Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  No sooner was he home than he found that the Arkansas enterprise stood nearly as compromised. Graham had employed a virtual counterpart to Turner, Col. Isaac T. Preston of New Orleans, to go to Little Rock to investigate the Bowie claims in that territory. On October 10, the same day that James Bowie arrived in Natchez, Preston filed his first report, and it was devastating. “I regret to inform you that the impositions practiced on the United States have been much more extensive than you supposed,” he told Graham. The commissioner sent him a list of suspicious claims to check out, and on them Preston found 63 of “what are called Bowie claims,” but he then told Graham that in fact the superior court two years before passed on 117 such claims, covering “upwards of 60,000 acres.” Worse, and seemingly playing right into the Bowies' hands, the following year the court allowed claimants to withdraw their original documents from the files. However, through oversight or overconfidence, the brothers left original papers from 58 of their claims in the land offices, and now Preston had examined them. “I can prove them, by a great many witnesses of the highest character and standing,” he said, “to be forgeries.”

  Though he hoped to send these papers and others to New Orleans, where a commission might take testimony, it would be pointless unless somehow the government obtained a revision of all the confirmed claims, and the Act of Congress on Arkansas claims made no provision for rescinding bogus claims. All the time for appeal in the courts had lapsed long since, and the U.S. attorney for the territory thought it hopeless to try. Arkansas was about to become a state, and the territorial courts would not have jurisdiction long enough to bring cases to trial, he feared. Once again it looked as if James Bowie might fortuitously slip through unwitting gaps in the legal system.

  Preston felt uncertain of just how the government should proceed. “Men of the deepest thought, as well as the Bowies, are embarked in this business,” he warned (seeming to suggest thereby that the Bowies were not themselves “men of the deepest thought,” as evidenced by the carelessness of their forgeries). “I fear they are meditating something to increase and sanction their claims,” he added, and suggested that the problem merited Congress itself taking a hand. He made quite certain that the pattern was familiar. He knew of James's other activities. “The government were, in like manner, at the land office in New Orleans, defrauded out of 60,000 acres of as good lands as are in Louisiana.” Reflecting on “the insatiable character of successful fraud,” he asserted that “forgery creates no rights,” and that the Bowies must be stopped, and soon.47

  How much James or John Bowie knew just yet of Preston's investigation is uncertain, though it became common knowledge in Arkansas, and John would have picked up the news quickly enough. Within a few weeks the Little Rock press carried rumors about Preston's report and its repercussions on the “Bowie Claims,” expressing concern over the fate of those who innocently bought the land from James and John. “If there has been fraud committed,” said one editor, “it is not chargable upon Arkansas, but on the Bowies of Louisiana, who had them presented to the Court. They received the benefit of the Claims, and if the fraud which is charged exists, it rests on them, and on them alone.”48

  Moreover, when the land office called an immediate halt to further location and confirmation of surveys of any of the claims, James and John knew that their problem was serious and perhaps insurmountable. Confirmations already in hand covered just under 28,000 acres, but that left the majority of the land they sought in limbo. Worse, bills of review were about to be introduced that could set aside some of the confirmations already in hand, even though John had sold them to others by now.49 Then it came out that the drunken extortioner John Wilson also had some involvement with the Bowie claims, making their odor only the stronger.50

  By November President Andrew Jackson himself saw Preston's report and took an interest in what he termed “the case of claims called Bowie's.” He instructed Graham and the U.S. attorney for Arkansas Territory to start taking depositions and testimony in the matter, suggesting that possible legal action would be the result, and soon thereafter the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives agreed to an investigation of the Arkansas land business.51 Their findings could conceivably see the whole matter referred to the Supreme Court itself.

