Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  The new recruit approached. “I want you to fix my gun,” he began, speaking to Houston, whom he did not recognize. “The lock is out of order, it won’t stand cocked.”

  The general played along. “Very well,” he said. “Set her down there, and call in one hour and she will be ready.”

  When the owner learned—to his horror—Houston’s identity, he returned. Afraid he might be punished for insubordination, he approached the commander, hat in hand, asking for forgiveness.

  The general just laughed. “My friend,” he reassured the soldier, “they told you right, I am a very good blacksmith.” He handed over the gun, which he had dismantled and cleaned. “She is in good order now, and I hope you are going to do some good fighting.”18

  Houston had learned much from his mentor. Jackson was a master at winning his men’s allegiance on the march; part of that was to maintain his authority and yet become one of them.

  THOMPSON’S FERRY

  Santa Anna looked across the Brazos River from San Felipe de Austin. His first attempt to get his army to the opposite shore had failed when a flatboat, manned by a squad of his men, had returned, rebuffed by a hail of bullets from Moseley Baker’s riflemen. Baker got his wish: He got to mix it up with the enemy, and he and his men acquitted themselves honorably. The Mexican general had ordered his artillerymen to return fire, but two days of bombardment—booms were heard at Groce’s—hadn’t cleared the nest of snipers.

  Santa Anna decided to leave General Sesma to continue the fight, while he headed downstream to find another crossing.

  At Thompson’s Ferry, on April 12, he tested his luck again, only this time he resorted to trickery. Before being observed by anyone on the opposite bank, the general and his men concealed themselves in the bushes. Then Colonel Juan Almonte, who spoke fluent English, showed himself on the shore.

  He hailed a boatman standing across the Brazos.

  Thinking the lone figure calling to him was a Texian looking to join the exodus, the ferryman poled over. The Mexicans quickly overpowered the unsuspecting boatman (by one account, Santa Anna himself wrestled him to the ground), and his vessel soon began shuttling Santa Anna’s force—seven hundred infantry, fifty cavalry, and a cannon—to the opposite bank.

  Santa Anna wondered about Sam Houston. He held the Texian army in contempt after the Alamo and Goliad and saw no reason to think his present opponent any more dangerous than Travis or Fannin. His campaign, he believed, had become little more than “a military parade,” in the face of an opponent who “was not undertaking a retreat but was in full flight.”19

  A new piece of intelligence inspired a new plan. From a Mexican colonist, Santa Anna learned that the “so-called government of Texas” was within striking distance at Harrisburg. He saw a clear way to end this fight: If he could capture the leaders of the revolution, he would strike “a single blow . . . mortal to their cause.” His first objective wouldn’t be to snare Houston but, rather, to capture the entire rebel government. If he moved quickly, Houston couldn’t—or wouldn’t—interfere, since the Texians were camped well to the north, out of Santa Anna’s direct line of attack, and reportedly heading east.20

  Santa Anna measured the odds. Tradition was not with him—most military planners regarded keeping an army together of paramount importance—but he was certain he saw the opening he wanted, an easy and major win in an immediate strike. And on April 14, Santa Anna led his contingent of dragoons, grenadiers, and riflemen toward Harrisburg, planning to end this rebellion once and forever.

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT

  Two days before, plumes of thick black smoke from the twin stacks had signaled departure time for Houston’s army. Fired by green wood, the steam engine of the Yellow Stone began the work, at ten o’clock on the morning of April 12, of carrying the Army of Texas across the Brazos. The retreat east resumed.

  On seeing the steamboat docked at Groce’s wharf ten days before, Houston had impressed the side-wheeler into service “for the benefit of the Republic.”21 Having the ship meant that the high waters of the rising river no longer posed an obstacle.

  Captain John Ross and his crew ferried the men across. With the 120-foot-long deck stacked with bales of cotton to protect her boilers and pilothouse from enemy rifles, the Yellow Stone required seven trips to carry the seven hundred soldiers (including more than a hundred sick and wounded), two hundred horses, and ten ox-drawn wagons loaded with ammunition and baggage to the left bank.

