Other men refused to move north as well. Captain John Bird and a portion of his men decided to stay in town to ensure that a certain barrel of whiskey did not go wasted. Lieutenant John McAllister took the balance of Bird’s company and joined Captain Baker at the river crossing. The army, having reached its largest size at about fourteen hundred men, now faced two hundred men splitting off as the retreat continued.21
Deaf Smith and scout John York arrived with news they had spotted an advance Mexican guard within a few miles of San Felipe. Although the “cavalrymen” were later determined to be a distant herd of cattle, the report was apparently enough to cause Houston to order Baker’s men to burn down Stephen Austin’s original town. Baker’s third sergeant, Moses Bryan, refused to do so when he was asked to supervise the destruction. “I did not want to be the one who destroyed the first town my uncle Stephen F. Austin had laid out in the beginning of his colonization enterprise,” he reflected.22
General Houston would flatly deny issuing such orders, but the fact of the matter is that Santa Anna’s troops would have soon looted and burned the town anyway. Houston turned to Isaac Moreland of Captain William Logan’s company and asked if he had heard any direct orders to burn the settlement.23
“General, I have no recollection of it,” Moreland said.
“Yet they blame me for it,” Houston muttered.
The entire town was a raging inferno as he led his men on a two-day march north to the Groce plantation. En route, Houston wrote a sharp letter to Secretary of War Rusk in which he criticized the Texas government for retreating from Washington to Groce’s and now down to Harrisburg. “Your removal to Harrisburg has done more to increase the panic in the country than anything else that has occurred in Texas, except the fall of the Alamo.” Houston added that he conferred with no man outside of Colonel Hockley in reaching his decision to move out. “Had I consulted the wishes of all,” he wrote, “I should have been like the ass between two stacks of hay.”24
Houston found few true friends within his army aside from Hockley and his trusted top scout, Deaf Smith. He was able to confer with the short, sturdy frontiersmen in solitary engagements. Smith was not entirely deaf but he was unable to follow an ordinary conversation, especially in a crowd. When Sam needed to get a point across to old ’Rastus, he could do so well enough as long as he was addressing Smith face-to-face.25
The march to Groce’s was challenged by steady rains that turned the road into bogs. Troops labored at clearing the timber and brush in areas that were not wide enough for the baggage wagons. Private Felix G. Wright, who had become gravely ill, died the next morning and was buried in camp. Colonel George Hockley recorded his passing as the first Texian death of the campaign.26
Two other companies from the upper Red River settlements, those of Captains William Kimbro and Benjamin Bryant, joined with the army during its move toward Groce’s. Kimbro’s company was ordered to assist Captain Baker’s men in guarding the San Felipe river crossing. Houston’s army made camp on the afternoon of March 31 on the west bank of the Brazos while work parties continued to widen the road ahead for the remainder of the march. Houston and Hockley estimated that approximately eight hundred men remained with their main contingent.27
General Houston’s men proceeded to camp for the next two weeks in their new location west of the Brazos River, opposite Groce’s Landing. George Hockley wrote that the new camp was “in a secure and effective position, with excellent water from a lake immediately ahead” near the road leading to Groce’s ferry. In sharp contrast, Dr. Nicholas Labadie felt that the army now pitched its tents in a deep ravine that was nothing more than a “miserable hole.” Houston did find relief in the fact that the 144-ton steamboat Yellow Stone of Captain John E. Ross was at the landing, taking on cotton from the Bernardo Plantation of Leonard Groce. He placed a guard detail aboard the riverboat and pressed its seventeen-man crew into service of the army in case its services were needed to move the troops across the river.28
The cold, rainy weather helped spread a few cases of measles, so Houston had the sick men transported across the river to a field hospital established on the opposite bank on April 1. The army had at least eight skilled doctors to help tend to the wounded, including surgeon general Alexander Wray Ewing, a twenty-seven-year-old Irishman who had studied his trade in Edinburgh. Few of the doctors enjoyed their task of treating the sick, many of whom increasingly suffered diarrhea from drinking foul water. Dr. Anson Jones, for one, demanded that he be permitted to maintain his rank as a private soldier and resign his medical duties once action was imminent.29
