Victoria County, C.S.A.
Victoria, Victoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Transportation, military and supply center in the Civil War. On one branch of the cotton road, which moved crop to Mexico for exchange on foreign markets for vital guns, ammunition, medicines and other goods. The 1861 vote favored secession 313 to 88. Troops furnished the confederacy included 5 cavalry companies. County men were also in the 6th Texas Infantry, which trained at "Henry E. McCulloch", a camp of instruction 4 miles from Victoria. Local men in Hood's, Ross' and Sibley's Brigades, Terry's Texas Rangers and Buchel's Cavalry were among the 90,000 Texans noted for mobility and daring who fought on every battlefront. Fort Esperanza, on Matagorda Island, was garrisoned by 100 Victoria Militia, who were captured by 1,900 Federals. The people at home made cloth, tallow candles, shoe blacking from china berries, coffee substitutes from parched corn, dried potatoes or okra seeds. To block 1863 threat of Federal invasion, Gen. John B. Magruder, commander of the Dept. of Texas, destroyed the railroad from Port Lavaca to Victoria. Citizens sacrificed their fine river harbor, one of the two busiest in Texas, by felling trees and sinking boats in the shipping lanes. (1963)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the Civil War, Victoria County served the Confederacy as a transportation, military, and supply hub, sitting on a branch of the "cotton road" that carried Texas cotton to Mexico to be traded for guns, medicine, and other scarce goods. Its 1861 vote favored secession more than three to one, and its men filled cavalry companies and marched in famous units like Terry's Texas Rangers and Hood's Brigade. On the home front residents improvised cloth, candles, and coffee substitutes, and in 1863 they sank boats in their own river harbor to block a feared Federal invasion.
Why it matters
The county shows how the wartime South's blockade-running supply lines and civilian sacrifice reached deep into a Texas far from the major battlefields.
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Related people
- · John B. Magruder
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Peter Henry Fagan House
Tivoli, TX
This cypress, oak, and Florida-pine house rose in 1868 on land first granted in 1834 to Nicholas Fagan, an Irish-born colonist who fought in Texas's war for independence. His son Peter Henry Fagan, a Confederate veteran of campaigns in New Mexico and Galveston, returned home in 1865 and built the home, which soon doubled as a way-station on the road between Refugio and Victoria. Travelers rested here, and visiting priests celebrated neighborhood masses under its roof.
Victor M. Rose
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Victor M. Rose (1842–1893), son of a Victoria County judge, left college to join the Confederate Army, serving in Ross' Brigade through some of the war's hardest fighting; he was wounded twice and held as a prisoner of war. Afterward he edited the Victoria Advocate and other Texas papers and became a noted author, writing a history of Victoria County and of Ross' Brigade. His story sits alongside a striking account of Civil War journalism in Texas, where soldier-correspondents like Rose supplied most war news across a state whose press was starved of paper and manpower.
Home County of William Pinckney McLean
Victoria, TX
A Victoria lawyer elected to the legislature in 1861 and to Congress from 1872 to 1874, William Pinckney McLean was appointed by Governor James S. Hogg to the newly created Railroad Commission of Texas, serving from 1891. First charged with regulating shipping rates, the Commission soon took on oil and gas—pipelines in 1917, conservation in 1919, and full regulation in the 1930s, when East Texas poured out 1.7 million barrels a day and martial law enforced its rules.
Abraham Levi House
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Built before the Civil War with eight fireplaces and ten rooms, this Victoria home was owned from 1861 to 1881 by banker-merchant Abraham Levi, known for his charitable giving. In 1865 the U.S. Army of Occupation took it over as a Reconstruction headquarters, with a prison in the rear. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.