“Sioux”
Pen Name and Biography of William P. Doran
Texas’ First War Correspondent
Transcribed and annotated by W. T. Block from
Galveston Daily News of Dec. 1, 1901
Sketch of Wm. P. Doran, the veteran newspaper
correspondent—his experience as a newspaper correspondent - later written on
his 35th anniversary as a member of the Galveston News family
Major
W. P. Doran died at Hempstead Monday, Nov. 25th (1901). He was born
in Rochester, N. Y. on March 3, 1838 and migrated westward in 1853, and
was located in Chicago for a short time. He went to Kansas about the close of
the “free state” excitement, and then drove 6 yokes of oxen for a government
contractor, who was engaged in supplying the United States military forts with
supplies. He made a trip from Leavenworth, Kansas to Fort Laramie, now in
Wyoming, and battled with the Cheyennes, Sioux, and Pawnee Indians in defense of
his teams, which consisted of 26 wagons. He came to Texas in 1857, which has
since been his home; he settled first in Harris County.
At the commencement of the
(Civil) war, he enlisted as a private in Capt. William Christian company, 2nd
Texas Infantry Regiment, commanded by Col. Ashbel Smith. He went with his
regiment across the Mississippi River, and was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh,
while making the famous flanking movement that resulted in the capture of
Federal Major Gen. Prentiss and his division of 4,000 men.
Mr. Doran published papers in
several Texas towns, and bore the distinction of being the first special state
editor in Texas, which was on the staff of the Houston Telegraph. In 1880 he was
Marshal of Brenham, Texas for 4 years. For the past 15 years he has lived with
his sons in comfortable circumstances. He was married to Miss Sallie M. Linsicum
of Long Point, Washington County, on the 10th day of Dec., 1865.
Three sons all grown, W. R., C. B., and Frank, survive him. He joined The News
family as a regular correspondent in 1861, and continued as such until a few
years ago. His (Civil) war “nom de plume” was “Sioux.” Thousands of old
soldiers have never known and do not know him by any other name. He became a
Confederate scout and war correspondent. He was a well-read man and could
converse on almost any topic. He was always a Democrat and always voted a
straight ticket except once, when he voted for (Wm.) McKinley (for president).
The following is a letter
written by him in 1896 and published in The News. “Hempstead, Texas, Feb. 18:
To The News:
You invited
me to write an article for the semi-centennial of Texas’ admission into the
American union. I came to Texas in 1857, and therefore my article would not be
appropriate for that issue.
You boys in
the News office seem to think me a very ancient chap, but when you see me,
perhaps you will change your mind, for old soldiers often tell me that I have
not changed a bit in 25 years. Anyway it will take a good man to lick me. Try it
some time.
Yours,
Doran
“Hempstead,
Texas, Feb. 28-This is my 35th anniversary as a member of the
Galveston News family and a regular correspondent, 1861-1896. That is indeed a
long time, and the interval is interesting to look back at the part and ponder
over the many changes observed on all sides. How few of the familiar faces met
then are now to be seen. How often The News recorded their deaths, and the words
engraved on the marble stones in the cemeteries remind the living that they no
longer exist. Thirty-five years! Almost a lifetime, and what wonderful changes
and improvements now bless the human race. Passengers from Galveston to Houston
and return were then carried on the fine steamers, plying daily between the 2
ports. A fine stateroom for $2.50, with excellent meals consisting of plenty of
fish and oysters, was the price of the fare. Good old Captains John Sterrett, C.
Blakeman, Bill Sangster, Dave Connor, Pat Christian, Bill Dwyer, and Capt.
Herschberger, and others now escaping the memory of the writer, paced the decks
of their fine boats; and many travelers preferred the trip by boat rather than
going on the Galveston, Houston and
Henderson Railroad, the fare being about the same. The trip by railroad took
about 4 hours. Now the time has been shortened to one hour and 40 minutes by the
schedule. President J. M. Brown and his master mechanic, George B. Nichols, were
fine looking business men, and putting their shoulders to the wheel, soon made
the railroad route the most popular and crowded the steamboat passenger traffic
to the wall. The freight business was quite flourishing, however, and the
steamers captured the largest portion of the freight traffic between the 2
cities during those many years. That was over 20 years ago although the event
seems like yesterday to old Texans. Passengers leaving Galveston in the evening
reached Houston early the next morning on the boats.
