Victoria County, C.S.A.

Victoria County's war left numbers. About 300 county men served in the Confederate army, and at least 48 died of wounds or disease. In 1860 the county held 2,757 white residents and 1,413 enslaved people, so the 1861 vote for secession was cast in a county where about one resident in three was held in slavery. Federal troops occupied the county from 1867 to 1869. Property values fell from $3,088,476 in 1860 to $1,503,295 in 1870, families worth $20,000 or more dropped from 33 to 5, and the cotton crop shrank to 205 bales.

What the plaque says

Victoria County, C.S.A. Transportation, military and supply center in the Civil War. On one branch of the cotton road, which moved crop to Mexico for exchange on foreign markets for vital guns, ammunition, medicines and other goods. The 1861 vote favored secession 313 to 88. Troops furnished the confederacy included 5 cavalry companies. County men were also in the 6th Texas Infantry, which trained at "Henry E. McCulloch", a camp of instruction 4 miles from Victoria. Local men in Hood's, Ross' and Sibley's Brigades, Terry's Texas Rangers and Buchel's Cavalry were among the 90,000 Texans noted for mobility and daring who fought on every battlefront. Fort Esperanza, on Matagorda Island, was garrisoned by 100 Victoria Militia, who were captured by 1,900 Federals. The people at home made cloth, tallow candles, shoe blacking from china berries, coffee substitutes from parched corn, dried potatoes or okra seeds. To block 1863 threat of Federal invasion, Gen. John B. Magruder, commander of the Dept. of Texas, destroyed the railroad from Port Lavaca to Victoria. Citizens sacrificed their fine river harbor, one of the two busiest in Texas, by felling trees and sinking boats in the shipping lanes. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — steps away
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.8 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Victoria County — steps away
• Victor M. Rose — steps away
• Victoria County Honor Roll — steps away
• Home County of William Pinckney McLean — steps away