Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  11

  “DAMNED ANXIOUS

  TO FIGHT”

  SIDNEY SHERMAN WAS PROVING to be quite capable with his small command at Dewees’s Ford.

  On the morning of March 23, his spies overpowered three Mexican soldiers who were out foraging for food. They were marched under armed guard that afternoon into General Houston’s camp, where they were interrogated by Moses Austin Bryan of Captain Baker’s company. A nephew of empresario Stephen F. Austin, Bryan was fluent in Spanish. He learned that General Ramírez y Sesma’s troops, camped on the opposite bank of the Colorado about three miles away, were struggling with meager clothing in the cold weather but had plans to build a boat for crossing the river.1

  Sam Houston sent written updates to his new superior, Secretary of War Thomas Rusk. The general was worn down from lack of sleep and nearly two days’ time he had gone without eating. Houston had been “in constant apprehension of a rout” and was greatly disturbed by the panic created by some of his men who had deserted in recent days. An additional curse on his command was the humanitarian efforts his men had to afford the homeless families of the Runaway Scrape, who sought his protection at every turn.2

  Houston informed Rusk that he had just received news via courier that Colonel Fannin’s men had been attacked a few miles from La Bahía. The results of the encounter were still not known to him, but the general blasted the man who had refused to follow his orders to abandon Goliad. “If what I have heard from Fannin be true, I deplore it, and can only attribute the ill luck to his attempting to retreat in daylight in the face of a superior force,” he wrote. “He is an ill-fated man.” Houston also criticized President Burnet’s government for retreating from Washington and leaving a full company of good men under Major Williamson to guard the river crossing there. His army had just received forty-eight extra muskets and ammunition, and he knew that Sesma’s nearby force was no larger than seven hundred men. Given more volunteers, Houston vowed, “We can beat them.”

  The general’s own troops were growing restless with guarding three river crossings. Sherman, motivated by his recent reinforcements, requested that he be allowed to make an attack on the Mexicans. He was ordered not to provoke an attack, as tejano Tony Menchaca recalled: “Houston told them that not a single man should move out, that the Mexicans were only trying to draw him out and ascertain his strength, which he did not intend to let them know.”3

  Several important Washington-area citizens joined the Texas Army at the Colorado crossing. Of them, Houston was pleased to add proper medical attention to his troops in the form of thirty-eight-year-old Dr. Anson Jones, a graduate of the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. Also arriving was Colonel John Austin Wharton, a Texas Army agent recently returned from securing supplies in New Orleans. He joined Houston’s staff as adjutant general, a position that Major Ben Smith had been filling in the interim. Houston also took the advice of President Burnet in adding to his staff Dr. James Hazard Perry, a former New Yorker who had studied at West Point.

  General Ramírez y Sesma’s nearby troops were reinforced while Houston loitered near the Colorado. General Eugenio Tolsa arrived on March 24 with his two battalions, fifty horses, and an additional artillery piece—bringing their combined force to 1,300 troops and 150 cavalrymen. The Texian troops were further disheartened on the night of March 25 when a volunteer named Peter Kerr arrived from Goliad. He brought word that Colonel Fannin’s command had been overtaken and captured by the enemy. Soldier William Zuber felt the news so intimidated the troops that General Houston acted to preserve their courage by denouncing Kerr as a spy.4

  Houston put his troops on the move again the next day. His opponents were growing in number, including cavalry, infantrymen, and even artillery. He did not expect a favorable outcome with battle at this point: many of his men were untrained and he had no artillery pieces yet. He consulted none of his staff in making the decision on March 26 to fall back to the Brazos River. He merely stated to some of his men that they needed to find new grass for the army’s horses and mules to graze on.5

  At the time, his volunteer force had swelled to perhaps thirteen hundred men—many of whom were not eager to be retreating from General Sesma’s troops. General Houston moved about in animated style, barking at his men to get moving. Heavyset wagonmaster James Wilson swore profusely, saying that he had worn out his shoes on the march to the Colorado and now his legs and feet were torn up from walking through sawbrier plants. Houston in turn cursed the man and ordered him to get his teams moving. Pointing at his bloodied feet, Wilson snapped, “Do you think I am going to drive a wagon for a damned little one-horse army and my feet in that fix?”6

