Few Union men were as bold or brave as James P. Newcomb. His Alamo Express had been published on and off for about a year. When Newcomb learned of the San Lucas Springs capture, he ran a scathing condemnation of the act in his triweekly paper. A mob consisting of KGC men and Texas Rangers responded by destroying Newcomb’s press and burning his building. The next day, a well-armed Newcomb rode down Commerce Street and out of town, headed for Mexico.11 In Houston, violence against Union men reached a fever pitch. On May 15, two New Hampshire natives were tarred, feathered, ridden out of town on a rail, and hanged. Anderson happened to be in Houston and heard that Dr. K. B. Ayer, also from New Hampshire, had been branded an abolitionist. This was ludicrous, since Ayer owned a plantation in Arkansas employing twenty-four slaves. Charles intervened just in time to convince a lynch mob to spare his friend’s life in return for his removal from the state.12
Union men and their families began leaving Texas in droves and the rebels were happy to see them go. Whether they chose to make their way to the Texas coast, to New Orleans, or to brave the more arduous journey southwest to Mexico, dangers along the way necessitated that refugees travel in wagon trains. After the first major land battle at Manassas, the Confederate government decided to put a deadline on these emigrations. The Alien Enemy Act of August 8 gave the refugees forty days to leave the state. That deadline was later extended to the end of October in Texas, based on the time it took for the proclamation to reach remote areas. Those who tarried longer were at the mercy of local authorities.
CHAPTER NINE
Capture
CHARLES ANDERSON’S FIRST IMPULSE was to flee. Over the course of the nightmare year 1861, however, the opportunity to assist other Union men had caused him to hesitate. Now that the Confederate government was closing that window, Anderson had to get his family out. This was hardly an easy task. War created chaos in financial markets, especially in the South. Compelled to sell his livestock, land, and house quickly in a hostile climate, Anderson braced for the worst. He had spent about thirty thousand dollars creating his beautiful ranch and home. He salvaged only a fraction of that investment.
Anderson first advertised his land for sale in the newspapers, but a scarcity of money and nervous potential buyers made that effort fruitless. He finally came up with an idea. His friend John James had an approved claim against the U.S. government for rent of lands near Camp Hudson, Texas. It was due to be paid in 1861, but the war broke out and the U.S. Senate froze appropriations to Texas. If Anderson could get back to Washington, he could present James’s claim and recover at least a thousand dollars. So he swapped some of his property for James’s claim on September 14. Anderson exchanged his most valuable land for notes on a house in Louisville, Kentucky. He bartered his prized stallions for land and whiskey in Lexington, Kentucky.1
The remaining livestock and personal effects went to auction. The Andersons ended up selling everything but their most practical possessions. Even Eliza’s family Bible went on the block. Fortunately Mrs. Banning Norton, a family friend, bought it and shipped it on to New York. On Friday, September 27, Charles Anderson rode into town, where he met with Confederate general Henry H. Sibley, who urged him to leave by stage for New Orleans the following Tuesday. Sibley gave Anderson till ten o’clock the following morning to decide. When Charles returned home, he found Kitty so sick that she was unable to sit up. She had malaria.2
Kitty suffered through chills and night sweats. Since she was unable to travel by stage, the family opted to leave in wagons for Matamoros, Mexico. There they could catch a steamship and eventually make it to the North. Despite Eliza’s objections, the family was persuaded to depart on Sunday. Their escorts, two members of Judge Thomas J. Devine’s jury, were leaving that day for Brownsville, Texas. That port town was 278 miles away, just across the river from Matamoros. Anderson purchased the fine ambulance of former U.S. Army major James Longstreet so that his wife and daughters could ride during the day and sleep comfortably at night. They went off to an uncertain future.
