Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  At 3:30 P.M. the order finally came down the line. “PARADE AND PREPARE FOR ACTION!”

  REST FOR THE WEARY?

  On the other side of the line, Santa Anna was taking a siesta.

  That morning he had risen early. He watched the approach of Cos and his men; their arrival gave the Mexican commander added confidence, but, since they had marched all night, he permitted the exhausted soldiers to stack their arms and bed down in a nearby grove of trees. He personally made a foray into the field to appraise the Texian line through his spyglass. But by midafternoon, with no sign of action from the Texian side, Santa Anna relaxed his guard and permitted the rest of his men to stand down and stack their guns. The Texians showed no signs of attacking and, with their backs to the bayou, Houston’s army certainly wasn’t going to slip away.

  Santa Anna decided upon a rest and, like him, many officers and soldiers lay down. Others in his army ate, took their horses to the water, or wandered into the woods to harvest tree branches for shelter. The officer in charge, General Fernández Castrillón, took the opportunity to shave, wash, and change uniforms. He paid little or no attention to the sentries who remained on duty.7

  THE PLAN

  The rise between the armies, as well as the trees overhead, helped mask Houston’s battle array. Unseen by the Mexicans, he positioned his infantry divisions in two lines, with his men divided in half on either side of the cannons, which were now commanded, with Neill wounded, by his aide Colonel Hockley. The cavalry, led by Mirabeau Lamar, newly promoted by Houston to the rank of colonel, waited on his extreme right, largely hidden by a stand of trees.

  His battle plan could hardly have been simpler. First, the sixty-one men on horseback would move on the Mexicans’ left, “for the purpose,” said Houston, “of attracting their notice.” Thus distracted, the enemy might remain unaware of the infantry—shoulders hunched, half-hidden by the topography and the grasses—trotting across the prairie that separated the armies. At the same time, the Twin Sisters would be wheeled to a station within two hundred yards of the enemy’s breastwork.8

  From the treetops, lookouts reported that no Mexicans seemed to be standing sentinel.

  While the uniformed Mexicans the previous day had, according to one Texian captain, looked “exceedingly grand in the[ir] picturesque costume,” no two of the Texians waiting to fight looked alike.9 They could lay no claim to being a proudly uniformed army; they remained, in looks and origin, a diverse blending of men. Frontiersmen in buckskin lined up with merchants wearing waistcoats and cravats; Stephen Austin’s nephew Moses Austin Bryan wore a claw-hammer-tailed frock coat. On their heads they wore top hats, sombreros, fur caps, or round hats of wool or velvet. A few wore remnants of military uniforms, but, mud stained and tattered, none met West Point standards. The troops looked unkempt and unwashed, with matted hair and beards. There were Tejanos and Yankees, Georgians and Kentuckians, Alabamians and Virginians, Americans of all sorts with a smattering of immigrants from Europe. Houston’s army shared little but a deep desire to avenge the needless slaying at the Alamo and Goliad—and to defend a free and sovereign Texas.

  Houston, riding a gray stallion named Saracen, moved along the lines, which extended some twenty-five hundred feet end to end. He spoke to all the captains. He conferred with Secretary Rusk. And at four o’clock, he raised his sword.

  “Trail arms!” he ordered. “Forward!”

  As instructed, the men began to move through the grass carrying their guns butt down, with muzzles inclined upward. The cannoneers pulled the pair of guns forward, their low-angled barrels almost invisible in the tall grass. As the army advanced, Houston patrolled the line. “Hold your fire, men,” he ordered, “hold your fire.”10

  One of the older soldiers on the field, fifty-seven-year-old Jimmy Curtis—known as “Uncle Jimmy”—carried two guns. When Secretary Rusk asked why, the settler (he had been among Stephen Austin’s original Three Hundred) replied, “Damn the Mexicans; they killed my son and son-in-law in the Alamo, and I intend to kill two of them for it, or be killed myself.”11

  The men on the far left, who remained partly hidden by the thicket of trees that lined the San Jacinto River, moved quickly. They were the first to fire.

  “THE ENEMY! THEY COME!”

  “The enemy!” the call rang out. “They come! They come!”

