Surrender of Federal Forces by General David E. Twiggs

San Antonio, TX

Organized in 1853 by San Antonio's cultured German immigrants, the Casino Association built an 1858 clubhouse with a theatre, a 700-seat hall, and banquet and club rooms. During the Civil War its stage hosted military balls, benefit concerts, and minstrel shows for the Confederate cause, while women gathered there to roll bandages. Over the decades its audiences included Robert E. Lee before the war and, later, Ulysses S. Grant and Buffalo Bill.

San Antonio, TX

Prompted by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, the U.S. Army secured land at San Antonio for an arsenal in 1858, and the post soon became headquarters for the Army's Department of Texas. This thick-walled limestone magazine—still under construction when the Civil War began—was among the Federal properties surrendered in 1861 and completed for Confederate Texas, its carefully spaced vents guarding against sparks in the stored gunpowder. It armed south Texas and frontier defense, supplied the 1862 Sibley expedition, and served the U.S. Army as a frontier supply depot until 1947.

San Antonio, TX

Born in 1835, Alejo de la Encarnación Pérez was carried into the Alamo as an infant during the 1836 siege and lived to become its last known survivor. His long life bridged two Texas eras: he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, then spent decades serving San Antonio as a police officer and city marshal. When he died in 1918 at 83, the living memory of the Alamo's defenders died with him.

San Antonio, TX

Early Spanish settlers first ground gunpowder here—charcoal from Hill Country wood, saltpeter scraped from bat guano in caves like Longhorn Cavern, and sulphur hauled by ox-cart from Mexico—to hunt game and defend against raids. The work was dangerous: even dampened powder sometimes sparked fires at the mill. During the Civil War the mill supplied powder to state troops, frontier defenders, and the home guard, worked by boys and men too old for military service.