Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  Menchaca, a tall man of more than six feet in height, could speak and write English as fluently as Spanish. He was well aware of the ways of General Santa Anna, a leader he had met before. After spending a week securing his family on the ranch of Juan Seguín, Tony Menchaca made his way to Gonzales. When he arrived on March 5, he found one fully organized company had preceded him, the Mina Volunteers under Captain Jesse Billingsley.

  Billingsley, a noted twenty-six-year-old frontiersman, had already participated in Colonel John Moore’s 1835 ranger campaign. He mustered in his new company near Mina at the home of Edward Burleson. His first lieutenant, Micah Andrews, hoped to avenge the loss of his brother Richard, who had perished in the October battle at Concepción. The next Texian volunteer company to reach Gonzales on March 5 was that of twenty-nine-year-old Captain William Hill, who had also held command on the 1835 ranger expedition. His Colorado River settlers had first organized under Captain Joseph P. Lynch and then rendezvoused with another small unit commanded by Captain Philip Haddox Coe. Once the combined group reached Gonzales, Coe and Lynch departed to organize more men, and Hill stepped into command of the unit.

  By March 6, more than seventy Texians from these two groups had gathered in Gonzales. They were joined that day by a company of U.S. volunteers who had traveled nearly one thousand miles in more than two months to join the freedom fight in Texas. Tall, brown-bearded Captain Sidney Sherman had sold his own cotton-bagging factory in Newport, Kentucky, to cover the costs of uniforming, arming, and equipping a fifty-man company. Sherman’s men called themselves the Kentucky Riflemen, and they were given a gala ball send-off at a mansion across the river by citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio. The ladies of Newport presented Captain Sherman with a special white silk battle flag. In its center was a half-nude maiden clutching a sword over which a streamer draped bearing the phrase “Liberty or Death.” Cincinnati-area leaders continued with a fund-raising drive for Texas that would fund a pair of cannon for the revolution.

  The properly uniformed Kentucky company was in sharp contrast to the frontier garb worn by the other Texians who had reached Gonzales. Juan Seguín arrived with twenty-five tejanos whose families lived in and around Béxar. All had been born in Texas, with the exception of Mexican native Antonio Cruz, who had accompanied Captain Seguín from the Alamo on February 25. In Gonzales, Seguín added another fourteen loyal tejanos and his men elected Salvador Flores as their first lieutenant and Tony Menchaca as their second lieutenant.16

  Three other Texian volunteer companies had reached Gonzales by March 6: Captain Moseley Baker’s San Felipe group; another San Felipe company under Captain Robert McNutt; and the men under Captain Thomas Rabb, who had recruited settlers along the Colorado River and mustered them into service in the little community of Egypt. Baker, a lawyer and former newspaper editor, was chosen by the company commanders to take charge of the collective volunteers in Gonzales until a superior army officer could arrive. Baker estimated there to be about 270 total, “as brave men as ever shot the rifle, the most of whom had been in the Mexican and Indians fights of the country.” The Alamo was in peril, and Baker found his fellow Texians “anxious for a fight.”17

  The first army officer to reach the town did so that afternoon. He was Lieutenant Colonel James Neill, returning from a twenty-day leave of absence from the Alamo. He found the eight newly arrived volunteer companies and proceeded to purchase supplies for the Alamo from local merchants. Neill and forty-eight men departed the next morning for Béxar. His force included volunteer scouts from various companies and Captain Seguín’s tejanos.18

  Neill and twenty-seven of his men returned in three days, forced back by Mexican patrols around San Antonio. Lieutenant William H. Smith and the remaining scouts remained on duty to keep tabs on the movements of Santa Anna’s army. A large contingent of infantry troops under General Antonio Gaona and newly arrived General Eugenio Tolsa would remain in Béxar, while the balance moved out after the Texas rebels on March 11.

  Colonel Morales was sent with the Jiménez and San Luis battalions to report to General Urrea in Goliad. The remaining seven hundred soldiers, under General Ramírez y Sesma and Colonel Eulogio González, started for San Felipe. General Vicente Filisola, one of the senior officers accompanying Ramírez y Sesma, noted that their men had one hundred horses, two six-pound artillery pieces, and plenty of supplies.19

  The San Felipe–bound army would pass directly through Gonzales, where the Texians were gathering.

  THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF of the Texas Army was quite a sight.

  Sam Houston and his staff rode into Gonzales about 4 P.M. on March 11. He wore a Cherokee coat, a buckskin vest, a broad cap topped with a feather, and high-heeled boots adorned with silver spurs and three-inch rowels in a daisy pattern. On his waist were a belt pistol and a ceremonial sword presented to him by his Cherokee friends. General Houston found before him some three hundred volunteers, low on rations and possessing only two operational cannon.20

  Houston proceeded to read the new Declaration of Independence and his orders appointing him as major general of the Texas Army, militia, rangers, regular, volunteers, and all others. Like a true politician, he continued to play to the audience gathered before him at DeWitt’s tavern in Gonzales. “He delivered a short speech setting forth in stirring words the complications or troubles that threatened our Republic,” recalled John Jenkins, a thirteen-year-old member of Captain Billingsley’s Mina Volunteers. “I now began to take in all of the responsibility, danger, and grandeur of a soldier’s life.”21

  Houston scarcely had time to give his speech before disturbing news began reaching Gonzales. The first word came in from two of Juan Seguín’s scouts: the Alamo had been overrun, and all within had been killed, including seven men who were bedridden. Sam Houston immediately denounced the two men, Anselmo Bergara and Andrew Barcena, as “spies” for Santa Anna and had them detained to prevent any further alarming of the local townspeople. It did not take long before William Smith, Captain Seguín, and other trusted scouts rode in with intelligence that supported the grim situation in San Antonio. Houston then wrote orders to Colonel James Fannin at Goliad, instructing him to fall back to Victoria, abandon La Bahía, and “blow up that fortress.” He wrote a separate letter, describing the stories brought in by the two tejanos he had held as “spies.” Houston privately admitted, “I have but little doubt that the Alamo has fallen.”22

  General Houston took steps to organize his volunteer troops into a true military regiment the following day. He named Ed Burleson his colonel commanding the First Regiment of Infantry, and promoted Sidney Sherman of the Kentucky Riflemen as the lieutenant colonel. Several other small companies of volunteers had continued to arrive in Gonzales, forcing the general to set up camp several hundred yards from the Guadalupe River in the edge of a prairie. The following morning, March 13, he had his army paraded for inspection and Lieutenant Colonel Neill made a formal report. The total number of officers and men present was 374.

  Sam Houston, hoping to verify the accuracy of the Alamo rumors, selected three of the ablest Texian scouts to find out the truth. Deaf Smith, Henry Karnes, and twenty-nine-year-old Robert Eden Handy raced for Béxar—Smith pledging to enter the city if necessary and to be back within three days. Deaf had joined the Texas Army the previous week to offer his services once again. Following the December assault on Béxar, he had retired to Columbia-on-the-Brazos to spend time with his wife, Lupe, and their four children—Susan, Gertrudes, Travis, and Simona, who ranged in ages from twelve down to six. Smith had moved them to Columbia for their protection from the Mexican Army during the Béxar siege. He was idolized by his kids and by Lupe, who fussed over the musket ball wound he had endured in San Antonio.

  Deaf had ridden to Gonzales to help answer the call of Travis’s besieged defenders in early March. He, Karnes, and Handy had only ridden twenty miles from Gonzales to check rumors of the Alamo’s fall when they found their answer: a party of four survivors. They were Susannah Dick
inson—holding her baby, Angelina, while riding horseback—Colonel Almonte’s servant Ben, also on horseback, and Travis’s former servant Joe on foot.

  Dickinson related the demise of the Alamo and handed the scouts the dispatches from Almonte. Deaf Smith—dirty and grizzled from days in the saddle—took pity on young Angelina and swung her up on his horse to let her ride with him for a while. Karnes raced for Gonzales to spread the news, while the remaining party arrived several hours later at 11 A.M. The wives of Lieutenant George Kimbell’s Gonzales Mounted Rangers listened in horror as the young woman described the thoroughness of the executions at Béxar. “Not a sound was heard save the wild shrieks of women and heart-rendering screams of their fatherless children,” wrote scout Handy. Teenage volunteer John Jenkins would never forget the “despair with which the soldiers’ wives received the news of the death of their husbands.” The effect of the news created a panic. Private John Milton Swisher of Captain Hill’s company recalled, “The terrible massacre struck terror to every heart.”23