  When, shortly after four o’clock, a single Mexican bugler sounded the alarm, an officer climbed atop a stack of ammunition boxes. He saw a long line of determined men approaching.

  “We marched upon the enemy,” one Texian private noted, “with the stillness of death.”12

  The bloodletting had begun moments before with gunfire in the woods, followed by cannon fire from the Twin Sisters. For most of the Mexicans, the ominous booms had been a complete surprise. Hunks of deadly, high-flying horseshoe scrap and grapeshot suddenly fell from the sky into their camp.

  Soon a few muzzle flashes could be seen from along the Mexican line, but the disorganized defense managed only an erratic counterfire before the Texian cavalry charged the Mexicans’ left flank. And the main army kept coming.

  Moments later, Houston, atop his horse some twenty yards in front of his infantry battle line, brought Saracen to a stop. He ordered the army to halt. On his command, the men, now melded into one line, knelt on one knee, raised their guns, and, as one, fired their first musket and rifle volley at a distance of sixty yards.

  Through the blue haze of gun smoke, Houston ordered the men to reload, but Secretary Rusk overruled his commander in chief. “If we stop,” he yelled, “we are cut to pieces. Don’t stop—go ahead—give them hell.”13

  Behind the Mexican lines, chaos and confusion reigned. Men awakened from their siestas were racing for their guns. Officers screamed contradictory orders.

  Suddenly the earth seemed to rise up to meet General Houston. His big stallion collapsed beneath him, the animal’s hide pierced by five balls. Houston kept his feet as Saracen sank to the ground, and a soldier corralled a riderless horse for the commander. Swinging his leg over the shorter horse, Houston found his feet dangled well below the stirrups.

  The Texian infantry surged forward and, as the attackers came within earshot, the Mexicans heard another terrifying sound rend the air: Houston’s men unleashed bloodcurdling war cries: “Remember the Alamo! Remember La Bahía! Remember Fannin!” The chorus of angry men, bent on revenge, now came at such speed that few of the surprised Mexicans had time to man their proper positions.

  The infantry on their right flank surprised a division of Mexican soldiers in the trees. After an exchange of fire, Santa Anna’s men retreated quickly, and the Texians moved relentlessly on.

  With shocking suddenness—few of the men had stopped to reload—Houston’s army was vaulting the Mexican barricade.

  One regiment of attackers made the artillerists manning the Golden Standard a particular target. The Mexican gun had fired on the Texian cavalry but had turned in the direction of the Texian infantry when a rifle shot took down the man who, match in hand, was about to fire the next volley. Most of the members of the gun crew soon fell to well-aimed bullets or to charging Texians clambering over the breastwork; the surviving gunners, outmanned and overwhelmed, abandoned their station, “commenc[ing] an immediate and disorderly flight.” Their commander, General Castrillón, who had stood resolutely behind the gun, urging his men to fight on, “folded up his arms, stood and looked on sullenly” before walking off. With the posture of a proud military man, Castrillón made an excellent target and soon fell, mortally wounded, his body riddled by rifle balls.14

  The battle had barely begun when Houston, a highly visible target as he patrolled the battlefield, had another horse shot from beneath him. But this time, as the horse went down, the general himself felt a sudden pain in his left ankle. A musket ball, fired from a Mexican gun, smashed into his ankle, fracturing his leg. Houston staggered as he came
off the dead horse but, leaning on a soldier who came to his aid, remained upright. Another Texian gave up his mount, and the men helped General Houston into the saddle.

  Once behind the Mexican line, the attackers used their rifles as clubs; few had bayonets. Some long guns fractured, and the fighters resorted to using “heavy hunting knives as cleavers [and] their guns as clubs to knock out the brains of the Mexicans.”15 Early in the battle, Deaf Smith, thrown from his horse in the melee at the breastwork, found himself amid the enemy. “Having dropped his sword in the fall, he jumped up, drew one of his belt pistols, presented it at the head of a Mexican who was attempting to bayonet him, and the percussion-cap exploded without the pistol’s going off. Upon which, Smith threw the pistol at the head of the Mexican, staggered him back, seized his gun . . . and defended himself with it.”16 Smith lived to tell the tale.

