Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  54 Ibid., 48.

  55 Crockett to Blackburn, July 5, 1828, Miscellaneous Collections, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  56 Nashville Republican, March 18, 1828.

  57 Chapman in Galveston Daily News, January 27. 1895.

  58 Walter Blair, “Six Davy Crocketts,” Southwest Review 25 (July 1940): 454. Blair mistakenly dates the press attention to Crockett in 1824, when it should be 1828.

  59 Slotkin, Regeneration, 5.

  60 Arpad, “Crockett,” 65.

  61 Ibid., iv.

  62 Arpad, “Crockett,” 62.

  63 Folmsbee, “West Tennessee,” 11n; Crockett to George Patton, January 27, 1829, Miscellaneous Collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  64 Bond, September 5, 1827, American Book Prices Current, Index, 1965-70 (Washington, Conn., 1970): 2227: Crockett to Dear Doctor, September 11, 1828, Miscellaneous Collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  65 Crockett to Patton, January 27, 1829, Miscellaneous collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  66 Crockett to James Davison, August 18, 1831, Crockett Biographical File, DRT: Crockett to Blackburn, July 5, 1828, Miscellaneous collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  67 Blair, “Six Davy Crocketts,” 452-53; Crockett to James Clark, January 3, 1829, American book Prices Current Index, 1965-70 (Washington, Conn., 1970): 226.

  The story appeared in the Nashville, National Banner and Nashville Whig on November 25, 1828. Verplank's and Clark's refutations appeared in the same journal on January 9 and 23, 1829. Shackford, Crockett, 124-25 interprets this to mean that between the November charge and the January retraction, Crockett made a deal with the opposition to aid in opposition to Jackson, in return for their support on his land bill. The accusation came before the deal was made, and the retractions followed once Crockett had changed sides. This seems a very flawed explanation, especially since Crockett's January 3, 1829, letter to Clark clearly establishes that the refutation came at Crockett's request, and not as a result of a spontaneous realization by the opposition that they had to remedy damage done to a man now on their side, as Shackford suggests.

  68 Admittedly this entire scenario is hypothetical, as is Shackford's contrary interpretation cited above, but it seems much more to fit the known facts of the moment.

  69 Crockett to Patton, January 27, 1829, Miscellaneous Collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  70 Crockett to the editor, December 13, 1828, Jackson Gazette, January 3, 1829.

  71 Polk to Pryor Lea, February 17, 1829, Weaver and Bergeron, Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1, 240-42.

  72 Shackford, Crockett, 95-96.

  73 Polk to Davison McMillen, January 16, 1829, Weaver and Bergeron, Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1, 229-30; Crockett to the editor, January 14, 1829, Jackson Gazette, February 7, 1829.

  74 Polk to McMillen, January 16, 1829, 229; Archibald Yell to Polk, February 14, 1829, 238; Weaver and Bergeron, Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1.

  75 Polk to McMillen, January 16, 1829, Weaver and Bergeron, Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1 230. Shackford, Crockett, 96, seems to interpret Polk's charge as meaning that Crockett may not have written the speeches he gave on the floor. This is possible, of course, but it is not what Polk charged. He quite explicitly says that what Crockett said in the House was not what Gales reported him as saying in his newspaper. In other words Gales was dressing up Crockett's speeches for publication after they were made, not writing them beforehand, a practice common then and later, down to the present.

  76 Crockett to Patton, January 27, 1829, Miscellaneous Collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL; Chapman in Galveston Daily News, January 27, 1895.

  77 J. J. B., “Davy Crockett's Electioneering Tour,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 35 (April 1876): 607-9.

  78 Jackson Gazette, March 14, 21, 28, 1829.

  79 Crockett to the “Mess at J. Davises,” February 23, 1829, Manuscripts Collection, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; Crockett to the “Mess at Dowson's,” February 23, 1829, Columbia University Manuscripts Collection, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. Crockett has noted on the latter of these two documents that he received no reply.

  80 Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (New York, 1981), 159.

  81 Crockett et al. to Jackson, February 25, 1829, John Davis Batchelder Autograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Chapter 6 Bowie 1824-1826

  1 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 463-65.

  2 Isaac Baker to Johnston, December 4, 1823, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  3 Walter H. Overton to Johnston, May 10, 1824; Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, July 8, 1823 [misdated—should be 1824], ibid.

