As good as his word, Travis supported Protestant missionaries and ministers when they took the risk of coming to Texas. On September 3 Rev. John W. Kenney, a Methodist whom Travis helped bring to Texas in 1833, came to San Felipe and camped in the woods nearby for a several-day meeting. People came from some distance, covering the field with their tents and wagons until the congregation numbered some four hundred. Kenney himself felt some trepidation at holding such a large and public Protestant meeting, for fear that Mexican authorities would attempt to break it up, but Travis himself assured Kenney that he and his friends would attend and stand guard to assure no interruptions. Of course Travis could also see in the meeting an opportunity to press his call for assertion and organization for political as well as spiritual rights. They appointed early October for another meeting, but by then events were moving too rapidly, and at too much peril, for it to be held. Indeed, now any gathering, even a friendly barbecue that fall at James Pevehouse's farm south of San Felipe, could be turned into a political meeting when Travis attended. Conscious of the danger, Travis and his friends began to look suspiciously on any unknown Mexican visitors.49
Travis no longer felt he had to explain his Anahuac affair defensively. Immediately before the camp meeting he gave Smith a brief matter of fact account, with few details, and more than a little self-conscious flattery. “Time alone will shew whether that step was correct or not,” he said, “and time will shew that when this country is in danger, that I will shew myself as patriotic & ready to serve her as those, who to save themselves have disavowed the act & denounced me to the usurping military.”50 It no longer mattered that Cós continued to call for his apprehension, and would even appeal to Austin himself when the empresario finally returned to Texas.51 Arresting Travis was a dead issue.
And within days Austin was back in Texas. He reached Brazoria on September 8, to be met by a public dinner in his honor, during which he finally abandoned his conciliatory policy. With Santa Anna sending troops to garrison Texas, their rights under the 1824 constitution were destroyed, and the constitution itself must be considered as abrogated. He would turn all of the states of Mexico into centrally ruled provinces. “Something must be done, and that without delay,” said Austin. Four days later he arrived in San Felipe, where Travis and the other leaders had called a public meeting. Privately Austin declared to friends that he was for “no more doubts—no submission. I hope to see Texas forever free from Mexican domination of any kind.” Yet it was too soon to say so publicly. They must still be a bit cautious if they wanted to hope for anything like unanimity. At Johnson and Winburn's tavern on September 12 Travis and others chose Austin chairman of their meeting, and then listened as he read aloud several of the military orders for Travis's arrest, and suggested that a consultation of all Texas was imperative. They then formed resolutions reaffirming loyalty to the 1824 constitution and suggesting that each jurisdiction send five delegates to San Felipe on October 15 for the convention. They, too, formed a committee of correspondence to maintain constant communication with the other municipalities. Travis supported every measure and concluded the meeting with a motion of thanks to Austin.52
Travis turned his attention immediately to the forthcoming consultation. He wanted to sit as a delegate, and as the man who had largely stirred up the current situation, he no doubt felt he had a right. He also encouraged his friend Henry Smith to make efforts to be elected to represent Brazoria. “I want to see that body composed of men talented, firm and uncompromising,” he told him. In other words, men like Travis, and his emphasis on their being “uncompromising” left no doubt of the kind of result he hoped to see from that consultation.53 So enthusiastic did Travis feel that he even presumed to give Austin very pointed advice on the conduct of the elections and the meeting itself. Ailing from his long confinement, and emotionally drained by the stress of events, Austin was easily swayed, and Travis may well have seen and taken advantage of his suggestibility—and perhaps of his susceptibility to flattery, which Travis did not stint in offering. “All eyes are turned towards you,” he told Austin ten days after the San Felipe meeting. “Texas can be wielded by you & you alone, and her destiny is now completely in your hands.” The people felt the spirit of war, he said, and Austin could assemble numbers of volunteers merely by asking. “This is not the base flattery of a servile mind,” he explained. “It is the reasoning of one ardent in his country's cause, & who wishes to un[ite] his feeble efforts with those who have the power & inclination to lead us in safety to the desired end.”54 It was also the none-too-subtle effort of a revolutionary to guide events by guiding the one man whom most Texians most admired.
