Corpus Christi History
By Murphy Givens

Wednesday, Nov. 4, 1998

City in shambles at Civil War's end

   The winter of 1863-1864 followed a terrible drought. It had not rained since the summer before. The grass was gone and dead animals by the hundreds could be found around dried-up water holes. Corpus Christi was almost a dead city itself.
   The Confederate general in charge of South Texas - Gen. Hamilton P. Bee - retreated north of the Nueces in late November. Practically all trade stopped when the troops left. City and county governments were dissolved; the min utes read "in vacation." The district court and the newspaper, The Ranchero, were relocated to a Nueces River crossing called Santa Margarita. Many citizens "refugeed" inland, many to Goliad. The Union army was firmly entrenched at Fort Semmes on Mus tang Island while the Confederates left an outpost at Banquete - Camp San Fernando.
   In Corpus Christi, firewood was scarce and water froze in buckets inside the houses. The women got almost no news of the whereabouts or safety of their fighting men. There was little food and the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers killed in action were paid in almost worthless currency.
   At Christmastime, 1863, Maj. William C. Thompson, commander of the 20th Iowa Regiment on Mustang Island, led a scouting party into Corpus Christi. In a letter to his wife, he wrote that, "The women and children are absolutely suf fering from want of necessities of life; and it is only the beginning of their misery."
   Thompson wrote that "there are many good Union men in the place and they send me much valuable informa tion, every word of which would hang them if Rebel leaders knew it."
   Thomas J. Noakes of Nuecestown, a loyal Confederate, wrote in his diary that "about half of the people in Cor pus Christi have deserted to the Yan kees and when you are talking to your most intimate acquaintance, you can not tell whether you are addressing friend or foe politically."
   The soldiers of the 20th Iowa (most of them from around Marion, Iowa) made frequent expeditions into Corpus Christi scrounging for lumber and fur niture. The Iowans' tents had rotted and there were no trees on the island. Raiding parties dismantled frame houses belonging to Confederates and "appropriated" the lumber. Such expe ditions were often followed by retalia tory Confederate raids, with posses sions taken from the homes of Union sympathizers.
   The regimental historian of the 20th Iowa wrote that the men "built com fortable quarters and furnished them with comfort, even luxury. The little frame huts, many of them, contained mahogany and rosewood furniture of the richest description - procured dur ing scouting expeditions to various places on the coast, by confiscation from houses abandoned by rebels."
   Few wooden houses were left stand ing by the time the war ended in the spring of 1865.
   This was a time of anarchy. The Con federate government in Texas simply melted away, with no government to replace it. Refugees filled the roads. Confederate soldiers, broke and bitter, were turned loose, often hundreds of miles from their homes. Corpus Christi was a ghost town, its streets clogged with mud and dead animals.
   The occupying forces arrived in June. Texans called them the "blue-coated dogs of despotism." Accounts say there were two regiments of black soldiers under white officers ordered to Corpus Christi.
   Mrs. Rosalie B. Hart Priour wrote that the black soldiers plundered homes and humiliated local citizens. Other accounts, however, say that ex cept for a couple of incidents the black soldiers behaved very well. Mrs. Priour did get along with the wives of the white officers. When they left, she wrote, "it was like parting with a part of my own family. Before leaving, they gave me a white cat and two white chickens...They were counted among my greatest treasures."
   An occupation tax was imposed and some of the best homes were comman deered by the Union officers for their quarters. One home on Chaparral was where Confederates were required to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. A separate office was set up in the home of Royal Givens, where those who had remained loyal to the Union could take what was called the "iron-clad" oath. The bloodiest war in American history was over, but terrible times were not over for South Texas - the lawless era of Reconstruction was ahead.
   THE WAR - Part 3
   (Sources: Newspaper archives at the Caller-Times and the Corpus Christi Public Library; "Fugitive Slaves in Mexico," The Journal of Negro His tory, January, 1972; "Rip Ford's Texas"; Texas Parade, June, 1961; the diary of Thomas J. Noakes; the autobi ography of Rosalie B. Hart Priour; "Recollections of Field Service with the Twentieth Iowa" by Capt. C. Bar ney; letters of Maj. W.G. Thompson.)