In 1860
mutterings of the coming Civil War were heard, which soon changed to realities
of a great and awful struggle, where brothers often met each other on the fields
of strife, and fathers met sons while wearing a gray uniform, the other in blue,
as was seen on the morning of the Battle of Galveston. There Col. A. M. Lea of
the Confederacy pillowed the head of his dying son Edward on his arms aboard the
captured Harriet Lane. Edward’s grave is now found in the Episcopal Cemetery
in Galveston, where it is decorated every year.
In Feb. 1861
volunteers were called for to go to Brazos Santiago and from there to march to
Brownsville, 30 miles distant, and capture the Federal forts on the lower Rio
Grande River. Galveston responded with 2 companies, the Lone Star Rifles, Capt.
W. H. Redwood, and the Galveston Rifles, Capt. A. C. McKeen. The writer belonged
to the latter group. C. M. Mason was 1st lieutenant. Oliver Steele
and Sydney T. Fontaine were also lieutenants. In the ranks were Tom M. Jack,
Mart H. Royston, and many others, who afterward became distinguished in the war.
Billy Nichols, 1st sergeant, was company drillmaster, and he made the
boys sweat while going through the manual of arms. He was then a fine looking
young fellow, weighing about 146 pounds, and was considered the handsomest man
in the company. The writer met him a few years ago, and was quite certain he
weighed 250 pounds. That showed that men change, and proved the historical fact
of evolution.
Here was the
writer’s first advent with The News family. The Yankees at the forts on the
Rio Grande had doubtless heard that the Galveston soldiers were coming and they
evacuated in a hurry. Then Col. John S. Ford called for volunteers to man the
forts and wanted to enlist men in the State service for a six months term. The
majority of the Galveston braves returned home on the steamer General Rusk, on
which they came, but enough volunteered to march on Brownsville. En route a body
of United States troops were met with their mule wagons hauling their personal
luggage.
In the ranks
of the State Troops were George A. Quinlan, now the president of the Houston and
Texas Central Railroad; R. M. Swearingen, now State Health officer, both of whom
proved to be valuable troopers while scouting in the outer regions of the lower
Rio Grande valley.
It would take
up too much space to detail the experiences of a war correspondent throughout
the four years of the struggle, so therefore the feat should not be attempted.
The writer can look back on those years, as many ludicrous events should be
narrated. Many men who ran like scared turkeys when Yankee bullets began to fly
also got sick when the smell of gunpowder filled the air were generally the
first to call on war correspondents to put in a good word for them in the
newspapers. The writer was compelled during the Red River campaign (Louisiana,
April 1864) to keep a safe distance from certain cavalry regiments for several
days for, as they termed it, “not doing them justice.” At the Battle of
Galveston just after General Magruder ordered Gen. Bill Scurry to save several
brass guns on the Strand and the land forces to retreat, it seemed that the
entire army was in a race to see which regiment could reach the Gulf shore
first. Men with red faces, shouting, “We’re whipped! We’re whipped! I
don’t want the Yanks to take me back to New Orleans!” were seen dashing
across the Courthouse Square, then an open plain. Also four fine artillery
horses hitched to a brass cannon and riderless seemed to absorb the panic of
their masters. The writer, who had sought the friendly protection of the brick
post office building, saw a sorry staff officer with 2 companions heading for
the Strand just before firing ceased. A small wound on his right cheek about the
size of a small nail head from which a little blood was falling, was observed.
Since the war a report in a New York paper stated that the hero was severely
wounded in the face at the Battle of Galveston.
After the
capture of the Harriet Lane by the gunboat Bayou City and Gen. Tom Green’s
“horse marines,” the late fugitives of the flying retreat came running to
the front as rapidly as they had passed in the other direction a short time
previously. Several ran up against this war correspondent and, swinging their
hats, throwing them into the air and showing other manifestations of joy,
exclaimed: “We’ve whipped them!
We’ve whipped them!” and nearly split their throats. Three officer dressed
in fine uniforms who outran all the others during the panic of retreat, had the
gall to request: “Don’t fail to mention my name in your report!” This was
the ludicrous side of the war.
