At the outset of the CiViL War, Galveston was the second largest city in Texas. Home to 7,000 people, the seaport was a major exporter of cotton—more than 200,000 bales in 1860. It was also one of the South’s leading industrial centers, with two iron foundries and several facilities capable of manufacturing boats and other equipment for shipping and fishing.
During the Civil War, Galveston continued to be economically important, serving as a major port for receiving imported goods from blockade runners. Galveston also had strategic importance to both the Confederacy and the Union: As the South’s westernmost major port, it had the potential to be an important base of operations for the Union navy’s blockade, if captured. Despite its significance, Galveston received scant military attention for the early part of the war. Given the Confederacy’s manpower needs, there were no troops to spare for the town’s defense, and by late 1861 it was guarded by only a handful of local militiamen. Union ships would occasionally bombard the town, but they made no serious attempt at capture until October 1862. Finally, in that month, a small contingent of Union ships and soldiers managed to overtake Galveston with relatively little bloodshed.
Once Galveston had been taken, 260 members of the 42nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment were sent to fortify the town and prepare for a Confederate counterattack, which came in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1863. A small and disorganized group of Confederate troops and ships under Maj. John Magruder invaded from both land and sea. After a brief period of intense fighting, the Battle of Galveston ended with a Union retreat. The Confederate losses were 30 killed, 130 wounded. The Union had 21 killed, 36 wounded, and 250 captured.
Confederate troops held the city for the rest of the war. The last two years of the war were marked by a series of crises in Galveston: There were two near-revolts of underfed and undersupplied Confederate troops and a severe outbreak of yellow fever in 1864 that killed 250 people. Nonetheless, it continued to be an important port for blockade runners, with as many as nine or 10 ships in port at any given time. Galveston remained open for business until it surrendered on June 5, 1865. The town’s story illustrates the logistical difficulties the Union faced in effectively blockading a coastline as long as the Confederacy’s.
See also Confederate navy.
Further reading: Edward T. Cotham Jr., Battle on the Bay: The Civil War Struggle for Galveston (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998).
—Christopher Bates
Garnett, Richard B. (1817-1863) Confederate general
Confederate general Richard Brooke Garnett was born on November 21, 1817, at the family mansion at Rose Hill in Essex County, Virginia. His family was part ofVirginia’s influential Tidewater gentry. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1841. He served as an infantry officer in Florida’s Second Seminole War and was considered a capable and affable leader.
Garnett was commissioned a major of artillery in the Confederate service on November 14, 1861. He rose to brigadier general in the provisional army and then succeeded Gen. Thomas J. Jackson as head of the “Stonewall Brigade.” Garnett engaged in his first action at Kernstown, Virginia, on March 23, 1862. Out of ammunition and nearly surrounded by Union forces, he ordered an unauthorized retreat that forced Jackson’s entire army to fall back. He was consequently arrested by Jackson and removed from command. A court-martial was pending but was never officially sanctioned.
Garnett resumed command in August 1862, taking charge of a Virginia brigade in Gen. George E. Pickett’s division. Vowing to clear his reputation, he fought with distinction at the Battles of South Mountain and Antie-TAM in September 1862. Garnett was next engaged at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he was so ill that he wore a heavy topcoat despite the summer heat. On July 3, 1863, Pickett’s division was ordered to spearhead a final charge against the Union line, and Garnett, unwilling to remain a passive spectator, painfully mounted his horse and accompanied his brigade. He was apparently killed at the head of his men, only 20 yards from Union positions atop Cemetery Ridge, but his body was never recovered. It is assumed that Garnett’s remains were stripped by Union forces and buried in a common grave. Many years later his sword turned up at an antique shop in Baltimore, Maryland.
Further reading: Matthew W. Burton and Robert K. Krick, The River of Blood and the Valley of Death: The Lives of Robert Selden Garnett and Richard Brooke Garnett, C. S.A: Two Cousins for a Cause (Columbus, Ohio: General’s Books, 1998); Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge— The Last Attack at Gettysburg (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
—John C. Fredriksen
Garrison, William Lloyd (1805-1879) abolitionist, journalist
Militant abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was born in 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of Abijah Garrison and Frances “Fanny” Lloyd. Abijah abandoned the family when William was young, and Fanny was left to raise three young children on her own. The family’s finances were tight, and young William was regularly dispatched to beg for scraps from neighbors’ tables. From this he developed a strong sense of compassion for the poor. He was also heavily influenced by his mother’s devout Baptist convictions.
