Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  By January 16 they were ready, though their orders, if any, were loose. The Rio Grande lay 300 miles away, and San Antonio, a probable point of defense, nearly 280. Governing authorities lay divided themselves as to the next move, whether to await Santa Anna's coming, or send an expedition to Matamoros. In the absence of specific orders, Forbes no doubt simply suggested that Crockett take his small company toward San Felipe, where the consultation of (now) Gen. Sam Houston could decide where to send them. Expecting to spend not a few days out in the open now, and with the rain and cold blasts of winter expected, Crockett drew a small tent from the local military supplier, bid farewell to Nacogdoches, and set off on the La Bahía.113 Those of them who could write sent letters back to their old homes in the United States before they left, for hereafter mail service would be increasingly chancy. Young Daniel Cloud sent home what amounted to an assertion of American manifest destiny. “The tide of emigration will be onward and irresistible,” he said. Inevitably Americans must have Texas, and spread on west, even beyond the Rocky Mountains. “The prospect is grand, too much so for my feeble power of description to compass,” he continued. “We go with arms in our hands, determined to conquer or die.”114

  David Crockett, too, sent a letter home to Tennessee, though only one, for time did not allow him to write more, and he had been working on this one desultorily for days. He said nothing of conquest, but spoke only of his prospects. “I am rejoiced at my fate,” he wrote. All his bad fortune was about to turn around. He would achieve wealth and renewed station here in this newer world, and promised to do the best he could. “Do not be uneasy about me,” he said before he rode off toward the revolution. “I am with my friends.”115

  17

  BOWIE

  1833-1835

  Bowie, and others cry, “wolf wolf, condemnation, destruction, war, to arms, to arms!” to deceive many persons and make them believe that an army is coming.

  JAMES KERR, JULY 5, 1835

  Whatever Ursula Bowie's death took from the heart of her husband, one overriding thing still drove his life: his passion for land. When he returned to San Antonio in March 1834, he began settling her estate, or at least claiming what was due him as her survivor. The fact was that, despite his earlier promise not to encumber his assets with mortgages, Bowie had almost completely entangled their community property, and though he owed no substantial debts in Texas thanks to his late father-in-law's generosity, still the fact remained that he had no ready source of income.1 He owned only the league of land on the Navidad, and that was hardly worth much at the moment. With Veramendi dead, access to his wealth ceased, though he left an estate worth around one hundred thousand dollars, some of which should surely be Bowie's as Ursula's inheritance. Yet that would take time and remained uncertain, for Ursula's grandmother survived and could claim all of her son's estate.2

  For the first half of 1834 Bowie largely wandered, and may have surrendered to drink more than he should as he tried to regain his personal and financial balance. His old temper flared again, and there were fights. After one supposed brawl in San Antonio he asked a friend why he had not come to help in the scuffle. The man answered that, so far as he could tell, Bowie had been in the wrong in the encounter. “Don't you suppose I know that as well as you do?” replied Bowie. “That's just why I needed a friend. If I had been in the right, I would have had plenty of them.”3 The fact was, with Ursula and Veramendi gone, with Caiaphas Ham and brother Rezin back in Louisiana and Stephen dead, Bowie did need friends just now. Houston came back to San Felipe in December 1833, and the two may have passed a few convivial evenings in the taverns, but then Houston left on his trip to Washington, where he would meet Crockett and others, and perhaps New York, to look into yet another colonization and land company.4

  During much of the late winter and early spring of 1834 Bowie simply went on a long hunt, scouting land on the upper waters of the Trinity River as far as the Cross Timbers region two hundred miles north of San Felipe. William Lacy, his companion for much of the time, found Bowie “a roving man,” unattached to any steady way of life, yet “he was like Barnum's show, wherever he went everybody wanted to see him.” Bowie kept to himself much of the time, seldom laughed, and frequently did not speak at all. Occasionally he reminisced, however, and once even recounted for Lacy the story of the Sandbar scrape, opening his shirt to show the ugly scars left by the sword canes and bullets. Lacy found to his surprise that Bowie rarely if ever swore.5

