Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  Bowie wasted no time in starting his transactions. Indeed, perhaps even before the final surveys came through, he commenced selling. In April and May he began the formal transfers from the Martins to himself, on paper showing a purchase price of nineteen thousand dollars for six of the nine claims, whereas he may have paid nothing at all except a fee to the transfers meant nothing, other than perhaps an attempt to establish a benchmark for future asking prices. As for the Martins themselves, they certainly needed money, for in July a judgment against them for debt led to seizure of some for their own property, including slaves. The holder of the judgment was none other than Josiah S. Johnston.

  The news of the issue of surveys and certificates to Bowie stunned George Graham. He commenced an investigation at once and discovered that once again Bowie had benefited from fantastic luck. All approvals on his claims had been withheld since Graham first discovered the possibility of fraud. But then that spring James Turner in the Donaldsonville land office had resigned and left, and several weeks passed before his successor, James Allison, arrived. Before Turner left, however, he turned over certificates of approval on Bowie's plats of survey. Most infuriating of all, it appeared that Bowie or his agent had actually showed Turner a letter from Graham to Johnston authorizing him to issue the approvals. Precisely what the letter said no one seemed to know, but Graham himself knew that he never wrote such a document. Turner somehow may have mistaken Graham's January 9 letter for an authorization, but in any event no one could see how that document came into Bowie's hands. Graham himself believed that the “pretended letter” was nothing but “an imposition,” meaning a forgery. He demanded from Turner's superior, George Davis, and explanation of how this could have happened, and declared that he would take the matter to President Adams himself. He would ask for an executive order directing that Bowie's surveys be declared void, instead ordering the land surveyed and sold at public auction immediately. At the same time he asked Davis's superior, Harper, for his explanation and for copies of all of the documents on file in the matter. Harper replied that he had never ordered or authorized Davis or Turner to conduct the surveys, and that after Congress approved his original report recommending the claims—his later letter having been lost—he assumed that he had nothing more to do in the matter and gave all the documents back to Bowie when he called at the office and displayed Robert Martin's power of attorney. Since Bowie did not have a power of attorney from William Wilson, the papers for that one single claim still lay in the office. Turner, meanwhile, tried to put the responsibility on George Davis, finding him “highly culpable” in the matter, and an associate blamed Turner. Kenneth McCrummon to Johnston, December 8, 1824 [misdated 1823], Graham to George Davis, November 1, 1827, M1385; Harper to Graham, May 24, 1827, James Turner to Graham, April 23, 1827, Graham to Harper, August 16, 1827, James Turner to Graham, April 23, 1829, Graham to Davis, August 16, 1827, Harper to Graham, August 29, 1827, Entry 404, Record Group 49, NA; Graham to Davis, March 2, 1827, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 5, 440-41; New Orleans State Gazette, April 11, 1826; conveyance Book D, 154, 344-45, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse; Wells to Johnston, July 26, 1827; McCrummon to Johnston, December 23, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  4 Stanley C. Arthur, The Story of the Kemper Brothers (St. Francisville, La., 1933), 13, says that Kemper died in 1828. However, Wells to Johnston, February 12, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP, mentions Kemper's recent death, obviously placing the event in January 1827.

  5 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 157-58; Commission, March 24, 1827, Nathaniel Lockhart to Finlay Hodgson & Co., July 16, 1827, De La Vergne Family Papers, LSU.

  6 Dent v. Bowie, November 30, 1827, Judicial Mortgage Record A, 54, Natchitoches Parish Courthouse.

  7 Wells to Johnston, July 26, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  8 Sparks in Ellis, Crockett, 215.

  9 John S. Moore to Fontaine, April 25, 1890, Fontaine Papers, UT, asserts that the ensuing duel grew of an argument over the recent election, but that would only apply to the disagreement between Wright and Bowie.

  10 John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, July 13, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  11 Grady C. McWhiney, Cracker culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1988), 148ff.

  12 H. A. Bullard to Johnston, November 13, 1821, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  13 Wells to Johnston, July 26, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP; Thorp, Bowie Knife, 10, states that in 1927 James O. Wells, a member of the family, said that the origin of the Maddox-Wells duel was that a female patient of the doctor's told him some gossip on Wells, and Maddox spread it injudiciously.

