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Christi Bay, from which a force, under
General T. E. G. Ransom, went to the Aranzas Pass, farther up the coast, and by a gallant assault
carried the
Confederate works there, and captured one hundred prisoners.
Corpus Christi was occupied by National troops the same day. Then a force, under
General Washburne (then commanding the Thirteenth Army Corps), moved upon Pass
Cavallo, at the entrance to
Matagorda Bay, where the
Confederates had a strong fort, called
Esperanza, garrisoned by two thousand men of all arms.
It was invested, and, after a sharp action, the
Confederates blew up their magazine and fled,
most of the garrison escaping.
These important conquests, achieved in the space of a month, promised a speedy closing of the coast of
Texas to blockade-runners, and great advantage to the
Union cause in that region.
No place of importance on that coast was now left to the
Confederates, excepting at the mouth of the
Brazos and on
Galveston Island, at each of which they had formidable works; and a greater portion of their troops in
Texas, commanded by
General Magruder, were concentrated on the coast, between
Houston,
Galveston, and
Indianola.
Banks was anxious to follow up his successes by moving on
Indianola, on the west side of
Matagorda Bay, or upon
Matagorda, at the mouth of the
Colorado.
This would have brought him into collision with a greater portion of
Magruder's troops.
He did not feel strong enough to undertake a task so perilous.
He asked for re-enforcements, but they could not be furnished, and at about the close of the year he returned to New Orleans, leaving
General Dana on the
Rio Grande.
That officer sent a force more than a hundred miles up that river, and another toward
Corpus Christi, but they found no armed Confederates; and when, by order of
General Banks, he left the
Rio Grande and took post at Pass
Cavallo,
he found some National troops in quiet possession of
Indianola and of the
Matagorda Peninsula, on the opposite side of the bay. The Confederates had withdrawn to
Galveston; and all
Texas, west of the
Colorado, was abandoned by them.
With a small additional force
Banks might have driven them from
Galveston, and secured a permanent military occupation of the
State.
It remains for us now, in considering the military events west of the
Mississippi, to the close of 1863, only to take a glance at the trouble with the Indians, toward the head-waters of that stream, in the
State of Minnesota.
As these troubles had no immediate connection with the war, further than in drawing some troops from the grand theaters of strife, we must be content with only a brief passing note of the events.
At midsummer, 1862, bands of the warlike
Sioux Indians, in the
State of Minnesota, made open war upon the white people in that region.
It is not positively known by what special motive, or under what particular influence they were impelled; and the suspicion that they were incited to hostilities by emissaries of the Conspirators, with the hope of thereby causing a large number of troops fighting the rebellion to be drawn away to a distant point, rests only upon conjecture.
The fact is, that a Sioux chief, named Little Crow, a most saintly-looking savage in civilized costume, was the most conspicuous of the leaders in the inauguration of the war, by the butchery of the white inhabitants at
Yellow Medicine, New Ulm, and
Cedar City, in