  General Houston dispatched couriers toward other towns to spread the word of the Alamo’s fall. He also decided to have his volunteers abandon Gonzales and retreat east to a more defensible position while calling for more support. The townspeople furiously packed what they could carry away. Houston allowed three of his four supply wagons to be donated to the desperate citizens for hauling their belongings toward the Sabine River. The Texas Army’s only artillery, two brass cannon, were dumped into the Guadalupe River to prevent the Mexicans from taking possession of them. The fourth wagon was maintained for hauling ammunition.

  Henry Karnes and a party of scouts were left behind to burn down the town in order to deny shelter and aid to Santa Anna’s advancing troops. Like many others, merchant Horace Eggleston sadly watched his home and business being reduced to ashes as he fell out with the army around midnight. Everything was torched—hotels, an unfinished schoolhouse, Andrew Sowell’s blacksmith shop, and even the hat factory of the late Alamo defenders George Kimbell and Almeron Dickinson. The ensuing rush of settlers fleeing eastward ahead of the Mexican Army was a mass chaos that became known in Texas as the “Runaway Scrape.”24

  THE VOLUNTEER TEXAN ARMY moved ten miles overnight, halting for breakfast at Peach Creek early on March 14. They were greeted there by another company of ninety volunteers raised at San Felipe by Captain John Bird, a forty-one-year-old former Tennessean who had fought with Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812.

  The eastward march was soon resumed. Captain Jesse Billingsley was disturbed during the day by the sight of “families flying in terror from a foe well known as paying no regard to age or sex. Men were flying barefooted in every direction, spreading terror and dismay all over the country.” During the forced march, Sam Houston showed compassion for teenager John Jenkins when he noted the boy struggling to keep up. The general ordered his servant Willis down off his horse to let Jenkins ride for a while. His kindness flipped to rage when Jenkins was unable to prevent his spirited horse from dashing ahead.25

  “God damn your soul!” Houston roared. “Didn’t I order you to ride right here?”

  Jenkins dismounted and handed the horse back to Willis. He understood the general’s need to rebuke him but lost all respect for the man with the manner in which he was called out. “I’d rather die than ride this horse another step,” he said.

  Houston doggedly pushed his troops until sunset, when he allowed them to make camp at the homestead of Williamson Daniels on the Lavaca River. The men ate boiled or roasted strips of beef from slaughtered cattle and used a portable corn grinder to work the ears of corn they carried.26

  General Houston ate little and slept less. He seemed to chew tobacco constantly, napping occasionally on the ground with a saddle blanket and his saddle for a pillow. He carried a vial of ammoniacal spirits, made by his Cherokee friends by distilling liquid from the shavings of deer antlers. Some who saw the general slip the hartshorn vial from his breast pocket and apply the spirits to his nostrils believed their leader was partaking of opium.

  Young John Swisher was feeling less enchanted with the life of a soldier. He had been hauling his rifle and heavy knapsack to the point where he could barely move one foot before the other. “Forty-eight hours without sleep, and all the time on duty, was about as much as a sixteen-year-old boy could stand,” Swisher related. “When I reached camp I did not even stop to cook my supper, but dropped down upon my blanket and fell into a sleep at once.”27

  10

  FANNIN’S BATTLE AT

  COLETO CREEK

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL JAMES FANNIN was not leaving Goliad.

  Couriers David Boyd Kent and Ben Highsmith had arrived on March 13 with orders from General Sam Houston. Fannin was told to forward one-third of his men to join the army’s main body and then fall back to the town of Victoria with the rest of his command. “Previous to abandoning Goliad, you will take the necessary measures to blow up that fortress,” Houston had written.1

  Kent and Highsmith waited impatiently around Goliad for Fannin to reply. Highsmith finally asked, “Are you going to answer the general?”

  “No,” snapped Fannin. “Tell him I will not give up Fort Defiance.”

