Fannin assured Shackelford that the Mexicans would not dare to attack a force of more than three hundred men. Some of the men sneered at Shackelford, who they felt was only worried about protecting himself. Shackelford believed that Fannin naively placed “too much confidence in the ability of his own little force,” and that the man of such little military experience “could not be made to believe that the Mexicans would dare follow us.”6
Fannin resumed his march about 12:45 P.M. on March 19. They had advanced a mere four miles when a large force of Mexican cavalry was spotted emerging from the timber two miles behind. Charles Shain, a Kentuckian serving in Captain Burr Duvall’s company, realized the mistake of Fannin’s previous time wasted on the open prairie. “Had we proceeded, we could have reached the woods in safety,” he recalled. Urrea’s mounted men swiftly split into two groups to block the Texians from reaching either the protective cover of the woods or the route to Coleto Creek. Fannin had his men unlimber their cannon and fire several rounds, but it was without effect.7
The Texians formed a hollow square with artillery pieces posted on each corner. Instead of racing for the timber, Fannin’s men would have to fight it out on an open prairie without food or water. The Mexican dragoons dismounted and advanced on foot. Their first volley from a quarter mile away had no effect. The dragoons continued to advance and fire two more volleys while Fannin shouted at his men to hold their fire until the enemy was at point-blank range. The third round from the Mexicans created some casualties. Only when his enemy had advanced within one hundred yards did Fannin order his troops to commence firing with artillery, muskets, and rifles.
The Texas artillerymen created heavy losses but the Mexican dragoons slowly picked off many of the rebel sharpshooters. Captain Horton and about thirty of his mounted men who had gone ahead to the Coleto crossing saw that Fannin’s men were hopelessly outnumbered. Instead of sacrificing his men, Horton opted to ride for Victoria to seek reinforcements.
The Mexican soldiers took advantage of high prairie grass to cover themselves, rising only long enough to fire into the tightly packed Texians. Anyone who had criticized James Fannin’s courage previously now found the young leader to be stalwart in action. Although painfully wounded by a shot in his thigh, he coolly refused to leave the front ranks of the action. The fighting carried on into the late afternoon as parched Texans drank the last water from their canteens. Both sides were relieved when dusk brought an end to the fighting.
Fannin’s rebels had suffered nine killed and fifty-one wounded. They had inflicted severe losses on Urrea’s troops in the form of fifty killed and 140 wounded. Shain heard some of the officers proposing to make a retreat in the dark toward the distant woods. Enough of the men objected to leaving the wounded behind that the idea was rejected. Shain and his comrades instead worked to construct a breastworks overnight, using carts, dead oxen, and horse carcasses to form their protection. Others used spades to dig a three-foot-deep trench. Mexican bugles and sporadic sniper fire made it evident that they were completely surrounded on the prairie. “They kept sounding their bugles every five minutes during the night, and we expected a charge every minute,” said Shain.8
Dawn on March 20 brought more bad news. Urrea had been reinforced by another hundred infantrymen, two four-pound cannon, and a howitzer. The Mexican commander opened the day by peppering the Texan bastion with several rounds of canister and grape. He was making a show of force that was clear: he could simply pound the rebels from long range with artillery until they were annihilated. Fannin’s men agreed that they should surrender if Urrea could offer them honorable terms. Colonel Fannin thus limped forward under a flag of truce.
General Urrea denied him any conditions of surrender, however. The Texians were to lay down their arms and end the matter or Urrea would simply renew his bombardment. Fannin had no choice. He returned to his men and lied. He told them Urrea had accepted their offer and would spare their lives. Fannin’s men then lay down their arms and surrendered. They were marched back to Goliad under guard, arriving late in the evening. “They gave us nothing to eat that night and nothing till late next day,” said Shain. “Then they gave us about as much for twenty-four hours as we could eat at one meal.”
General Urrea’s men took swift possession of Victoria as well on the morning of March 21. Captain Horton’s men, arriving ahead of the Mexicans, found little assistance from the locals and chose to flee town. The other separated contingent under Colonel Ward was largely killed or captured upon trying to enter Victoria that day. By the following day, only ten of Ward’s men had managed to escape death or capture. The surviving members of Ward’s battalion were then marched back to Goliad to be held with Fannin’s captured command.