  14 Overton to Johnston, August 18, 1827, Robert Sibley to Johnston, September 2, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  15 John Nevitt Diary, September 16, 1827, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (SHC, UNC).

  16 It has been suggested that Wright did not want to meet Bowie on the dueling field because this would imply social equality with him, whereas if Bowie was really a fraud then he was no gentleman. This could also explain why the two had not settled their differences after the earlier shooting incident before this. However, given Wright's own behavior in shooting an unarmed Bowie, he could hardly lay claim to being a gentleman himself. His real reason for not wanting to encounter Bowie on the ground now was probably prudence, knowing that Bowie would be well armed this time and ready for him.

  17 The contemporary first-person sources on the Sandbar brawl are numerous, and all have been used in compiling this account. They include: letters and statements by Crain, Wells, Denny, Provan, Maddox, and others in the Natchez, Ariel, October 19, 1827; Samuel L. Wells to Johnston, September 20, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP; Samuel L. Wells letter, September 24, 1827, in the Woodville, Miss., Republican, October 13, 1827; Robert A. Crain “To the Public,” October 1827, Miscellaneous Collection, LSU; Crain to Joseph Walker, October 3, 1827, in Stafford, Wells Family, 23-24; an account by “An Eye Witness” that is probably Crain, published in the New Orleans Argus, October 2, 1827; and the statement of Thomas J. Maddox, ca. 1880, Thomas J. Maddox Papers, SHC, UNC. Also useful is an account from a March 1860 issue of the Concordia, La., Intelligencer, of which a transcript is in the James Bowie Vertical File, UT. It is only signed “W. M.,” but is clearly written as either an eyewitness account, or else an extremely well informed one, as it speaks of conversations with Bowie the night before the fight and in the days that followed. The author was probably William Minor of concordia, who appears there in the 1830 census. It should be noted that there are several minor discrepancies in these accounts, as would be expected in a number of views of an event that lasted no more than a minute or two, under great stress and excitement. The account offered in the text is an amalgamation of them all.

  Additional but probably not eyewitness sources survive from men who would have gotten their accounts directly from Bowie as close friends. These include Caiaphas Ham's “Recollections,” UT, and the William Sparks account, which appears to have been published first in the Philadelphia Times in late 1880 or early 1881, and reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 1881. The article is not signed but is repeated verbatim in a lengthy Sparks account of the Bowie that appears in Ellis, Crockett, 215-18. Sparks moved from Georgia to Natchez in the Mid-1820s, and was certainly a resident of Assumption Parish in 1830, just a few miles from the Bowie plantation in Terrebonne (1830 Census, Assumption Parish, La.), and his comments on the Bowies, as stated previously, are so accurate and perceptive on many vital points that he must have been well acquainted with them, as he claimed. William H. Sparks, The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men (Philadelphia, 1870), is disappointing in that it only mentions James Bowie twice in passing, but much of the rest of it confirms what he wrote in his 1880 article on other points.

  There are several obviously spurious supposed eyewitness accounts or ones written so long after the fact, and so
muddled by confused memory and the influence of legend, as to be virtually useless. These include accounts in the San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1881, by an unidentified “L. H.,” and an even more confused rendering in the New York Times, January 15, 1893.

  A full compilation of almost all of the genuine Sandbar sources is James L. Batson, James Bowie and the Sandbar Fight: Birth of the James Bowie Legend & Bowie Knife (Madison, Ala., 1992), while the best and most complete recent narrative account of the affair is J. R. Edmondson, “James Bowie, first Blood,” Knife World 21, October, November, and December 1995 issues, and 22, January 1996 issue. Less useful is Joseph Musso, “Jim Bowie's Sandbar Fight,” Alamo Journal 60 (February 1988).

  18 Woodville, Miss., Republican, September 29, 1827, quoting the Natchez Statesman, September 20, 1827; Concordia, La., Intelligencer, March 1860, in Bowie Vertical File, UT; Maddox statement, 1880, Maddox Papers, SHC, UNC; Nevitt Diary, September 19, 1827, SHC, UNC.