  The Texan scouts thus rode back for Gonzales, delivering the news on March 15 that Fannin had no intentions of blowing up the La Bahía fortress or retreating to Victoria. Fannin’s scouts told him that General José Urrea was advancing on the town of Refugio with Mexican soldiers, so Fannin dispatched Captain Amon B. King with a small party of men. They were to use their wagons to help the Refugio citizens evacuate in the midst of the great Runaway Scrape. His men wasted time, punishing rancheros who were loyal to the Mexican Army, and they were soon confronted with Urrea’s advance cavalry force on March 12. King sent a messenger to Goliad for help while his men took shelter in Refugio’s Mission Nuestra Señora del Rosario.2

  Fannin dispatched Colonel William Ward’s 120-man Georgia Battalion to reinforce Captain King, and they arrived in Refugio around 3 P.M. on March 13. The forces became divided on what actions to take and thus did not depart straight for Goliad. King took his men out that night with some of Ward’s force to a nearby ranch to attack tejanos believed to be spies. They killed eight of the rancheros and scattered the rest. As they returned to the Refugio mission on March 14, they found Colonel Ward’s men under attack.

  The long rifles of the Texians turned back three Mexican assaults. Amon King’s company fell back to a grove of trees on the Mission River and inflicted heavy losses on any of Urrea’s soldiers who came within range. The Battle of Refugio soon taxed the powder and lead ball supply of Texians both inside and out of the fort. Both parties hoped to escape after dark rather than surrender. King’s men crossed the Mission River but were overtaken on March 15 by Tories, the loyalist rancheros they had so recently punished. His men had nothing but wet gunpowder and were forced to surrender. Colonel Ward’s group was more fortunate. Instead of retreating toward Fannin in Goliad, they dodged through swamps and woods and headed southeast along the Copano Road. King’s men were marched back to the Refugio mission, where they were shot to death on March 16—in accordance with Santa Anna’s December 30, 1835, decree that commanded death to all armed rebels. Colonel Juan José Holsinger spared only eight of the rebels from execution.

  Lewis T. Ayers, one of those spared, learned firsthand what Anglos who supported the rising against Mexico could expect: “The rest of our party were barbarously shot, stripped naked, and left on the prairie about one mile from the mission.”3

  JAMES FANNIN HELD HIS position at Fort Defiance, reluctant to move his supplies and ammunition without the carts and teams being used by Captain King. His Goliad soldiers were joined on March 14 by another forty-man volunteer company under Captain Albert C. Horton. Fannin sent couriers out for two days to ascertain the fate of the men under Ward and King, but most of his scouts were captured.

  One courier finally returned to Goliad at 4 P.M. on March 17 with news of the
defeat of his men in Refugio. Some of his officers felt Fannin had been mistaken in splitting his command days earlier and he now showed no intentions of departing Fort Defiance. His garrison’s force totaled about 330 Texians. Captain Horton’s cavalrymen went out on the morning of March 18 to engage approaching units of Urrea’s cavalry. Fannin and his officers had finally decided to retreat but his men were forced to hold their position throughout the day as Horton’s force toyed with the Mexican cavalrymen. Urrea’s men would chase the Texians to within gun range of their artillerymen and then turn back. Horton’s mounted volunteers took up the pursuit until they were forced to retreat. The fruitless game of chase and be chased consumed precious hours and exhausted all horses.4

  Colonel Fannin resolved to move from Fort Defiance on the morning of March 19, but his long delay in so doing would prove costly. He insisted on hauling extra baggage, nine brass cannon, and five hundred spare muskets on oxcarts. Fannin could have used the early morning heavy fog to slip away, but he procrastinated even longer in having his men burn the nearby houses of the La Bahía settlement and destroy anything that might aid the Mexican Army. The rising pillars of smoke only gave clear indication to Urrea that the rebels were pulling out.5

  The comedy of errors did not cease. The carts were overloaded and the unruly oxen stubbornly stopped to graze after traveling less than four miles. One of the carts broke down. The large artillery piece rolled off into the San Antonio River and an hour’s delay was spent in retrieving it. By midmorning, Fannin’s troops realized that no one had thought to pack any food—all of which had been burned in the confusion of destroying the town. The final, and most costly, error occurred just six miles from Goliad. Fannin ordered his column halted to rest his men and allow the hungry oxen to graze in an open prairie just five miles from tree-lined Coleto Creek. Captain Jack Shackelford of the Alabama Red Rovers was among those who demonstrated loudly that they should push on toward sufficient cover before resting.