The realities
are shown in Gen. Magruder’s official report of the battle—26 killed, 107
wounded. The official report of the Federals shows that Col. Burrell of the 42nd
Massachusetts Regt. had Companies D, E, and G on Kuhn’s Wharf behind the
barricades when attacked, in all 260 men. It has been heretofore believed that
that only Co. D was there. The other 7 companies of the regiment were aboard the
Cambria, off Galveston bar, which Capt. John W. Payne nearly decoyed into the
harbor, the commander not knowing that the battle had been fought, and that the
place was back in the hands of the Confederates. The writer is in possession of
official reports of both sides.
In 1861 the
Galveston News office was located in the second door from Market and Tremont
streets, in a small 1-story, dilapidated wooden building. Three or four
compositors got out the weekly edition of 4 pages, which was printed on an old
style Campbell power press, capable of throwing out a few hundred copies hourly.
It was driven by an old-fashioned threshing machine, endless chain horsepower,
and an old blind horse being the motive power. Mr. Dave Richardson, an
Englishman, was the managing editor, and Mr. Willard Richardson was the editor
in chief. The men were not
relatives however. After the war had got under full headway and a blockade of
the port of Galveston followed, The News was moved to Houston to get out of
reach of the bomb shells occasionally thrown into the city by the blockading
steamer South Carolina. Mr. Richardson also moved his family there and rented a
small house adjoining Col. W. J. Hutchins on Franklin St.
The News was
located in the 2-story brick building of Mr. George Baker, on the south side of
Market Square. The old press and faithful blind horse were also in position; but
the paper was brought out tri-weekly as well as weekly. Mr. Ed C. Wharton of New
Orleans was managing editor, but the “old man,” as Mr. Richardson was
called, wrote editorials nearly every day. Mr. Wharton’s health declined, and
Rev. W. C. Carnes, a well-known Methodist preacher of Galveston, stepped into
the vacancy. He too was compelled to retire a few months after the war ended.
In those days
there was no local editor anywhere in Texas. The department was established, and
a young Mississippian, Capt. Purdom, was placed in charge. The local editor was
a fighting man, his motto being: “For either thing, a battle or a spat, was
always ready if it came to that.”
He came near
having several fights on account of his incisive locals, but this was before the
pistol law was in effect in Texas. The News was soon after this moved back to
its old home in Galveston, and the large brick building on Market Street just
around the corner was occupied, and soon the daily issue came out, which was
very liberally patronized by the business men of Galveston and proved a success
from the start.
Yours,
W. P. Doran,
War
Correspondent
(Doran’s
nom de plume was “Sioux.” Thousands of old soldiers have never
known and do not know him by any other name—Galveston Tri-Weekly News
An article published in The
News several years ago gives the following data as to the part he played during
the Civil War.
William P.
Doran was born in Rochester, N. Y. on March 3, 1838, and was raised on a farm
and migrated westward in 1853, and was located in Chicago for a short while. He
went to Kansas about the close of the “free state” excitement, and there
drove 6 yokes of oxen for a government contractor, in supplying the United
States military posts with grain, flour, and other supplies. He made a trip
requiring 4 months between Leavenworth, Kansas to Fort Laramie, now in Wyoming,
and battled with the Cheyenne, Sioux and Pawnee Indians in defense of his wagon
train, which consisted of 26 wagons, with six yokes of oxen to each wagon. {Note:
At 12 oxen per wagon, which would total 312 oxen, an enticing target for any
marauding Indians.} He came to Texas in 1857. Some time
after, Mr. Lincoln was nominated for president on the Republican ticket.
Northern men were looked upon with much suspicion all over Texas as being
abolitionist emissaries, and Doran was not free from that impression.
Mr. Doran
settled in Harris County, where he made a crop of corn, and the farmer from whom
he rented the land ran him off after the crop was made for the purpose of
defrauding him of his earnings. He brought suit for $100 for labor before Ben E.
Roper, Justice of Peace at San Jacinto, who had his office about a half-mile
from the battlefield. The Texas and New Orleans Railroad was started soon after,
and Mr. Doran was engaged as cook for the bosses’ mess at $15 a month.
The election
of Lincoln greatly increased the excitement under which the people were
laboring, and the farmer whom Doran had sued spread the rumor that “Doran was
a damned Yankee and proposed to get a gang of slaves together and run them off
to Mexico,” and other misstatements of a like character. Hal G. Runnels was
then a contractor on the railroad line between Liberty and Houston, and had
become favorably impressed with Doran, although his mother and himself were
large slaveholders. One day a number of half-drunken men came to the San Jacinto
Bridge, where Doran was employed, with the avowed intention of hanging the
“damned Abolitionist.” Runnels put Doran on his fine horse and told him to
“git” and a few days after, he said: “If you are innocent of this charge,
I will protect you, and if you are guilty, I will hang you.”