  Surely James Bowie thought that his homecoming could not possibly get any worse, but then it did. When he met Rezin he learned that the creditors holding notes totaling $30,860 against the tract on the Lafourche that he got from Maronges had gone to court. At the same time Jean Baptiste Montez, from whom he had purchased the adjacent tract, also went to court for the $3,000 still due him on the purchase price. The court decided in favor of the petitioners and issued a writ of fieri facias directing the seizure of the Maronges parcel, that it might be sold at sheriff's sale on September 26. Conveniently for the family, Stephen bought it at the auction, paying a mere $599.86, and at that simply paid with his note for twelve months. That kept the property in the family, but it did not relieve the creditors, who still considered their mortgages outstanding and would be ready to contest their case and obstruct clear title should the Bowies ever sell the plantation. On top of all that, smallpox broke out on the Lafourche that year, killing twenty-seven of the Bowie slaves. The steam crusher was not yet working, and the mechanic brought in to set it up was put to making coffins instead.52

  No wonder James had little stomach for staying in Louisiana. Everything had turned to dross, all his schemes stymied or exploded. Of course he still owned more land on the Lafourche, but the creditors could go after that next, and either he was simply too stubborn to pay off those huge notes, or more likely no longer had any of the windfall in cash that he realized the year before. He wintered in New Orleans as usual, but took no interest in the harvest on the plantation that now belonged to himself and Stephen.53

  Besides his impatience and tendency to rush affairs without careful forethought, Bowie also usually revealed a tenacity bordering on the stubborn, a refusal to see that the odds were against him and move on. But he simply could not ignore all that had occurred in the last few months. He had run out his string in Louisiana; it offered him nothing more except debt and failure, and perhaps eventual prosecution. Even the partnership in the plantation held few attractions. Just as the harvest and grinding season began, sugar prices started to fall, and if their steam machinery was not yet in operation, that placed them far behind others as the new technology spread into Rapides and elsewhere.54 Money tightened again. Stephen was always impecunious, and now even Rezin was forced to write to James's old foe Josiah Johnston in hopes of getting an agency to oversee timber cutting on the Louisiana coast.55

  Everything suggested that his tentative exploration of the possibilities of Texas had been well advised, and that he should close the book on Louisiana. Tocqueville had seen how “every American is eaten up with longing to rise, but hardly any of them seem to entertain very great hopes or to aim very high.” In their rush for property, reputation, and power, he thought that “few conceive such things on a grand scale.”56 Obviously the French visitor had never heard of James Bowie. He had made a stunningly bold play at exploitation here, in all laying fraudulent claim to 80,000 acres in Arkansas, and between 73,000 and 80,000 more in Louisiana. If it had succeeded he would have been whole or part owner of 250 square miles of bayou and riverfront property, and possibly another 200 square miles in 188 other Arkansas claims he had withdrawn, making him the largest landowner in the region, and in his time very possibly the largest private landholder in the United States.

  James Bowie was never a prudent man with money. If he had been, he could well have parlayed all that into a fortune that would have made him the first American millionaire west of the Mississippi. He may not have thought things through very carefully, but he certainly thought big. Now, instead, he was apparently all but broke. When one of his Terrebonne buyers made a timely installment payment of $3,333.33 on January 11, 1830, the money was welcome, but not enough.57 He had one or
two legitimate properties in the state, but nothing of significance, and no prospect of deriving anything from the vast acreage claimed under the stalled Sutton report. All that he could sell to fund a move to Texas was the balance of his land in the Lafourche plantation. On January 15, at Rezin's home on the Lafourche, he transferred his land and thirty-four slaves to Rezin and Stephen in return for $42,000, and at the same time left his power of attorney with Rezin to handle any further sale of his Terrebonne holdings, and with Stephen for any affairs in New Orleans. Even then they only paid $10,000 in hand, while they would apply the balance of $32,000 to the mortgages still owed on some of the slaves, and the debts due to Montez and the other creditors who had taken James to court.58 At that, what they agreed to pay James in hand was probably really just a note, for Rezin and Stephen were sufficiently short of cash themselves that a month later they mortgaged sixty-five slaves for $15,000 to cover debts of their own.59 James told them to have his $10,000, or as much of it as possible, forwarded from Natchez to Saltillo, Mexico. He was leaving.60

