Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  GENERAL SAM HOUSTON’S THOUGHTS were far removed from aiding the Alamo on February 23.

  He and John Forbes were deeply engaged in carrying out orders of deposed governor Henry Smith with the East Texas Cherokee village of Chief Bowles. In return for their loyalty to the new revolutionary Texas government, the Indians were finally promised their own land in East Texas, a territory fifty miles wide by about thirty miles long. Bowles and his head chief, Big Mush, signed the treaty on February 23, an agreement that covered a dozen Texas tribes: the Cherokees, Shawnees, Delawares, Quapaws, Kickapoos, Biloxis, Ionies, Alabamas, Coushattas, Caddos of the Neches, Tahocullakes, and the Untanguous.6

  Houston made a ceremonial presentation of goodwill items to Chief Bowles, including a silk vest, a handsome sash, and a brass-hilted military sword. The Cherokee leader would treasure these items until his death, even if the new Texas government never did carry through with any of its land promises for his Indians.

  Houston and Forbes immediately rode for Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the general had been voted in as the delegate for Refugio for the March 1 convention. They arrived, ragged and tired, on Monday, February 29. A true army had yet to be raised in Texas, so the commanding general decided it best to let the various factions of volunteers handle things until his present duties with the convention were concluded. The Texas delegates had a declaration of independence to write.

  The Matamoros expedition under Colonel Frank Johnson and Dr. James Grant was no closer to offering aid to the Alamo defenders than Sam Houston. They were near the coastal settlement of San Patricio, trying to round up sufficient horses for their offensive on the Rio Grande town. Other Texas companies were widely scattered in southern Texas as of late February: James Fannin’s command was at Goliad; Captain Burr H. Duval’s company of Kentucky Mustangs was at Refugio for a time; and other soldiers held duty at Copano, one of the principal Texas ports on Aransas Bay.

  The Alamo defenders now under siege by some fifteen hundred Mexican troops had no properly organized Texas Army ready and willing to come to their immediate relief.

  Efforts to drive the Texas rebels from their Spanish fortress resumed on February 24. The skilled frontiersmen atop the Alamo walls were quite deadly with their long rifles, picking off Mexican soldiers at two hundred yards without any great fear from the enemy’s inferior Brown Bess muskets. Inside the compound, Jim Bowie’s health continued to decline to the point that he could not function effectively. Bedridden, he ordered his volunteer forces to obey the commands of William Travis.

  Engineer Ben Jameson and parties of men worked continually to mend damages inflicted by Mexican cannons that maintained a steady bombardment against the compound’s walls. At least two pieces of Alamo artillery were damaged during the second day of the siege but they were soon brought back into operation. By day three, February 24, Lieutenant Colonel Travis was again using his best weapon—his inspirational messages to inspire reinforcements to come to their aid.

  His latest paper was addressed “to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world.” He called on them “in the name of Liberty, or patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch.” Travis estimated Santa Anna’s army to number more than a thousand men. “The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will, no doubt, increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.” He related that his fortress had been continually bombarded for twenty-four hours, but he had yet to lose one of his 150 defenders. “I shall never surrender or retreat,” Travis proclaimed. “I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.”7

  To emphasize his determination, Travis underlined the “never surrender or retreat” line, and he underlined “Victory or Death” three times before signing his name to the appeal. He selected Captain Albert Martin, a storekeeper from Gonzales originally from Rhode Island, to ride from the Alamo with his message that night. Martin burst through the main gate and charged through the Mexican lines toward his hometown.