Houston received welcome news in the fact that a pair of much-needed cannon were en route to his army from the coastal port of Velasco. The pair of artillery pieces had been cast by leading citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio, to aid the Texans in their war for independence. They had been transported down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, where they were moved on a sailing ship to the Texas Gulf Coast. Aboard the packet sailing for Texas was the family of Dr. Christopher Columbus Rice. Those on board the vessel suggested a formal presentation of the cannon be made and that Rice’s twin daughters should act as sponsors. The pair of American artillery pieces were thereafter dubbed the “Twin Sisters.”30
The news that the artillery would soon reach his army compelled Houston to promote Leander Smith from captain of the Nacogdoches Volunteers to major of artillery on April 1. While he waited, General Houston used the time to drill his green troops on proper military discipline. Two of his soldiers were brought up on formal court-martial charges for insubordination and desertion. A review board of a dozen Texas Army officers on April 2 found both men guilty and sentenced them to be shot to death the next day. General Houston approved the proceedings and declared that Captain Richard Roman’s company of regulars was to carry out the executions at noon.31
If Houston hoped to use the rebellious soldiers as an example, his point was made with the rest of his troops. Captain Amasa Turner and two others from his company petitioned the general the next day to pardon one of the condemned men—Private Abraham Scales, who had deserted from their company and been captured. Houston gave in to their wishes and Scales was released. Days later, he would successfully desert the Texas Army again.32
Sam Houston pushed the execution of the second prisoner, Private John T. Garner, back one day. This time he allowed the execution process to be carried out until the last possible second. Teenagers like John Swisher and Bob Hunter were shocked as their companies were made to parade in formation for the execution. “The grave was dug and a coffin was there,” Hunter related. “The man was blindfolded, and made to kneel on the ground by the coffin, and there was 12 men to shoot him.” Captain Robert Calder found the affair to be a “solemn and impressive” ceremony.33
Captain Roman gave the order, “Present arms. Take aim.”
At that moment, Colonel Hockley raced up and hollered for Roman to halt the execution. He and Houston played the drama to the last possible second before granting clemency to Private Garner. Houston wrote in his reprieve that he hoped the mercy he had shown would be repaid with good conduct and strict obedience to all army regulations. He then took the opportunity to advise his entire army as they stood at attention that any further prisoners found guilty of mutiny and desertion “will suffer the penalty of the law.” The near-death experience served its intended purpose with John Garner: he would remain loyal to the Texian cause for the remainder of the campaign.34
GENERAL SANTA ANNA HAD fewer discipline concerns with his men.
He had crushed the enemy’s resistance in San Antonio, and his subordinates had literally wiped out the Texas rebels in the Goliad area. By late March, his troops were dispersed to put down aggression in several sectors. General Antonio Gaona was on the march toward Nacogdoches with artillery and seven hundred men. Colonel Augustin Amat moved on March 27 toward San Felipe with the Sapper Battalion and most of the Guadalajara Battalion. The “Great Napoleon of the West
” hoped to surround Sam Houston’s troops, with Gaona moving in from the northeast and General Urrea’s thirteen-hundred-man division coming up from the south through Victoria. Houston’s men would be followed by General Ramírez y Sesma’s men until the other divisions could close in.35
Lieutenant Colonel Peña led his First Infantry Brigade from San Antonio de Béxar at 4 P.M. on March 29. Heavy rains caused General Santa Anna to linger in Béxar until March 31, when he, his staff, and thirty dragoons finally departed. El Presidente’s group caught up with Colonel Amat’s division near the Guadalupe River on April 2. He hoped to punish the rebellious colonists swiftly, but heavy rains had swollen the Guadalupe. Santa Anna was delayed several days in crossing the river. He soon became annoyed with the lack of progress, leaving General Vicente Filisola behind to help his army shepherd their wagon trains and artillery over the angry river.
Santa Anna pushed on toward the Colorado River to rendezvous with Sesma’s forces. He soon learned that the Texas Army was nowhere to be found in early April. Sam Houston and his rebels—the last faction of Texians in need of eradication—appeared to Santa Anna at the moment to have “completely disappeared.”36
12
THE FORK IN THE ROAD
PRESIDENT DAVID BURNET WAS also wondering just what General Houston was doing.