In 1818 the 13-year old Garrison was apprenticed to the editor of the Newburyport Herald. He completed his apprenticeship in the mid-1820s and moved on to serve as editor of a series of newspapers in Massachusetts and Vermont. Each of these ventures failed, as readers were put off by Garrison’s antigovernment editorials. In 1829 Garrison accepted a post as the editor of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, published in Baltimore, Maryland. In that capacity, Garrison wrote an editorial that condemned Massachusetts businessman Francis Todd as a “murderer” because he had participated in the slave trade. Todd sued, and Garrison was jailed.
Garrison’s imprisonment changed his fortunes. For 49 days, Garrison remained in his cell, publicizing his “martyrdom.” By the time he was released, he had become a hero among New England’s rapidly growing abolitionist community. Garrison returned to Boston and promptly founded a newspaper, The Liberator. In his first issue, published in January 1831, Garrison promised to be “harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice.” He served notice that “I will not retreat an inch, AND I WILL BE HEARD.” The Liberator quickly became the preeminent abolitionist newspaper, and it would remain so throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
Garrison’s message to readers of The Liberator was that slavery had to be eliminated through immediate emancipation of the slaves. He believed that to enslave human beings was a sin and that both Northerners and Southerners were complicit. Garrison rejected colonization, which was the relocation of freed slaves back to Africa. In his 1832 pamphlet “Thoughts on African Colonization,” Garrison explained that he found colonization to be both impractical and racist. Instead, he thought the slave problem should be solved through “moral suasion,” the use of petitions, speeches, newspapers, and pamphlets to peacefully turn public opinion against slavery.
In 1833, Garrison reached the height of his influence. He helped to found the American Anti-Slavery Society, a biracial, gender-inclusive organization dedicated to promoting abolitionist activities throughout the United States. Garrison authored the society’s Declaration of Sentiments, which emphasized nonviolence and urged abolitionists to do whatever necessary to cause their message to be heard. In 1834, shortly after completing the Declaration of Sentiments, Garrison married Helen Benson.
During the latter part of the 1830s, Garrison grew increasingly radical. He was attacked by a mob in 1835 and had to be rescued from being lynched. A number of other events—including the murder of abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy, Congress’s tabling of all antislavery petitions, and the failure of church leaders to join in the abolition movement—left Garrison disillusioned. He came to believe that government and religious institutions had become corrupted and needed to be overthrown. He condemned Christian scripture as “superstition” and vowed that he would only follow the “pure religion of Jesus’ perfect example.” He called the U. S. Constitution “a covenant with death—an agreement from hell” and suggested that the states without slavery should secede from the Union.
Garrison’s increased militancy created serious tensions within the abolitionist movement. A number of prominent Garrison supporters were put off by what they saw as blasphemy. Others disagreed with Garrison’s unwillingness to work within the political system. Some abolitionists did not approve of Garrison’s belief in women’s suffrage. And a number of African-American abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, were angered by Garrison’s paternalism. He was willing to fight for African-Americans’ freedom but was generally unwilling to make them equal partners in the struggle by appointing them to leadership positions within the American Anti-Slavery Society.
William Lloyd Garrison (Library of Congress)
In 1840 the split between “Garrisonian” and “antiGarrisonian” factions became official, as a number of prominent abolitionists resigned from the American AntiSlavery Society and founded the Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Others left to found the Liberty Party, the United States’s first antislavery political party. In seven years, Garrison had gone from being the leader of the ABOLITION movement to being on the fringes. He continued to generate attention with The Liberator and with outrageous gestures like publicly burning copies of the U. S. Constitution, but he had little influence on the antislavery movement.
During the CiViL War, Garrison began to back off from his nonviolent philosophy, conceding that the use of force was sometimes necessary. He also came to be a supporter of Abraham Lincoln. When the war ended and the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted, Garrison told the readers of The Liberator that his work was at an end. Although he supported Radical Reconstruction, he evinced little interest in joining the fight for African-American civil rights. At the end of 1865, Garrison shut down his newspaper and resigned from the American Anti-Slavery Society. By 1866 his career as a public figure was essentially over. Garrison devoted the rest of his life to the care of his wife and four sons before dying in New York in 1879.
See also Aerican Methodist Episcopal Church; women’s status and rights.
Further reading: William Lloyd Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight against Slavery: Selections from The Liberator, ed. William E. Cain (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
—Christopher Bates
World History