  Santa Anna ordered his artillery to resume its bombardment of the Alamo during the morning of February 25. The Texans returned fire and the sharpshooters continued firing from the walls. Around 9:30 A.M., General Castrillón and Colonel Miñon led the Matamoros Battalion and several companies of cazadores to within a hundred yards of the fortress. Texas artillery Captains Almeron Dickinson, Samuel Blair, and William Carey directed their men to pound the Mexicans with canister and grapeshot as their enemy took possession of several small adobe huts near the fort’s south wall. The Mexican batteries roared back with canister, grape, and cannonballs of their own in a two-hour exchange. In the end, Santa Anna’s men suffered two killed and six wounded, and they retreated back out of range.8

  El Presidente responded by sending a courier down El Camino Real to order up three of General Gaona’s best battalions from his First Infantry Brigade. The great Napoleon of the West was not fully consumed with the business of war, though. Castrillón reported to him that he had encountered a widow of a Mexican soldier in one of the houses with her attractive daughter. Santa Anna expressed desire to see the girl, seventeen-year-old Mechora Iniega Barrera, but the mother refused him any contact with her daughter unless sanctified by marriage. The general found a wily soul among his soldados who was willing to don the apparel of a priest and he took young Barrera as his wife in his quarters on the Main Plaza. Santa Anna, already married, then retired in the company of his new wife. She would later be sent on to San Luis Potosí in the general’s private carriage while Santa Anna conducted his campaign.9

  The Texian leaders in the Alamo maintained outward optimism. Davy Crockett was animated in pointing men to various duties. He even took up his fiddle at times to boost morale. Bowie, ravaged with illness, had his cot hauled out into the open so he could speak words of encouragement to his volunteers. Artillery exchanges and minor skirmishes carried on until nearly midnight. Lieutenant Colonel Travis wrote a letter to Sam Houston that night in which he singled out Crockett and two other defenders, Charles Despallier and Robert Brown, for their inspiration and bravery thus far. Travis again made strong pleas for reinforcement, adding, “it will be impossible for us to keep them out much longer.”10

  Once again, his letter concluded with “Victory or Death!”

  The Alamo leaders held a council of war and voted for a man to be sent to James Fannin at Goliad. They elected Juan Seguín over the objections of Travis, who preferred the key Béxar citizen to remain as his aide and interpreter. Travis was overruled. His comrades offered encouragement to the brave tejano. “Ride like the wind,” advised Jim Bowie. David Crockett, who had bet he could outshoot Seguín against wild turkeys, chided him: “Don’t you forget, we still have a shooting match to attend to. So don’t go and get yourself killed.” Seguín crawled out of the compound in the darkness, eased his way along a waterway past the Mexican sentries, and met one of his companions, Antonio Cruz y Arocha. Cruz and Seguín spurred their horses and rode into a cold northern wind toward Goliad, hoping they could convince someone to care enough to come to the aid of the Alamo defenders.11

  The only forces that made positive response to the calls from William Travis were neither regulars nor volunteer army soldiers. They were mustered in as Texas Rangers.

  Courier Launcelot Smither had reached Gonzales on the morning of February 24. The message from the Alamo was clear regarding Santa Anna’s intentions. “They intend to show no quarter,” Travis had written. “If every man cannot turn out to a man, every man in the Alamo will be murdered.”

  Smither found the Gonzales townspeople armed and ready. Ranger recruiter Byrd Lockhart, appointed as such by the General Council in early February, had already recruited twenty-two men who were not attached to the regular army. He had mustered them into service on February 23 as the “Gonzales Mounted Ranger Company.” In keeping with the council’s regulations, the rangers nee
ded a full fifty-six-man company to elect a captain. Their original elected leader would be a second lieutenant until full muster could be obtained. They elected Lieutenant George C. Kimbell, a thirty-three-year-old former New Yorker who had settled in Texas in 1825. Kimbell lived with his wife and two young sons in Gonzales, where he was co-owner of a hat factory. His business partner, Almeron Dickinson, was busy commanding an artillery company in the Alamo.

