Brownsville is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county 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.
The Battle of Palo Alto was the first major battle of the Mexican–American War and was fought on May 8, 1846, on disputed ground five miles (8 km) from the modern-day city of Brownsville, Texas. A force of some 3,700 Mexican troops – most of the Army of The North – led by General Mariano Arista engaged a force of approximately 2,300 United States troops – the Army of Occupation led by General Zachary Taylor.
The Battle of Palmito Ranch, also known as the Battle of Palmito Hill, is considered by some criteria the final battle of the American Civil War. It was fought May 12 and 13, 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande east of Brownsville, Texas, and a few miles from the seaport of Los Brazos de Santiago, at the southern tip of Texas. The battle took place more than a month after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, which had since been communicated to both commanders at Palmito. However, in early May Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith had rejected a proposal from Union Major-General John Pope to surrender Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on the same terms that General Ulysses S. Grant had given to Robert E. Lee. As such Kirby-Smith only officially surrendered all Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865.
The Lower Rio Grande Valley, commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas 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, Donna, 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.
Fort Brown was a military post of the United States Army in Cameron County, Texas, during the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Established in 1846, it was the first US Army military outpost of the recently annexed state. Confederate Army troops stationed there saw action during the American Civil War. In the early 20th century, it was garrisoned in relation to military activity over border conflicts with Mexico. Surviving elements of the fort were designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park near Brownsville, Texas, United States, is a National Park Service unit which preserves the grounds of the May 8, 1846, Battle of Palo Alto. It was the first major conflict in a border dispute that soon precipitated the Mexican–American War. The United States Army victory here made the invasion of Mexico possible. The historic site portrays the battle and the war, and its causes and consequences, from the perspectives of both the United States and Mexico.
The Battle of Valverde, also known as the Battle of Valverde Ford, was fought from February 20 to 21, 1862, near the town of Val Verde at a ford of the Rio Grande in Union-held New Mexico Territory, in what is today the state of New Mexico. It is considered a major Confederate success in the New Mexico Campaign of the American Civil War, despite the invading force abandoning the field. The belligerents were Confederate cavalry from Texas and several companies of Arizona militia versus U.S. Army regulars and Union volunteers from northern New Mexico Territory and the Colorado Territory.
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.
Fort Duncan was a United States Army base, set up to protect the first U.S. settlement on the Rio Grande near the current town of Eagle Pass, Texas.
The origins of today's Texas Ranger Division trace back to the first days of Anglo-American settlement of what is today the State of Texas, when it was part of the Province of Coahuila y Tejas belonging to the newly independent country of Mexico. The unique characteristics that the Rangers adopted during the force's formative years and that give the division its heritage today—characteristics for which the Texas Rangers would become world-renowned—have been accounted for by the nature of the Rangers' duties, which was to protect a thinly populated frontier against protracted hostilities, first with Plains Natives tribes, and after the Texas Revolution, hostilities with Mexico.
The Battle of Brownsville took place on November 2–6, 1863 during the American Civil War. It was a successful effort on behalf of the Union Army to disrupt Confederate blockade runners along the Gulf Coast in Texas. The Union assault precipitated the capture of Matamoros by a force of Mexican patriots, led by exiled officers living in Brownsville.
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.
Manning Marius Kimmel was a military officer who served on both sides of the American Civil War. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1853 and graduated in 1857. After initially fighting for the Union, he switched sides to the Confederacy, one of four West Point graduates to fight on both sides during the war. In the Confederate Army, he served as adjutant general and assistant adjutant general on the staff of generals Benjamin McCulloch and Earl Van Dorn, and as inspector general on John Magruder's staff. He was the father of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who commanded the United States Pacific Fleet during the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
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.
The Battle of La Bolsa was a major event in the Cortina War, a series of armed confrontations between the milita of Mexican rancher Juan Cortina and elements of the United States Army and the Texas Rangers. The battle occurred on February 4, 1860, when Cortina's forces attacked the steamboat Ranchero on its way to Brownsville.
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.
Cortinistas
United States