  19 Ham, “Recollections,” UT.

  20 Concordia, La., Intelligencer, March 1860, Bowie Vertical file, UT.

  21 Veramendi v. Hutchins et al., 140, Documents Pertaining to James Bowie, UT.

  22 John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, September 30, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  23 John Bails to Johnston, October 25, 1827, ibid., HSP.

  24 Whitcomb to Bynum, February 11, 1839, Entry 200, Record Group 49, NA; Conveyance Book F, 125-26, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse; Bill of Sale, May 12, 1827, Bowie Family Papers, UT; House Bill 474, 22nd Congress, 1st Session, March 16, 1832.

  25 Thomas to Johnston, November 5, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  26 Conveyance Book D, 158, 216-17, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.

  27 Thomas to Johnston, November 5, 1827, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  28 Conveyance Book D, 133-34, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.

  29 Shinn, Pioneers and Makers, 88; Frederick W. Cron, “The Bowie Land Frauds in Arkansas,” James Bowie Vertical File, UT; Samuel C. Roane to Graham, July 16, 1830, Benjamin Desha to Graham, March 1, 1828, Records of the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office, Division D (Private Land Claims Division), Records Re. Bowie Claims, Fraudulent Claims in Arkansas, 1827-1843, Entry 394; Bowie Claims, Cleland List, St. Augustine, Fla., Locations Under Arkansas Court, Entry 215, Record Group 49, NA. John Bowie retained in his own name roughly one-fourth of the acreage, but Roane knew that regardless of the names of the claims, “John Bowie pretended to be the owner.” John Bowie speedily worked to capitalize on their good fortune. He went to Arkansas in January and began selling the grants already in his name, while at the same time transferring those claims confirmed to fictitious persons over to himself for equally fictional nominal sums. “The original claimant or confirmee, was a fictitious person,” land office officials later discovered, “and a part of the fraud perpetrated on the government and the innocent purchasors of those claims, consisted in the forged assignment of those claims from such fictitious persons to John J. Bowie.” Several months later, on October 16, 1828, he appeared in Clark Country, where he entered the transactions with the local clerk of the court, and his witnesses came with him and signed their affidavits that they had seen Bowie purchasing the grants from the fictitious grantees. A week later he appeared at Washington, Arkansas, in neighboring Hempstead Country, where he entered copies of the records made in Clark but did not have to produce his witnesses, and there he located his actual claims. Thus, in his brother James's standard practice, he had erected a structure of supposed documentary evidence elsewhere, while in the country where he would claim the land no original documents or witnesses could cause problems (Conveyance Book B, 143, 144, 221-45, Hempstead Country Courthouse; Samuel Wheat and D. T. Walton to Thomas H. Blake, November 22, 1842, Entry 394, Record Group 49, NA).

  30 Bowie's presence in New Orleans as early as January 12 and as late as February 14 is definitely confirmed by these sales in Conveyance Book D, 247, 214-16. However, Isaac Thomas to Johnston, November 5, 1827, and March 5, 1828, Johnston Papers, HSP, indicate that Bowie was in the city by early November, as Thomas speaks of their having a meeting there that was apparently prior to the writing of his November 5, 1827, letter.

  31 Nevitt Diary, January 4, 1828, SHC, UNC; New Orleans Bee, January 10, 11, 1828.

  32 A preposterous story gained wide currency in the late 1800s and on into this century that not only did Bowie attend the principal Jackson dinner, but also that it was hosted at the American Theater by none other than Stephen Austin, and that other guests included Crockett, Travis, James Fannin, and a man identified only as Wright, probably Claiborne Wright who later died at the Alamo, all of them a committee being sent to Texas on behalf of would-be settlers in Kentucky and South Carolina. Variants of the story have Bowie sitting next to Austin in honor of his being a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans, and he, Crockett, and Travis all making speeches, Crockett praising Jackson inordinately, and Bowie declaring prophetically that they were off to Texas to fight the Mexicans and might even die in defense of freedom.

