Brownsville is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Cameron County, located on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The city covers 145.2 sq mi (376.066 km2), and had a population of 186,738 at the 2020 census. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, it is the 139th-largest city in the United States and 18th-largest in Texas. It is part of the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan area. The city is known for its year-round subtropical climate, deep-water seaport, and Hispanic culture.
Rio Grande City is a city in and the county seat of Starr County, Texas, United States. The population was 15,317 at the time of the 2020 census. The city is 41 miles (66 km) west of McAllen. The city also holds the March record high for the United States at 108 °F (42 °C). The city is connected to Camargo, Tamaulipas, via the Rio Grande City–Camargo International Bridge. The city is situated within the Rio Grande Valley.
Arizona Territory, colloquially referred to as Confederate Arizona, was an organized incorporated territory of the Confederate States of America that existed from August 1, 1861, to May 26, 1865, when the Confederate States Army Trans-Mississippi Department, commanded by General Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana. However, after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Confederates had to retreat from the territory, and by July 1862, effective Confederate control of the territory had ended. Delegates to the secession convention had voted in March 1861 to secede from the New Mexico Territory and the Union, and seek to join the Confederacy. It consisted of the portion of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel, including parts of the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona. The capital was Mesilla, along the southern border. The breakaway region overlapped Arizona Territory, established by the Union government in February 1863.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley, commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The region includes the southernmost tip of South Texas and a portion of northern Tamaulipas, Mexico. It consists of the Brownsville, Harlingen, Weslaco, Pharr, McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, San Juan, and Rio Grande City metropolitan areas in the United States and the Matamoros, Río Bravo, and Reynosa metropolitan areas in Mexico. The area is generally bilingual in English and Spanish, with a fair amount of Spanglish due to the region's diverse history and transborder agglomerations. It is home to some of the poorest cities in the nation, as well as many unincorporated, persistent poverty communities called colonias. A large seasonal influx occurs of "winter Texans" — people who come down from the north for the winter and then return north before summer arrives.
The University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA) was a public university in Edinburg, Texas. Founded in 1927, it was a component institution of the University of Texas System. The university served the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas with baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees. The Carnegie Foundation classified UTPA as a "doctoral research university". From the institution's founding until it was merged into the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), it grew from 200 students to over 20,000, making UTPA the 10th-largest university in Texas. The majority of these students were natives of the Rio Grande Valley. UTPA also operated an Upper Level Studies Center in Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas. On August 15, 2014, Dr. Havidan Rodriguez was appointed interim President of UTPA, the institution's final leader.
Texas Southmost College (TSC) is a public junior college located in Brownsville, Texas, United States.
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Goseacochea, also known by his nicknames Cheno Cortina, the Red Robber of the Rio Grande and the Rio Grande Robin Hood, was a Mexican rancher, politician, military leader, outlaw and folk hero. He was an important caudillo, military general and regional leader, who effectively controlled the Mexican state of Tamaulipas as governor. In borderlands history he is known for leading a paramilitary mounted Mexican Militia in the failed Cortina Wars. The "Wars" were raids targeting Anglo-American civilians whose settlement Cortina opposed near the several leagues of land granted to his wealthy family on both sides of the Rio Grande. Anglo families began immigrating to the Lower Rio Grande Valley after the Mexican Army was defeated by the Anglo-Mexican rebels of the Mexican State of Tejas, in the Texas Revolution.
The Cortina Troubles is the generic name for the First Cortina War, from 1859 to 1860, and the Second Cortina War, in 1861, in which paramilitary forces led by the Mexican rancher and local leader Juan Cortina, confronted elements of the United States Army, the Confederate States Army, the Texas Rangers, and the local militias of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
John Salmon Ford, better known as "Rip" Ford, was a member of the Republic of Texas Congress and the Texas Senate. He was also the mayor of Brownsville and Austin. Ford was a Texas Ranger, a Confederate colonel, a doctor, a lawyer, and a journalist and newspaper owner. He commanded men during the Antelope Hills expedition and later led the Confederate forces in what was arguably the last engagement of the American Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch on May 12–13, 1865. It was a Confederate victory, but as it occurred more than a month after Robert E. Lee's surrender, it did not affect the war's outcome.
Leander Harvey McNelly was a Confederate officer and Texas Ranger captain. McNelly is best remembered for leading the "Special Force", a quasi-military branch of the Texas Rangers that operated in south Texas in 1875–76.