  “A BEWILDERED AND PANIC STRICKEN HERD”17

  Many, many Mexicans soon lay dead or wounded, but some Texians fell, too. One company of nineteen men sustained four casualties in the charge as the rest fought on. Another wounded man who kept fighting, despite a boot filling with blood, was General Sam Houston.

  Terrified Mexican soldiers made for the trees, looking for shelter. Santa Anna himself proved unable to rally the men; he was observed “running about in the most excited manner, wringing his hands and unable to give an order.”18 Just one battalion had managed to confront the oncoming Texians when a desperate recognition struck one of Santa Anna’s generals as he attempted to organize a counterattack. “In a few minutes [the Texians] won the victory that could not even be imagined.”19

  “In ten minutes after the firing of the first gun,” Secretary Rusk reported the next day, “we were charging through the camp, and driving them before us.”20 In eighteen minutes, they had won.

  The fight deteriorated into a one-sided rout. The Texians’ blood was up as they avenged the loss of so many at the Alamo and Goliad. Some Mexicans asked for quarter, kneeling and pleading for mercy. “Mi no Alamo! Mi no La Bahía,” claiming to have fought at neither the Alamo nor at Goliad.21 The Texians were beyond hearing the enemy’s denials or even the orders of Houston and his officers for the men to fall back, “to take prisoners, not to kill anyone.” One lieutenant interpreted such directives for his men: “Boys, take prisoners. You know how to take prisoners: take them with the butt of your guns.”22

  Many retreating Mexicans, on reaching the shore of Peggy Lake, abandoned their guns and dove in, hoping to swim to safety. The Texian riflemen in pursuit raised their guns and commenced a deadly target practice, picking off the fleeing soldiers “as fast as they could load and shoot.” The waters of the lake turned blood red.23

  When an officer ordered them to stop, one soldier turned on him. “If Jesus Christ would come down from Heaven and order me to quit shooting yellow bellies I wouldn’t do it, Sir!”

  The officer reached for his sword. The soldier countered by cocking his rifle, and the officer “very discreetly . . . turned his horse and left.”24

  Some of the Mexican cavalry took to the prairie, making for Vince’s Bridge, only to find it collapsed into the river and impassable. Men and horses alike drowned attempting to cross; still more men died when the Texians in pursuit caught up and “pour[ed] down upon them a deadly fire, which cut off all escape.”25

  With victory assured, Houston rode slowly back to the stand of live oaks, blood dripping from the bullet hole in his boot. On reaching the tree beneath which he’d slept the night before, he collapsed; his friend and chief of staff, Colonel Hockley, caught the half-unconscious general as he slid off his horse.

  A surgeon was summoned. Once he cut the boot off Houston’s badly swollen leg, bones could be seen protruding from the flesh. Dr. Alexander Ewing cleaned and dressed the wound.

  Only twilight brought an end to the slaughter, and Secretary of War Rusk accepted the surrender of Mexican colonel Juan Almonte and some two hundred men. As the shooting slowly stopped, the wounded were cared for. Guns, ammunition, horses, mules, and sabers were collected by the hundreds, and a lockbox of some $12,000 worth of silver pesos was uncovered in the Mexican camp.

  The Texians had fewer than a dozen men dead or dying, another thirty or so wounded. But virtually all of the men under Santa Anna’s immediate command were either dead, wounded, captive, or soon-to-be-captured. Under the watchful eyes of more than two dozen guards, the prisoners huddled around campfires they themselves built although, at first, when ordered to cut wood to build the fires, more than one Mexican worried that “we were to be burnt alive in retaliation for those who had been burnt in the Alamo.”26 Though casualty estimates varied widely, almost certainly some 630 Mexicans died in the battle, with more than two hundred wounded. The total prisoners would in the coming days exceed seven hundred.

  The Texians had outperformed everybody’s expectations. As Houston put it, “Every officer and man proved himself worthy of the cause in which he battled.”27 To many, the overwhelming victory brought to mind the stunning success of Andrew Jackson’s army at New Orleans two decades earlier.