As Mr. Doran
recently said to The News, “He found out that I had written several letters to
a country paper at my old home at Rochester, N. Y. He wrote to the editor as
though he were an Abolitionist and wanted to know if Doran could be depended on
to aid that good work in Texas. The reply reached Texas on the very last Morgan
steamer from New Orleans before the war. Then all mails were carried by Morgan
steamers. Capt. John Y. Lawless was the commander. I think it was the Mexico or
General Rusk. The reply was as follows:
“Don’t
trust Doran for he has written several letters to my paper that slavery was not
half as bad as the Northern people think, and that we have a wrong impression of
slaveholders. He is not sound on the grand question.”
When the
letter was shown to the old fellows, some of whom was Mercer McKinley, John M.
Simms, and others, I was a “lion” all at once, and the man who had lied
about me was indicted for cattle theft at the next term of the Harris County
court.
Volunteers
were called for the Rio Grande State Troops under Gen. E. B. Nichols of
Galveston to go on the steamer General Rusk to Brazos Santiago to capture the
forts along the Rio Grande, Forts Brown and Ringgold. I joined the Galveston
Rifles, Capt. A. C. McKeen, 1st Lt. Charles W. Mason, 2nd
Lt. Oliver Steele, Orderly Sgt. W. H. Nichols, Color Sgt. M. H. Royston, Tom M.
Jack, and many other distinguished Galvestonians were privates in the ranks. No
resistance was made at Brazos Santiago, and the expedition returned to
Galveston, calling for 6-months State Troops to garrison Forts Brown and
Ringgold. I then joined Co. C, Battery of light artillery, Capt. John P. Austin.
Col. John S. Ford was commander in chief of all the troops in that region.
We marched
from Brazos Santiago to Brownsville, 30 miles, met the retreating United States
troops en route to take ship at Brazos Santiago aboard the transport Daniel
Webster, lying several miles off the bar. I was already a regular News
correspondent for all the time since we sailed on Feb. 18, 1861. Gen. A.
Quinlan, vice president of the Centrail Railroad; R. M. Swearingen, state health
officer, and many others were in my
company. In the spring of 1862, Messr. Cushing of the Houston Telegraph and
Richardson of The News, made arrangements for me to accompany the Second Texas
Infantry on its march from Wiess Bluff above Beaumont to the army of Gen. Albert
Sidney Johnston, then concentrated around Corinth, MS., about 13 miles from
Shiloh or Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee River.
“We boarded
the steamer Magnolia at Alexandria, La., and in a day or two, landed at Memphis,
Tenn. A special train of cars was ready, and after an all night ride, landed us
at Corinth MS. The next day we were on the march to Shiloh. As we passed Gen.
Johnston’s headquarters in Corinth, he turned to one of his aids, Col. T. M.
Jack, and said: “All these Texans have come all the way here to help me, and I
will give them a chance tomorrow to show the stuff that Texans are made of.”
Col. Jack told me this on the stage en route from Shreveport back to Navasota,
TX. Then an order was issued that all persons not belonging to the army must
vacate the camps or take the consequences if not obeyed. Here I was a war
correspondent, with rations cut off and ordered to ‘git.’ Pleading my case
as a newspaperman did no good, and I was forced to enlist in Co. A. of Capt.
Christian. I then put on the uniform and became a soldier bold.”
“The battle
was fought one day later than planned, which was Saturday. Gen. Breckenridge’s
division could not reach the locality because of muddy roads, and the fight
opened on Sunday, April 6, 1862. While we were marching to aid in the capture of
Gen. Prentiss’ division, a bullet struck the side of my left heel, pitting the
bone, and I thought my leg was gone. I rolled over and over and seeing Col.
Moore and Capt. Christian in a ravine, I rolled in there. They both laughed
heartily at my antics. The division was captured when nearly surrounded by us.
“
“The
Yankees compelled us to fall back to Corinth after a stubborn fight nearly all
day of the 7th. If (Union Gen.) Buell’s 20,000 fresh troops had not
met us that morning, the result would have been different. We made a hard fight
about 5 miles from Corinth several weeks after called the Battle of Farmington.