  Yet it was unlike Bowie to stay reclusive for long. By late spring he returned to the more settled parts of Texas, and at the same time felt the old instincts rising once more to find or make an opportunity in his favorite currency, land. His timing, though accidental, proved perfect. For some time, now, he had been unable to sell the eleven-league grants that he and Isaac Donoho acquired from Mexicans the year before, because it was up to Samuel Williams actually to make the location of the grants. Resenting the way Bowie got them in the first place, Williams consequently delayed.6 But on March 26 all those efforts to encourage moving the capital from Saltillo to Monclova, and to relax land policies, finally paid off, and it looked as if Bowie would not have to wait on Williams to start making land money again. The Monclova legislature, undisguisedly corrupt from its first convening, realized that the movement to separate Texas from Coahuila might soon be successful and hit upon the means of subsidizing itself at no real cost by capitalizing on its remaining time in jurisdiction over the northern province. The legislature passed an act opening vacant Texas land to foreigners in quantities up to eleven leagues per buyer, to be sold at auction, with a ten-dollar minimum for each 177-acre plot. If no one bought, then a supplementary act allowed the land to be sold subsequently to anybody for the ten-dollar minimum fee on application. Moreover, the act decreed an end to further colonization contracts so that empresarios would no longer receive profits that could not go to the legislature. Then, on April 19, another measure authorized the sale of up to four hundred leagues of vacant Texas lands to raise money for defense against the marauding Indian tribes on the frontier, though again the real intent of the act was simply to sell Texas land to all comers in order to enrich Monclova.7

  As design would have it, Mason, agent for the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, was in Monclova at that very moment, and may have had something to do with encouraging the more pliable of the legislators to vote for the land acts. The moment the measures passed, he sent his resignation to his company and then started negotiating as a private investor for the purchase of hundreds of nonauction leagues in a personal contract with the governor.8 Almost as soon as they heard of the legislation, would-be speculators like Bowie, his friend Archibald Hotchkiss, and William Wharton hurried to Monclova to take advantage, not knowing that Mason was ahead of them all. Travis himself prepared the passports for Bowie, Wharton, and several others on June 4, and Bowie probably left for Monclova immediately after borrowing $790 from Frank Johnson, part of it to cover the cost of the journey, but the bulk to be spent on land.9

  Bowie and Mason had been at least casual acquaintances since the year before, and Mason no doubt discovered that their association could be to his advantage. Bowie enjoyed the goodwill and esteem of several in the legislature, knew who could and could not be bribed if necessary, and perhaps still carried some influence as the late Veramendi's son-in-law. As it happensed Bowie had other business here anyhow, for late in the month he engaged Oliver Jones, a Texas delegate to the legislature, to act as his agent with power of attorney to collect from Veramendi's administrators all of his property left in Ursula's hands.10 There could not have been much of value to be collected, but a few months earlier Bowie's friend Angus McNeil managed to raise $750 for him by selling a slave man named Abner, whom Bowie had left behind in Natchez, and that added to the residue of the Johnson loan at least gave him the start of some investment money.11

  Once more the old charm and bold talk came out, and within days Bowie gained Mason's trust and at least a prom
ised share of the land deal. Mason himself would have to return to New York soon to raise the money to pay the governor, and while he was away he left Bowie's friend Hotchkiss in charge, though the hand of Bowie himself was seen everywhere.12 By June 10 they had their first ninety-five leagues, most of it in eleven-league parcels.13 Initially Mason transferred them to another agent of the company, George Nixon, on June 25 purely for title purposes, until Bowie, acting as sales commissioner in Texas, could actually make the sales. Eventually Mason would gain title to up to three hundred or more leagues of Texas land, and Williams would buy another three hundred himself.14