The family was detained in town as close friends said their goodbyes. Most of the paroled Union officers turned out. Kitty’s fiancé, Will Jones, packed the wagon with extra comforts for the road. Melinda, the family’s twenty-year-old black servant, was in tears as she begged Eliza to take her with them. She had been freed by Anderson just days before. Once the family fled the state, Melinda was abducted and sold back into slavery. They finally departed San Antonio around eleven o’clock. As the Andersons followed the course of the lovely river, passing several missions along the way, they gazed backwards. Their hearts sank as the town slowly vanished.
The little band made twenty-five miles that day. Edward Gallagher and Robert McCarty followed them at first but soon passed, as their mules were stronger and their loads lighter. After an hour, they crossed the Salado River and bade farewell to several of their Mexican friends. The roads were heavy with sand. The Andersons could not catch up with their fellow travelers by nightfall, so they made camp by the roadside. They passed their first evening as refugees uneasily. Kitty and Eliza awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of horses. They were afraid that bandits had come to rob them, as some miscreants in town had threatened to take their auction money. Thankfully, the riders passed and the Andersons rose to breakfast Monday morning relieved if not completely refreshed. The party left early in the morning for the second day of their planned journey.
The Anderson family had been back on the road only four or five miles when they observed soldiers riding toward them. As they drew close to the wagon, the column split in two and filed off on either side of the emigrants. Once surrounded, Anderson asked Lieutenant Arthur K. Leigh if he had seen their escorts. “They are about three and a half miles beyond,” replied the officer. “Would you be able to return to San Antonio?” he asked. “I object particularly and prefer to go on and catch up with our company,” replied Anderson. Leigh informed him that they had orders to bring him back. Anderson maintained his poise throughout the exchange, stating that he could not imagine why he should be molested in this way. “Well, Felix,” he finally said to his driver, “Turn around. We shall go back.” Turning to Leigh, Anderson added: “I assure you, if it were possible against such odds, I would resist such a rascally procedure.” As the soldiers and their captives returned to town, Anderson looked for opportunities to escape. This might have been easily accomplished as they passed through the thick chaparral, but he feared for the fate of his family should he attempt it.
When the party stopped for dinner, Anderson pretended to make coffee while he burned letters and other papers that might implicate his Union friends. He tried to remove a thorn from a hobbling mule and was rewarded with a kick, followed by a bite from his dog for the same mercies. “Well this is Anderson luck!” he exclaimed. Despite his misfortunes, Anderson retained his sense of humor. As they neared San Antonio, however, his mood changed. Leigh had ridden forward to inform McCulloch of his successful mission. Upon his return, the Confederate lieutenant informed Anderson that if he agreed not to leave the city, he would be given a parole and liberty of movement throughout the town. “I refuse to take parole for an inch of space or a moment of time!” Anderson exclaimed. The women were allowed to go wherever they pleased, but they preferred to stay with the prisoner.3
Arriving in San Antonio Monday evening, soldiers took the Andersons to the Menger House and placed them in the hotel’s finest rooms. Guards monitored the doors and did not allow the prisoner contact with any of his friends. The soldiers confiscated the family’s baggage, allowing access to it only by the women under the watchful eyes of Lieutenant George W. Balzer. The family spent the next three days locked in the Menger House hotel. Eliza and her daughters refused to take meals at the public table downstairs, as they were concerned that any contact with their friends might put them in danger too. Confederate colonel Dr. Phillip N. Luckett and Presley J. Edwards came to visit the Andersons on the first day of their captivity and were turned away
by the guards. Will Jones, Kitty’s fiancé, would not be deterred. He succeeded in visiting the women each day of their confinement. It was cold comfort.
The Andersons woke early on Tuesday morning and awaited their fate. At about half past nine, three officers called for Charles and escorted him down to the vacant room where the family’s baggage was stored. Captain D. C. Stith, Major William T. Mechling, and Lieutenant Leigh each questioned the prisoner in turn. Anderson opened all the trunks and unpacked every article. They confiscated all of his money save one hundred dollars and all of his personal papers. Anderson was alarmed. “Some of the money was mine,” Eliza protested. “And some mine,” Kitty added. Such remonstrations were pointless. Anderson asked his wife if she really thought that McCulloch would recognize her auction proceeds of three hundred dollars for the piano and three hundred dollars for her carriage. “Yes,” replied Eliza, “they have no right to take it from me nor will not.” Eliza and Kitty also worried that the soldiers would try to take the money they had sewn into their clothing. What was clearly illegal in peacetime had little bearing on the actions of local authorities in a time of civil war.