The Yanks were trying to surround Corinth, and Gen. Price’s army and opened
the gate. Corinth was soon ordered to be evacuated, and Price’s army destroyed
everything and retreated to Tupelo, MS. Here a general order was issued that all
men fit for military duty must report to a Board of Surgeons. I was honorably
discharged and returned home via Vicksburg, crossing the Mississippi in a
Negro’s skiff and footing it along the ties of the abandoned railroad from
opposite Vicksburg to Monroe, La., then footing it to Shreveport, La. I paid $25
stage fare to Navasota, TX. Then came the coast campaign around Galveston, where
I served as scout and war correspondent.”
“On
arriving at Houston, Mr. E. H. Cushing of the Houston Telegraph employed me to
go at once to Galveston and send the telegraphic reports from the extreme front.
Mr. Willard Richardson of The News also made arrangements for me to send
information to his paper. The Confederate troops were then at Virginia Point {Note.
The Union Navy took control of Galveston Bay and Island in Sept., 1862 and
remained there until the Battle of Galveston on Jan 1, 1863}
and 2 companies of Elmore’s Regiment occupied Fort Eagle Grove, located on
Galveston Island at the end of the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad
bridge. To get proper information, I had to slip into Galveston at night, and
would foot it to the city, five miles, and generally managed to get one or more
Yankee newspapers, for which I often had to pay a silver dollar for each. When
the plans for the Battle of Galveston were made, the military used much of the
information contained in the—as news to them.”
“In other
words, I was a scout as well as a correspondent. Nearly the whole army knew
“Sioux,” and wondered how he got hold of the news.”
“I never
advised Gen. Magruder to make the desperate move against the powerful fleet,
armed with the best kind of modern artillery, but did the reverse, because I
considered it wrong to fight behind breastworks of men, women, and children then
occupying the city. Magruder was stubborn, and the battle was determined upon.
Then we all took a hand and history has given the result.”
“The land
forces were defeated badly, and Gen. Magruder had given an order to the army to
retreat to the Gulf shore. The order was being obeyed, and many of the troops
had left the front line of battle - Strand - when the Confederate gunboats
dashed into the Harriet Lane, and soon changed a defeat into a great victory.
Soon after that Messrs. Cushing and Richardson sent me to the first Louisiana
campaign of the spring of 1863, where I was captured.”
“In the
spring of 1864, I was ordered to Louisiana as war correspondent with Gen. Dick
Taylor’s army, confronting the advance of Gen. N. P. Banks’ army, marching
up Red River, with Shreveport as the destination. My report of the battles of
Mansfield and Pleasant Hill and the daily 40-days skirmishes all the way down
Red River, a distance of 200 miles, in the hurried retreat of Banks’ army,
were all the Northern newspapers could publish, and were copied from The News
and Telegraph. After returning to Texas, I set out on a collecting horseback
tour of all the main towns of the state for The Galveston News, Houston
Telegraph, and Christian Advocate. I was held up and robbed only once; that was
near Waco.”
“Then on
returning home, I went to Galveston again as correspondent for the News and
Telegraph, and accompanied the officers on the side wheel steamer Island City
when they went out to the bar to make the final surrender of the Confederacy,
June 2, 1865, but the Federal commander forbade all but Confederate officers to
go aboard their ship, and of course I had to stay on the steamer until Generals
E. Kirby Smith and Magruder, with their chiefs of staff, returned.”
I have tried unsuccessfully to
locate the W. P. Doran Papers, but fear now that they may have been destroyed;
or they may be somewhere in possession of a descendent. Considering that the
extensive papers of his father-in-law, Dr. Gideon Linsicum, are in the
University of Texas archives, it seems odd that Doran’s papers may have been
destroyed. Yet for some one with about 250 newspaper articles published over a
span of 35 years, it certainly seems probable that Doran kept a scrapbook of his
published articles. Perhaps some day some one will try to locate all of them in
the Galveston Weekly, Tri-Weekly, and Daily News and Houston Telegraph (the
latter only between 1861-1865), but for the moment only a minute list can be
furnished.
Some of Doran’s articles
under the pseudonym of “Sioux” included “Retrospective About the Battle of
Galveston,” Galveston Daily News, July 28, 1886; “Death of Gallant Col. A.