  4 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 100, 162, 257, 264-65; John Sibley to Johnson, April 20, 1824. John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, June 19, July 15, 1824, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  5 John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, June 19, 1824, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  6 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 274; St. Martinville, La., Attakapas Gazette, January 15, 1825.

  7 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 275-76, 278, 286-87.

  8 John Bowie receipt, 1823, Alonzo Snyder Papers, LSU; Sheriff's conveyance, February 6, 1822, Bowie Family Papers, UT; Conveyance Record F, 221, Ouachita Parish Courthouse.

  9 Bill of sale, January 16, 1823, Bowie Family Papers, UT.

  10 G. W. Lovelace to James G. Taliaferro, June 5, August 24, 1824, James G. Taliaferro Papers, LSU.

  11 Taliaferro to John Bowie, July 30, 1824, Deposition, October 22, 1824, Petition, October 23, 1824, Taliaferro Papers, LSU. It must be stated emphatically that no documentary evidence links James Bowie with John Bowie's campaign, or suggests or implies that James might have been involved in voter intimidation. Such a possibility is based solely on James Bowie's character as it will continue to develop in this book, and on his later willingness to resort to heavy intimidation in pursuit of his goals, combined with his demonstrated burgeoning interest in politics.

  12 Taliaferro to John Bowie, October 11, 25, 1824, John Bowie to Taliaferro, October 22, 1824, Taliaferro Papers, LSU.

  13 Graham to Crawford, December 17, 1824, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 4, 32-33. It is as well to note here as anywhere that Williams, “Critical Study, III,” 95, states that Bowie established an office in New Orleans for his land business. She offers no source for the statement, and there is no evidence to support it, her assertion being merely a garbled reading of the John Bowie article “The Bowies.”Bowie operated out of Alexandria alone until he moved to Lafourche.

  14 Edward Jones to Samuel Harper, February 7, 1824, Harper to Crawford, March 9, 1824, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 5, 436.

  15 Graham to Davis, December 26, 1824, Entry 404, Record Group 49, NA.

  16 St Martinville, La., Attakapas Gazette, February 19, 1825.

  17 On Charges by a Deputy Surveyor Against the Official Conduct of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 4, 943, 947, 951-52.

  18 Conveyance Book D, 33, 34-35, 155-56, 344-45, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse; Conveyance Book E, 412, 418-19, 425, Avoyelles Parish Courthouse.

  19 Flint, Recollections, 239; John Sibley to Graham, August 6, 1825, Graham to Sibley, September 16, 1825, Entry 404, Record Group 49. NA.

  20 Davis to Graham, November 16, 1825, Extracts, M1385; Davis to Graham, November 12, 1825, Davis to Milo Johnson, October 29, 1825, Johnson to Davis, November 12, 1825, Entry 404 Record Group 49, NA.

  21 Valentine King to Graham, October 13, 1825, Reports on Private Land Claims, Southwest District, La., Act of May 11, 1820, 1820-1825, Entry 292; William Armstrong to R.C. Nicholas, January 23, 1839, Letters Received by the Commissioner of the General Land Office Relating to Private Land Claims in Louisiana, 1818-1881, M1385, Record Group 49, NA. It has not been either practical or possible to trace the extent of this third set of Bowie'
s frauds. That they were in some degree successful is evidenced by the fact that in 1839 the Despallier claim was still under active consideration and by then the property of either Montfort or J. Madison Wells, both friends of Bowie. Since no conveyances connecting Bowie with the properties specified in the two letters cited above have been found in any of the other Louisiana parish records, the transactions must have been confined to Rapides, and the complete destruction of its courthouse records by fire in 1864 effectively obliterated all evidence there. Consequently the fraud may have been confined to the 8,124 acres specified in the Despallier, De Leon, and Duran claims, or it may have covered the other three claims mentioned by King, whose acreage is not mentioned. If they were the same customary size, that would extend the fraud to 16,248 acres, always with the possibility that there were other claims that King did not catch.

  22 Sibley to Graham, December 6, 1825, Entry 404, Record Group 49, NA; Sibley to Johnston, February 27, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP. Sibley's Handwriting is not always legible, and it is possible that his specific mention of what appears to be Bowie could in fact be another name entirely, possibly Nevin.

  23 Conveyance Book C, 102, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.

  24 Conveyance Book E, 410-28, Avoyelles Parish Courthouse; McCrummon to Johnston, December 10, 1825, Johnston Papers, HSP; Hughes to Graham, January 6, 1826, Entry 404, Record Group 49, NA.