  Houston went across with the first load of men and cargo; Rusk came last after supervising the loading. Secretary of War Rusk had emerged as an invaluable Houston ally, rebutting criticisms from the government and soldiers alike.

  On April 13, Houston and his army marched along Cypress Creek—but away from Santa Anna’s forces. Again the dissention in the ranks grew louder—Did Houston intend to retreat all the way to Louisiana, to seek the direct military aid of Jackson and the United States?22 It didn’t help that Moseley Baker and Wyly Martin, together with more than three hundred men, had retreated from the Brazos and rejoined Houston’s force. Their voices only added to the discontent.

  By April 16, the Texians marched through Cypress City; a few miles later they reached a fork in the road. There a local landmark, the Which-Way Tree, stood like a scarecrow with its arms raised. One craggy limb indicated the road to Nacogdoches; to tread that path meant further retreat, perhaps to the Sabine River and beyond. Another gnarled branch pointed due south, toward Harrisburg and—very likely—the long-awaited fight. The tree remained silent, but, according to Dr. Nicholas Labadie, a physician riding with the advance guard, a local man named Roberts did the talking.

  He stood near the gate to his farm. Just as Houston rode up, Roberts was asked, Which way to Harrisburg?

  “The right hand road will carry you,” he replied, “just as straight as a compass.”

  Before Houston could say a word, a shout came from the ranks. “To the right, boys, to the right.” The cry was repeated by others—“loud and joyous shouts followed in succession.” The army’s band made the turn, too, following the right arm of the Which-Way Tree.

  Houston had kept his plan to himself, issuing no standing orders regarding which way to turn. Would Houston rather have had the army head straight for the Sabine—the cowardly way out, his skeptics thought—or turn south and fight? Suddenly, though, Houston’s preference no longer mattered. As one soldier remembered, “the head of the column . . . took the right-hand without being either bid or forbid.”23

  The soldiers may have been pleased, but not everyone liked the southward turn.

  Mrs. Pamelia Mann, for one, was miffed. An inn operator fleeing Washington-on-the-Brazos, she had recognized there was safety in numbers and had reached an understanding with the Texian army when the army left Groce’s landing. “If you are going on the Nacogdoches road,” she had said, “you can have my oxen.” Yoked to the Cincinnati cannons, the sturdy animals pulled the heavy equipment along the muddy route and Pamelia Mann had joined the caravan.

  Now the deal had changed. When she realized the destination had shifted with the turn toward Harrisburg, Mrs. Mann, well-known for her hot temper, galloped to the head of the column. She was said to have “fought everyone except Indians,”24 and now she confronted the commander in chief.

  “General, you told me a damn lie,” spat out the angry woman. “Sir, I want my oxen.”

  “Well, Mrs. Mann, we can’t spare them,” Houston replied as reasonably as he could. “We can’t get our cannon along without them.”

  “I don’t care a damn for your cannon,” she replied, brandishing a pistol. She soon headed north, away from the army, trailed by the oxen she had unharnessed herself, cutting the rawhide tug with her knife as the men looked on wordlessly.

  Captain Rohrer, one of the wagon masters charged with delivering the cannons, remonstrated with Houston. “We can’t get along without them ox
en, the cannon is bogged down.”

  Houston, caught in the middle, offered a noncommittal reply. “Well . . .”

  Rohrer, determined to get the draft animals back, turned and rode off with another soldier in pursuit of Mrs. Mann. He was a hundred yards away when Houston, rising up in his saddle, hollered a warning. “Captain Rohrer, that woman will fight.”

  “Damn her fighting,” was the reply.

  Nothing more was heard on the matter until nine o’clock that evening, well after the army had made camp for the night. Rohrer returned, his shirt badly torn—without the oxen.

  “Hey, captain, where is your oxen?” someone hollered.

  To the amusement of many, Captain Rohrer’s abashed reply was, “She would not let me have them.”

