Those of us down here in Texas would have to respectfully disagree with you on that. If you knew your history, you would also know that Texas ports were among the last to remain in confederate hands and accordingly drew a good ammount of yankee attention. Union assaults were made on Corpus Christi and Galveston, not to mention the Sabine campaign. The reason you cast Texas as an "irrelevant" theater stems primarily from the fact that, despite many yankee efforts to advance into it, the confederates successfully impeded them at the coast. At the time of the war, Texas became a major frustration for Butler and the yankees in general following New Orleans...even to the point that they lied to the northern newspapers and claimed to have taken Corpus when they had not done so because conceding their frustrations would have been embarassing for a state they thought they could overrun.
surely compares to the most famous in history which if lost by the Spartans could have changed the face of the Western world.
In military odds, definately. I have already ventured to say that the odds against the Texan confederates at Sabine were greater than those against the Spartans, making their feat all the more significant.
And though NO battle in the entire war between the states could reasonably be compared in results to a saving point of the western world, Sabine Pass could easily be said to have had a similar effect on the history of the state of Texas itself.
I don't see how this battle's outcome had any impact on Texas history since it had no impact on the outcome of the war or the policies which came after it. Had it been won by the Union it would have had a trivial impact on the plans of the Union.
From what I have read this battle cannot be compared to Thermopylae in any way. A fort against a couple of gunboats is not similiar to 300 Spartans against a force of 100,000 Persians. Sorry but your hyperbole is vastly overblown as I said initially in our exchange.
Beating Benjamin Butler, a terrible general by any measure, was not difficult for any competent soldier (which he wasn't being a political appointee.) Had the forces been led by a Grant, Sherman or Sheridan the story would have been totally different.