Santos Benavides - The Confederate Hero of Laredo
The Merchant Prince of the Rio Grande Who Chose the Confederate Cause
The Merchant Prince of the Rio Grande Who Chose the Confederate Cause
(Jose Nino, The Abbeville Institute) - When 200 Union cavalrymen rode toward Laredo on March 18, 1864, their mission seemed straightforward. Destroy 5,000 bales of Confederate cotton stacked at San Agustín Plaza, worth millions of dollars at wartime prices, and cripple the South’s economic lifeline to Mexico. What stood between them and their objective was a garrison of just 42 men commanded by a Mexican American colonel who would rather die than retreat.
Colonel José de los Santos Benavides understood what those cotton bales represented. For three years, he had protected the trade route that allowed Confederate Texas to export cotton through Mexico and import desperately needed war materials. The Union blockade had strangled Southern ports, but the Rio Grande remained open, and Benavides’s Tejano cavalry kept it that way. Now, facing odds of nearly five to one, the highest-ranking Mexican American officer in Confederate service would defend his hometown in what would become his finest hour.
Born on November 1, 1823, in Laredo, Texas, Santos Benavides entered a world defined by fluid borders and shifting allegiances. His lineage traced directly to Tomás Sánchez de la Barrera y Garza, the Spanish captain who founded Laredo in 1755. This distinguished ancestry placed the Benavides family among…