This exhibit examines the subject that has most often been neglected in previous retellings of Dick Dowling's story—the relationship between the Battle of Sabine Pass and the institution of slavery in Texas specifically and the Confederacy more generally.

Introduction

In the 150 years following the conclusion of the Civil War, retellings of the Dick Dowling story and the Battle of Sabine Pass underwent many subtle changes, as Dowling's statue moved from Houston City Hall to an obscure corner of Hermann Park. But virtually all of the people who memoralized Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shared one thing in common: no one discussed the relationship between Dowling's victory and slavery in Texas. 

Despite the lack of attention to this subject in almost all previous discussions of Dowling, slavery was an important part of the story of Sabine Pass. First, Confederate officials in Texas used the labor of enslaved men to build the sophisticated fortifications that Dowling defended in the battle. Second, a few slaves emancipated by Union naval forces participated in the battle. Contemporaries of Dowling understood that the future of slavery in Texas hinged on the outcome of the Civil War as well as the outcome of specific battles, including the one that made Dowling famous.

From the beginning, Confederate Texans understood that the Civil War was fought to protect slavery—an institution that was thriving and expanding in their state on the eve of battle. On the other hand, by the time the Battle of Sabine Pass was fought on September 8, 1863, the American Civil War had become a war of emancipation by Union forces. For the approximately 200,000 enslaved living in Texas in 1863, and especially those African Americans who participated in the battle itself, the stakes at Sabine Pass were extremely high. For the first time, this exhibit considers the story of Dick Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass from the perspective of those men and women who stood to gain their freedom from the victory of Union forces in the Civil War. For these men and women, Dowling's famous victory in 1863 was a moment of defeat that delayed their freedom.

Slavery's Frontier

By the time of the Civil War, slavery was a growing institution in Texas, and Confederate Texans, much akin to secessionists in other states, were determined to ensure that slavery survived the conflict. The labor of enslaved men and women was crucial to the economy of the Confederate states, and the enslaved themselves were valuable property. By 1860, there were around 4 million enslaved people in the United States, accounting for about one third of the total population of the slaveholding South. As cotton cultivation expanded in states like Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas in the decades before the war, slavery expanded with it.

At the beginning of the war, the size of Texas's total slave population ranked ninth among the states that comprised the Confederacy. But the number of slaveowners, the number of slaves, and the average price of slaves had all climbed rapidly in the decades since 1835. Enslaved persons made up approximately 30 percent of the state's total population according to the 1860 federal census. In several counties near Houston, including Brazoria, Fort Bend, and Montgomery, the majority of the county's population was enslaved. Even in northern prairie counties around Dallas, where there were fewer slaves in 1860, white residents testified that this was due to high prices for slaves rather than a lack of demand (1).

Thus, in the words of historian Randolph B. Campbell, "Texas was slavery's frontier during the late antebellum period; it held the promise of growth and vitality for years to come." (See Further Reading for Campbell's works.) By 1860, leading white Texans believed that the state's fertile soil made it well-suited for the expansion of cotton production. Some even advocated the reopening of the African slave trade, which had been banned by the United States Congress since 1808. Average slave prices in Texas doubled between 1850 and 1860, but the state's slave population still grew by 200 percent.

Sources

1. "Clay County," The Texas Almanac for 1861, 1860; Galveston, Texas., pgs. 188-190. View item.

Slavery's Frontier

Slavery's growth and vitality was evident on the streets of pre-Civil War Houston, as well. More than 1,000 enslaved persons lived in Harris County. One of the state's wealthy slave traders, Edward H. Riordan, served as a city alderman on the eve of the War and kept his offices and warehouses in Houston near the site of a bar owned by Dick Dowling, the Bank of Bacchus (1). But even Houstonians who did not, like Riordan, buy or sell enslaved people also benefited from the system of slavery. Houston's financial and mercantile community depended on business from the cotton and sugar plantations in surrounding counties where enslaved laborers were numerous. Moreover, white Houstonians who did not legally own slaves could still "hire out" enslaved laborers for a set period of time through paying their legal owners. This practice of the renting of slaves by slaveholders to non-slaveholders increased the number of white Texans who had a vested interest in the institution of slavery.