M. Lea,” Galveston Daily News, Jan. 21, 1891; “Reminiscences of the
War-Battle of Galveston,” Galveston Daily News, Aug. 6, 1876; “Death of
Capt. Henry Scherffius,” Galveston Daily News, Nov. 26, 1894; “Gen. A.
DePolignac,” Galveston Weekly News, Dec. 14, 1882.
The following 2 obituaries of
Major Doran appeared in Galveston Daily News of Nov. 26, 27, 1901.
“Hempstead,
Waller County, Nov. 26—Major W. P. Doran died this afternoon at 2:52 o’clock
He had not been in good health for some time, but was confined to his bed for
about 2 weeks. He was a man above reproach and had the confidence of all who new
him, and his death will be universally regretted by all who had the good fortune
to know him. His friends were legion. His death has cast a pall of gloom over
the city. Interment will take place tomorrow.”
“MAJOR
DORAN—Brenham, TX, Nov. 26—Major W. P. Doran had many friends in Brenham who
sorrowed on reading the announcement of his death at his home in Hempstead
yesterday. Major Doran married a daughter of Dr. Gideon Linsicum, a Texas
pioneer and prominent physician, who lived for a great number of years in Long
Point. Doran was elected City Marshal of Brenham in 1880, served for 2 terms,
and is remembered as a most efficient officer. Major Doran achieved distinction
during the Civil War as war correspondent of The Galveston News over the nom de
plume of “Sioux.” After the war, while living in this city, he continued to
act as correspondent for The News, and after his removal to Hempstead, was a
contributor to its columns over his real name. A few weeks before his death,
Major Doran stated to the correspondent that his connection with The News as
correspondent antedated that of any living man. Several members of Washington
Camp 239, United Confederate Veterans, went to Hempstead this evening to attend
the funeral.”
Major W. P. Doran’s
tombstone in the Hempstead city cemetery has been turned over for some time, and
efforts made in 2000-2001 to have it remounted may/may not have proved
successful.
Rebel ‘Paul Revere’ Traveled 1,000 Miles to
Warn of Invasion
By W. T. Block
Reprinted from Beaumont TX. Enterprise, Feb. 5, 1984, from W. P. ‘Sioux’
Doran’s Memoirs in Galveston Daily News
News has oftentimes taken a
circuitous route to reach its destination. Such an occurrence in 1863 brought
the ominous warning of an impending invasion of Sabine Pass, Texas, by sea to
Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, the Confederate commander at Houston. Considering
that the military intelligence traveled first to Mexico, was then dispatched to
Houston for 250 miles on horseback, it was a wonder indeed that the warning
arrived before the event.
The story began in the spring
of 1863, shortly after the recapture of Galveston by the Confederates. West of
New Orleans, Federal Armies were advancing in Louisiana along the banks of the
Bayou Teche and Bayou LaFourche, in the direction of Lafayette, and there were
widespread fears that an overland invasion of Texas was brewing. Magruder
quickly dispatched the Texas cavalry brigades of Gen. Tom Green and Col. James
P. Majors to Central Louisiana to help counter the invasion threat. The Texas
force also included most of Col. A. W. Spaight’s 11th Texas
Battalion, formerly stationed at Beaumont and Sabine Pass.
One of the men who accompanied
Majors was W. P. Doran of Hempstead, who quickly acquired a reputation as an
outstanding war correspondent in the Lone Star State, known to his readers only
as “Sioux.” Doran wrote for the Galveston Weekly and Tri-Weekly News and the
Houston Telegraph, and his many Civil War and post-Civil War dispatches can
still be read in the microfilm of those newspapers, particularly Galveston Daily
News.
During those war years,
“Sioux” ‘ dispatches were to emanate from all parts of the
Trans-Mississippi (even from the Shiloh battlefield, where Sioux was wounded and
also briefly an enlisted man in the 2nd Texas Infantry) Department,
composed of those three Confederate States lying west of the Mississippi River.
During the fall of 1863, several of his letters originated from Sabine Pass.
By July 1863, Doran had
entered Thibodeaux, La. on the Bayou LaFourche, after the Texans had driven the
retreating Federals from the village. “Sioux” always rode on his mule as he
followed the Confederate soldiers, and being somewhat saddle-weary at the end of
the day, he crawled into the hayloft of an abandoned livery stable and went to
sleep. During the night, the Federals regrouped, surrounded, and recaptured the
town, and the next morning Doran was captured by the 47th
Massachusetts Regiment. He was soon carried to New Orleans and jailed with other
Confederates, although he was a civilian.