  Scout Daniel Shipman noted that Houston then offered up his own boots to Wilson in order to get the belligerent man moving. Many of the volunteers murmured their discontent about falling back. James Tarlton considered it a “shameful retreat.” Private John Swisher felt that “nine-tenths of the army was anxious to fight.” In hindsight, he admitted, “There are times when it requires more courage to retreat than to stand and fight, and this was the case at the Colorado.” As many as two hundred men left the army at this point, opting to go take care of their families since the army showed no signs of fighting soon.7

  Sidney Sherman, still stationed at Dewees’s Ford with three hundred troops, was also disturbed to be falling back. His command had just been joined by another volunteer company from Nacogdoches, to whom he assigned Captain Sadler’s eight rangers. Sherman’s men reluctantly loaded up beef from freshly slaughtered cattle and followed their orders to rejoin General Houston’s main body. They marched about seven miles and made camp around midnight in the river bottomlands.8

  Sherman’s force was on the move again early on March 27. Prior to reaching the Texas Army, they were greeted by three new companies under Major John Forbes, with upwards of 150 men. The first to arrive on March 26 was the company of Captain Amasa Turner, who had visited the saloons in New Orleans to round up American volunteers for the revolution. His group sailed from Louisiana but faced great difficulty in making it to Texas soil when their vessel was wrecked on a sandbar off Velasco. Once ashore, the Americans were organized into companies during late January and early February. Two other infantry companies were mustered in under the command of Captains William S. Fisher and Richard Roman.9

  Major John Forbes, an aide-de-camp of General Houston, had moved from Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 5 to forward troops to the army. He arrived in Velasco and found the New Orleans–raised infantrymen to be fully armed and ready for action. Captain Fisher’s company had been in Texas longer than the Americans under Captains Roman and Turner, but the whole lot was a true melting pot of cultures. The occupations of the new Forbes battalion ranged widely: farmers, carpenters, printers, clerks, a musician, and even a Baptist minister from Georgia. While most had been born in the United States, Forbes found his volunteers also included immigrants from England, Italy, Scotland, Germany, Poland, France, and Portugal.10

  Forbes procured sufficient wagons and ox teams from local citizens and began a forced march up the Brazos River past the town of Columbia. Captain Turner’s company reached Sidney Sherman’s division by 11 A.M. on March 26. The companies detailed to march with the ox teams and wagons, those of Roman and Fisher, were another fifteen hours in making their rendezvous.

  Captain Robert Calder was as eager as any to figure out old Sam Houston’s plans. He rode alongside the general during some of the retreat from Beason’s Ford toward San Felipe. Calder commented that the Texians could have whipped Sesma’s troops at the Colorado, but that he guessed Houston was hoping to draw the enemy deeper into the heart of the Anglo settlements before fighting. Houston agreed, offering that more supplies and more men would be available, and that any casualties would have been impossible to transport away from the Colorado River area.11

  “You may tell those fellows who are so damned anxious to fight,” Houston remarked to Calder, “that before long they shall have
it to their heart’s content.”

  Sherman’s men were still roasting a freshly slaughtered cow when the main contingent of General Houston’s army finally reunited with them shortly before noon on March 27 at the San Bernardo River. The Texas Army continued its retreat throughout the day, covering some twenty miles before halting at 9 P.M. near the home of Samuel May Williams—located on Spring Creek, just two miles from San Felipe.

  Several new volunteers had joined Houston during the day’s march, the most notable being a trio previously attached to the command of Colonel Fannin. Thomas Jefferson Adams, Garrett E. Boom, and Dr. John Walker Baylor each joined one of the volunteer companies, with hopes they would soon be able to effect some revenge on Santa Anna’s army. They had been among the mounted horsemen of Captain Albert Horton’s command who escaped the Coleto Creek battle on March 19. Their last sight of Fannin’s troops showed them to be hopelessly surrounded on an open prairie in the midst of a terrific battle.

