Courthouse lawn (corner of Canal and Gay Streets)
Menard
Private Property
No
Marker Condition
In Situ
Marker Size
Civil War Memorials - (pink granite)
Marker Text
Located 21 miles west. Upon secession, Confederate cavalry occupied this post to give protection against Indians. Early in 1862 this fort confined group of Union troops from surrendered U.S. forts who were seeking to leave the state at start of Civil War. Permanent personnel left the post in April 1862 when the frontier defense line was pulled back more than 60 miles east. However scouting parties and patrols of confederate and state troops used the fort intermittently in aggressive warfare to keep Indians near their camps and away from settlements and to check on invasion by Union forces. Usually supplying their own mounts, guns and sustenance, these men guarded the frontier until war's end. Texas had 2000 miles of coastline and frontier to defend from Union attack, Indian raids, marauders. Defense lines were set to give maximum protection with the few men left in the state. One line stretched from El Paso to Brownsville. Another had posts set a day's horseback ride apart from Red River to the Rio Grande. Fort McKavett and other U.S. forts used by scouting parties lay in a line between. Behind these lines and to the east organized militia, citizens' posses from nearby settlements backed the Confederate and state troops to curb Indian raids. A memorial to Texans who served the confederacy Erected by the State of Texas 1963