Fort Defiance was now a prison for more than 370 Texians.
SAM HOUSTON’S LITTLE ARMY was continuing to fall back to the east.
His men broke camp on the morning of March 15 and marched toward the Colorado River. Houston ordered Major William Austin, one of his aides-de-camp, to ride to the coastal town of Velasco to requisition more horses, supplies, cannon, and ammunition. The general spent his morning cursing those who showed insubordination and threatening to court-martial a young sentinel who had fallen asleep at his post during the night.9
One of the few bright spots of the day for General Houston came during the noon hour, when his army was joined by about two dozen Brazoria-area volunteers under twenty-nine-year-old Captain Peyton R. Splane. The Texas Army halted its march around 1 P.M. on the Navidad River and made camp on the land of settler William Thompson. The ragged force, unskilled in military maneuvers, had been on the march for about twenty-six of the past thirty-eight hours.
Mexican troops were not far behind. General Ramírez y Sesma and his seven hundred infantrymen reached Gonzales on March 14 and found some of the buildings still smoldering. Santa Anna, having elected to remain in Béxar awaiting solid intelligence, finally received the news. On March 17 he dispatched General Eugenio Tolsa with six hundred of his Second Infantry Brigade to meet Sesma—already in pursuit of Houston’s army—on the Colorado River. He sent the balance of Tolsa’s brigade to reinforce General Urrea at Goliad.10
General Houston was wary of the movements of the Mexican Army. He took a diversion on the morning of March 16. Instead of continuing east toward Columbia-on-the-Brazos, he headed north from the Navidad River. The Texas Army, now numbering about five hundred souls, halted at 4:30 P.M. at Jesse Burnam’s crossing of the Colorado River. Houston promoted William Smith to captain of cavalry this day, trusting the Béxar veteran’s ability to command such squad leaders as Deaf Smith and Henry Karnes. A cool, drizzly rain fell on the five hundred Texians bivouacked on the west bank of the Colorado during the next morning. Houston sent orders to Colonel Fannin to take position on Lavaca Bay to protect the army’s munitions stored at Cox’s Point and Dimitt’s Landing. He said that his own force would “remain for a time” before marching down the river.
The convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, having received word late on March 15 of the Alamo’s fall, was at work while the army rested. The delegates resolved to create an ad interim government for the free and sovereign Republic of Texas. The new leaders were sworn into office at 4 P.M. on March 17, and Governor Henry Smith’s provisional government ceased to exist. Forty-seven-year-old David Gouverneur Burnet was named as the new president. A stocky man with bushy brown whiskers, Burnet was a native of New Jersey who carried a Bible in one pocket and a pistol in the other.
Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala, whose plantation sat along the San Jacinto River, had been born in the Yucatán state of Mexico in 1788. He had been a strong supporter of President Santa Anna until the dictator had denounced the Constitution of 1824 the previous year. The balance of Burnet’s cabinet included Secretary of Treasury Bailey Hardeman, Attorney General David Thomas, Secretary of State Samuel P. Carson, Secretary of War Thomas Jefferson Rusk, and Secretary of Navy Robert Potter. Secretary Potter, who had been a junior
officer in the U.S. Navy, had once been jailed in North Carolina for castrating two relatives whom he suspected of having sexual relations with his wife. He was later elected to the state’s legislature but was run out of office for cheating at cards. Potter was loyal to President Burnet, and his great distaste for the characters of both General Houston and Secretary of War Rusk would soon surface.11
Burnet immediately called upon the people of East Texas to join his republic’s army against their Mexican aggressors. With the new government in place, the convention adjourned on March 18. Many delegates headed for the army or to their families. Burnet and most of his cabinet moved to a temporary station at Groce’s Retreat, a plantation located downriver from Washington-on-the-Brazos. Secretary of War Rusk was committed to protecting the citizens who remained in Washington, so he commissioned Captain Andrew Briscoe and John Henry Moore to recruit and organize a spy company for the town’s defense.