When Union Maj. Gen. William
H. Emory learned that “Sioux” was a correspondent in New Orleans, he ordered
that he be brought to his headquarters for questioning. Emory, who was almost
deaf, was anxious to hear any news of his old friend and former West Point
classmate, Gen. John B. Magruder.
While waiting in an
antechamber of Emory’s office, Doran could overhear upraised voices through
the thin walls. The deaf Emory and Gen. Nathaniel Banks, the Union commandant,
were in conference, and Banks fairly screamed as he explained to his executive
officer that the U. S. Navy was holding up the Texas invasion. As of that date,
they still had not located enough gunboats of sufficient shallow draft to
navigate the Sabine Pass bar.
Before leaving Emory’s
office that day, Doran realized that Banks was planning to capture both
Galveston and Houston from the rear, first by capturing the new fort at Sabine
Pass by a direct assault from the sea, and then attacking Houston from the rear,
by advancing along the Texas and New Orleans Railroad from Beaumont.
After his meeting with the
general, “Sioux” was then transferred to the U. S. Customhouse at New
Orleans and billeted with captured Confederate officers. After a few days,
inasmuch as he was a civilian, he was promised his early release from captivity,
provided that he booked passage to Matamoras, Mexico.
While at the Customhouse,
Doran also learned that New Orleans was bristling with excitement. Twenty
transports in the river were being loaded with munitions, mules, wagons, and
other military gear. On the shore, thousands of Federal troops, all of them
veterans of the successful Vicksburg campaign, were awaiting the signal to go
aboard.
Through one of his guards,
Doran booked passage aboard the English schooner “Gleaner.” After four
stormy days at sea, the schooner dropped anchor a half-mile off the Mexican port
of Bagdad, at the mouth of Rio Grande River. He and others were lightered ashore
in a yawl boat, and “Sioux” almost drowned when the little vessel capsized
in the choppy breakers.
After a 30-mile buggy ride to
Brownsville, Doran quickly located Gen. Hamilton P. Bee, commandant of the
Confederacy’s Rio Grande District, and explained Banks’ Texas invasion
plans. There were then no telegraph lines in Texas, except those connecting
Galveston, with Houston and Beaumont, and to convey the intelligence back to
Gen. Magruder in Houston would require a 250-mile horseback ride to the nearest
railroad at Alleyton.
In the event one rider might
not get through, Gen. Bee dispatched Doran and a cavalryman, each bearing
letters addressed to Gen. Magruder and instructions to Confederate encampments
along the way to provide the pair with food and fresh horses. Nine days later,
Doran pulled up at Alleyton, Texas, then the westernmost terminus of the Buffalo
Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railroad, just as an eastbound train was pulling out
for Houston. He arrived there on the afternoon of Sept. 3rd, five
days before the Battle of Sabine Pass.
The next day, Magruder sent
telegrams and letters to his engineers at Sabine Pass, ordering them to fortify
the seaport “with all due haste” because of an impending invasion threat.
And 2 nights later, the first lights of an invasion armada appeared
offshore. On September 8, the invaders tried to storm their way inland, only to
have 2 gunboats aground as steaming wrecks, their boilers hit and exploded,
while the remainder of the invasion fleet, totaling 5,000 men, hastily retreated
seaward, being “suddenly homesick for New Orleans.”
The next day, the commanding
general and his staff arrived at Sabine Pass from Houston, and Doran rode on the
train with him. And “Sioux” quickly wrote another of those famed battle
dispatches that was to win for him so much acclaim throughout the Civil War.
What he failed to mention in his battle account was the fact that he had just
ended a 1,000-mile journey by land, sea and saddle in order to warn his fellow
Texans that “the Yankees are coming.”
“Paul
Revere rode twenty-four miles in the saddle,
From Boston to Lexington Square.
Bill Doran
rode for a thousand miles,
On the train, in the saddle, and the crisp ocean air.” (W. T. Block)
-
Dear
lord: Please let Bill Doran have his tombstone remounted soon, although his
feats deserve a Texas state historical marker so the world will not forget
him, is my earnest prayer.
