June 2, 1865---"Virginia-in-Mexico": The Sham Surrender of Edmund Kirby Smith

JUNE 2, 1865:           

In Galveston, Texas, General Kirby Smith C.S.A. signed the surrender documents that officially brought to an end the existence of the Confederate Military Department of The Trans-Mississippi and (again officially) marked the surrender of his mostly-notional 40,000-man army.

Within days of signing the documents, Smith was being accused of having engineered a “sham” surrender by critics both north and south. Few of the armed men in “Kirby Smithdom” actually did surrender or seek parole. Many simply became “outlaws” (whether or not they engaged in violence was the personal choice of each man). Still, Smith’s disordered surrender left the western United States largely in a state of ruinous chaos.

Smith himself sneered at the idea of surrender. His “Farewell Address” to his scattered and scattering troops was downright nasty:

“I feel . . . humiliated by the acts of a people I was striving to benefit.”

Smith himself, within 24 hours, moved southward through Texas, picking up last-ditch Confederate stragglers as he went. What he never troubled to tell the Union negotiators with whom he dealt was that Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico had offered Smith and all Confederates with him political asylum in Mexico. All that the Confederates were required to do was to swear allegiance to Maximilian. Most did, with no conviction.

Smith was no more honest with Maximilian than he was with the Union. The Mexican Emperor was led to believe that Smith would be entering Mexico with 40,000 armed men dedicated to fighting the democratic insurgents of Benito Juarez and  Porfirio Diaz.  What arrived was a body of a few thousand bedraggled men in gray in whom military discipline and order had largely evaporated.  Maximilian, who had been promised the importation of the Confederate cotton economy and a large battle-tested army, found himself supporting the impoverished remnants of the Confederacy.

Among those remnants were Generals Thomas Hindman who had fought in Arkansas, Jubal Early of Virginia, Simon Bolivar Buckner who had fought in Tennessee,  Richard Ewell a survivor of Gettysburg, Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury who refused a Federal pardon, General “Prince” John Magruder, Sterling Price who had battled valiantly if fruitlessly in Missouri,  Confederate Governor Isham Harris of Tennessee, Alexander Terrell, and Smith himself. In addition to these Generals and political leaders and their families and slaves, perhaps 5,000 men under arms (with their own families and slaves) were settled in Mexico.  

The Confederates were given land at very cheap prices where they built towns. The largest of these, outside Veracruz, was Carlota (or Carlotta), named for the Mexican Empress.

General Jo Shelby came south to Mexico with approximately 1,500 men in spanking military order; his group are known to Lost Cause exponents rather romantically as “The Unconquered.”  In reality, Shelby and his men were planning on detaching the large Mexican State of Sonora from Maximilian’s empire in order to set up a new and independent Confederate nation there.

Problems with what the Confederates grandiosely called “Virginia-In-Mexico” began immediately. The wealthier exiles began speculating in Mexican land, and this speculation reduced the poorer exiles to tenants.  This fractured the American community.  Maximilian, who was subsidized by the French, could not afford in turn to subsidize the destitute Confederate colonists.  Maximilian particularly distrusted the speculators whom he thought might plan a coup against him. This mistrust only grew when he became aware of Shelby’s plans. 

The Confederates showed no interest in fighting with or leading the Mexican Army against Juarez and Diaz, and fought only when their own settlements were attacked.  The African-American slaves brought to Mexico to presumably work the cotton fields ran away or were emancipated by Mexican mestizos fighting under Diaz.

 

By midsummer 1865, it was clear that “Virginia-In-Mexico” was failing, and many of the men and their families returned north to claim their paroles from the United States. Life in the settlements became increasingly difficult. Carlotta took on the appearance of the worst of Mexican shantytowns before the settlement was abandoned. By late 1865, the “Virginia-In-Mexico” idea had also been abandoned, and most of the remaining exiles had moved into the larger Mexican cities. In June 1867, Maximilian I was overthrown and executed by Benito Juarez, and Juarez subsequently ordered the remaining Confederates out of his country.