Sabine Pass: The Confederacy’s Thermopylae
Edward T. Cotham, Jr.
As the Battle of Sabine Pass is interpreted one way in the South—or more specifically, in Houston—and another way in the North, so too can Cotham’s argument about the significance of the battle be individually understood.
Ryan, in my opinion, rightly points out that Cotham doesn’t think Sabine Pass is remembered for its military brilliance but its ideological impact in the former Confederacy.
However, the reasons for touting the victory seem to undermine the “Lost Cause” theory — that the Confederacy was bound to lose, regardless of the courage and determination of its soldiers, because of the overwhelming numbers and resources of the Union army — that still lingers, for some, as a viable narrative of the Civil War. If Dowling and his small group could hold off such an overwhelming Union presence at Sabine Pass, why couldn’t that result be achieved elsewhere?
But perhaps this is painting with too broad of a brush, for, undoubtedly, there were certain contextual factors that helped craft the success of the Davis Guards.
The fort at Sabine Pass, redesigned and reconstructed by engineers, was strategically positioned at the junction of two channels. In addition, Dowling and the Davis Guards had undergone extensive conditioning for their moment of glory. The group had the exact training it needed to be successful in the engagement at Sabine Pass: they drilled more often than most troops, because they were (possibly) being discriminated against in terms of receiving choice battlefield assignments (41); they practiced with their second-hand cannon more than they might have if all their cannons were brand new, because they were worried about it working (82).
The second question this realization begs is, “Why remember the battle if it undermines a justification for the Confederacy’s loss that Lee himself proffered?”
It seems to me Sabine Pass might be more of a consolation story both for the public at the time and for the people of the present. Against turn-of-the-century cries of racism and xenophobia, one could hold up the story of Dowling and his Irish troops and point to their success, their “integration” into Houston society. Particularly salient in the present, one can say remembering Dowling and the victory at Sabine Pass is not necessarily celebrating the Confederacy and what it stood for, but the saving of Texas and its residents from becoming a theater for the physical ravages of war.
To my understanding, this latter point rings especially true, given the perception of Texas by the rest of the country (and to some extent the self-perception of Texans) as fiercely independent and resolutely pragmatic. One can then extend the remembrance of Dowling to “…the saving of Texas and its residents from becoming a theater for the physical ravages of a war for a cause in which they did not believe,” allowing room for a monument, while silencing the integral status of slavery to the Confederacy.