The prewar history of slavery in Texas helps explain why leading secessionists trumpeted their commitment to the institution early and often. When secessionists gathered in Austin in February 1861 to adopt an ordinance of secession from the Union, secession leaders also issued a declaration of causes that defended racial slavery and proclaimed that it would be a permanent institution in the state. (Click here for the secessionists' declaration.) The following month, secessionists adopted a revised state constitution that explicitly prohibited private citizens or the legislature from emancipating slaves. (Click here for the state constitution of Confederate Texas.) For the remainder of the war, those fighting in Texas for the success of the Confederacy understood that they would be fighting for a state that was firmly committed to the institution of slavery.

Sources

1. "Civilian and Gazette." Weekly. (Galveston, Tex.), vol. 21, no. 32, November 9, 1858. First edition.

Slavery's Frontier

Dick Dowling's early support for the secession movement in Texas suggests that he, too, accepted its stated commitment to slavery, although there is little documentation of Dowling's prewar political views. While there is no evidence that Dowling owned slaves, census records show that he participated in the "hiring" the labor of slaves who were legally owned by others. At least three slaves owned by hotel proprietor H. H. Milby, including a twelve-year-old boy, are listed as being in Dowling's temporary employ in the slave schedule of the 1860 census (1). The work performed by these unnamed men is unknown, but Dowling's use of their labor is strong evidence that he, like other white Texans at the time, did not object to slavery and benefited from it.

Sources

1. United State Census, Slave Schedule, State of Texas, Harris County, 1860 via Heritage Quest.

Freedom's Frontier

The 1861 constitutions of Texas and of the wider Confederate States of America were pledged to the permanence of slavery as an institution. By September 1863, however, the Civil War was disrupting the institution in ways that troubled slaveholders and impacted the lives of many slaves living in Louisiana and eastern Texas.

By the time fighting took place in Galveston and Sabine Pass, Union forces were already actively engaged in liberating slaves and employing or enlisting African American men in various parts of the Confederacy, and particularly in nearby Louisiana. As early as 1861, the United States army and navy began treating many enslaved people who escaped to Union camps or boats as "contraband of war" and refused to return them to legal owners. Then, in the summer of 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which in practice extended freedom to all slaves who could reach Union lines. Congress also authorized the military to employ escaping enslaved individuals in various jobs. Finally, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in states then in rebellion—including Texas—"are, and henceforward shall be free." The Proclamation also authorized the enlistment of freepeople into "the armed service of the United States."

Throughout the war, hundreds of thousands of Southern slaves seized these new opportunities by flocking to Union camps when they could. They understood the shifting lines of Union forces in the South as a frontier offering freedom to those who could reach it. Many African American men also quickly transformed themselves from legally enslaved persons to "contraband" to paid soldiers and sailors in the Union army and navy, where they directly worked to extend freedom's frontier by participating in combat operations.

These developments made slaveholders in Texas and neighboring Louisiana worry that their own slaves would soon be freed, especially after 1862 when a large Union force occupied the major port city of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes. The Union expanded its control of the Mississippi Valley with several 1863 campaigns that resulted in the fall of the Mississippi River Fort of Vicksburg in July, splitting the Confederacy in half. In the course of these campaigns, newly enlisted African American soldiers saw combat, demonstrating the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation in the region. Officially, the Proclamation did not apply to those parishes of Louisiana that were under Union occupation as of January 1, 1863, but Union forces who operated outside of these parishes were authorized to liberate slaves. And even within the exempted parishes, some Louisiana planters reported that slaves were aware of Union promises of emancipation and were claiming freedom even where it had not been officially granted. (Click here for a document discussing the effect of wartime emancipation in Louisiana.)

Freedom's Frontier

In 1863, many slaveholders in western Louisiana decided to flee with their slaves to Texas instead of risking their slaves freedom, through either Union action or escape. British traveler Arthur Fremantle noted the flight of slaveholders to Texas several times in his journal of the trip when he traveled through eastern Texas, Galveston, and Houston in 1863. (Click here to read Fremantle's narrative.) Meanwhile, because there were no serious military engagements along the Texas coastline until September 1862, when Union forces captured and briefly held Galveston and its port, most slaveholders in coastal Texas had ample time to move their own slaves inland.