  25 Conveyance Book D, 209, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.

  26 John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, February 13, 1826, R. Donaldson to Johnston, February 13, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  27 C. Beaman to Johnston, August 23, 1826, ibid.

  28 Graham to Johnston, March 5, 1826, ibid.

  29 Isaac Baker to Johnston, December 4, 1826, ibid.

  30 Isaac Thomas to Johnston, November 5, 1827, ibid., says that Clay's advice had been secured in the Reuben Kemper claim, and in a subsequent letter to Johnston, March 5, 1828, when Bowie was in the East again, makes reference to Bowie's “first trip” to Washington in the matter. The only other trip Bowie is definitely known to have made is this one in late winter 1826. It is possible that Bowie made an 1827 trip, but no evidence of one has been found to date. Thus he either got Clay's advice in person or subsequently by mail. It is worth noting that there is a persistent story, supposedly told by Jefferson Davis, that Clay told him of once meeting Bowie on a stagecoach, and that during the trip Bowie performed one of his customary acts of heroic chivalry (“The Bowie Knife,” American Notes and Queries, vol. 3 [July 27, 1889], 155). The story itself is probably completely apocryphal. Certainly there is no evidence that Davis ever told such a story, and he and Clay were not no sufficiently cordial terms that the latter would have traded stories with him (William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour [New York, 1991], 193ff). Nevertheless the juxtaposition of Clay's name with Bowie's even in myth may contain some germ of fact from a genuine meeting , and this 1826 trip to Washington, and an errand that would have taken Bowie to the State Department, seem the most likely opportunities.

  31 W. H. Overton to Johnston, August 2, 1826, Johnson Papers, HSP.

  32 Overton to Johnston, August 2, 1826, ibid.

  33 Flint, Recollections, 232-33.

  34 Edward Doney to Taliaferro, May 4, 1825, Taliaferro Papers, LSU.

  35 Mims, Trail, 38-38, says without authority that Bowie established a steam sawmill on Bayou Boeuf in 1825, and that when he applied to the bank for a loan after he overextended himself, he was turned down. There is no contemporary evidence whatever to confirm the mill story or the loan. The former is probably a confusion with the mill that John and James's late father owned on Bayou Nezpique. The loan myth is connected to Norris Wright, Who—so goes the story—had influence at the bank and ruined Bowie's chances for the loan, commencing the feud that led to him shooting Bowie sometime in 1826-27, and their subsequent fatal encounter in the Sandbar brawl.

  36 Case#1780, U.S. v. Charles Mulhollan, General Case Files, 1806-1932, Entry 21, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. New Orleans, Record Group 21, National Archives-Southwest Region, Fort Worth, Tex.; Stanley C. Arthur, The Story of the West Florida Rebellion (Baton Rouge, 1976), 13, 124.

  37 Reuben Kemper to Johnston, March 18, 1824, December 1, 1825, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  38 Reuben Kemper to Johnston, May 19, 1826, Henry Boyer to Johnston, March 30, 1828, ibid.

  39 Notary Felix De Armas, Power of Attorney, Jose de la Francia to James Bowie, February 10, 1826, vol. 5, 72-73, New Orleans Notarial Archives; Kemper to Johnston, March 18, 1824, February 7, 1825, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  40 Bayou Sara is in Point Coupee Parish, where Charles Mulhollan had a land claim in 1820. Mulhollan's connection with Bowie is further established by an article in the Alexandria, Red River Herald, of June 1836, quoted in the Little Rock, Arkansas Advocate, February 3, 1837.

  41 Kemper to Johnston, May 19, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP. The precise nature of this deal is still uncertain. Mulhollan's role is unknown, but since Kemper says that Bowie told him “he had become the owner of this claim,” it does not appear that Mulhollan had an interest in the claim. Nor is Isaac Thomas mentioned by Kemper, though he was later to be a co-owner of the claim.

  42 Notary Felix De Armas, Power of Attorney, Jose de la Francia to James Bowie, February 10, 1826, vol. 5, 72-73, New Orleans Notarial Archives.

  43 Kemper to Johnston, May 19, 1826, power of attorney, May 19, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  44 L. Pleasonton to Reuben Kemper, April 15, 1820, vol. 1, 171; Statement of the Fifth Auditor to Henry Clay, April 20, 1826, vol. 2, 257-58, Fifth Auditor's Office, Letters Sent, 1817-1869, Record Group 217, NA.

