The troops guarding Houston disappeared on May 23, 1865, as these old posts of mine below indicate. The information came from the Galveston Daily News.
Desertion was a problem with the confederate army throughout the war.
The article I found dealt with the period in question, but recounts loosely the dispersal, beginning in Galveston on May 21 with Gen. Kirby Smith's order to evacuate the city, of the Confederates.
Fehrenbach records that the Confederate troops were disposed to go home even before the news of Lee's surrender arrived. At Palmito Hill/Ranch, a week earlier, some Confederates told captive Union officers after the battle that they'd have surrendered themselves and their position at discretion, if the hotdogging political-hack officer leading the Union force hadn't marched out a black regiment in his van.
A couple of days after the battle, Union officers under flags of truce informed Rip Ford, the Confederate cavalry commander, of Lee's surrender in Virginia. After some considerable cussing and swearing, negotiations began for the surrender or disbanding of the Confederate force in Brownsville. Later, Ford escorted the Union officers to Matamoros to attend a French/Mexican imperial military review, knowing that the appearance of a mixed Union and Confederate party of officers would disconcert the French, for whom a composition of American differences would be bad news. Their turnout had the desired effect.
I also read your other post in which you quoted the May 5th declamation offered by the troops of Hardeman's formation to the Confederates east of the Mississippi, inviting them to make their way to Texas to make a last stand. That was a pretty late date for such a ringing declaration. The army fell apart only two weeks later.
Your statement in that post that Ford's Confederates at Brownsville already knew about Lee's surrender seems reasonable but is contradicted by Fehrenbach's eyewitness account of the conference between Rip Ford (whom your ancestor served under) and Union Gen. E. B. Brown, who informed Ford of Lee's surrender. Perhaps they knew in Galveston, but word hadn't yet filtered down the coast.
Which coast, by the way, is taking another sort of beating today, if you've been watching the weather reports.
I also read your other post in which you quoted the May 5th declamation offered by the troops of Hardeman's formation to the Confederates east of the Mississippi, inviting them to make their way to Texas to make a last stand. That was a pretty late date for such a ringing declaration. The army fell apart only two weeks later.
Re the Galveston material, one wonders what people did for money or postage between June 1, when the local post office stopped accepting Confederate stamps and money, and June 19, when Gen. Granger showed up and promptly seized all the mails, and the post office itself. (Now, why would he do that?)
Your statement in that post that Ford's Confederates at Brownsville already knew about Lee's surrender seems reasonable but is contradicted by Fehrenbach's eyewitness account of the conference between Rip Ford (whom your ancestor served under) and Union Gen. E. B. Brown, who informed Ford of Lee's surrender. Perhaps they knew in Galveston, but word hadn't yet filtered down the coast.
Which coast, by the way, is taking another sort of beating today, if you've been watching the weather reports.