  JAMES WALKER FANNIN AND his 375 Goliad defenders had spent a week as prisoners of war in a 113-year-old Spanish mission.

  The old La Bahía presidio that Fannin had renamed Fort Defiance was filthy, cramped, and the scene of great suffering. Captain Jack Shackelford found that throughout it all “Colonel Fannin was quite cheerful, and we talked pleasantly of the prospect of our reaching the United States.” The wounded men suffered with poor medical attention, and all of the Texians struggled to take in enough rations to survive. Some used whatever money they had to buy a meager corn tortilla, hardly enough food to feed a child.

  Abel Morgan, tasked by Mexican soldiers with tending to the wounded, reported that they were only allowed to feed them the soup of a stillborn calf boiled in a large copper kettle. “I cut the feet off and threw them down close to the kettle,” Morgan related. “Some of our men came and picked up those feet and roasted them and ate them, hide and all.”12

  General Urrea was given direction by Santa Anna to execute the “perfidious foreigners” being held at Goliad. Perceiving some reluctance from Urrea, Santa Anna sent orders on March 23 directly to the twenty-seven-year-old officer in command of the La Bahía fortress, Lieutenant Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla. The Texans were not to be treated as prisoners but rather as pirates who should be immediately executed. Portilla received the command on March 26 and, though it weighed heavily on his moral convictions, he passed the word that the Texians were to be shot at dawn.

  Soon after sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, Colonel Portilla carried out El Presidente’s orders. Twenty men were spared their lives because of their value as physicians, interpreters, orderlies, or mechanics. The kind and brave intervention of Colonel Francisco Garay and a Mexican woman named Francita Alavez also helped spare some. The other 370 Texans were divided into three separate groups. Young Charles Shain believed the Mexicans intended to comply with their truce and would simply march them to Matamoros for the duration of the revolution. “The first division was led out on the Victoria road,” he wrote. “The second, the division I belonged to, was taken out on the San Antonio Road.” Shain’s group was moved toward the San Antonio River. As they reached a brush fence, he suddenly heard a firing of guns commence either in or near Fort Defiance.13

  The guards immediately ordered Shain’s division to halt. The rear of the group was still coming to a stop when one of the Mexican officers barked, “Prepare!” Shain stared in horror as the infantrymen only yards away from the Texans raised their guns level and began firing. Dozens of men dropped instantly as lead bullets ripped through their chests and foreheads. The scene was played out at the same time through the other Texas divisions as they were summarily executed at point-blank range.

  Some were merely wounded by the first volleys fired at them. Others survived the first shots when bullets tore into an adjacent man or when a few of the old Brown Bess muskets had a flash in the pan and failed to fire on the first strike. Those who could do so fought back or immediately fled for the nearby San Antonio River. Artillery captain Benjamin Holland desperately smashed a Mexican soldier in the face with his fist, ripped away the soldier’s rifle, and sprinted for the river. John C. Duval was not hit but he collapsed under the weight of a fellow Texan who was shot in front of him. Duval wisely played dead until the Mexicans took off in pursuit of fleeing Texans before he headed for the water.14

  Sergeant Isaac D. Hamilton had his left thigh shredded by a ball from the first volley. He ran for his life and was bayoneted in the right thigh in the process. Somehow, in the midst of the killing frenzy, he escaped through waist-high prairie grass into the nearby timber. Former cavalryman William Haddin made it across the river but the three Texans he fled with were not as fortunate. Many of those who reached the river were shot along its banks or were picked off as they swam. Hundreds of the Texans were killed by either the first rifle volleys or were cut down with sabers and guns as they fled. Miraculously, at least twenty-eight of them escaped, many badly wounded.15

  One who survived against all odds was William L. Hunter. He had been shot, stabbed with a bayonet, clubbed with the butt of a gun, stripped, and finally had his throat partially slashed. After nightfall, Hunter managed to crawl away and hide in a thicket. He was later found by a kindly Mexican woman who brought him food and water until he was able to set out for help. The first volley missed Charles Shain and he raced for the river. “While I was swimming they shot five times at me, at a distance of not more than fifty yards,” he wrote. He met fellow survivor Daniel Murphy—wounded in the left knee—on the other shore and took cover during the next few hours while Mexican soldiers chased down and slaughtered every Texan they could catch. They moved about two miles to some heavy timber and found another survivor, John Williams, hiding in a treetop. The trio remained hidden until nightfall before moving toward Coleto Creek overnight.