  In the end, when Bowie left Rezin's on his way to Texas, he may have had no more than $1,000 in his purse, little enough to show for a decade of energetic fraud.61 His friend Caiaphas Ham agreed to go with him, and they left Thibodeauxville late in January for the long trip up the Lafourche to Donaldsonville, then up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Red, and so on to Natchitoches.62 If he bought a horse there it could have cost him $95, but at least he knew he could turn around and sell it in Texas for up to $300 if necessary.63 Then it was horseback on the old trail to Texas, less a road than a track marked by notched and blazed trees, but still with traffic so heavy that one observer said “we saw them marching in shoals” for Texas.64 Once into Texas they would have stopped at one of the two large taverns in San Augustine, perhaps finding as did other travelers that the fare on the table was poor but not as bad as the beds.65

  Mexican law required that prospective colonists must bring with them a reference either from their former homes or else from a man of respectable stature in Texas.66 James Bowie might have had something of a problem getting a good reference from someone in Louisiana other than his brothers just now, and thus his acquaintance with Thomas F. McKinney became useful. The merchant was one of the biggest traders in Texas, widely known and respected, and moreover just at the moment commencing a partnership with Jared Groce to transport Groce's cotton by mule train to Mexico. Thus he and Bowie might well look to a mutually beneficial future association, and when Bowie reached Nacogdoches, one of his first stops after taking a room, probably at John Hyde's notoriously “quite inferior” Emigrants Hotel, was at McKinney's, where on February 13 he secured the requisite recommendation.67 It may have been rather more effusive than their slight acquaintance justified, and probably reflected McKinney's own interest in Bowie's success. Nevertheless he affirmed that “James Bowie is a gentleman who stands highly esteemed by his acquaintances and merits the attention particularly of the citizens of Texas as he is disposed to become a citizen of the country and will evidently be able to promote its general interest.” Bowie got not just the recommendation that he needed, but McKinney made it serve as well as an introduction to Stephen Austin himself, with McKinney's expressed wish that when they met the two “may concur in sentiments” and that Austin might help to further Bowie's plans.68

  When Bowie and Ham left the Nacogdoches mixture of shabby old Spanish chinked log cabins and new crisp American frame homes, they rode into the monotonous pine woods of the Great East Texas Forest again, and followed the sandy soil along the La Bahía Road until they came to Groce's store on the Brazos, not far from Robinson's ferry and the small settlement then called la Bahía, though soon to be renamed Washington.69 Now and again they came out of the forest onto wide prairies, sometimes dotted with moss-hung live oaks and cottonwoods. Bison, deer, and wild horses seemed abundant, and when they camped at night by the road the howling of wolves disturbed their sleep. A man on a horse could cover easily one hundred miles in three days, and if he stayed the night at one of the occasional “stands,” or private homes that let beds, it cost him one dollar a night for his bed, coffee, supper, breakfast, and some corn for his horse. “The whole catalog of luxuries has been erased from their cooking books,” one traveler lamented. The invariable fare was cornbread and pork, beef, or venison, with rarely either butter or milk. Often it was simply “hog and hominy.”70

  Jared Groce was another good man to know, by some accounts the richest in the region. Here they remained well into March, Bowie and Groce talking of the cotton potential and meanwhile exploring the countryside. Bowie and Ham rode on south the thirty miles to San Felipe more than once while staying at Groce's, and now he finally met Austin for the first time.71 The empresario was only a year older than Bowie, university educated, with a career full of business and politics before he came to Texas in 1821 to assist his father in colonization under a grant from Mexico. He had been quite successful, virtually ruling the colony until he turned over much of his power to an elected council or ayuntamiento, and thereafter concentrated much of his time on encouraging immigration and business and overseeing land affairs in his colony. Most of all he tried to insulate his norteamericano settlers from the continuing factional politics in Mexico, which seemed constantly fluctuating from anarchy to military despotism and back again. As the population in Texas swelled, and as more empresarios brought in settlers with no allegiance to Austin, it became increasingly difficult to attempt to maintain control and quell dissent. Certainly Bowie and Austin met each other politely and established what appeared to be cordial personal relations, though it is just possible that stories of Bowie's Louisiana and Arkansas activities may have reached Austin. There were many coming to Texas now who knew of Bowie's reputation, and Austin himself felt a growing aversion to land speculators. Nevertheless, if Bowie's cotton mill scheme came to fruition, it would be wonderful for Texas, and on that basis he certainly had Austin's support.

