Trans-Mississippi Department

Map of the CSA (inaccurately including border states claimed by the CSA but that voted not to secede and whose populations generally were pro-U.S.: Missouri and Kentucky); the Trans-Mississippi Department covered all land west of the Mississippi.

Battles fought in the Trans-Mississippi Department

Dr. Edmund Lewis Massie of the Trans-Mississippi Department

The Trans-Mississippi Department was a territorial command of the Confederate States Army comprising Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, Arizona Territory and the Indian Territory; i.e. all of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi River. It was the last military department to surrender to Union forces at the conclusion of the American Civil War.

History

The Trans-Mississippi Department was established on May 26, 1862, at Little Rock, Arkansas, by merging the Department of Texas and the Trans-Mississippi District (Department Number Two) which had been organized on January 10, 1862, to include the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas (except for the country east of St. Francis County, Arkansas, to Scott County), Missouri, and that part of Louisiana north of the Red River. On April 24, 1863, the department headquarters was transferred to Shreveport, Louisiana, where it remained until relocating to Houston, Texas, on May 18, 1865. Responsible for the Confederate theater of operations west of the Mississippi, its forces were sometimes referred to as the "Army of the Southwest." As a result of being largely isolated from the Confederate government at Richmond late in the war, it was also referred to as "Kirby-Smithdom."

Commanding generals

• Brigadier-General Paul O. Hébert (May 26, 1862 – June 20, 1862)
• Major-General John B. Magruder (assigned June 20, 1862, but did not accept)
• Major-General Thomas C. Hindman (June 20, 1862 – July 16, 1862)
• Lieutenant-General Theophilus H. Holmes (July 30, 1862 – February 9, 1863)
• General E. Kirby Smith (March 7, 1863 – April 19, 1865)
• Lieutenant-General Simon Bolivar Buckner (April 19, 1865 – April 22, 1865)
• General E. Kirby Smith (April 22, 1865 – May 26, 1865)

Further reading

• Baker, T. Lindsay, ed. (2007). "Chapter 6: Collapse of the Confederacy". Confederate Guerrilla: The Civil War Memoir of Joseph M. Bailey. Civil War in the West. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 978-1-55728-838-7. OCLC 85018566. OL 8598848M.