By Edward T. Cotham
Returning to Ryan’s initial question of what Edward T. Cotham might be arguing in Sabine Pass: The Confederacy’s Thermopylae by praising the Battle of Sabine Pass as the Confederacy’s Thermopylae, I too was confused by this analogy, and unlike Ryan I was not won over by his David and Goliath explanation on the last page. Cotham draws to this analogy of Sabine Pass as Thermopylae throughout his book, yet never fully explains why, and often explains how specifically Sabine Pass was not a battle of such magnitude as the classic story of the three hundred men of Sparta who were tragically outnumbered. In fact, Dowling appeared not to worry as much for reinforcements or more men, as despite the seeming lack of men he continued to ignore additional sources of labor. As Cotham himself states,
“Writers of history (this one included( probably have a tendency to over emphasize the small number of men that Dowling had in Fort Griffin during this battle. Even though regulations called for almost a hundred men to tend the number of guns under Dowling’s command, the fact is that with only six guns the young lieutenant actually had more assistance that he needed for what would turn out to be the short duration of this battle” (Cotham 129).
Nor was the Battle of Sabine Pass a strategic masterpiece worthy of historical comparison. I would argue that the participants, fortifications, and outcome of the battle were a matter of dumb luck. This is not to say that Fort Griffin was not built as to provide the best strategic positioning and protection possible at Sabine Pass, that the Davis Guard was not highly trained and possibly the best regiment to defend the fort, nor that the outcome in terms of massive damage to the Union ships and morale were not major factors in the battle and did not play a role in the Civil War. While Cotham tries to address why all of these factors came to be, never are the combination of “contextual factors” that Jaclyn describes explained as being the strategic foresight of Confederate strategy makers. These contextual factors, including the Davis Guard, Fort Griffin, and a Union Navy neglecting to land, are the result of pure dumb bringing diverse factors into one spectacular event that while interesting and heroic is not a strategic victory for the Union.
However, just because Sabine Pass was not a strategic victory does not mean it should be silenced as Jocelyn brings up. Still, it would be wrong to overemphasize the outcome of the battle just as it would be wrong to underemphasize it. Cotham gives examples of both these fallacies Sabine Pass. First he starts the book by explaining Jefferson Davis’ considerable praise for the battle following the war, showing how one small battle was over emphasized into a battle that “when it has orators and poets to celebrate it will be so esteemed by mankind” as the Battle of Thermopylae (Cotham 3). Then, he also provides examples of Northern news coverage of the Battle and how, to borrow from Jocelyn, the “unthinkable” is silenced. I was particularly moved by Cotham’s explanation of this phenomena:
“The ‘failure at Sabine City,’ as Banks referred to it, was only a minor affair to many of the Union troops who had been present. In response to an 1883 article in the Southern Historical Society Papers calling Dowling and his men the ‘forty bravest men in the Confederacy,’ Frederic Speed, a staff officer in the Nineteenth Corps, wrote blisteringly: (…) ‘their merit consists in the fact that they did not run away” (Cotham 167-168).
This too does a considerable injustice to Sabine Pass and its memory. While Cotham attempted to provide a history somewhere between the two extremes, he falls somewhat short by attempting to compare it to another historical battle of different significance and numbers. How then might we as historians “build upon the shoulders” of Cotham to a gain better and fuller understanding of what really happened to Dick Dowling and the Davis Guard at Sabine Pass and how important it was to the Civil War effort as well as the importance it become to the Irish and Catholic communities in Houston?