Upon secession, a company of the First Regiment Texas Mounted Rifles occupied Fort Chadbourne, located 8 miles north on the old Butterfield Stageline, to protect against Indians. The fort became a stopover for many Union sympathizers and people wanting to avoid the conflict of war on their way west. Permanent personnel left in 1862 when the frontier defense line was pulled back more than 50 miles east, but scouting parties and patrols of Confederate and state troops continued to use the fort intermittently in aggressive warfare to keep Indians near their camps and away from settlements and to check on invasion by Union forces. Usually supplying their own mounts, guns, and sustenance, these men guarded the frontier until the war's end. More broadly, Texas Civil War frontier defense sought to protect 2000 miles of coastline and frontier from Union attack, Indian raids, and marauders with the few men left in the state. Defense lines were arranged for maximum protection: one stretched from El Paso to Brownsville, another placed posts a day's horseback ride apart from Red River to the Rio Grande, and Chadbourne and other U.S. outposts used by scouting parties lay in a line between. Behind these lines and to the east, organized militia and citizens' posses from nearby settlements backed Confederate and state troops to curb Indian raids.