The disruption of slavery in Louisiana made clear to Confederate officials and slaveholders in Texas what would happen if Union forces moved inland from Galveston as they had in the Mississippi River valley. Confederate forces thus moved aggressively to recapture Galveston on January 1, 1863 and then began making plans to better fortify the Texas coast in the event of another Union attack by sea.

Building the needed fortifications in Galveston and at Sabine Pass required hard manual labor, and Confederate General John Bankhead Magruder soon found that voluntary labor would not be sufficient to complete the work. Magruder therefore began pressuring slaveholders to send their slaves to do the work, in exchange for hiring fees paid by the Confederate government to slaveowners. According to one proclamation by Magruder, slaveholders who refused to cooperate "would be dealt with strictly under military law" (1). Under this system, between 3,000 and 5,000 enslaved individuals were forced to build new state-of-the-art fortifications in Galveston.

Sources

1. Jan. 27, 1863. "Proclamation!" Galveston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, Page 1, Section 1.

Freedom's Frontier

In general, however, slaveholders proved very reluctant to allow the army to use their slaves. Many owners were concerned by the danger military labor posed to the value of their slaves, who might be injured on the job or might use the distance from their owners' homes and proximity to a port as an opportunity to escape. Slaveowners in Texas proved so unwilling to send slaves to support the war effort that Magruder finally had to resort to the impressment of slave labor in the summer of 1863. Under this system, Magruder began taking advantages of a law passed by the Confederate Congress that spring allowing Confederate officers to force slaves to perform military work whether their owners volunteered them or not.

In a letter to the governor of Texas explaining why he had to take this bold new step, Magruder explained that only improved fortifications would prevent the Union from returning to east Texas and invading the state. Slaveholders only had two options, argued Magruder: they could allow the army to use their slaves, or they could lose their slaves to emancipation by invading Union forces. "A mere inspection of the map," said the general, "should satisfy any holder of slave property that these defenses are absolutely necessary to its security" (1).

Sources

1. Letter from J. Bankhead Magruder to Gov. F.R. Lubbock, United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Series 1, Volume 26, In Two Parts. Part 2, Correspondence...Confederate., book, 1889; Washington D.C. View item.

Forced Labor at Sabine Pass

The decision by Confederate officials to make slaves work on military fortifications played a direct role in the Battle of Sabine Pass even prior to the onset of hostilities. Under the policy adopted by Confederate Major General John B. Magruder in 1863, thousands of slaves in Texas were quickly put to work building fortifications in Galveston and on the Texas coastline. Additionally, enslaved labor was used to build Fort Griffin, the small but well-designed fort that Dick Dowling and the Davis Guards later defended in the Battle of Sabine Pass.

Contemporary evidence shows that slaves were put to work on coastal fortifications throughout 1863. As early as January 4, Alexander Hobbs, a Union private captured at the Battle of Galveston aboard the U.S.S. Harriet Lane, wrote from a Houston prison that "our negroes" (which likely refers to the enslaved people who had been cooking for him and his fellow prisoners since their capture) were being sent to Galveston to work on fortifications. In his diary, Hobbs noted a prayer meeting held by the slaves in the prison yard before they departed (1).

Later that year, enslaved laborers were also sent to work on Fort Griffin, the structure that Dowling would defend in the Battle of Sabine Pass. Years after the battle, Jefferson Davis described the fort that Dowling defended as nothing but a small "mud fort." But, in reality, the batteries built at Sabine Pass in the summer of 1863 were reinforced by wood, iron, and design that modeled the fort according to the latest European ideals for defensive entrenchments. Fort Griffin's location, design, and low profile proved essential to Dowling's victory by allowing his men to concentrate their fire on enemy gunboats while simultaneously protecting themselves from Union cannon fire.