  The Gonzales Rangers were a mixed bag, including farmers like Andrew Kent and Dolphin Floyd; Marcus Sewell, an English shoemaker; and Jesse McCoy, who had taken the vicious beating in September that helped start the revolution. They were still in town when a second courier, Captain Albert Martin, arrived from the Alamo during the early morning hours of February 25. He passed his latest appeal to Smither, now rested up from his ride into town the previous morning. He then rode on toward the convention in San Felipe, passing Travis’s note once again to another rider en route. On the back of the letter, Smither scribbled his own additional plea: “I hope that everyone will rendezvous at Gonzales as soon as possible, as these brave soldiers are suffering. Don’t neglect them.”12

  Major Willie Williamson, commander of a battalion of Texas Rangers, was also in Gonzales when Captain Martin arrived with the Travis letter. He quickly sent his own orders to Captain John Tumlinson, whose ranger company was still engaged in building its blockhouse on the headwaters of Brushy Creek. They had seen no further action since their January 20 battle with Comanches in which they had recovered the captive young boy. Williamson related the determined “victory or death” pledge of the Alamo defenders and asked Tumlinson to move his company to Bastrop (Mina), keeping spies out to watch for Mexican troops, until he could join them. Major Williamson sent copies of his orders to the governor in San Felipe and then departed Gonzales on February 26 to join his rangers in Mina.13

  Captain Martin and the new Gonzales ranger leader, Lieutenant George Kimbell, spent another two days scouring the local areas for more volunteers to join them for the trip to San Antonio. Some of the men who had originally mustered into the Gonzales Mounted Ranger Company opted to stay behind and protect their families, replaced by new volunteers. The rangers departed the Gonzales town square on Saturday, February 27, at 2 P.M. They were guided by returning Béxar scout John W. Smith and accompanied by Captain Martin, who was returning to his Alamo command. The twenty-five men who set out included Thomas R. Miller, the richest man in town, and three teenagers—seventeen-year-old Johnnie Gaston, his nineteen-year-old brother-in-law, Johnnie Kellogg, and sixteen-year-old Galba Fuqua.14

  Lieutenant Kimbell’s ragged ranger group might not have been impressive in size or training, but it was a hell of a sight better than anything being dispatched by the Texas Army. Express rider John Johnson had reached Goliad on February 25, two days after riding from Béxar. He delivered the note from Travis to Lieutenant Colonel James Fannin, who pledged that he would march in the morning with 320 men. He would leave about one hundred men behind in the Goliad presidio, which his men had renamed “Fort Defiance.”

  Fannin and his men set out on the morning of February 26, but they did not go far. Three of their supply wagons broke down just two hundred yards from Fort Defiance. It was nearly sunset by the time his men wrestled their four small cannon across the San Antonio River. Due to cold weather, they went back into the Goliad fort to sleep for the night. The men returned the next morning to find some of their oxen had wandered away. Without provision carts, the men would have to carry their own supplies, food, and ammunition. They decided they were ill-prepared for any large force of Santa Anna’s troops that might be encountered on the road. “It was deemed expedient to return to this post and complete the fortifications,” he wrote as justification to acting governor Robinson in a letter that day. Fannin knew that abandoning Goliad would leave the path wide open for General Urrea’s advancing soldiers.15

  THE FOUL WINTER WEATHER did little to slow the determined march of General José Urrea’s forces. The night of February 26 was “very raw and excessively cold,” Urrea noted in his diary. The near-freezing rain that fell had his dragoons “so numbed by the cold that they could hardly speak.”16

  His men were nevertheless brave and faithful as they swept across the coastal plains of Texas, cutting down other potential Alamo defenders while Fannin’s reinforcements were stalling out. Colonel Frank Johnson had divided his rebel command into five separate parties. Three groups were camped in and around San Patricio while two seven-man parties protected the horse herds. General Urrea struck with speed. Johnson was badly surprised and had no time to collect his command. By dawn of February 27, he had taken the Lipantitlán fort and the town. Nine or ten Texans were killed and eighteen men were taken prisoner. Only six, including Colonel Johnson, escaped.17

  Dr. James Grant and his horse-hunting party were returning to San Patricio, unaware that Urrea had taken the town. Urrea learned that Grant was approaching and he set an ambush along Agua Dulce Creek, about twenty-six miles south of town. Grant and twenty-six men were driving several hundred head of horses toward town on March 2, when more than sixty dragoons came out of the woods.