After dinner, Anderson spent the afternoon being further interrogated downstairs. In the evening, he was allowed to see close friend Presley Edwards for a few minutes. Eliza still refused to see a steady stream of friends who called at Menger House. Kitty received a handful of friends Tuesday night, including her loyal beau Will. Perhaps tomorrow would be better, she prayed. By the next morning, however, her hopes were dashed. Kitty resolved to be quiet and cheerful, but early Wednesday morning her mother came back to their room with tears in her eyes. Anderson had decided that the rest of the family should leave him in Texas and go north. Eliza did not agree and tried to convince him otherwise, but his mind was made up. McCulloch finally informed Anderson that he was considered “an alien enemy and a prisoner of war.” No formal charges had been brought, but it was clear to all that the prisoner was not going anywhere.
Luckett was finally allowed to see Anderson, and he began carrying letters back and forth from McCulloch. Anderson sent word to the colonel that he wished his family to embark on their journey, so McCulloch arranged for Lieutenant Leigh to escort them the following day. He suggested that his friend, Cuban lawyer Jose Augustin Quintero, should also accompany them to Brownsville. Quintero called on the family later in the day. Kitty found him polite and charming. She did not suspect that he was a Confederate spy.
Anderson’s missives to McCulloch became increasingly combative. These proceedings were illegal by any civilized standard, he declared. He had been denied the privilege of facing his accuser. He could not be both a citizen of Texas and an alien. Martial law had not been declared. Anderson insisted he be remanded to Brownsville, where the Confederate States Court was in session. When again offered parole, the prisoner replied, “I wouldn’t give my parole for one minute to save your soul from Hell!” Anderson received his last letter from his captor on Thursday. McCulloch wrote that it was his duty to arrest Anderson. “As your former mild and courteous letters, and the appeals of your friends, have not been able to arouse my personal sympathies,” McCulloch wrote, “you certainly will not expect me to be so unmanly as to permit your harsh, bitter, and unwarranted allusions to myself to excite the baser passion of the heart . . . I will exercise all the kindness and courtesy towards you that I can do safely, or that you—in your evident desire to make yourself a martyr—will permit.”4
McCulloch ordered Anderson to be removed to Captain William T. Mechling’s line of camp sentinels and forbade him correspondence or outside visitors. Although the terms of parole allowed Will Jones travel within the Confederate States, McCulloch denied him the right to accompany his fiancé’s family to the port. Eliza went into her husband’s room alone for what seemed to Kitty like hours. When she emerged, Kitty and her eleven-year-old sister wrapped their arms around their father’s neck and said their good-byes. Belle was sobbing quietly, while Kitty stood somber and stone-faced.
CHAPTER TEN
Exodus
ELIZA ANDERSON WAS CRYING as family friends loaded them into their ambulance for yet another wrenching farewell. As the mules started moving, Kitty’s beau, Will Jones shouted, “I will overtake you before you reach there!” to which Eliza responded, “And bring Mr. Anderson with you!” They were traveling the same road that took them back to San Antonio less than four days previous, but the rear view this time looked gloomy and ugly. They never saw their Texas home again. At the edge of town, the little company paused, as Lieutenant Arthur Leigh had gone back to Presley Edwards’s house to retrieve some family photographs. They had almost made it to the Salado River when night fell and they were forced to make camp near an ancient little house on the side of the road. Leigh and lawyer Jose Augustin Quintero made every effort to tend to the family’s needs, but sadness and exhaustion had enveloped the Anderson girls. They fell asleep immediately.