  While in San Felipe, Bowie and Ham also met with other locals, such as Austin's principal assistant, Samuel May Williams, secretary of the ayuntamiento. Jane Long was there from time to time, too, and though society was slim, such as there was the people enjoyed. Very few single women lived in the village, making thoughts of Ursula all the sweeter and Bowie the more anxious to move on to San Antonio. When a “ball” was held, it often as not involved no women at all, with the result that “stag parties were a bit convivial.” Godwin Cotton sometimes simply gathered several men at his home, gave them a dinner, and required each to provide a few minutes of entertainment to the rest in whatever manner he could manage.72

  Bowie stayed sometimes at Peyton's inn, but may well have frequented James Whitesides's as well, for that was where the land hunters seemed to congregate. Of a piece with Bowie in the main, they were well limned by Tocqueville, who observed the exemplar of such men being fearless either of native arrows, wild beasts, or the hundred solitary dangers of the wilderness: “A passion stronger than love of life goads him on,” he found. “An almost limitless continent stretches before him, and he seems in such a hurry not to arrive too late that one might think him afraid of finding no room left.”73 The Frenchman might almost have been portraying Bowie in particular. Most were Louisianians like himself, some of them men of intelligence, but not a few fugitives from justice. At the breakfast table one morning a visitor counted four murderers, and Texas brag said that eleven such broke bread at the same board on one occasion. They all blamed their misfortunes on others, presenting themselves as victims of circumstances “in which it was necessary to violate the laws, while they admitted no criminality in their conduct.” Among the most common questions after a stranger sat down to eat were where had he come from, and why had he come.74“There may be ‘murderers and outlaws’ among them,“ said another visitor about now, “and some few perhaps, who, tired of waiting for a general jubilee, fled their country to shake off the burden of debt.” But none of them were idlers. No one had any t
ime for the lazy or for the tinhorn sharper, “and this class of emigrants either reform from necessity, or leave the country in disgust.”75 Certainly there were men here whose pasts were a match for James Bowie's, and many a one whose criminal deeds far exceeded his in violence if not enterprise. Yet for any who had heard of that increasingly well known battle on the Natchez sandbar thirty months earlier, and who saw now that same long knife sheathed at his belt, they knew that this new man among them had the grit to make his way in Texas, and even to bend Texas to his way.

  Before leaving San Felipe Bowie gathered to himself a number of other people either interested in his cotton enterprise or else simply anxious for his company and protection during their own anticipated journey deeper into Mexico. Groce's son Jared junior of course could represent his father's interests in negotiation for the cotton deal, and may well have represented some of his father's money that Bowie expected to attract to the enterprise. Groce's daughter and son-in-law William Wharton decided to come along. Being an attorney, he, too, could look after Groce's interests, and Bowie himself was always comfortable in the company of lawyers. As it happened, Wharton was also one of the more outspoken proponents for taking an aggressive stand with the Mexicans, and if anyone spoke of eventual Texian independence, Wharton listened sympathetically. There was also Isaac Donoho, a Tennesseean just arrived in Texas who had some capital to invest, and to whom Bowie paid speedy and earnest attentions. Since they all wanted to go to the provincial capital at Saltillo, they needed passports, which Austin provided, along with letters of introduction to Veramendi and to another influential tejano, Juan Erasmo Seguín.76