His cabinet, now keeping time in Harrisburg near the Gulf Coast, was discontented with Sam Houston’s apparent unwillingness to engage the Mexican Army. The fact that Houston had sent letters condemning the “flight of the wise men” of the Texas government did little to soothe the nerves of the republic’s top executives. In a meeting with his cabinet, Burnet decided that Secretary of War Thomas Rusk should be sent to find the general “to stop a further retreat of our army, and to bring the enemy to battle.” Colonel Robert Potter read the orders aloud to Rusk, informing him of his authorization to take command of the Texas Army, if necessary.1
On April 3 Colonel Rusk reached San Felipe, where he sent words of encouragement to Captain Wyly Martin for his efforts in continuing to hold the key Brazos River crossing at Fort Bend. The first news of the massacre of Colonel Fannin’s men in Goliad was just making the rounds this day. William Haddin, the first of the twenty-eight survivors to reach friendly forces, was originally thought to be the only man to escape death.2
George Erath, the Austrian-born surveyor who had made his first campaign in Texas with rangers in August 1835, learned more of military procedure as a Texas Army volunteer. Sam Houston finally had time to begin training his recruits during the rainy days in camp near Groce’s Landing. “The delay had a good effect in disciplining us, and giving us information about military tactics,” Erath recalled. The general forced his men to stand round-the-clock guard details, often spent “knee-deep in water.” Erath, a member of Captain Jesse Billingsley’s company, benefited from the drills but found little variety in the food available near the Brazos River: “Supplies were beef principally, scant of salt, an ear of corn for a man a day, which had to be ground on a steel mill.”3
Sam Houston was prone to curse out those whose who defied him or impeded his army’s progress. But he was also seen to display a fatherly side to some in times of need or when he needed to instill some motivation. One young volunteer approached Houston in Groce’s camp to seek advice on his soaked firearm.4
“General, I’ve got my gun wet and it won’t fire,” he said. “What shall I do with it?”
Houston calmly explained that the soldier should warm his pocket handkerchief by the fire, open the gun’s powder pan, wrap the handkerchief around the lock, and let it remain for several seconds.
“Repeat the operation two or three times, then pick a little dry powder into the touchhole,” said the general. “I think you’ll have no difficulty in blowing the bullet out.”
A small crowd had gathered to watch their commander in chief school the young recruit. After the general retired to his tent, Private John Swisher noted that some of the men could not resist having some fun with Houston. Another young man new to the army announced that his old flintlock was broken. He was told to go see the camp blacksmith, and was pointed toward the tent of Sam Houston.
He appeared in the general’s tent, saying, “I can’t make my gun stand cocked. What shall I do with it?”
“Go to hell!” Houston snapped as he realized the prank. “Damn it, I’m no gunsmith!”
The young soldier retreated, leaving his weapon behind. In solitude, Houston removed the gun lock, cleaned the old flintlock piece, and reassembled it. The boy was soon informed by the camp fun-lovers that he had not visited the blacksmith but instead the army’s top man. He was urged to go beg forgiveness, and he did so with his hat off, trembling as he explained his mistake to Houston.5
He was surprised by the generosity now displayed by General Houston, who was well aware that he was the cause of the snickering outside his tent. “My friend, they told you right,” he said. “I am a very good blacksmith.”
Houston snapped the gun several times and handed it back to the soldier. “She is in good order now,” said Houston. “I hope you are going to do some good fighting.”
THOMAS RUSK REACHED THE Texas Army camp on the evening of April 4. He was met by a number of the more rebellious officers who were displeased with their general’s continual retreating from the Mexican Army. Many hoped that Colonel Rusk would use his authorization to seize command of the troops.