  By late summer more hopeful entrepreneurs reached Monclova, including the noted abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who thought all of the agitation in Texas merely part of a plot to separate it from Mexico in order to create another slave state. His mission here was to combat that, rather frontally it has to be said, by trying to get a colonization grant to settle free blacks in Texas. He did not succeed, but on September 22 he did encounter Oliver Jones on the street in Monclova, and with him “the noted Bowie.”15 Frank Johnson, Samuel Williams, Dr. James Grant, and several others arrived in December, and still Bowie was there, apparently continuing his efforts through Jones and others to encourage even more land concessions from the legislature.16 Grant, a Scot most recently from Nacogdoches, had also held a seat in the legislature, and would take office in March 1835 as the body's secretary. He and Bowie became somewhat close as the fall turned into winter, and when James's money ran out Grant started advancing him rather considerable sums, no doubt for living expenses and, perhaps, a little sweetening to hurry legislation. In return Bowie promised him 100 leagues of Texas land when he finally secured possession.17 Yet another old friend from Louisiana joined Bowie at some point, Blaz Despallier, a part of the Alexandria family so involved in his forged Spanish grants in the Opelousas district.18

  Unfortunately government always impeded Bowie's schemes. The continuing unrest in Mexican politics worsened through 1834 and into 1835, and the situation rapidly disintegrated. Augustín Viesca took office as governor of Coahuila y Texas in April, and soon thereafter Vice-President Valentin Farias arrived from Mexico City with news that Santa Anna had ordered the Congress there to dismiss him. Virtually a dictator now, Santa Anna—at last openly revealed to be anything but republican—intended to put down all opposition to his regime. He directed drastic reduction of local militia, and all other arms surrendered to the central authority. Already the state of Zacatecas rebelled, and faced a harsh punishment. In the former capital of the province, Saltillo, the ruffled ousted legislators fed military commander Martín Perfecto de Cós with rumors that Farias and Viesca planned a revolt of their own. Fearful of being attacked by Cós, Monclova's legislature passed its March 14 land act to raise money for defense.

  All the politicking and cajoling, and probable bribery, had been a waste of time, it seemed, but the result was the same when the legislature passed the measure to sell an additional four hundred leagues in Texas, and followed that with an April 7 act for more. Mason and Williams, hovering in anticipation of the legislation, swooped on the opportunity immediately, and then the congress began to appoint commissioners to oversee the actual sale of the land in the grants. It appointed Bowie to act for Mason's 400 leagues, and almost immediately he began issuing titles for eleven-league parcels.19 Moreover, Bowie obtained as payment for his services a grant of his own, ninety-five leagues not far from Nacogdoches. It seemed stunning. “Col. Bowie was the rightful owner of thousands of acres of land in Texas,” his friend Ham later remembered, but his recollection hardly met the case.20 Bowie suddenly held in his hand a title to more than half a million acres, some 850 square miles, four times his known Louisiana and Arkansas frauds, and all at a fraction of the trouble, and nothing more illegal than cozening a few legislators.21 One Texian estimated that “within a year every league will be worth 40,000$.”22 That was certainly an exaggeration. Still, if Bowie sold at a good price, that old elusive fortune would finally be his.

  Unfortunately for Bowie, the nature of the land sale was so obviously corrupt—Williams and others got their parcels for a fifth of the going rate, and before any property was put up for public sale—that when Santa Anna heard of it his congress annulled the legislature's acts. Word of that suggested to Cós that this was the time to make a military march on Monclova to clean out the speculators infesting the place and exert some control over the irresponsible legislature and plotting governor. On April 7 Bowie and others learned of Cós's approach, and a few days later the Monclova militia confronted the Mexican regulars outside the city. Typically, his instinct always to go on the offensive, Bowie himself was out with the militia, and according to Spencer Jack “did every thing in his power to bring on a battle.”23 Fortunately Cós kept a cool head, no one started shooting, and then the Mexican soldiers retired. Fortunately too, after putting down the Zacatecas rebellion rather brutally, Santa Anna went back to Mexico City instead of going on to Monclova. The speculators and their legislature were a nuisance, but apparently not yet sufficient to warrant an outright attack.

