If that is so, why then did the yankees commit several significant forces to subdue it including multiple invasion attempts and a flotilla of warships accompanied by a 5,000 man army?
Texas units were fighting in the east and those were a larger threat than any remaining in the state.
Those remaining in state continued in military operation past appomattox and enjoyed a record of beating the yankees to the very end.
I don't see how this battle's outcome had any impact on Texas history
Look at it this way. Texas would be an entirely different state today had its population experienced what happened to, say, the citizens of Georgia when the union invasion forces came marching through. If you cannot figure out why, you should not be taking on the topic of the war and its fallout to begin with.
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.
I would beg to differ, noting that had Sabine Pass been lost, an invasion campaign up the Sabine and over the Red river would have occured meaning an entirely different history for, primarily, Texas as well as borderland Louisiana, Arkansas, and what would become Oklahoma.
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.
Make that an earthen fort with only 6 guns, two of them disabled, manned by only 44 dockworkers under the command of a lieutenant. They were up against 4 steam gunboats escorting a flotilla of over 5,000 troops for a combined total of over 20 ships. 5,000 troops accompanied by over 20 ships, four of them armed warships, should have been able to easily overrun an earthen fort with only 44 men, just as the Persians should have been able to easily overrun the Greeks. Yet they did not. The persians were held up at the pass far longer than should have been the case.
The yankees were not only held up at a pass they should have been able to walk right over, but were thoroughly routed. All four of their warships were disabled including two of them destroyed. The 44 dockworkers killed as many as five times their numbers and captured even more. So yes, I do think a valid comparison in the terms of odds may be made.
Sorry but your hyperbole is vastly overblown as I said initially in our exchange.
And with that assertion, I would beg to differ as I noted above. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the battle at Sabine pass and its circumstances. I also ask that you temporarily set aside any biases toward the north while doing so. You will find a confederate victory against near impossible odds that sent shockwaves across both nations. The confederates at sabine pass were arguably down by greater odds than in any other battle during the war. Yet they prevailed.
Beating Benjamin Butler, a terrible general by any measure, was not difficult for any competent soldier (which he wasn't being a political appointee.)
Perhaps, and in a standard engagement I would probably agree. But this was by no means a standard engagement. It was 44 dockworkers, none of them professional soldiers, led by a lieutenant, himself not a soldier. They used four cannon behind an earthen wall to stop an entire invasion fleet. They were outnumbered well over 100 to 1 in men alone, and that is to say nothing of the disadvantages in their weaponry. In other words, while Butler himself may have lacked in military experience, he faced a smaller force of men even less qualified than himself. Butler and his forces were, at the time, war hardened and experienced. Most of those confederates had never fired a single shot in wartime circumstances. Most of them had never even recieved basic military training. They were led by a tavern owner turned part time lieutenant.
Had the forces been led by a Grant, Sherman or Sheridan the story would have been totally different.
Do you honestly think so? In a naval to shore battle as well?
Key to the confederate victory was Dowling's ability to hide from the yankees how few men they were actually up against. The yankees had little way of knowing how many confederates were in that fort before hand, regardless of who led them - Grant, Sherman or otherwise. Dowling carried through on the deception by putting out so much fire power the yankees didn't know what hit them. Some of the fiercest bombardments of the war occured in those confederate hits on the yankee ships. It happened because, despite their lack of training as a military unit, the dockworkers proved to be dead-on shots and made the hits count. I would venture to say that what happened there would have happened under practically any general no matter who led the ships up the channel.
It in no way compares to Thermopylae and was not a significant battle.
Sherman and Grant would not have been fooled and would have destroyed the fort and its men had they not been occupied in more important areas.
Texas history would not have changed in any way except that Blacks may have had a brief period of freedom and a degree of power as they had when the murderous vengence of the Slaveocrats was prevented by the victorious Union army from exercising its full power over them. As far as I am aware there weren't thousands of Blacks murdered after the war there as there were in the Deep south. Since the Slaveocracy was not as strong in Texas the ex-slaves could always go to the west where the cotton culture was non existent. This moderated the need for Union forces which were required to stop wholesale slaughter by the Red Shirts and the KKK in Tenn., Ga., La., and S. Carolina.
Texas turned its back on its greatest citizen when Sam Houston was forced by the Slaveocracy to resign his Senate seat because he believed in and supported the Constitution against those determined to wipe their @$$es with it.