  Mrs. Mann had won her fight, and it seemed the soldiers had won theirs, too. Houston had kept them fighting battles they could not win—now he would find out if he had held them back long enough.25

  FOURTEEN

  The Battle at San Jacinto

  We go to conquer. It is wisdom, growing out of necessity, to meet the enemy now; every consideration enforces it. No previous occasion would justify it.

  —SAM HOUSTON TO HENRY RAGUET, APRIL 19, 1836

  The heavy spring rains meant misery to every soldier, Mexican and Texian, as the confrontation between the mismatched armies drew closer. Drenched clothing never seemed to dry, and the mud on what passed for roads grew deeper by the day. Streams swelled into rivers and rivers looked like lakes. The challenging conditions also revealed something about the characters of both generals.

  General Sam Houston—seemingly now committed to confront Santa Anna—won new respect from some of his troops when, in the course of the demanding, two-and-a-half-day, fifty-five-mile march to Harrisburg, he dismounted his horse to help the wagon drivers when their carts bogged down in the mud. Despite his high rank and old war wounds, again and again he leaned his good shoulder into wagon wheels. His men took note.

  On Santa Anna’s trip to Harrisburg, he grew impatient at the progress of his column. When a fallen tree bridged one creek bed, its broad trunk easing the passage for men on foot, Santa Anna stepped carefully across, and a dragoon swam his horse through the rushing waters. But rather than wait for his soldiers to help carry the baggage and commissary stores safely across, His Excellency ordered the fully loaded mule train to cross the swollen stream. Up to their withers in water, several mules lost their balance. There was a “terrible jamming of officers and dragoons, pack-mules and horses,” one of his officers noted in his diary. Several animals drowned “in a scene of wild confusion.”

  Santa Anna’s reaction to the dangerous situation? “His Excellency witnessed [it] with hearty laughter.”1 The lives of men, Mexican or Texian, meant little to His Excellency.

  Santa Anna had a particular reason for hurrying to Harrisburg. He was keen to arrest the Texas government and especially its vice president. Previously a provincial governor and Mexico’s ambassador to France, Lorenzo de Zavala had opposed Santa Anna’s power grab in Mexico City and His Excellency’s reversal of democratic reforms. Santa Anna regarded the exiled Zavala as a sworn enemy and a traitor to his country; he wanted to make Zavala his prisoner.

  As far as Santa Anna was concerned, Houston’s army could be dealt with later. His exact location wasn’t clear, but scouts reported that the retreating Texian general aimed for Nacogdoches and the Sabine. “Since he is escorting families and supplies in ox-drawn wagons, his march is slow,” Santa Anna noted. He believed that if he could promptly capture the government, he would still have time to subdue Houston. “The Trinity River, moreover, should detain him many days.”2

  On April 15, the morning after the hazardous crossing, Santa Anna headed for Harrisburg. Despite marching at double-time pace, per Santa Anna’s orders, the Mexicans remained far from the town at sunset. But their commander, accompanied by an officer and fifteen dragoons, rode on. The midnight hour approached before they finally reached their destination.

  Harrisburg’s streets were desolate. The only sign of life the Mexicans managed to find was in a printshop, the new offices of the Telegraph and Texas Register. At gunpoint, three ink-spattered men told Santa Anna he had arrived too late. The government had departed hours before, boarding the steamboat Cayuga, along with most of the inhabitants of Harrisburg. The vessel had steamed for New Washington, a town some twenty miles southeast on a river known as Buffalo Bayou.

  Angry that his prey had eluded him, Santa Anna ordered the printing equipment destroyed, the ruined press parts and type cases thrown into the river. Only weeks earlier this same press had inked the first impression of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

  HARRISBURG

  Three days later, when General Houston looked across Buffalo Bayou, Santa Anna’s army had come and gone, leaving the river town unrecognizable. “We arrived at Harrisburg about noon,” one Texian private reported, “[and] the smoke at the town told us too plainly . . . that the enemy had been there before us, and set fire to its buildings.”3

  Exhausted after the long march, the Texians made camp. Deaf Smith and his team departed on another mission. Houston wanted to know the exact whereabouts of the enemy that had burned Harrisburg. Tired as they were, the Texians felt ready to engage. “They were of one mind,” one colonel remembered, “to march down and fight the enemy.”4

  Smith, Henry Karnes, and their scouting party swam their horses across the wide, slow-moving Buffalo Bayou. A dozen miles downstream, they met—and promptly took as their prisoners—three men. One was a Mexican captain; his companions were a guard and a Tejano guide. A search of their belongings revealed that the captain was a government courier, and his saddlebags contained for-his-eyes-only dispatches addressed to Santa Anna.

