May, 2011

Issue #20

How the Irish Saved Texas
By C. F. Eckhardt

The Irish saved Texas in September of 1863. That we did. There were forty-seven of us counting Himself—darlin' Dick Dowling—and amongst us we saved Texas for the Confederacy. The only silver medals ever struck by the Richmond government were awarded to us. We were named the Davis Guards for our deed.

I'm getting ahead of meself. I first came to Galveston in 1859, and at first the Irish fought shy of me. My name is Juan Patricio Omali y Flores, and that didn't sound Irish. My father fled Ireland one step ahead of the sassenachs and went in search of a Catholic country. He landed in Mexico, where he married. He spoke Gaelic, of course, but English as well, though with an Irish countryman's brogue. My mother spoke Spanish, which my father learned. I grew up speaking English and Spanish, but I learned to swear in Gaelic.

I left Mexico for much the same reason my father left Ireland—he always said he was in trouble for shooting the sheriff out of the season. I didn't shoot the sheriff, but I did take a shilleleigh to a Mexican government official. I knew he had to be bribed, but the spalpeen wanted to be bribed twice. And for the same thing.

In Texas, the place for an Irishman was Galveston. There was many a fine Irishman in Galveston in those days. Himself, of course, was king of the saloon men. Rory O'Grady was the finest horse-handicapper in the place, and wee Padriac O'Finnegan was the best of the jockeys. There were many more.

As I said, the Irish first fought shy of me, but when I translated my name for Himself, he said any man named John Patrick O'Malley, no matter what language he was named in, could drink in his bar any day of the week and all day Sunday after Mass. After that the Irish accepted me as one of their own.

Come 1861 and Secession was a problem which arose. We Irish wanted to do our part for Texas, but we didn't want to leave Galveston to do it. None of the hoity-toity Home Guard companies would accept us—No Irish Need Apply, you know. No matter—we formed our own company. Himself was elected to command it, for everyone knew he was the best we had. Men would follow Himself when they'd follow no one else—and we Irish, being a contrary lot, followed almost no one but ourselves anyway.

Come September of '63 and the damnYankees were on the move. They were to invade Texas. Their general Banks was to come in from the northeast, from the Arkansaw, while another was to come in by sea, up the Sabine. At the mouth of the Sabine, on Sabine Lake, there was a small mud fort. It had a couple of cannons in it. There were also some small boats mounted with cannon. We were ordered to go to the fort to scuttle the boats and to remove the cannons from the fort and bring them to Galveston if we could or spike them, wreck their carriages, and knock off a trunnion if we could not. Nowhere in the orders did it say we were to try and fight the Yankees. We were to run away. There are many things you might tell an Irishman to do and he might actually do some of them, but by the Lady never tell him to run from a fight.

I've said there were forty-seven Irishmen in our company, and that's not quite true. Forty- five of us were sons of the Auld Sod, but we had two who were not. One was a Scot named Andy MacKay, who'd been a gunner aboard a Royal Navy bulldog before he jumped ship in Charleston and took a sailor's retirement. He said he put an oar on his shoulder and started walking inland. When he finally got to a place where someone asked him what that thing was he had over his shoulder, he figured he was far enough from the sea to be safe from the Royal Navy's bloodhounds. The other was Fritz Schmidt, who brewed some of the finest beer in Galveston. We took them in— made them honorary Irishmen, you might say.

Well, we packed up to make the march from Galveston to Sabine Pass. Most of us, of course, rode our horses—a horse is as much a part of an Irishman as his head. They say if you give an Irishman two dollars and a horse, he'll fight the whole world for you. That's not far wrong.

We had no muskets, for the State of Texas didn't issue us any. Most of us had our pistols, a few had hunting rifles or shotguns, Himself had a sword, and most of the rest had Bowie knives. I had two pistols—a LeMat I bought in New Orleans before the War, and a pocket-sized Colt—in addition to my Bowie. That gave me fourteen shots I could use on Yankees if necessary—eight in the LeMat's cylinder and five in the Colt's—a prudent man always keeps the hammer on an uncharged chamber—and one more in the LeMat's shotgun barrel.

Along with us we brought three wagons. One was loaded with provisions, for there was no food stocked at the little fort. One had powder—there was shot at the fort—and paulins for us to make shelters with. The third had fifteen barrels of beer from Fritz's brewery, for marching and fighting is hot work, and Irishmen have a mighty thirst. It's been said that an Irishman is the only man in the world who'll step over the bodies of twelve naked women to get to a bottle of stout, but that's not true in my case. I will say, though, that I've known Irishmen who might fit the description.