  The respite allowed Mason and Bowie to leave on or after May 3 to make the trip to Matamoros, a three-hundred-mile ride along the south bank of the Rio Grande. Once they reached the port city early in May they received $40,000 in specie sent from New York for Mason to pay the balance due on his 1834 contract, and then set off once more for Monclova. By May 25 they were close to Monclova when they heard terrible news: Cós had come back.24 Issuing a proclamation that charged “two or three designing and naturally turbulent foreigners, somewhat crafty in their machinations,” with engineering the land grab, he blamed the upheaval in the state on them and their kind, hinting that their ultimate goal was to bring about Texas's secession from Coahuila.25

  Indeed, even in Texas, when news of the land deal arrived, there was some considerable outcry. The Brazoria Texas Republican hammered Viesca for having “bartered our public lands for a mere song,” and in San Felipe the Telegraph and Texas Register referred to them as “unjust and fraudulent claims.” When the buyers of those eleven-league grants started trying to locate and survey their claims, they inevitably had to displace hundreds of squatters and occupants who had made improvements to land in anticipation of being able to buy it one day. It would be a repeat of the dislocation that Bowie's Louisiana frauds caused years before, and the injustices brought about by the North Carolina warrants in Crockett's west Tennessee.26

  Certainly Cós thought of Mason as one of those “designing and turbulent foreigners,” and most likely Williams and Bowie were also on his mind. In spite of that, they went on toward Monclova, to find that the legislature had adjourned on May 20 just as Cós and his command from Saltillo approached. Bowie and Mason found Governor Viesca and some of his followers encamped outside the town, and joined them when they began to move to the Rio Grande, intending to cross into Texas to reconvene the legislature in Béxar. But within a few days Cós caught up with them and arrested almost the whole lot.27 Oddly enough Bowie allowed himself to be captured, though it may be that he did not want to be separated from Mason and his forty thousand dollars. Nevertheless Mason and the money soon disappeared.28

  The Mexicans sent Bowie to Matamoros along with several others, including his friend Despallier, but their confinement was not so strict that Bowie could not see events unfolding in the town near the mouth of the Rio Grande. Mexican authorities impounded every vessel in the port, ostensibly for the purpose of convoying troops and munitions to points on the Texas coast, obviously to strengthen garrisons and quell any spread of the Zacatecas and Monclova resistance. He heard that three thousand soldiers were in Saltillo even then, on their way overland, dire news indeed. Fortunately for Bowie the authorities relaxed their guard and on June 12 he and Despallier managed to escape, and in the ensuing ten days traveled overland 240 miles along the Atascosita road to the Lavaca River, 50 miles south of San Felipe. There they stopped at Sylvanus Hatch's
plantation, near Texana. Despallier felt too sick from fever to continue without several days' rest, and Bowie himself perhaps wanted to dally awhile with Clara Lisle of Texana, who may have rekindled some romantic interest in the widower now that Ursula was nine months gone.29

  Bowie sent a note to James Miller of the ayuntamiento at Nacogdoches with news of what he had learned in Matamoros, and soon it spread through the Texas settlements, leading to calls for militia to turn out.30 Williams and Johnson also made their escapes from Matamoros, and as they arrived in Béxar and San Felipe, the alarm took on even more urgency. A few days later Bowie, and perhaps Despallier, continued on to Brazoria, but already some looked skeptically at the news he brought. Bowie now stood clearly identified with those soon to be called the War Party, yet many saw them and the speculators as one and the same, and their interests suspiciously intertwined.31 James Kerr protested to Thomas Chambers that “Williams, Johnson, Carbajal, Bowie, and others cry, ‘wolf wolf, condemnation, destruction, war, to arms, to arms!’” when their only real objective was “to deceive many persons and make them believe that an army is coming to destroy their property and annihilate their rights in Texas.”The fact was, he charged, that they stirred up trouble, even rebellion, in hopes of protecting their massive illegal land purchases. Santa Anna had repudiated the Monclova land actions. If Bowie and others could deny Mexican rule in Texas, then they had a chance of making their titles hold.32 Of course self-interest guided Bowie's actions, but within a few weeks Texians would realize that Santa Anna had more things than land titles on his mind as Mexican soldiers marshalled to come to Texas.33