  But as night fell, one large question remained unanswered: Where was His Excellency, Santa Anna? Additional Mexican troops were not all that far away, and if he reached them he might return for revenge.

  SIXTEEN

  Old San Jacinto

  The 22nd day of April was the first free day in Texas. Before then, her people had declared their independence, but now they had won it in a noble contest. The victory was physically and morally complete [and] . . . the Texans had their revenge.

  —H. YOAKUM, History of Texas

  The morning after the big battle, a detachment of Kentucky volunteers swept the prairie looking for Mexicans on the run. Near the bridge that Deaf Smith downed, Captain James Sylvester rode alone when a movement in the ravine caught his eye. He turned to call out to his squad, scouting for game in nearby woods. By the time Sylvester looked back, the figure seemed to have vanished.

  The Texian captain rode closer. At first, he saw only a Mexican blanket on the ground, almost obscured by the vegetation. Then he noticed that the blanket, worn as a serape, covered a man lying motionless.

  Sylvester ordered him to stand, and the stranger—certainly a Mexican—rose reluctantly. The Kentuckians surrounded him. “He was tolerably dark skinned,” noted one of them, “weighed about a hundred and forty-five pounds, and wore side whiskers.” Dressed in a plain cotton jacket and an old hide cap, he appeared to carry no weapons.

  Despite the language barrier, they managed to learn he was a soldier and that, no, he didn’t know where Santa Anna was. But Sylvester’s sharp eye saw something amiss. Beneath his plain outer garments, the Mexican wore a fine shirt with studs that glimmered like precious stones.1

  Accused of being a liar—no mere soldier would possess such a garment—the man then admitted he was an aide to Santa Anna. To prove it, he showed them a letter in his possession from one of the Mexican generals. Sylvester and his men decided Houston might wish to interrogate this man.

  Once they returned with their prisoner to their battlefield camp, however, the Mexican prisoners they passed did something unexpected. On seeing the man in the humble serape, they leapt to their feet and saluted or lifted their caps. Some clapped and cheered.

  “El Presidente!” they called out to him. “General Santa Anna!”

  Captain Sylvester and his men had captured not an aide to Santa Anna but His Excellency himself.

  GENERAL MEETS GENERAL

  After a night deprived of sleep due to the pain, Houston lay dozing on the ground at midday. He stirred with the approach of the company and their captive. Colonel Hockley escorted Santa Anna to Houston, where the enemy commander, his plain clothing spattered with mud, stepped forward, “advancing with an air of one born to command.”2

  He announced, in Spanish, “I am General Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico
, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Operations. I place myself at the disposal of the brave General Houston.”

  The surprised Houston, according to one account, replied, “Ah! Ah! indeed, General Santa Anna. Happy to see you, General.” He gestured toward a nearby toolbox. “Take a seat, take a seat.” General Almonte, who spoke English, was summoned into the circle.

  Half sitting, Houston listened. With his officer translating, Santa Anna began with flattery. “That man may consider himself born to no common destiny, who has conquered the Napoleon of the west.”

  Then he added, “And it now remains for [you] to be generous to the vanquished.”

  Houston stared at the man, then shot back, “You should have remembered that at the Alamo.”

  A crowd had begun to gather as word spread around the camp of the prisoner’s identity.

  Houston waited, but Santa Anna offered his justification.

  “I had summoned a surrender and they had refused,” he explained. “The place was taken by storm, and the usages of war justified the slaughter of the vanquished.”

  Though Sam Houston’s anger was rising, his response was measured.

  “That was the case once but it is now obsolete. Such usages among civilized nations have yielded to the influences of Humanity.”

  As the generals’ exchange grew more heated, a growing undertone of voices became audible. Among the men outside the circle of officers there were “demands for the captive’s blood.”3 Some called for “the butcher of the Alamo” to be shot; others wanted to hang the man.

  Santa Anna, now entirely surrounded by hostile faces, asked that his medicine box be brought to him. From it he withdrew a wad of a tincture of opium, which he swallowed, to calm his nerves. For a man accustomed to complete deference from any and everyone he met, these jarring calls for his head, even if only half understood, intimidated His Excellency.