The Yankee Invasion of Texas.

The Yankee Invasion of Texas. By Stephen A. Townsend. Canseco-Keck History. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. Pp. [xii], 189. $25.00, ISBN 1-58544-487-1.)

Union forces made four attempts to invade Texas during the Civil War. The Yankee Invasion of Texas covers the third attempt, which was directed at the Rio Grande area of the state. From the beginning this effort suffered from a confusion of purpose and disagreement over the best route for an invasion of the Lone Star State. Some in the Lincoln administration saw the attempt primarily as a way to establish a Union presence along the border as a warning to the French in Mexico while others, among them Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, who commanded the Union effort, saw it as the beginning of the conquest of the entire state. General in Chief Henry W. Halleck preferred to invade the state via the Red River and resisted supplying troops for the Rio Grande.

Banks's expeditionary force arrived at the mouth of the Rio Grande on November 1, 1863, and by the end of the year had occupied Brownsville and parts of the Texas coast up to Matagorda Bay. Banks saw these movements as a prelude to the invasion of the interior of Texas and seemed set to pursue that course. Lack of reinforcements and the advice of others persuaded him to drop the project and adopt Halleck's project of a campaign up the Red River in Louisiana. The three thousand federal troops then in Texas were quickly reduced to a small holding force of about one thousand and the most successful Union effort to conquer Texas came to an end.

Stephen A. Townsend credits the Rio Grande campaign with disrupting but not ending the cotton trade between Texas and Mexico, bringing in Andrew J. Hamilton as military governor of the state, and making Texans aware that the war touched them. He also suggests that the presence of Federal troops in Texas prevented the French in Mexico from "meddling in the war north of the Rio Grande" (p. 148). It is not clear that the Union invasion actually brought about these results, and their significance is not clear. The book would be improved if more evidence were offered in support of these assertions. In particular, an appendix showing the impact on the cotton trade would be valuable.

Townsend's organization is a bit odd as he tends to deal with the Union and Confederate sides of the story in separate chapters almost as if they were not related to one another. The maps are just adequate. For some reason the only illustration is of General Banks. Why none of the other major participants warrants a picture is a mystery. Townsend's research is solid and his writing is workmanlike, but the book is either much too long for the significance of the story or much too short to support its conclusions.

MICHAEL D. PIERCE

Tarleton State University