Editing Port Aransas, Texas (section)

===The Civil War===
Around the start of the [[American Civil War]], the lens was taken out of the lantern room of the lighthouse and hidden in the  [[marsh]]lands behind the structure. This lighthouse was of utmost importance because it controlled the night-time pass. Whoever governed the light beacon regulated the night-time passageway. Without that light, the Union ships could only traverse the treacherous pass in the daytime, limiting Union ship movement in the blockade of the coastline.

The harbors in the [[Corpus Christi, Texas|Corpus Christi]], [[Rockport, Texas|Rockport]]-St. Marys, [[Copano Bay]] area and Mustang and [[San José Island (Texas)|San Jose]] Islands were all supplying the [[Confederate Army]] with  beef, salt, seafood, and cotton supplies for the troops fighting the North, and [[Union (American Civil War)|the Union]] was bent on stopping those shipments. Around November 1861, as expected, the Union Navy started a campaign of coastal [[blockade]]. Then, [[United States Marine Corps|Marines]] off the Navy vessel [[USS Afton|USS ''Afton'']] surged ashore on San Jose Island and leveled the small town of Aransas, burning most of the houses, structures, warehouses, piers, docks, and wharf sometime in February 1862. The small town was all but wiped out, but remnants of it can still be found today. Jurisdiction of the lighthouse traded back and forth between the Confederate and Union detachments throughout the war.

Though Lt. [[J. W. Kittredge]] attempted the expropriation of Corpus Christi from the Southern forces, Maj. Alfred M. Hobby and troops sent the Union ships sailing away. By early that summer, Southern civilians had forsaken the islands rather than be under the rule of the North. [[United States Navy]] vessels under J. W. Kittredge (before he was captured) besieged the coast, using St. Joseph's Island and the few remaining structures on it as a depot to store captured cotton.

On Christmas Day of 1862, a move was made by Confederate General [[John B. Magruder]], who authorized a detachment of troops to commence the ruination of the lighthouse tower. [[Gunpowder]] kegs were clustered inside the tower and lit, resulting in the damaging of 20–25 feet of brickwork, the glass housing case, and the round stairwell.

The next significant stage in the war for this arena was on May 3, 1863, when Capt. [[Edwin E. Hobby]]'s Confederate company assaulted the Union garrison set to protect the lighthouse and killed 20 soldiers. On May 8, the Confederates once again maintained a battery on Mustang Island; later in the month, they pushed Union forces off St. Joseph's Island. But their victory would not be long lived as the Union comprehended the significance of the pass, and in November, federal troops under [[T. C. G. Robinson]] came back and regained control of the island.