Sources

1. Alexander Hobbs diary and bible, 1861-1863, MS 370, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. View item.

Forced Labor at Sabine Pass

Some information about the enslaved laborers used to build Dowling's batteris can be found in the writings of the Swiss-born Confederate engineer Julius Getulius Kellersberger, who oversaw the construction of Fort Griffin. In a memoir published in German after the war, Kellersberger reported that there were numerous "negroes at our disposal" who performed the hard manual labor that the army required (1). According to Kellersberger's account, about 500 enslaved laborers were brought to Sabine Pass in the summer of 1863. They performed a variety of dangerous jobs, including mounting heavy cannons. Slaves performing the similar work in Galveston suffered high fatality rates. Additionally, those working at Sabine Pass had to work in the August heat and swarms of coastal mosquitoes. As historian Edward T. Cotham reported in his book on the Battle of Sabine Pass, one white engineer who supervised the work wrote from Sabine Pass that "this place is hell." (Check the Further Reading page for information on Cotham's book).

Kellersberger also recalled that enslaved laborers who worked at Fort Griffin were accompanied by the "necessary overseers," whose job on most Southern plantations was to ensure that the enslaved remained at work. Like the slaves who worked on Texas's plantations or were hired out in its cities, the slaves who labored at Fort Griffin were forced to do so. As Cotham also discovered, wartime letters written by Kellersberger to his superior officers reported that the conditions in which they lived and worked were poor. Although enslaved laborers "work hard," Kellersberger reported, they were insufficiently clothed and received inferior rations, a situation that the engineer wished to correct as a matter of "policy." If slaves suffered malnourishment, he reasoned, it would make it difficult to "get any more of them" from slaveholders already unhappy about Magruder's military impressment policies.

After the Battle of Sabine Pass, virtually all commentators on the battle neglected to mention the work that African American laborers were forced to perform at the site. For decades, admirers of Dick Dowling praised him for holding Fort Griffin with fewer than fifty men and argued at length about the precise number of white soldiers who were in the fort when Union ships were turned away. With the exception of Kellersberger, however, these postwar writers did not mention that five hundred slaves had built Dowling's fort. Their experiences therefore remained largely absent from the written record until a distant descendant of Kellersberger discovered his memoir in an attic and deposited her own translation of it in a few Texas libraries, including Fondren Library at Rice University.

Because of such scarce documentation, very little is known today about the African American men who labored at Sabine Pass in the summer of 1863, such as whether any were brought from Houston like the men whom Hobbs witnessed being taken to Galveston in January. But the Confederate Army's use of hundreds of enslaved laborers to build the fort that Dowling defended illustrates clearly the contrasting social systems at war in 1863. While the Union army and navy were serving as agents of emancipation in many of the war's theaters and often sheltered "contrabands" who fled for Union lines, Confederate Texans continue to exploit the labor of slaves in war as they had in peace.

Sources

1. Excerpts from Getulius Kellersberger, Memoirs of an Engineer in the Confederate Army of Texas, trans. Helen S. Sundstrom (n.p., n.d.), 27-31, 32-33.

From Slaves to Sailors

While Confederate Texans built fortifications along the coast in 1863, federal policies were dramatically transforming the relationship between men of color and the United States Army and Navy. The Union Navy began to employ African American men on board ships as crew members and sailors very early in the war. And as the war progressed, blockading squadrons and naval vessels also took on board numerous "contraband" slaves who managed to escape from land to sea. By 1863, the Union navy was enlisting and actively recruiting runaway slaves as crewmembers or paid sailors, usually at the low rank of "landsman." By the end of the war nearly 20,000 black sailors had enlisted, a figure which represented nearly 20 percent of the navy's enlisted men. The majority of these black sailors were men who had been enslaved but seized naval service as a route to freedom.

A few of the thousands of "contraband" slaves who became sailors were present at the battles of Galveston and Sabine Pass in 1863. Both battles demonstrated the unique dangers that African American men faced when they participated in combat operations against the Confederacy. One "escaped slave" participated in the Battle of Galveston of January 1, 1863, before being captured and marched to Houston, and according to a newspaper report at the time, the crowds who gathered in the city to watch the parade of federal prisoners from the U.S.S. Harriet Lane down Main Street jeered at and paid special attention to one of the "negroes" who was "clothed in sailor's uniform" (1).

Sources

1. "Arrival of the Federal Prisoners in Houston," Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph (January 28, 1863), 4.

