred volunteers from his cavalry, and with these, on board two steamboats under command of Captain Leon Smith, aid in General Magruder’s attempt to recapture Galveston. But General Green, conscious of his power and confident of his ability as a leader of men, declined to embark on boats under the command of Captain Smith, insisting that, as he was supreme on the land, he must also be supreme on the sea; and then it was that General Magruder, pleased with the spirit of the man, entrusted to Colonel Green the command of the two river steamers, the Bayou City and the Neptune, which had been rudely converted into marine rams with a few cotton bales to protect their wheels and engines.

It required immeasurable courage in such frail and unseaworthy boats to pass out into the Gulf of Mexico, or into the harbor at Galveston, and attack war vessels. General Green, now fifty-one years of age, had led a most strenuous life, and it was too late for him to take counsel of fear. He went back to his command full of the excitement and glamour of glory’s calls and issued the following order:

“Soldiers, you are called upon to volunteer in a dangerous expedition. I have never deceived you, I will not deceive you now. I regard this as the most desperate enterprise that men ever engaged in. I shall go, but I do not know that I shall ever return; I do not know that any who go with me will, and I want no man to volunteer who is not willing to die for his country and to die now.”

None could say that they misunderstood the purport of this laconic but stirring and impassioned appeal. The 5th and 7th regiments had been recruited to a full quota. Not five in a hundred had ever been to sea; they knew nothing of the management of any sort of seagoing vessel, but they did know that General Green wanted them to go and they did go, largely because he was going with them. When the two regiments were drawn up in line and volunteers called for, be it said to the renown of Texas and to the honor of the Confederate soldier that, without an instant’s hesitation, or a moment’s delay, every man in these two regiments stepped forward and declared his willingness to take the chances of war in an expedition of which they knew nothing, except that their beloved commander told them that while it might lead through the paths of glory, it also might lead to the grave.

In all the history of the Confederate armies, so replete with the highest and noblest heroism, there is no record of anything grander or more inspiring than this act of the men of these two regiments, offering, in the face of the warning of their beloved commander, to go with him, if needs be, even unto present death, to serve their country.

A cavalryman never likes to give up his horse. There is a sense of safety, as well as a sense of pride in the cavalry mount. And when those valiant Texans went away and committed their steeds to the care of their comrades, it added a new radiance to their courage and valor. Ready to leave their beasts to enter upon an element of which they knew nothing and engage in an enterprise of which they were profoundly ignorant, all because, through the voice of their commander, they heard the call of country bidding them go to meet the foes of the land they loved, was both an unusual and an extraordinary exhibition of patriotism and of obedience to duty’s demands.

But, like those with Gideon of old, three hundred alone could assume the dangers and win the honors of this peculiar engagement.

Some members of the 4th Regiment heard of the expedition, and these hurried forward to offer their services, but they were reluctantly denied the valued privilege, and ordered back to their command. Satisfied to obey, they were filled with grief which later became even more poignant when they understood the result of the splendid victory of which they were denied a share.

It was a difficult task to determine who should go, in face of the universal and intrepid desire manifested by these volunteers, to take part in this desperate and dangerous enterprise.

With that abandon of courage that marks the really brave, these three hundred soldiers, one-half from the 5th and one-half from the 7th Regiment, marched down to the wharf at Houston, and took passage on the Bayou City and Neptune.

General Green remained with the Bayou City. The Neptune, the faster boat, was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bagby, on which were volunteers from two artillery companies. But the main fighters and the great fighting machine, the real men behind the guns, were those who handled the Enfield rifles which General Magruder brought over from the far East.

With such unworthy seagoing vessels, protected with a few bales of cotton, likely to be blown up by the first well-directed shell, only the most valiant of men would have undertaken so hazardous an enterprise. The remaining men of the 4th, 5th and 7th Cavalry, composing Sibley’s brigade, had been dispatched to Galveston to engage in the assault by land and the defense of the guns on the beach.

General Magruder led the land forces in person. Along the wharves and shores of the bay, all the Confederate artillery was put in position. There was little, if any, protection to the guns or gunners. They were coming out in the open to fight the men who were protected in ships, and they were eager for the unequal fray.

General Magruder had announced that he would fire the first gun, and that when this was heard, all the artillery should turn loose upon the Federal fleet.

Under Colonel Cook, five hundred men plunged into water waist deep, carrying upon their shoulders the scaling ladders, upon which to climb upon the barricades held by the Federals on the remains of the City Wharf.

Neither wind nor wave had aught of terror for these splendid knights of the sea, who, in the darkness of the night, guided only by the pale stars, encumbered with guns and ladders, were hunting for their foes, who, safely barricaded, were waiting to send death-dealing missiles into their ranks. On land, such an assault had terrifying elements, but wading out into the sea, with neither beacons nor torches to guide their steps, carrying or pulling scaling ladders, by which alone they could hope to engage an enemy entrenched high above them upon wooden wharves, reaches to the sublimest heights of human courage.

The dismounted cavalry had been brought within a short distance of Galveston, and when the first gun was fired, with brave and steady heads and fleet of foot, they pressed forward to the front, on the line held by the venturesome artillery.