In part Travis's advice to Austin was a response to Austin's September 21 call for volunteers to come forward, organize themselves into companies, and mobilize on September 28 on the Colorado or the Lavaca. Immediately Texians began to volunteer for military companies, organizations far more formal than the loose town militias like the one that had made Bowie its colonel earlier in the summer. Travis visited with Rebecca Cummings for a few days after the Austin meeting but was back in San Felipe on September 28 to enlist.55 The company did not organize immediately, however, and for Travis it was just as well, for he needed to press upon the citizens his candidacy for the consultation, and early in October they rewarded his efforts.56
Events moved quickly. On October 3 Travis learned that a few days earlier Mexican troops had appeared outside Gonzales in a threatening posture, and that 150 Texian volunteers stood there to meet them, with more arriving daily. He expected a Texian attack on the Mexicans momentarily, and had already received a plea from Gonzales for more men. Travis saw one friend after another leave for Gonzales every day, and would have gone himself but for a bout with influenza. He hoped to be able to go in a few more days, and meanwhile exhorted his friend Randall Jones that “our frontier is attacked & who says now that we shall not fight.” The metal of Texas was hot enough at last. “Let us go at it heart & hand,” he said. “Stand up like men & we have nothing to fear.”57
Then came the news of the actual outbreak at Gonzales, the firing on October 2 that ignited the revolution. San Felipe would have gotten word of the outbreak on October 4, and it only added impetus to getting the local company formed. Randall Jones came in from Fort Settlement, and the volunteers elected him their captain, and when Travis could arise from his sickbed they made him their lieutenant. On October 5 they hurriedly prepared for the journey, Travis impressing a horse for a man without a mount, and then took the road for Gonzales, probably accompanied by Austin. By October 11 or earlier they reached the scene of the skirmish.58
There was little to do there at first. The assembled volunteers overwhelmingly elected Austin their general-in-chief, and had hoped to move on Goliad, occupied by Cós's main contingent of a few hundred soldados, but word that he had withdrawn to Béxar gave them a pause, and time to regroup. Jones and Travis's company had left San Felipe so hurriedly that they had not taken time to prepare statements of the horses and equipment that their volunteers brought into the Texian service, and now Austin directed them to do so. Travis had good friends in this company, some of them men he had known ever since settling in San Felipe, including several of Kuykendall's close relations.59
The same day that Travis and Jones handled their paperwork, they got Austin's order to commence the march to Béxar. Exciting as it was to be on a campaign, even with this scruffy “army” of barely three hundred men, Travis must have felt some small regret. He had been elected to the consultation. So had his friend Henry Smith, and a number of other leading men including Wharton, Williamson, Hall, and more who shared his views. But the consultation was to meet on October 15 or the next day, and there was no way he could go to Béxar and take his seat. At least he would not be alone. Most of the elected delegates were with the army, and Travis knew well that his duty must keep him there for the moment. Overhead, pointing the way, Halley's Comet inflamed the heavens. Crockett saw it, leading him west f
rom Tennessee. Bowie saw it as he raced to catch Austin's army. But of the three of them, probably only Travis had read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Only he could wonder knowingly at the portent: “When beggars die, there are no comets seen,” said Calpurnia. “The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
The army made slow progress to the vicinity of Béxar, and only reached the banks of the Cibolo on October 16, and there a council of war decided to wait for more volunteers to arrive. Three days later, however, Travis went to Austin's headquarters in place of Jones for another council, and this time cast his vote with the rest in favor of an immediate advance on Béxar.60 The next morning they resumed the march, accompanied now by Bowie, who had joined them on the Cibolo, and within a few days Travis waited with the rest of the command while Bowie took Fannin's company and some others off to scour the missions Espada, San Juan, and San José for food and to establish a position on the main road south from Béxar.
While waiting for Bowie and Fannin, Travis and the other elected delegates to the consultation met to decide what course they should follow. Travis argued for remaining with the army, but most thought they should leave to take their seats. The convention had already been postponed on October 17, when no quorum assembled. If they left immediately, they could be there for the opening, now scheduled for November 1. Because of their own inability to form a consensus, and no doubt fearful that they might be regarded as self-serving or cowardly for leaving the army almost in the face of the enemy, they decided to put the question to the whole army. On October 25 Travis stood with his company when Austin paraded the command in review to hear speeches on the issue. When the volunteers voted that the delegates ought to go to San Felipe, Travis declined, volunteering to remain at the post of danger, especially after hearing Houston give a defeatist address that urged the entire army to retire. Several other elected delegates declared their intention to remain as well, and then when Austin and others rebutted Houston, Travis no doubt joined the volunteers in their cheers of “on to San Antonio.”61
Perhaps it was Travis's unqualified support that won him a special assignment from Austin, but more likely Travis himself had been taking advantage of his influence with the commander to urge a project of his own. The idea of the cavalryman held a special appeal for Travis. He liked horses himself and had owned several, even encouraging the formation of a local jockey club. Moreover, his taste in fiction tended toward the kind of romantic novel that glorified the man on horseback. Out there with the army, seeing it spending days of immobility, his instinct for quick, even impetuous action no doubt rebelled at the inactivity. They were in a vast countryside, with much open ground, ideal for the off-road travel of the horseman, and with the ever-present danger of Mexican supplies and reinforcements coming from unexpected quarters, they needed rapid intelligence and competent reconnaissance. No organized mounted force was with the army as yet, and Austin and Travis both could see that it needed one.
As a result on October 27 Austin authorized Travis to raise from among the existing companies a command of fifty to eighty volunteer cavalrymen, each to be armed with a double-barreled shotgun or carbine, and a brace of pistols. In no case was he to accept more than one-tenth of the volunteers from any one company, so as not to dangerously deplete Jones's or any other captain's command.62 Since there were a good number of horses with the army already, Travis had no difficulty in raising the nucleus of his company that same day, and by the next morning they were mounted and ready to ride north in advance of the rest of the army. Austin had sent Bowie and Fannin out the day before to find a bivouac for the army near Concepción, just two miles from San Antonio, and he was anxious that they might be attacked while isolated from the main army.