The Runaway Scrape was in full motion. Settlers continued to flee from the advancing Mexican Army. General Houston and the new government thus saw little need to maintain frontier protection via the Texas Rangers, so orders went out for the various units to join the main army. Captain Stephen Townsend’s rangers, camped on the east bank of the Colorado River in Robertson’s Colony, received the word on March 16. Captain Louis Franks’s thirty-man Robertson Colony unit was largely broken up by late March and some of its members soon became part of the army. The ten-man regional ranger company of Captain William Sadler was finishing work on Fort Houston in East Texas when they got news of the fall of the Alamo. Sadler disbanded his unit but most of his men opted to cross the Trinity River on March 19 and ride with him down the Old San Antonio Road to join the Texas Army.
Major “Three-Legged Willie” Williamson’s ranger regiment was also notified of the crisis. Captain Isaac Burton, recruiting on the Sabine, headed out with some of his men. Williamson, headquartered in Mina with the company of Captain John Tumlinson, received orders from Sam Houston on March 18 to monitor the movements of General Gaona’s upper division of the Mexican Army as it advanced. News of the tragedy in San Antonio spread panic among the remaining Mina townspeople. Williamson’s rangers sank all the ferryboats on the nearby Colorado River to prevent the Mexican Army from crossing. Tumlinson and some of his rangers were allowed leaves of absence to help escort their families to safety during the Runaway Scrape. Acting command of the remaining twenty-two Mina rangers fell upon Second Lieutenant George M. Petty.
Mexican troops soon appeared across the Colorado River, prompting Williamson and Petty to move their rangers toward the Brazos River. The unit’s advance was slowed by muddy roads and two rangers without horses. Major Williamson, eager to join the Texas Army, rode on ahead toward Washington-on-the-Brazos with two of his junior rangers. He arrived on March 20 and found John Henry Moore assembling a spy company that was known as the “Washington Guards.” Captain Joseph Bell Chance, a thirty-five-year-old from Tennessee, was elected into command by his peers—the preferred nomination style in which ranger captains gained the respect of their subordinates.
Three-Legged Willie, utilizing his power as ranger commander, took supervisory authority of Chance’s company. One-quarter of the three dozen members of the Washington Guards had already been in service with the Texas Rangers during 1836. Williamson used them to guard the ferry crossing of the Colorado River, per orders from General Houston. Any man heading eastward toward the United States was to surrender all rifles, powder, lead, and horses possible for the use of the Texas Army. Major Williamson’s rangers were to maintain such duty until Houston sent new orders or they encountered the Mexican Army.12
The various Texas Ranger companies in operation during March 1836 would eventually contribute more than eighty men to Sam Houston’s army as the campaign progressed. These seasoned frontier fighters would prove to be invaluable as scouts for the cavalry and fierce soldiers in combat.
The Texas Army spent March 18 helping frantic citizens cross over the Colorado River. The five-hundred-man army had completed its own ferrying across by late afternoon and then moved several miles farther down the river.
Houston’s scouts scoured the countryside to provide intelligence on the movements of the Mexican Army. In addition to Captain Smith, Henry Karnes was promoted into command of a second cavalry unit on the Colorado. Karnes gathered up Deaf Smith, Robert Handy, and six other horsemen and rode west of the main army to seek news on the enemy. They ate supper on the Navidad River and slept under a large oak tree in the prairie, maintaining a cold camp—no fires burning. “We took this precaution on account of the Indians, or any straggling band of Mexicans, who might have been out, like ourselves, spying,” recalled scout John Sharp. Cavalrymen Karnes, Deaf Smith, and the like would prove to be invaluable scouts—one of Sam Houston’s strongest assets in the field.13
Captain Karnes’s scouts set out on the morning of March 20 for the Beason’s Ford crossing of the Colorado. They soon found fresh horse tracks and, upon examination, Deaf Smith said that at least ten or twelve horses had passed through no more than an hour before. Smith’s men pushed forward at a brisk gait and soon came upon six Mexican soldiers on horseback who were leading other horses behind them. The Texas scouts pursued, and fired their pistols as they closed the distance. Washington “Wash” Secrest shot down one of the Mexican soldiers but the balance took shelter in the river bottomlands, abandoning their horses in the process.