From Slaves to Sailors

African American men who became Union sailors risked more than just ridicule if they were captured by Confederate forces. The diary of Union prisoner of war Alexander Hobbs, who was also captured from the U.S.S. Harriet Lane, reported on January 15, 1863, that "six coulered men" from aboard his ship—all "but one or two...free born"—were to be "sold togather" (1). Contemporary records show that "six Negroes claiming to be free" from aboard the Harriet Lane were in fact forced into labor at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, confirming the outlines of Hobbs's story. Whether they ever escaped the penitentiary, even after war's end, is difficult to tell, and part of a wider pattern of continued enslavement for African Americans across America through progams of convict leasing. (Click here for a letter explaining the fate of these men). 

ight months later, at least two dozen African American sailors were on board the Union gunboats that steamed into Sabine Pass to face Dowling's Davis Guards at Fort Griffin. But many of them never left the Pass again. Casualty reports indicate that several African Americans were among the many Union sailors who suffered gruesome and often fatal wounds when the boiler of the steamship U.S.S. Sachem exploded, spraying scalding hot water on the boat's crew. Many years later a Confederate veteran of the battle vividly remembered a wounded black man who was covered with flour after the battle to treat severe burns to his skin (2). Among those killed at the Battle, according to the surgeon aboard the U.S.S. Clifton, were also "three contrabands"—a term that many Northerners used to describe Southern slaves who escaped to Union lines during the Civil War. And an official casualty list prepared by the commander of the U.S.S. Clifton, Frederick Crocker, also reported the death of "a negro contraband, name unknown" (Items 3, 4). 

Little is known about these anonymous men or their origins. But they had probably been held by slaveholders somewhere along the Gulf Coast or in Louisiana before managing to reach the Union naval vessels that sailed into Sabine Pass in September 1863. One white Union Marine assigned to the Clifton and captured by Dowling's men left behind a diary describing frequent encounters between the ship and runaway slaves in Louisiana who were brought aboard as "contraband." But however the story of their movement from slavery to freedom began, it ended in the battle that made Dick Dowling's name famous.

Sources

1. Alexander Hobbs diary and bible, 1861-1863, MS 370, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. View item.

2. S.O. Young and Margaret L. Watson, "Confederate Veterans Column," Galveston Daily News (September 3, 1899), 14.

3. Report of Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Crocker, U.S. Navy, prisoner in the Confederate lines, transmitting list of casualties on the U.S. steamers Clifton and Sachem. United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Series 1, Volume 26, In Two Parts. Part 2, Correspondence...Confederate., book, 1889; Washington D.C., pg. 542-543. View item.

4. Nimitz Library, MS 310, Box 1, Folder 11: News Clippings - Confederate Captivity, February 29, 1864 and undated. View item.

From Slaves to Sailors

Two other African American men who had once been slaves managed to survive the battle. Their names, though less famous than Dowling's, were even recorded at the time. The captured surgeon of the Clifton listed "George Houston, contraband" and "Randal Smith, contraband" as two members of the crew of the Sachem who were "missing" after the battle. Smith and Houston appear to have been presumed dead by the acting commander of the Sachem, who was also captured after the battle and spent the next eighteen months in a Texas prison (1). But other evidence indicates that Smith and Houston (sometimes spelled Horton or Hurton in casualty reports that were compiled and published later) somehow managed to escape death (2). During the heat of the battle, these two men, and possibly others, swam or splashed across the Pass to seek shelter in the U.S.S. Arizona, which safely escaped from the channel back to New Orleans. A few months later, in December 1863, a George W. Houston and a Randall Smith were listed as African American sailors on the muster rolls of the Arizona, suggesting that these two former slaves had survived and decided to remain in the Navy. By enlisting, they would have been paid wages of around 10 dollars a month. (Click here and search for "George W. Houston or "Randall Smith" to see their muster records).

Most other black sailors involved in the battle were not so fortunate. According to Crocker, among the sailors on board the Clifton who went missing after the battle were "twenty-one of the crew, names unknown—mostly colored." Some of these were presumed to have drowned in the battle, but their exact fates may never be known (3).