The party woke early the next morning to repack and reload. Once under way, they made good progress and arrived at the Calaveras River by lunch time. Before the meal, Kitty whispered a private prayer. “Oh father, my dear father, when will I ever see you again? So blessed of God in every way. Kind heaven grant a nobler destiny than this we fear!” Passing the very spot where Charles Anderson had been arrested, the party again made camp. After a brief walk they fell into another dreary, deep sleep. The days passed with little variation. They woke early and traveled until sundown, making twenty to twenty-five miles on a good day. The refugees and their escorts began to feel more comfortable with each other. Lively conversation provided occasional relief from premonitions of doom. Quintero engaged Kitty in a discussion of politics and was surprised at how much she knew. When he asked her why her father would turn down a parole, Kitty replied, “Do you think my father would take parole now?” All talk of such matters ended abruptly.
At Goliad, Eliza urged Kitty to keep up her singing per her father’s wishes. Anderson loved music and the sound of his favorite daughter’s voice most particularly. “Every note,” Kitty replied, “seems to choke me.” So she buried herself in one of her father’s beloved Shakespeare dramas. The little book was replete with his characteristic pencil notations. As she gazed at the margins of each page, Kitty could almost hear her father’s voice. During the journey she learned that Quintero had an interesting past. Leigh told her that the Cuban and fellow exiles like Narciso Lopez had attempted to overthrow the Cuban government with arms and financial backing from U.S. interests. Quintero continued to work Kitty for information, reading poetry to her and promising her a parrot he kept with Colonel John S. Ford at Brownsville. Ford later pretended to go out of his way to aid the refugees. However, he was actually their sworn enemy.
The landscape past Palo Blanco became more attractive, with bright streams, grassy plains, and post oaks. It was a park-like setting. Leigh sang “How Can I Leave Thee” in his native German as they rode along, his fine voice cheering the emigrant band. If her father was only with them, Kitty speculated, they might actually start enjoying this trip. After a week on the road, the weather changed. Rains came, alternating in drizzles and torrents. The mules were tired from their extra exertion in the wet, sandy roads and hungry due to a scarcity of corn, their favorite fodder. The midday meal for the humans was “beyond barbaric,” according to Kitty, and they did not eat it. The day they left San Patricio, where arms were being stored for the Confederate government, the party made only six miles. An unfinished, abandoned house on the prairie served as their lodgings for the night, as the ground was too damp for camping.
On October 12, the company made an arduous seventeen-mile slog, pushed along by a fierce storm, and arrived at the King ranch. Captain Richard King had one of the largest and most prosperous ranches in the state. His sixteen thousand acres included the spring-fed Santa Gertrudis Creek in the middle of the Wild Horse Desert. King and his refined wife, Henrietta, were kind to travelers. The Anderson family enjoyed a brief respi
te in the comfortable society they were accustomed to. The next day, packed with a supply of fresh meat from their generous hosts, the refreshed travelers again braved the hostile desert. A swift but boring twenty-five-mile ride to Santa Rosa on Saturday was followed by an equally wearisome trek to Taylor’s Well on the Sabbath. The only break in the monotony was the addition of Captain James Walworth to the party, he having joined them from King’s ranch. Walworth was a clever man and a confirmed bachelor. He was also an outspoken secessionist, so the Andersons kept their distance.
The rain resumed on Monday and continued during the twenty-two-mile crawl to Las Animas (the Ghosts). This stretch of the journey was well named, as they found abandoned vehicles and homesteads nearly as plentiful as the wild turkeys, ducks, partridges, geese, and deer that inhabited the area. After two more days of sandy and sparse wilderness, they stopped at the ranch of Francis W. Latham, who treated them with the utmost kindness. He was a Connecticut native and about to be married to a cousin of Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island. Like so many former Union men, he eventually supported secession. Finally they arrived at the edge of Arroyo Colorado, fourteen miles from Brownsville. Recent rains had flooded the arroyos and made the crossing a difficult proposition. They were forced to wait until the water level subsided.
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