  On the little party’s return to Houston’s camp at eight o’clock that evening, the captives’ arms were bound behind their backs. The general summoned Sergeant Moses Austin Bryan, nephew of Stephen Austin and fluent Spanish speaker, to help question the prisoners.

  The guide claimed he had been detained by the Mexicans in San Antonio while on a furlough from the Texian army. His commanding officer was summoned and confirmed both the man’s identity and his commitment to the rebel cause.

  How many men had been in the force that burned Harrisburg? Houston wanted to know.

  The Tejano wasn’t certain, but he had “heard some of the officers say . . . that there were 500 infantry and 100 cavalry and one twelve pound cannon.”5

  The numbers reassured Houston and Secretary of War Rusk. At least for the moment, the Mexican force in the vicinity was smaller than the Army of Texas, which now hovered around a thousand men.

  Major Lorenzo de Zavala Jr., son of the republic’s vice president, and a team of Tejanos speedily translated the documents the courier carried. They found some were letters home, addressed to loved ones back in Mexico, and of no strategic value. But others offered invaluable intelligence.

  One revealed that General Cos and 650 soldiers would soon arrive to reinforce the men who had burned Harrisburg. It also became clear that the Mexicans didn’t know where Houston’s army was or that it was following in their footsteps. Still another fact emerged, one that galvanized Houston’s interest: “I learned,” he noted, “that General Santa Anna, with one division of his choice troops, had marched in the direction of Lynch’s Ferry, on the San Jacinto.”6

  The man who had ordered the slaughter at both the Alamo and Goliad was in striking distance, just downstream on the Buffalo Bayou. As they reviewed the documents together, Houston and Rusk reacted as one.

  “We need not talk,” said Houston, turning to Rusk. “You think we ought to fight, and I think so too.”7

  FROM HUNTER TO HUNTED

  The capture of the courier changed everything. The roles that Houston and Santa Anna played suddenly reversed: Houston became the hunter, His Excellency the hunted. T
hanks to Deaf Smith’s brilliant intelligence gathering, Houston, now armed with the who, what, where, and when, could plan a surprise attack. Here was his chance to steal the initiative from Santa Anna; the enemy commander, by making his impulsive move to capture the government, had given Houston an opening. Santa Anna had isolated himself with a fraction of his forces at hand.

  At the same time, Houston’s army showed signs of finally coalescing. The time at Groce’s had helped. By retreating across Texas, Houston had bought time for these men to grow together, to gain experience, to learn military tactics. He had identified who among his officers were to be trusted in battle. Now Houston saw an army that showed its readiness to act in unison: He’d seen that when, spontaneously, the rank and file had chosen to move toward the fight at the Which-Way Tree crossroad.

  But time was suddenly of the essence. If the Texians could move quickly—that is, if Houston could strike before the larger Mexican army reassembled—he might be the one doing the capturing. This war was about revolution, about freedom, but it was also about avenging the annihilation at the Alamo. And at Goliad. For the first time since Houston had taken command of the Army of Texas, a big battle loomed in his immediate future, suddenly inevitable, perhaps only a day or two away. After a long reluctance to engage until the right moment, Houston now foresaw a battle he was ready to fight.

  Houston and his men may have needed no further motivation to carry this fight to the Mexicans, but, on close inspection, another grim reminder emerged of the savagery of their enemy. Only weeks before, the saddlebags containing the Mexican documents had been the property of a fellow Texian. There, on the underside, the name W. B. Travis had been inscribed. Travis’s bags had become a battlefield souvenir, scavenged by the murderous victors at the Alamo.