  Inside the La Bahía mission, the men who were too wounded to walk were put to death under the direction of Captain Carolino Huerta of the Tres Villas battalion. Colonel Fannin, suffering from the bullet wound to his thigh, had to be helped to the courtyard of Fort Defiance. Joseph H. Spohn, one of the Texians being spared for his skills as an interpreter, was ordered to convey to Fannin that he was being chastised by the Mexican government “for having come with an armed band to commit depredations and revolutionize Texas.”16

  Fannin was denied his request to speak to Colonel Portilla. He then offered Captain Huerta his gold watch, a small purse of doubloons, and a double handful of cash from his overcoat. Fannin asked in return for these gifts that he be given a proper burial and that they spare scorching his face by shooting him in the chest. He then sat down on a chair and was blindfolded. Huerta pocketed the cash and gold watch, and had Fannin shot through the face. Instead of a Christian burial, his body was later thrown upon a funeral pyre with the other victims.17

  Approximately 341 Texians were slain in what became known as the Goliad Massacre. Lieutenant Colonel Portilla reported to General Urrea that he felt “much distressed” over carrying out Santa Anna’s orders. “It is my duty to do what is commanded me, even though repugnant to my feelings.” Santa Anna could have hauled his prisoners to Mexico or shipped them off to the United States. By choosing to execute and butcher entire companies of both U.S. and Texian volunteers, he had succeeded only in creating an image of himself as the most barbaric of murderers.18

  Those who had been spared and the twenty-eight who escaped would in due time relate the horrors they had witnessed. Charles Shain, Daniel Murphy, and John Williams fell in with two more survivors of the Goliad Massacre the next day. They continued their flight for five days without any proper food. “On the sixth in the morning, we found a small turtle,” Shain related. “We immediately kindled a fire and cooked and ate it.” Feeling rejuvenated from such a meager meal, the survivors pushed on toward the Guadalupe River, hoping to make contact with anyone from the Texas Army.

  SAM HOUSTON’S REBELS WERE on the move again on March 28, ignorant of the cold-blooded massacr
e that had taken place the previous day in Goliad.

  The Texas Army moved from the Samuel Williams homestead into San Felipe de Austin, where the companies were furnished with all the clothing and supplies the town could offer. The merchants were issued promissory notes. It was little surprise to many when the word was passed on March 29 that the Texas general had no intention of making a stand at San Felipe. Instead, Houston had decided to move upriver to Groce’s Landing, the settlement of fifty-four-year-old Jared Ellison Groce, the richest man of Austin’s Colony. He hoped to find food supplies there. He had also learned the steamboat Yellow Stone was at Groce’s Landing, taking on cotton for transport down the Brazos.

  A direct-line march would be fifteen miles, but following the snaking Brazos would stretch the journey to twenty. Captains Moseley Baker and Wyly Martin at this point refused to retreat any farther. At age sixty, Martin had been a captain under Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, where Houston had been a lieutenant. Martin now found it difficult to continue retreating under a leader seventeen years younger and once his subordinate. General Houston wisely opted not to call out his recalcitrant juniors and risk dividing his volunteer army.19

  He rode back and issued orders for Captain Baker to post his company on the east bank of the Brazos, opposite San Felipe, to prevent the Mexican Army from crossing. Baker had already sent seven of his men to do this hours earlier. Captain Martin was similarly directed to station his men at the key crossing of Fort Bend, or Old Fort, located twenty-five miles downstream from San Felipe.20