Sources

1. Report of Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Amos Johnston, Commander of U.S.S. Sachem at Sabine Pass. United States. War Department. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series 1, Volume 20., book, 1905; Washington D.C. View item.

2. Casualty List Prepared by the Surgeon of the U.S.S. Clifton. Nimitz Library, MS 310, Box 1, Folder 11: News Clippings - Confederate Captivity, February 29, 1864 and undated. View item.

3. Report of Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Crocker, U.S. Navy, prisoner in the Confederate lines, transmitting list of casualties on the U.S. steamers Clifton and Sachem. United States. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies. Series 1, Volume 26, In Two Parts. Part 2, Correspondence...Confederate., book, 1889; Washington D.C. View item.

The Stakes at Sabine Pass

The roles of the enslaved or formerly enslaved in the story of Sabine Pass went mostly unrecorded at the time and were seldom mentioned afterwards by whites on either side of the battle. In the Union, embarrassment over the negligence of the officers who commanded the invasion fleet completely overshadowed the heroism of men like George Houston and Randal Smith who fled slavery, faced Dowling's guns, and survived to join the Union Navy. Confederate victors were more interested in extolling their white hero, Dowling, than in remembering the forced labor that built his fort. For them, and for most historians since, the battle was significant mainly because it prevented the war from spreading into the Texas interior.

At the time, however, slaveholders and slaves understood the high stakes of the Battle of Sabine Pass quite well. Instead of being comforted by Dowling's victory, some slaveholders along the Texas coast were only more anxious about the threat that the Union navy posed, especially since the battle made clear that Union war planners still wanted to capture Texas. On September 27, 1863, after Confederate Acting Brigadier General P. N. Luckett traveled from Houston to present-day Freeport, he reported to his superior that "owing to the heavy planting interest in this section of country, and the precarious tenure by which negro property would be held in case of an invasion," he found "the deepest anxiety" among the area's white inhabitants, who urged him to request that the defenses be strengthened. Fearing that a future Union invasion would be successful, Confederate officials also ordered Getulius Kellersberger to Austin to build new fortifications there. Upon his arrival, Kellersberger was met by another crew of 500 enslaved laborers who had been forced to travel there to perform the work and were "half frozen" because of the winter chill (1).  

In short, slaveholders in Texas understood how "precarious" their "negro property" would have been if the Union invasion at Sabine Pass had been successful enough to forcibly extend freedom's frontier into the state. Conversely, African American men who fought for the Union army and navy understood how precarious their freedom would be if captured by Confederate forces. Regardless of whether they were "contraband" or free men before the war, Union sailors of color could expect to be counted and treated differently from white prisoners. Following the Battle of Calcasieu Pass on May 17, 1864, for example, a Confederate officer stationed at Sabine Pass reported that of fifteen "Negroes" captured ("7 Northern and 8 Southern"), ten were sent to Houston while the other five were "in [the] charge" of specific Confederate officers or assigned to labor for the Confederacy (2). In 1899, aging Confederate Veteran J. M. Chasten even told an interviewer in Beaumont, Texas, that he remembered capturing "a negro" at the Battle of Sabine Pass who was "the head cook or steward on the Clifton, and had a wife and nine children in New York." According to Chasten, "Dick Dowling kept [the man] with him as cook till the war ended" (3).

No evidence has been found to corroborate Chasten's story, but the memory points to a basic reality about the Battle of Sabine Pass that is only beginning to be understood: at stake in this relatively minor engagement were the same individual and global issues of freedom, labor, race and slavery at stake in the American Civil War as a whole, from New York all the way down south to Houston.

Sources

1. Excerpts from Getulius Kellersberger, Memoirs of an Engineer in the Confederate Army of Texas, trans. Helen S. Sundstrom (n.p., n.d.), 27-31, 32-33.

2. West Gulf Blockading Squadron report of captured prisoners from engagement at Calcasieu Pass / Sabine Pass United States. War Department. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series 1, Volume 21., book, 1906; Washington D.C. View item.

3. S.O. Young and Margaret L. Watson, "Confederate Veterans Column," Galveston Daily News (September 3, 1899), 14.