Charles Stillman was the founder of Brownsville, Texas, and was part owner of a successful river boat company on the Rio Grande.
The Bandit War, or Bandit Wars, was a series of raids in Texas that started in 1915 and finally culminated in 1919. They were carried out by Mexican rebels from the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. Prior to 1914, the Carrancistas had been responsible for most attacks along the border, but in January 1915, rebels known as Seditionistas drafted the Plan of San Diego and began launching their own raids. The plan called for a race war to rid the American border states of their Anglo-American population and for the annexation of the border states to Mexico. However, the Seditionistas could never launch a full-scale invasion of the United States and so the faction resorted to conducting small raids into Texas. Much of the fighting involved the Texas Ranger Division, but the US Army also engaged in small unit actions with bands of Seditionist raiders.
The Battle of La Ebonal was fought in December 1859 near Brownsville, Texas during the First Cortina War. Following the Brownsville Raid, on September 28, and a few skirmishes with the Texas Rangers, rebel leader Juan Cortina led his small army into the hills outside of town and dug in near a series of cattle ranches. The United States Army responded by sending an expedition into the area, under the command of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman, with orders to pacify all resistance. A minor battle began on December 13, at a ranch called La Ebonal, and continued for a few hours as the Americans routed and then pursued the retreating Cortinistas.
The Battle of Rio Grande City was a military engagement during the Cortina War between pro-Mexican Cortinistas and a group of US Army regulars supported by Texas Rangers.
The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is a public research university with multiple campuses throughout the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas. It is the southernmost member of the University of Texas System. The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 after the consolidation of the University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College and the University of Texas–Pan American.
The University of Texas at Brownsville was an educational institution located in Brownsville, Texas. The university was on the land once occupied by Fort Brown. It was a member of the University of Texas System. The institution was formed from a 1991 partnership between the two-year Texas Southmost College and University of Texas-Pan American at Brownsville. The partnership ended in 2011 as UTB became a standalone University of Texas institution, and Texas Southmost College returned to being an independent community college. UTB itself offered baccalaureate and graduate degrees in liberal arts, sciences, education, business, and professional programs.
Adrián J. Vidal was a Mexican soldier who fought in both the American Civil War and the Mexican War against France in the 1860s. He served the Confederate States of America Army from October 1862 to 1863, when he and his troops defected. He was branded a traitor, having killed one Confederate soldier, wounded another, and killed as many as ten or more individuals. He was said to have planned an attack on Brownsville after defecting from the Confederate Army. In the end, General Hamilton P. Bee ordered that Fort Brown and Brownsville be set on fire, destroying large quantities of cotton and military goods under the watchful eyes of 400 Union troops as well as Juan Cortina and his soldiers on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande. The next month, he enlisted in the Union Army, serving just six months. During that time he captured an Army tugboat and its crew. He then fought under General Juan Cortina during the Second French intervention in Mexico. Vidal was captured by the French who executed him by a firing squad in June 1865.
Mifflin Kenedy (1818–1895) was a rancher, steamboat operator, and investor who settled in Texas. He began his steamboating career on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers. He then went to Texas and northern Mexico, where he helped get many steamboats to the Rio Grande area during the First Cortina War (1859–1860). Using the Corvette, he transported General Zachary Taylor and his soldiers on the Rio Grande and then overland to Camargo, Mexico. He became successful during the Civil War when he transported goods along the Rio Grande. Kenedy operated ranches and invested in railroads in Texas, some of them in partnership with Richard King. He was among the first ranchers to fence in his ranches, starting with the 36-miles of fencing around Laureles Ranch. Kenedy was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners.
The Brownsville Raid was the opening act of the Cortina Troubles, a series of raids by Mexican rancher Juan Cortina into Texas. The raid was precipitated by Brownsville sheriff Robert Shears attacking a Mexican man named Thomas Cabrera and in turn being shot by Cortina. The incident was a culmination of growing discontent between Mexicans and Texan settlers.
The Battle of Carrizo was an 1861 battle, the only engagement of the Second Cortina War, and the final engagement of the wider Cortina Troubles. Juan Cortina, a Mexican rancher who had previously attacked American settlements in Texas' Rio Grande valley, sacked Carrizo, a settlement that was then the seat of Zapata County on May 22 with about thirty Cortinistas. In a forty-minute battle, Confederate Captain Santos Benavides decisively defeated Cortina, killing or capturing many of his soldiers and driving him back into Mexico.
Cortinista militia
Texas Rangers