Corpus Christi, 1861-1865
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Near here on August 16 and 18, 1862, three Confederate artillery pieces held off four attacking Federal ships during the Civil War bombardment of Corpus Christi. The blockading squadron of Lieutenant J.W. Kittredge, U.S.N., had harrassed the southern coastal trade inside the offshore islands since February. It had gained control of Aransas Bay in July, halting water traffic in the shallow bays, and entered Corpus Christi Bay August 12. Women and children were evacuated during a forty-eight hour truce and the Confederates threw up breastworks for the artillery on the night of August 15. On August 16, the Federal ships and Confederate shore battery exchanged hundreds of shells before the Federals withdrew. The Federal ships returned August 18, landing sailors and a howitzer north of the Confederate battery. The sailors dragged the howitzer within range of the battery and began firing. Confederate infantry, led by Major A.M. Hobby, charged the Federal position. Captain James A. Ware's cavalry joined the assault, forcing the Federals to withdraw. A month later Kittredge was captured south of here at Flour Bluff while ashore with a detail. On November 17, 1863, Federal troops under General Nathaniel P. Banks captured Mustang Island to the east and held it seven months. By this time Confederate troops had been withdrawn from south Texas, making it possible for soldiers from the Federal garrison to visit Corpus Christi at will. They frequently returned to camp loaded with lumber torn from frame buildings, other objects of plunder, and on occasion, Union sympathizers. These depredations, a bitterly cold winter in 1863-1864, and a scarcity of food resulted in an exodus of local people. There was little left in Corpus Christi when the war ended. A memorial to Texans who served in the Confederacy.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In August 1862, a small Confederate battery of three guns near this spot dueled a Union blockading squadron that had spent months choking off the South Texas coast trade. Over two days, shore artillery and Federal warships traded hundreds of shells before a charge led by Major A.M. Hobby and Captain James Ware's cavalry drove the Federals back. The war ground on here for years afterward, with Union troops taking nearby Mustang Island in 1863 and a harsh winter and plundering raids emptying much of Corpus Christi before peace returned.
Why it matters
The bombardment of Corpus Christi is a reminder that the Civil War reached even the remote Gulf coast, where blockade and coastal raids brought hardship far from the great eastern battlefields.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1862 the Civil War had reached even here, to the sunbaked bays and barrier islands of the South Texas coast — about as far from the war's great eastern battlefields as an American could get and still be at war. The fighting on this shore was not a clash of vast armies but a slow, grinding contest over water, trade, and survival.
The Union strategy for strangling the Confederacy leaned heavily on its navy. Federal warships fanned out along the Southern coastline to choke off the ports through which the South shipped its cotton and brought in the goods it could not make for itself. On the shallow Texas coast, with its maze of offshore islands and narrow passes, that blockade turned into a cat-and-mouse struggle through waters too thin for deep-draft ships to easily follow.
Corpus Christi sat squarely in the path of that pressure. A modest coastal town on its bay, it found itself defended by a handful of guns and a scattering of local men against the reach of the United States Navy.
People & events
The blockade here had a face: Lieutenant J.W. Kittredge of the U.S. Navy, whose squadron had harried the coastal trade inside the offshore islands since February, seized control of Aransas Bay in July, and pushed into Corpus Christi Bay that August. When his ships closed on the town, there was even a grim courtesy to it — a forty-eight-hour truce during which women and children were evacuated before the shooting began.
Through the night of August 15, the defenders threw up earthen breastworks for their three artillery pieces. On the 16th, ship and shore traded hundreds of shells until the Federal vessels drew off. They came back on the 18th, this time landing sailors and a howitzer north of the battery and dragging the gun into range. The reply came on land: Confederate infantry under Major A.M. Hobby charged the Federal position, Captain James A. Ware's cavalry joined the rush, and the attackers were driven back to their boats.
The war here did not end with that repulse. A month later Kittredge himself was captured south of the town at Flour Bluff, taken while ashore with a detail. In November 1863 Federal troops under General Nathaniel P. Banks seized Mustang Island to the east and held it for seven months.
Its place in the American story
It is tempting to imagine the Civil War as a drama confined to Virginia and the Mississippi Valley. The bombardment of Corpus Christi is a reminder of how completely that war wrapped around the whole country — that a Union naval officer and three Confederate guns could duel over a Gulf bay a thousand miles from the famous names of the eastern front.
What happened on this coast also shows the true weight of the blockade, the patient economic siege that historians often rank alongside the great campaigns in deciding the war. Cutting off a shallow bay's traffic was not glamorous, but it was part of the slow suffocation of the Confederacy's ability to trade and supply itself.
And the marker is honest about the war's cruelest ledger: the part that falls on civilians. With Confederate troops withdrawn from South Texas, the Federal garrison could visit the town at will, carrying off lumber torn from houses, other plunder, and sometimes Union sympathizers. That plundering, a bitterly cold winter in 1863–1864, and a scarcity of food emptied much of Corpus Christi. By war's end there was little left — the quiet, comprehensive ruin that war brings to ordinary places far behind the headlines.
If you visit
Come to this shore and the first thing you'll notice is how peaceful it is — the wide bay, the light on the water, the barrier islands lying low on the horizon to the east. That very openness is the point. Look out at the water and picture warships probing the shallows, and a low line of hastily dug earthworks somewhere along this bank answering them with three guns.
This is a memorial as much as a battlefield marker, raised to the Texans who served the Confederacy here. Read its long account slowly; it does something many markers don't, following the war past the fighting into the hunger, cold, and plundering that scattered the town's people. That fuller story is worth carrying with you as you look around.
The marker fits naturally into a day spent along the Corpus Christi bayfront and out toward the islands. Let the geography do the teaching: the same shallow bays and passes that shaped this fight are still here, and standing between the town and the open water, you can read the whole contest in the landscape itself.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · J.W. Kittredge
- · A.M. Hobby
- · James A. Ware
- · Nathaniel P. Banks
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of the Corpus Christi Lighthouse
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As Corpus Christi worked to become a deepwater port in the late 1850s, the U.S. Lighthouse Service bought this site in 1857 and built a brick lighthouse to guide approaching vessels. The Civil War halted the harbor plans, and Confederate forces turned the tower into a powder magazine — until a band of young Confederate loyalists, fearing Federal capture in 1863, secretly packed a butter churn with gunpowder and tried to blow it up. The blast scorched the tower but spared the powder store; the battered beacon limped on until it was dismantled as a nuisance around 1878.
George Owens
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Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.
William Henderson Maltby
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Ohio-born William Henderson Maltby came to Corpus Christi in 1859 to help his brother publish the Ranchero, beginning a lifelong career in the frontier press. He served the Confederacy as an artillery officer until his battery was captured in 1863, survived the 1867 yellow fever epidemic that killed his first wife, and in 1877 co-founded the Corpus Christi Free Press, forerunner of the Corpus Christi Caller.
Matthew Nolan
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Orphaned and brought to Corpus Christi as a boy in 1845, Matthew Nolan served as a bugler through the Mexican-American War, rode with the Texas Rangers under 'Rip' Ford, and became Nueces County sheriff in 1858. He fought for the Confederacy along the Texas coast, returned to the sheriff's office as a major, and was murdered in 1864; he lies in Old Bayview Cemetery beside the brother who died as his deputy.