A Confederate general refused to surrender and fled to Mexico. Now the Texas park named for him is the center of another standoff
Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, has become a staging ground for state forces, the epicenter of a standoff with the federal government and a stark symbol of dysfunction at the border.
But there’s another story about this park that’s far less well known than the recent legal battle over immigration enforcement in this border city.
The 47-acre park along the Rio Grande was named after a Confederate military leader who fled to Mexico in 1865 rather than surrendering to Union troops.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency case study describing the park notes that it was named for General Joseph Orville Shelby, known to some as the “undefeated rebel.”
“What struck me about it is the irony of all this,” says historian Jeremi Suri, who wrote about Shelby and other Confederate exiles in his 2022 book, “Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.”
Most people likely aren’t familiar with Shelby’s story. But there’s a clear resonance between this moment and Shelby’s rarely recalled chapter of American history, Suri says.
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The park’s name, Suri says, reveals more about the current dispute than any argument in the immigration debate.
“What this is really about is about power for groups that have power and don’t want to give up power. The naming of that park, rather than naming it Martin Luther King Jr. park or Cesar Chavez park, was an assertion of power, and the irony is that assertion has now become militarized in that space again,” he says.