  45 Kemper power of attorney, August 3, 1826, Kemper to Johnton, December 14, 1826, Johnson Papers, HSP. It must be said that this construction of events is somewhat speculative, based on the few sources available. Bowie filed the perjured power of attorney on February 10, 1826. In July Kemper received a letter from Johnston that apparently ended the matter for Bowie. The fact that three months earlier Johnston secured a listing of $11,396.44 in payments due to Kemper from the U.S. Treasury represented some of his other claims due. Moreover, it is evident in Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, that Kemper has assumed personal responsibility for the de la Français heirs' claim, hence the narration of this episode as written.

  46 Bowie, “The Bowies,” 380.

  47 Flint, Recollections, 241-42.

  48 Sparks, in Ellis, Crockett, 220.

  49 Flint, Recollections, 242.

  50 No definitive record of when or where Bowie became a Freemason has been found. Among his effects after his death was a Masonic apron, which is the only testimony to his having joined. The first active lodge in Texas formed in late December 1835, when he was too heavily engaged in the revolution to be joining fraternal organizations, and prior to his departure from Louisiana the closest lodges to Alexandria were at Natchitoches and Opelousas, both towns to which his business would have taken him on occasion. His frequent visits to Natchez also make it a possible location for his joining. The timing of his association with the Freemasons can only be guessed at, but considering the social and business advantages to membership, and Bowie's own drive in 1826 for social prominence, this seems the most likely period.

  51 Bowie, “The Bowies” 380.

  52 There is absolutely no contemporary evidence or authority for these rumored romantic alliances of Bowie's. They are to be found chiefly in Horace Shelton, “Texas Heroes—James Bowie,” Under Texas Skies 2 (November 1951): 27, and in 1989 letter from a very distant cousin of the Louisiana Bowies to Clifford Hopewell (Bowie, 139n). The Montejo reference comes from “James Bowie,” an undated anonymous manuscript probably written sometime after 1912, in the James Bowie Biographical File, DRT. It should be noted that no families of the name Montejo, Bornay, or Cade appear in the Louisiana censuses for 1810-1830, though this is not conclusive that they did not exist. Catherine Villars certainly did exist, bearing Laffi
te a child in 1818, but being a quadroon with no property she would not appear in any census. She disappears from history after Laffite left Campeachy in 1821.

  53 The story of the Cecilia Wells courtship rests on no better foundation than the stories of Bowie's other romances. The undated account by J. Madison Wells, “James Bowie: Something About His Romantic Life and Tragic Death,” at DRT, was certainly written prior to 1900, by one who knew Bowie and who was Cecilia Wells's cousin and virtual foster brother, and yet does not mention Miss Wells at all in speaking of Bowie's romantic life. There is an undated indirect reference to it in the Virginia Berkeley Bowie manuscript, “The Story of James Bowie,” in the Lucy Bowie Papers at DRT, wherein she says that “there is some dim tale of a young girl whom he loved in his youth, and who died before they could come to marriage.” It is presumably on the basis of the that Lucy Bowie wrote the first published reference to Cecilia Wells, in the Doylestown, Pa., Daily Intelligencer, June 20, 1916, embellishing the story by having her die two weeks before their wedding. How she actually connected Cecilia Wells specifically with the story is unknown. Hopewell Bowie, 28, 68, repeats this, in the process making Cecilia the sister rather than the cousin of the Wells brothers. Joseph Musso, “Jim Bowie's Sandbar Fight,” Alamo Journal 60 (February 1988): 4, accepts the Lucy Bowie story, and further embellishes it by making her romance with Bowie a part of the Bowie-Wells bond that led to his involvement in the Sandbar fight. In fact Cecilia Wells died September 17, 1829, two years almost to the day after the Sandbar brawl, and at a time when Bowie had been living in Terrebonne Parish, 150 miles away from Alexandria, for fully a year and was already spending much time in Mexico and Texas preparatory to his move there. None of this suggests that he was engaged, or even involved in a romance that, at best, was extremely remote. Besides, it would have been much out of character for Bowie to endure a two-year engagement. George M. G. Stafford, The Wells Family of Louisiana and Allied Families (Alexandria, 1942), 129, gives no indication of having found anything connecting Cecilia to Bowie, and when John Johnston wrote to his brother Josiah on September 18, 1829, notifying him of her death, he made no mention of her being engaged to James Bowie, who by this time was very much a foe of Johnston's, which would have made the fact of such an engagement quite newsworthy (Johnston Papers, HSP). In the end, while Bowie may have paid some court to Cecilia Wells during 1826-28, it is virtually certain that there was never an engagement.