When we got to the fort there were no Yankees in sight, so we set up our shelters, unhitched and unsaddled our horses, and set about learning about cannons. As I said, Andy MacKay had been a gunner aboard a bulldog, and he knew how to charge and lay a piece. To the south of us was the Pass of the Sabine—a narrow channel the Yankees would have to come through, their boats in single file. We laid the pieces and fired them to get the proper charge and elevation to be able to drop a ball square in the middle of the pass. A half-dozen shots and we had the range. The Yankees would have a warm reception when they came to take us on.

We hoisted the flag—the beautiful Stars and Bars, which, unfortunately, was all red, white, and blue, with never a touch of the blessed green about it. Alongside it we hoisted the Lone Star. Then, it being late, we settled in to eat and enjoy some of Fritz's beer.

We expected the Yankees in the early morning, so we roused from our sleep with the stars still showing and took our places with the guns. Nothing happened. Noon passed, and still no sign of the Yankees. Himself sent two men with spyglasses to the Pass to keep a lookout. When they saw the Yankee boats coming on, they were to make signal by lighting a fire atop the bluff, then mount up and come back to the fort.

Along about half past three in the afternoon we saw the smoke. We charged the pieces and waited. The scouts reached us long before the first boat came in view. They reported at least a dozen boats, perhaps more. There were a couple of gunboats in the lead, the rest appeared to be transports loaded with troops.

At about a quarter after four the first boat entered the narrows. MacKay had us hold until she reached a certain point, then fire our first round. We scored a hit on the foredeck, and of course the gunboat returned our fire. The first round went into the mud below us with a mighty splat and just stuck there, but the second sailed over our heads. "Bracketed!" MacKay shouted. "Fire!"

We'd reloaded the first gun and this time we fired both of them. One hit the starboard wheelhouse on the gunboat, smashing her starboard paddlewheel, and she began to steam in circles to port, which ruined the Yankees' aim. We fired again and she began to go down by the stern.

The second gunboat fired on us, but didn't have the range, so the shot simply splashed into the river. About that time Fritz came running up the back side of the fort. "Poys!" he yelled. "De Gottverdammter Yankees has bust de beer!" We went to look and sure enough, the first Yankee's 'over' landed square on the beer wagon. All of our lovely beer was spilling out into the red mud of the place.

You can deny an Irishman much, but never deny him his beer. We were furious. The damned Yankees would pay for this—and dearly! We dropped a roundshot amidships on the second gunboat and must have hit the boiler, because she exploded like a giant firecracker, spreading splinters—and dead Yankees—across the lake. Then we began to shell the first transport. We hit her twice and she began to go down by the stern. Someone yelled "They're turnin' back!" and sure enough, the rest of the transports, now having no gunboats for protection, began to turn around. We put a pair of shot into the second in line and it, too, began to sink, but it was close enough to the Texas shore that the pilot could run the bow aground. We left a small crew with the guns and the rest of us went down to the water's edge to form a welcoming committee—ready to make prisoners or corpses, depending on the mettle of the Yankees.

Most of them had muskets, but few had powder and shot. Their powder and shot were mostly aboard one of the boats that turned back. They had little choice but to surrender. We took nearly a thousand prisoners, we forty seven, one of them a Yankee general, and over a thousand stand of arms. The general did confront Himself and say "Young man, do you realize what you have done?" Himself merely smiled, then walked away whistling a tune. There are many stories about the tune he was whistling. Some say it was Dixie, some say it was The Bonnie Blue Flag, some say it was the song about the Yellow Rose. I was close enough to hear. It was The Wearin' of the Green.

As we marched back to Galveston with our prisoners, I fell to talking with one—an Irishman from New York. He asked me what made us so fierce and furious when we came to the shore. I told him about the beer, and what the damnYankee gunboat had done.

"Faith," said he. "Bust the beer? And all the beer ye had? 'Tis a miracle from St. Patrick himself ye didn't kill the lot of us for that."

Ah, well. The War's over now, and the Yankees finally won. Texas is back in the Union, but she still flies her Lone Star flag. Truly it's a beautiful flag, even though it is all red, white, and blue, and with not even a touch of the blessed green about it. Still, thinking on it, I believe we should make one small alteration. Right in the middle of that big white lone star, there should be a wee golden harp—to commemorate the forty-seven mad Paddies who turned back the invasion and saved Texas in 1863.

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