Colonel Rusk, however, was able to see past the venting to coolly analyze the situation. He soon realized the former Tennessee governor, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was doing all he could to hold together such a motley bunch of men: American mercenaries, volunteer colonists, and a few companies of uniformed regulars. Rusk gave his support to Houston and proceeded to appoint Stephen Austin’s nephew, Moses Austin Bryan, as his own staff secretary and interpreter soon after his arrival in camp. Houston was itching to acquire fieldpieces for his troops and had sent his new artillery captain, Leander Smith, to Harrisburg to fetch the two artillery pieces. The Twin Sisters from Cincinnati were loaded on board the steamboat Ohio and moved from Galveston to Harrisburg, where they would arrive on April 8.
During this waiting period, Houston and President Burnet continued to duel with each other in ink. In response to Burnet’s latest critical letter, Houston fired back on April 6: “I hope a just and wise God, in whom I have always believed, will yet save Texas.” Secretary of War Rusk displayed his support for Houston in his own update to Burnet. “I find the Army in fine spirits, ready and willing to measure arms with the enemy,” Rusk wrote. He estimated the total Texian strength to be fifteen hundred men, although a portion of this number was detached guarding the major river crossings.6
The main body of the army was suffering in its rank position. The most ill were moved across the Brazos River to the field hospital established on Jared Groce’s Bernardo Plantation. More men fell ill by drinking stagnant water, adding dysentery to the measles outbreak that had already swept through the lines.
General Santa Anna did not have to ponder Sam Houston’s whereabouts for very long after his staff caught up to Ramírez y Sesma’s troops on the Colorado. They marched into the torched town of San Felipe on April 7 and surprised three of Captain Baker’s guards who were sleeping near the river. Two escaped across the Brazos but Private Bill Simpson was seized by Mexican cavalrymen. Under interrogation, he told Santa Anna that Houston’s rebels were camped in the woods near Groce’s Landing and numbered about eight hundred. El Presidente had snipers take shots at Baker’s company, entrenched across the river. The Texans fired back, killing two soldiers and a mule during the day.7
The skirmishing intensified the next morning. Private Isaac Hill was awakened in his trench by the booming of a Mexican artillery piece from across the river. “Many rounds of roundshot, grape, and canister were discharged at us, throwing the sand upon us and knocking the bark from the cottonwood trees that extended their branches upon us,” he said. Private John Bricker
of Baker’s company was killed by grapeshot striking his head as he moved about to retrieve spent cannonballs—thus becoming the first casualty of enemy action on General Houston’s campaign. The Texans returned fire throughout the day, trying to suppress the Mexican soldiers’ steady work of building wooden rafts for use in crossing the river.8
Near Groce’s Landing, Sam Houston and Colonel Rusk took the time on April 8 to better organize their army. They created a Second Regiment of Infantry, placing Colonel Sidney Sherman and Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bennett in command. The original First Regiment of Infantry remained under Colonel Ed Burleson, with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Somervell now his second in command. The regular companies of Captains Amasa Turner and Henry Teal were placed under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Millard.9
Although the booming of the Mexican cannon at San Felipe could be heard from the Texian camp, Houston held most of his men in check. He sent Lieutenant Colonel Bennett with forty-five men to reinforce Captain Baker while he struggled with the rising number of sick men in his filthy river bottom camp. General Santa Anna took some 550 grenadiers and infantrymen on April 9 and moved down the west bank of the Brazos, away from Groce’s. He left General Ramírez y Sesma and about 850 men to continue firing on Baker’s troops and to finish building the river rafts. Santa Anna’s force reached the tavern of widow Elizabeth Powell on the San Bernard River on the evening of April 10. They pushed on the next day toward the next major crossing point of the Brazos River, Thompson’s Ferry, near Fort Bend.10
Moseley Baker’s San Felipe detachment fell back from the Brazos to Iron’s Creek on April 9. He sent word to General Houston the following day that the majority of the Mexican soldiers were on the move. Word also reached President Burnet in Harrisburg that Santa Anna’s army was preparing to cross the Brazos. He wrote angrily to Sam Houston that his intelligence told him the Mexicans had “jeeringly threatened to smoke him out” of his Brazos bottomlands campground. “The enemy are laughing you to scorn,” Burnet said. “You must retreat no further. The country expects you to fight. The salvation of the country depends on your doing so.”11
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