The Federal ships were not slow to take their part in this magnificent night pageant. Shells and bombs and shot plowed through the walls and over the fortifications and played hide and seek amongst the guns and caissons, that stood out on the land with distinctness, when the flashes of the cannon lit up the weird scenes of the fateful hour. The men in line on the shore were unable to reach their enemies, who were safely anchored out in harbor. Though their position was made uncomfortable by the fierceness of the fire, none flinched and none sought to avoid the consequence of the unequal affray.

So close were the combatants together that shells alternating with grape and canister speeded forth from the Federal gunboats, and from midnight until morn this contest was waged. From two o’clock until the dawn of day, fierce and fast flew the shells; and the roar of artillery and the flashes of the guns made the bay a scene of terror.

Magruder turned his eyes anxiously towards the direction from which his navy should come. The men aboard the steamboats heard the sound of artillery and, catching the inspiration of the hour, with illy suppressed anxiety and impatience, urged that they push forward into the midst of the conflict. They had waited from midnight until four in the morning for the sign which would bid them to enter the arena, and when at early morn they heard the call for them to come, it was with difficulty that their commanders could restrain their impatient ardor.

As they sailed down the Bayou, they caught sight of the flashes which marked the place where the artillery duel was being fought out. The clear starlight, with the moon gone down, was a splendid background upon which was painted the illuminations created by rapidly firing ordnance. This was more brilliant and more beautiful than any display that fireworks might produce.

The roll of the cannon was sweet music to the patriots now afloat and being propelled with quickening revolutions of the wheels into the turmoil and excitement.

The Federal ship, Harriet Lane, being nearest the shore, was the first to receive the attention of the Confederate navy. The Neptune, the fastest of the flotilla, came quickly within range of the Federal fleet, and in swinging around to the side of the Harriet Lane, was struck amidships and quickly sank. The water was so shallow that it did not reach the upper part of the vessel. Without being deterred from the serious business in which they were engaged, the cavalry mounted on the highest portion of the boat and with their Enfield rifles poured a deadly fire upon every part of the Harriet Lane, and practically drove her gunners from their posts.

The Bayou City, not so swift, but manned by none the less determined soldiers and sailors, swung promptly into action. Compared with the Lane, she was helpless in an artillery fight, but those aboard of this frail ship had no dread of any danger that the exigencies of the hour could precipitate. As she advanced into the battle, her best piece of artillery burst and the valiant captain, Wier, who had volunteered to direct the guns, fell dead by their side.

Disregarding all ideas of prudence, and casting to the winds or the waters all fear, the Bayou City, with her improvised ram, made straight for the Harriet Lane and drove her iron nose into her sides. The blow was given with such force that it disabled the Harriet Lane; the vessels appeared as one forum of raging conflict. With grappling irons, the Confederates held the two vessels fast together, and then in obedience to the call of General Green, every man from the Bayou City sprang upon the deck of the unfortunate Lane.

There were no words of parley, there were no calls for surrender, but the brave Texans, under their valiant commander, with Enfield rifles and their swords, made quick work of the crew of the Federal ship, and in the briefest period the storm quieted to the stillness of death.

The commander of the Lane, Captain Wainwright, was killed. Lieutenant Lee, his junior officer, was mortally wounded. There was nothing to do but ask for quarter. The Federal troops on the wharves, who, by reason of the shortness of the Confederates’ scaling ladders, had escaped capture, now surrendered, and fate with relentless and pitiless edict, gave the Federals over to complete defeat.

When Captain Lee, a Confederate officer, one of those manning the Bayou City, looked into the faces of the Federal prisoners, he was shocked to see that the dying lieutenant on the Harriet Lane was his own son.

Commodore Renshaw, in command of the Westfield, was not disposed to rush away and leave his comrades on the Harriet Lane unsupported. The shallowness of the water and the limited space in which these vessels had maneuvered caused the Westfield, Commodore Renshaw’s boat, to run aground. The Mary Boardman, one of the transports, gamely essayed to help the Westfield, and the Clifton, another propeller, tendered her assistance in her extremity. The laurel wreath had been woven for the brow of the daring, fearless Confederates, and no effort of the brave Federals could stay the losses. When the enterprise was first considered, only hope stirred the hearts of the men in gray. They scarcely calculated that, under the most favorable conditions, any such consequence could come from the expedition. Brave and fearless, they were not prepared for such a wonderful result. True, they were guided by Magruder’s genius, aided by Smith’s skill, led by Green’s immeasurable courage, helped by Bagby’s experience, impelled by Scurry’s valor, encouraged by Cook’s dauntless bravery, and inspired by McNeill’s calm and imperturbable gallantry; but none dared to believe that so much could be accomplished in so brief a period, or such transcendent success crown even the bravest of men, facing such difficulties with such splendid reward. The Federal vessels which escaped sailed away. They left Galveston a Confederate possession. The survivors were glad to go beyond the reach of horsemen, who were as reckless and enterprising on the sea as they had proven themselves on the land.

It was a great victory. It cost the Confederates twenty-six killed and one hundred and seventeen wounded, but the success of the enterprise and the flight of the Federal vessels from Galveston set abroad a great wave of enthusiasm and patriotism. Few could realize that such glorious results could be obtained by men, handicapped by insufficient resources, even when sustained by the highest courage and noblest spirit. What had been done stirred the hearts of all the people of Texas. They recognized in General Magruder an illustrious soldier, and in the Texas cavalry, whether on land or sea, an invincible host, which had the apparent power to wrest from fate victory under any conditions, however adverse or stormy.