  The origin and earliest appearance of this fable is unknown. A handwritten note by Lucy Bowie in her papers (DRT) states that she found the story in a scrapbook belonging to Francis Xavier Martin, former chief justice of Louisiana. She does not say if it was a newspaper clipping or an account written by Martin himself. Attempts to locate such a scrapbook among the few remaining Martin papers have failed, and in any case Martin was a known crank, avoided by most of New Orleans society (Tregle, “Louisiana,” 180-81). If such a scrapbook did exist with Martin's account of the Jackson dinner, then it would probably be the origin of the story. John Henry Brown does not have it in his 1881 Encyclopedia, but it appears in his later books in the 1890s, and so it had gained some currency by then. Lucy Bowie published it in her article on Bowie in the Doylestown, Pa., Daily Intelligencer, June 20, 1916, and by 1935, when it appeared in the March 3 San Antonio Express, it was a common part of the Bowie and Texas canon and has since been passed on by Hopewell, Bowie, 60.

  It is, of course, complete nonsense. In January 1828 Crockett was at his seat in Congress a thousand miles away in Washington (Shackford, Crockett, 87-88). Stephen Austin was in Texas, and James Fannin was in Georgia. As for Travis, he was at that time an eighteen-year-old student at Claiborne, who hardly had the wherewithal even to get to New Orleans, two hundred miles distant. That unknown nobodies like Fannin and a teenage Travis would be invited to come and make speeches in front of Jackson is ridiculous. As for Bowie, his ardent associations with pro-Clay supporters make it clear that he was no Jackson adherent, and in any event he could not have been invited to attend as an honored guest for his participation in the Battle of New Orleans because, of course, he was never anywhere near the battle. Moreover, as of January 1828 he had exhibited no intentions to locate in Texas, and his stirring words about giving his life if need be to defend it against the Mexicans are an obvious projection of future events that reeks of fiction. The entire story can be safely put down as a myth, possibly created by Martin himself in his later irrational years.

  33 There is more than sufficient testimony to this meeting to establish that it did take place, though the details are muddled, as usual. Placing it in the winter of 1827-28 is conjectural. Crain's grandson, N. C. Blanchard, wrote on September 29, 1875, that the reconciliation took place “a short time after the Sand Bar fight” (undated clipping from the New Orleans Times, attached to T. Alexander to Taliaferro, October 10, 1875, Taliaferro Papers, LSU). The following year Crain took a seat in the legislature in early January 1829 and thus would not have been in New Orleans, where all sources agree the meeting took place, and later years seem less likely, though the meeting could have happened any time up to Bowie's last known trip through Louisiana in the fall of 1833. The earliest account of the meeting is in the “W. M.” article in the March 1860. Concordia, La., Intelligencer in the James Bowie Vertical File, UT. It states that Crain asked Bowie to his room, closed the door, and placed two pistols on the table
, saying they should settle things finally there and then, either by taking the pistols or by shaking hands. Interestingly, this is almost exactly the manner in which Bowie supposedly settled a difference of his with the Natchez editor Andrew Marschalk, though that episode is certainly apocryphal (San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 1881). The “pistols on the table” theme, in fact, is a common one in the mythology of dueling in the Old Southwest.

  In 1880 Thomas Maddox, Crain's friend, said that Bowie invited Crain to his room, and that they there settled things (Maddox statement, SHC, UNC). Finally, William H. Sparks, friend of both Bowie and Maddox, related in his 1879-80 account in Ellis, Crockett, 219-20, that the reconciliation actually took place several years afterward in New York, where Bowie helped save Crain from a mob. This version seems highly fanciful, though Sparks was not given to making up stories in his Bowie account, and is generally quite accurate, allowing for the vagaries of aging memory. Bowie was in the East in 1828, again in 1829, and perhaps in 1832, so it is just barely possible that there is some germ of truth in the Sparks account, which in any event he most likely would have gotten from his intimate friend Maddox, Crain's close associate. Nevertheless, it has seemed most likely that the reconciliation took place sooner rather than later, as Blanch indicated.