As Travis and his men galloped up the road, they crossed the San Antonio River and were the first to hear the sounds of firing in the distance, including the booming of a cannon, which only hurried them on. But then Travis received an order from Austin to halt at the river until the army could catch up. He needed Travis's mounted command to cover and protect the crossing, and did not want Travis isolated from him on the other side. Only when he was allowed to press on did Travis finally come in sight of Concepción, and then just in time to see the beaten Mexicans making their retreat. Without even thinking of sending word back to Austin, or asking permission, he ordered his men forward at the gallop to harass the foe, adding to the panic that already infected some of the soldados.63
If Austin felt irritation at Travis for taking an unnecessary risk, he showed less inclination to scold than he revealed to Bowie and Fannin. With Travis commanding his own company now, Austin recognized him as a captain, though he would be the only company commander in the army at the moment not elected by his own men.64 Then, when he received a report that Cós had sent up to nine hundred surplus horses on the road to Laredo on October 30, Austin ordered Travis and his company out after them the next day. The new captain took fifty men with him, and a few good guides, and Austin sent him on his way with an expression of confidence in his success.65
Not long after setting off on the southwest road toward Laredo, Travis learned that the herd and its guards enjoyed enough of a head start that he expected the expedition to take him perhaps three days.66 Austin, ever mindful of the absent cavalry, already had another task escorting a cannon awaiting him even before he returned from hunting the caballado.67 But Travis returned without the horses—and not surprisingly, since the original report Austin received was almost certainly false. Cós only had about six hundred men in San Antonio, most of them infantry, and nine hundred horses, plus the two hundred more believed still to be inside the Mexican fortifications for his cavalry, were far more than he needed for his baggage and artillery wagons.68
Travis returned to find the army in turmoil, the volunteers insubordinate over their inactivity, and other officers resigning in alarming numbers, including Bowie. On November 6 Travis himself sent Austin his resignation, without explanation other than that he felt he could not serve longer without giving rise to complaint.69 Perhaps Austin personally reprimanded him on his return for his impetuosity at Concepción, or maybe Travis himself only now saw Austin's October 28 edict to arrest any officer disobeying orders, and assumed that it was a veiled criticism of his conduct.70 Then, too, Travis may have had trouble with his volunteers during the chase for the horses. It was his first experience in independent command, and as several could attest, he was not always the most popular of men. More likely the men in his company may have raised complaints at Austin choosing him as their captain rather than their being allowed to elect their own officer as did all the other companies. As bad as the rot of jealousy was in Austin's army, Travis may even have found himself complained of by his fellow captains for his close relationship with the general. If his face-to-face relations with the commander were as flattering and occasionally fawning as his letters, others might well have seen him as a sycophant—an atmosphere in which he no longer wished to serve.
Austin had just written an order for another assignment for Travis when he received the resignation. He crossed out his name and instead gave the mission to Travis's friend Briscoe, who would now command the cavalry company. But having resigned his captaincy—Travis had no commission, nor did any of the other officers—he did not leave the army. Rather he became simply another private cavalryman in the ranks, and now followed Briscoe out of camp when Austin sent them off west of Béxar with orders to go as far as the Medina River some twenty miles distant to intercept mail riders, supply trains, and even a rumored shipment of silver coin for Cós's troops. Austin also believed that the enemy sent its horses out at night to graze west of town, and made forays to collect beefs for the men, and this too Briscoe was to disrupt. Austin did not want them to be gone more than two nights, however, so it was to be a short patrol.71
Some of the men in the cavalry company were tejanos, and while Travis certainly knew a number of tejanos prior to his service in the army, this may have been his
most intimate association with them to date. They dressed much the same as the Texians, since they shopped in the same stores, most of which catered to norteamericano tastes, but being experienced men of the range, they no doubt wore Mexican-style boots and wide sombreros. Having grown up on horseback in this country, they had much to teach Travis of how cavalry could operate, and he made an apt pupil. Despite his angry comment about “red skins,” when discussing invading Mexicans, Travis entertained cordial and apparently unprejudiced friendships with tejanos like Don Manuel Del Moral, and Juan Seguín, and pronounced any tejano who aided Austin's attempt to take Béxar as “a good man.” Some won his continuing respect when they voluntarily contributed their cattle to help feed the undernourished army, and his service on this scout would do even more to impress Travis with the fact that not all the patriots in this cause were whites.72
Briscoe left that same evening, and by early November 8 had ridden completely around San Antonio from the north to the west, and now to the south, arriving on the Medina where the road to Laredo crossed the stream. He encountered nothing along the way, and at that point decided to return to Austin's camp, his mission done. Travis thought it might prove worthwhile to stay out a bit longer and perhaps scout farther south to the Atascosa River, some twenty miles distant. His friend Briscoe disagreed, but then in the excessively democratic spirit that was practically the ruination of this army, they decided that Travis could ask for volunteers to leave Briscoe and accompany him on such a mission. A dozen men came forward, one of them the colorful scout Erasmus “Deaf” Smith, and unanimously chose Travis their captain, and Travis sent Briscoe back with a message to Austin that he expected to be at the Sabinas rancho on the Atascosa that evening.73
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