Fifty Miles and a Fight

While Maj. Samuel Peter Heintzelman, one of the most cultured, dedicated, and respected officers in the antebellum frontier army, was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shock waves throughout Texas by brazenly leading some seventy-five angry raiders into the streets of Brownsville and initiated a war that would reverberate north to Austin and beyond to the halls of Washington and Mexico City. Heintzelman's journal provides a detailed and vivid account of the battles at El Ebonal and Rio Grande City. Heintzelman's impressions of his senior commander, Col. Robert E. Lee, are also noteworthy.