As the sun rose over the southeastern corner of Texas on the morning of Sep. 8, 1863, four Yankee warships began the bombardment of the pitiful excuse for a fort at Sabine Pass. Union strategists resolved in the summer of 1863 to compensate for the embarrassing New Year’s Day loss of Galveston with a surprise attack of their own. Rebel spies were spoon-fed false intelligence hinting at an enemy offensive to be launched from Shreveport, Louisiana. While the southerners concentrated their forces far to the north, the northerners secretly assembled a quartet of warships and 23 troop transports for a landing in southeast Texas at Sabine Pass. With the Confederates effectively outflanked, the Union armada would deposit 20,000 soldiers at the narrow strait where the Sabine River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Beaumont, Houston and the hub of the state’s rail system would be under Yankee control by the end of the week. The Rebel commander realized too late that the invasion expected at Marshall, where he had massed 10,000 troops, was coming instead at Sabine Pass. Certain that resistance by the tiny detachment would be futile, he telegraphed the Davis Guards to blow up Fort Sabine and run for their lives.