  Plácido Benavides raced toward La Bahía, while Grant and Ruben R. Brown charged to aid their cut-off comrades. Many of the Texans were quickly killed. Grant and Brown tried to escape and raced about seven miles before they were surrounded. They dismounted and prepared to fight to the end. A Mexican cavalryman ran his lance into Brown’s arm but Grant quickly shot the soldier from his saddle. Several other Mexicans ran their lances through Grant. Others lassoed Brown and dragged him to the ground.

  Ruben Brown was lashed to a horse and taken to Matamoros for interrogation. Before he was escorted from the Agua Dulce Creek battlefield, he witnessed more Mexican officers running their swords through Dr. Grant’s corpse. He also saw another wounded Texan begging for mercy. Several dragoons approached him and smashed his skull with the butt of a carbine.18

  Benavides made his way to La Bahía on March 1 and informed Fannin of the deadly attack. Fannin had chosen not to march to the aid of the Alamo defenders, and now many of the men in his area had been killed. His inability to take decisive action was beginning to foreshadow his own future.

  JAMES FANNIN COULD HAVE tripled the manpower of the Texans holed up in the Alamo, but it was not to be. The only relief party to reach San Antonio was the mounted ranger company under Lieutenant Kimbell. Captain Martin and guide John Smith led them cautiously through the brush as they eased around Mexican campfires near the mission on the night of February 29. As Kimbell’s Gonzales men approached the fort around 3 A.M on March 1, they were suddenly fired upon by a nervous sentry.

  The thirty-two reinforcements raced into the Alamo as the gates were swung open. Travis had hoped to see hundreds of men arriving from Colonel Fannin’s command, but any new faces were welcomed at the moment. It was the beginning of the eighth day of the siege but Travis allowed his artillerymen to fire two shots toward Santa Anna in honor of his new arrivals. One cannonball ripped the roof off a house that had been serving as Santa Anna’s headquarters, while the other slammed into the town’s military plaza. David Crockett entertained his men with his fiddle while Scotsman John McGregor joined in with his bagpipes.

  Santa Anna’s troops had continued with their persistent artillery attacks on the Alamo compound’s walls each day. Travis urged his men to conserve their own cannon shot and ammunition. He estimated that at least two hundred shells had fallen within his compound without causing a single injury. He had been encouraged by the arrival of the Gonzales rangers, but was perplexed at why nine days had passed since he and Bowie had summoned Fannin for help. How could it possibly take so long for reinforcements to march ninety-five miles to Béxar?19

  The answer arrived just hours later at 11 A.M. on March 3. Courier James Butler Bonham rode into the fortress from Goliad with the disturbing news that Fannin would not be coming. He had elected to maintain his defense of the La Bahía mission. Ten da
ys of fighting the Mexican troops and watching them continue to grow in number was enough to make William Travis realize the inevitable: he would likely be fighting this battle on his own.

  Travis took up the pen that evening and wrote a lengthy appeal to the Texas Independence Convention meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos. “I feel confident that the determined valor and desperate courage heretofore exhibited by my men will not fail them in the last struggle,” he wrote. “Although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse to him than a defeat.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Travis then detailed his remaining resources. He had provisions to last another twenty days for the number of men he had on hand. He needed more lead, more gunpowder, and “two hundred rounds of six, nine, twelve, and eighteen pound balls” for his cannon. Travis defiantly signed this latest plea with “God and Texas—Victory or Death.”

  AS SANTA ANNA’S TROOPS swarmed into San Antonio, delegates gathered 180 miles to the east at Washington-on-the-Brazos. They met in an unfinished building—with no doors and no glass in its windows—a quarter mile up from the Brazos River landing. The forty-one convention members shivered from the cold air that blew through the little hall.

  A committee of five was authorized to write a formal declaration of independence for Texas. It was headed by George C. Childress, an attorney and former newspaper editor, who modeled their document closely on the United States’ 1776 declaration. When the draft was read aloud on March 2, 1836, it was approved. Texas was officially declared free from Mexico. Enough mistakes were found in the Texas Declaration of Independence to delay its final signing until the next day, March 3—delegate Sam Houston’s forty-third birthday. Two tejanos, José Antonio Navarro and Francisco Ruiz, were among the fifty-nine signers of the Texas independence document.