Karnes and his scouts plunged into the thicket on foot, too. He, Smith, and David Murphree captured one of the enemy cavalrymen. They tied his hands behind his back and extracted intelligence from him that General Ramírez y Sesma was advancing close behind with at least six hundred infantrymen, two pieces of artillery, and at least sixty cavalrymen. The scouts hauled their prisoner back to the main Texas Army camp that evening, where his sight created quite a stir. Even more disturbing to Colonel George Hockley was the fact that one of the Mexican horses captured by Karnes contained clothing belonging to a person who had been killed in the Alamo.14
Sam Houston’s army proceeded to the Beason’s Ford crossing of the Colorado and made camp. More volunteer companies, totaling about 150 men, arrived from the lower Texas settlements. Among these new company commanders was feisty Captain Wyly Martin, a sixty-year-old Georgian who had fought with William Henry Harrison in 1812 and Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Martin was promoted to captain in the U.S. Army for his bravery, but he was forced to resign his commission in 1823 and head for Texas after challenging a man to a duel and killing him. Captain Martin’s fighting spirit would do much to energize other Texians in the weeks to come but the same boldness would prove troublesome to General Houston.15
The Texas Army positioned itself to cover Beason’s Ford. Houston also sent a fifty-man detachment under Sidney Sherman to move several miles downstream to cover the next major crossing, Dewees’s Ford. General Ramírez y Sesma’s division began arriving that day, March 20, and his men made camp at a bend in the Colorado River about midway between Dewees and Beason fords. According to General Filisola, Sesma had 725 men and two cannon when he reached the west bank of the Colorado. His men were exhausted from their march from Gonzales, and heavy rains had soaked their firearms. The general had his men dry and clean their weapons before he would entertain any thoughts of challenging the river crossings that were well guarded by the Texian rebels.16
Sherman’s detachment, having taken up station at the shallow water ford at Dewees, grew in number on March 20. He was met throughout the day by five more companies marching in to report. Captain William Ware’s eighteen-man volunteer unit, raised on the San Bernard River, had already reached the crossing by the time Sherman arrived. A short time later, they were joined by the volunteer infantry unit of Captain Joseph Bennett and the twelve-man ranger company of Captain Stephen Townsend, who had been previously mustered to control Indian attacks along the Colorado.
Sherman’s men fortified themselves by digging an entre
nchment in the sandy beach along the river’s edge. “This was designed as a defense in case of an attack by the enemy from DeWee’s Bluff on the opposite side,” noted sixteen-year-old William Physick Zuber, whose father had granted him permission to join the company of Captain William Patton. Sherman’s men were still digging their trenches when a forty-man regular army company under Captain Henry Teal arrived.17
The fifth group to reach Sherman’s force at Dewees was that of former ranger captain William Sadler, whose men had departed Fort Houston in East Texas after receiving pleas to aid the Alamo defenders. He had only seven of his former rangers with him, but Sadler’s small numbers were welcomed on March 21. Captain Teal’s regulars soon moved to join General Houston’s main body. Their arrival meant that his two musicians, Frederick Lemsky and Martin Flores, were able to bring more military process to camp. Tattoo and reveille were then played on a regular basis at dawn and in the evening to organize the troops.18
Sam Houston had his men fortify their position near Beason’s Ford by chopping down trees to build a proper breastworks. From the prisoner captured by Karnes and Smith, he learned that more than a thousand Mexican soldiers were on the march to intercept his Texas Army. He decided on March 21 to send about 150 mounted men and foot soldiers across the Colorado River to probe the enemy’s position. The detachment was under Major Benjamin Fort Smith, a thirty-seven-year-old from Kentucky who had fought under General Andrew Jackson in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.19
Major Smith led one hundred of his men toward the camp of General Ramírez y Sesma during the morning of March 22. They were spotted by Mexican guards and came under fire. Karnes and his cavalrymen retreated as Sesma’s artillerymen opened fire with the camp’s cannon. Smith had his men retreat back across the river and take up defensive positions. General Ramírez y Sesma was not eager to yet make a full-scale engagement, but a number of his riflemen did advance to the riverbanks to engage in long-range shooting against the Texas rebels. Major Smith ordered the boardinghouse and other dwellings of Benjamin Beason torched to prevent them from providing any shelter to the Mexican troops. There were no reported casualties from the little skirmish, but the surprise attack did inspire many of the Texas troops who were most eager to get on about the business of fighting a war.20
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