El Paso County, C.S.A.
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Voted 871 to 2 for secession. At start of Civil War Minutemen were organized to provide frontier protection. The San Elizario Spy Company was mustered into Confederate service on July 11, 1861. El Paso was the springboard and supply point for 1861-2 Arizona - New Mexico campaign to give South a Pacific outlet. These troops retired back into Texas and by July 1862, the last Confederate forces left El Paso. Many citizens who favored South went with them, others moved across the river and established a colony in Juarez. In mid-August, Union troops arrived. Martial law was declared and military occupation - longest in any part of Texas - continued until war's end. (Back of El Paso County, C.S.A.) The number of federal troops occupying El Paso never exceeded 2 or 3 companies. Open pro-southern feeling was squelched during the war. There were recurrent rumors that the Texans were about to return and drive the federals out. Henry Skillman and his band of armed men operated courier service from unoccupied part of state to Confederate colony in Juarez. His men spread invasion rumors and acted as spies, which kept Union forces wary. It took two years before Skillman could be tracked down and killed. Most private property was seized and operated during occupation. Most food and fodder came from Mexican side. Other goods either came down the river from Santa Fe or were manufactured locally. Local elections were watched over by military. El Paso was represented during war in the Texas Legislature by pro-Confederates under a law allowing citizens of occupied areas to vote wherever they resided. Erected by the State of Texas, 1963
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Civil War came, El Paso County voted overwhelmingly—871 to 2—for secession, and local Confederates organized companies for frontier defense. From this far western outpost the South launched its 1861–62 campaign to seize New Mexico and Arizona and win a Pacific outlet, but by mid-1862 the last Confederate troops had withdrawn. Union forces then held El Paso under martial law for the rest of the war—the longest military occupation anywhere in Texas—while sympathizers like the scout Henry Skillman ran couriers and spies from across the border.
Why it matters
El Paso's story shows how the Civil War reached the far Southwest, where Confederate dreams of a transcontinental empire collided with a long Union occupation.
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Related people
- · Henry Skillman
Related events
- · Secession of El Paso County
- · Confederate New Mexico Campaign
- · Union occupation of El Paso
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Magoffinsville
El Paso, TX
Kentucky-born trader James Wiley Magoffin began buying land here in 1849, building a home and trading complex that became one of early American El Paso's four population centers. From 1854 to 1868 the U.S. Army post of Fort Bliss stood on his leased ground, and during the Civil War federal forces confiscated and damaged his property. After his 1868 death his family regained land, and his son Joseph became an early El Paso real estate and immigration promoter.
Captain James W. Magoffin, Major Simeon Hart
El Paso, TX
Kentucky-born trader James Magoffin and New York-born miller Simeon Hart both built fortunes in the El Paso borderlands—Magoffin from a trading post at Magoffinsville and his deep contacts in Mexico, Hart from a mill grinding a hundred barrels of flour a day. When the Civil War came, both threw their commercial networks behind the Confederacy, funneling supplies to the 1861–62 Arizona–New Mexico campaign and trading Southern cotton for war goods through Mexico and Europe. Hart's arrangements even helped thwart a planned Union thrust across the Rio Grande in 1863.
James H. White
El Paso, TX
Born in Virginia in 1847, James Harrison White served with the Confederacy before coming to El Paso around 1869, then spent the following decades in an extraordinary run of frontier service — in the Mexican and U.S. armies and as a U.S. Marshal at Las Cruces. As sheriff, tax collector, police chief, and railway official, he helped steer El Paso through its transformation from a rough border settlement into a modern city before his death in 1907. His life traced the closing of one frontier era and the rise of the Southwestern metropolis that followed.
Fort Bliss, C.S.A.
El Paso, TX
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Fort Bliss was surrendered to Texas Confederates on March 21, 1861, along with $20,000 and its property. From here the South launched its ambitious campaign to seize New Mexico and Arizona. When that drive collapsed, Confederates abandoned and destroyed most of the post—leaving only a hospital for their sick and wounded—before Federal troops reoccupied it on July 4, 1862 and held the trans-Pecos longer than any other part of Texas.