Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  54 Tregle, “Louisiana,” 85, 117-18; New Orleans, Louisiana State Gazette, October 16, 1826.

  55 John Johnston to Josiah S. Johnston, May 4, 9, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  56 Ibid., June 1, August 30, 1826.

  57 Pierre Rost to Johnston, February 20, 1826, B. Leonard to Johnston, April 24, 1826, Isaac Baker to Johnston, May 6, 1826, ibid.

  58 Chilton, “Brent Family,” 434; Tregle, “Louisiana,” 275-76, 278, 286-87; Henry Clay to John Quincy Adams, July 25, 1826, James F. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay, vol. 5, Secretary of State, 1826 (Lexington, Ky., 1973), 568; John Johnston to Josiah Johnston, July 25, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  59 Baker to Johnson, October 5, 1826, Johnson Papers, HSP.

  60 Sparks, in Ellis, Crockett, 213-14.

  61 Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  62 Samuel Bastian account, n.d. but circa 1887-92, in John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin, 1896), 138. The Bastian account, when mentioned at all, has been dismissed as a hoax, first by Brown, who published it in his book, and subsequently by others, principally because of one or two small internal errors that are in fact entirely consistent with an eighty-year-old man's recollections of events that took place sixty years before, such as confusing Gonzales with Goliad, Texas. Bastian definitely did exist, was a member of a large and prominent family of French ancestry in Philadelphia, and his father Washington was definitely in Natchitoches Parish in the 1830s with a claim on the Red River (Report, Register & Receiver, Land Office, Opelousas, La., on Private Land Claims, Act of Feb. 6, 1835, 1836-1840, Entry 297, Record Group 49, NA). Moreover, a surprising amount of what he says in his account checks out independently, leading Alamo historian Thomas R. Lindley to conclude that Bastian was, as he claimed, a messenger from the Alamo, and probably the first one sent out by Travis on February 23, 1836 (Lindley to the author, July, 1, 1996). More to the point for this study. Bastian's is the only early comment to be found in print connecting Bowie with land fraud in Louisiana. Bowie's later Arkansas activities are well known, but no one has ever even hinted that he might have done the same thing in Louisiana until this present study, yet it was the comment made by Bastian that led to a hunch to start checking the Louisiana land records, with the extensive results contained herein, all of which confirm Bastian's accuracy on the point. Williams, “Critical Study, III,” 93n, attempted to verify Bastian's account of the Kaufman killing without success, and indeed nothing on it seems to survive, if it ever happened. The Dalton Bastian mentions may be Samuel Dalton, who lived in Rapides at the time according to the 1820 census, and there was one man named Kaufman living in the state, but he traveled on business between Natchitoches and Natchez, and in any event was still living as late as 1836. He did a lot of business with Bowie's attorney John Quitman, though this may be mere coincidence, as Quitman was the most successful attorney in Natchez at the time. The whole story of Bowie's connection to the death of Kaufman may be false recollection, an unwitting amalgamation of several discrete stories into one by an elderly man, or it could be a genuine story that was lost without trace when the Rapides courthouse records were burned in 1864. In the absence of any shred of corroborating evidence, it must be treated only as unsubstantiated rumor, though it may reasonably be added to the body of evidence showing that Bowie had a reputation for instilling fear and intimidation in those who crossed him. Unfortunately, in quoting the interview with Bastian, Brown was very imprecise as to where it came from. He cites an October, 3 issue of the Philadelphia Press without giving the year. Internal evidence suggests either 1887 or 1891-92 as the proper year. However, October issues for both the Philadelphia Press and the more likely Weekly Press have been checked for every October for the inclusive years 1887-92, without finding the article. Probably with sufficient time the article could be found, but in any case it appears the Brown has quoted all that is relevant to Bowie.

  63 Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  64 Overton to Johnston, August 2, 1826, ibid.

  65 Baker to Johnston, October 5, 1826, Overton to Johnston, December 7, 1826, ibid.

  66 Overton to Johnston, August 2, December 7, 1826, ibid.

  67 R. H. Sibley to Johnston, October 4, 1826, ibid.

  68 Overton to Johnston, December 7, 1826, ibid.

  69 Samuel Wells to Johnston, December 15, 1826, Bullard to Johnson, January 26, 1827, ibid.

  70 Douglas, Bowie, 33, actually says that Bowie opposed Wright, and that this was part of the background of the Sandbar fight. He is undoubtedly right, but in fact there is no contemporary documentation that says Bowie supported Wells. It can only be inferred from the general alliance between them relative to Bowie's congressional candidacy.

  71 William S. Speer and John Henry Brown, eds., The Encyclopedia of the New West, vol. 1 (Marshall, Tex., 1881), 436.

  72 Conveyance Book C, 151-52, 154, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.

  73 C. Beaman to Johnston, August 23, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  74 In the previous couple of years engaged in a few transactions with his brother John, including the joint sale of some of the as-yet-unconfirmed property on Deer Creek claimed in the Sutton report. John himself actively traded in land and occasional slaves in the Catahoula region, but, typical of the Bowies, he seems not to have managed his money well and fell heavily in debt by the end of 1826. As a result he sold more property than he bought, and in December 1825, when he acquired some two thousand arpents of undesignated land from James, he paid with three slaves rather than cash. Much more significant, though, is that John had to know of his brother's false titles—everyone else seemed to know—and yet, on the face of it, he allowed James to cheat him. But there was much more to it than that. This was no case of one brother defrauding another, but rather the beginning of a partnership destined to extend the reach of James Bowie's land appetite beyond the borders of Louisiana. Conveyance Record C, 331, Catahoula Parish Courthouse; various debt judgments against John Bowie for 1826-28, Bowie Family Papers, UT; Conveyance of December 8, 1825, recorded with Clerk of the Court, Chicot County Courthouse, Lake Village, Arkansas, and cited in George Kelley, “John J. Bowie, 1787-1859,” Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock.

  75 Josiah Hazen Shinn, Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas (little Rock, 1908), 87-88. It is not possible to recreate the nature of James Bowie's involvement in the Arkansas scheme in any greater detail because he successfully kept his name almost entirely out of it. His name does not appear on any of the conveyances, yet his authorship of the titles is confirmed in Reuben Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP, while by his own hand he connects himself with the scheme as at least a full partner, if not the prime mover, by his 1831 marriage dowry in which he lists the Arkansas property among his assets. Furthermore, when the Arkansas claims became controversial, they were universally spoken of as claims by “the Bowies,” making it clear that though only John's name was on the documents, still everyone knew that James was in the shadows behind him.

  76 Isaac T. Preston to Graham, October 10, 1829, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 6, 5-6.

  77 Conveyance Record B, 231-32, Clerk of the Court, Hempstead County Courthouse, Washington, Arkansas.

  78 Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  79 Bowie Claims, Cleland List, St. Augustine, Fla., Locations Under Arkansas Court, Decrees Act of 1824, Private Claims Division, General land Office, Entry 215, Record Group 49, NA.

  80 Bowie, “The Bowies,” 381.

  81 J. Madison Wells account, James Bowie Biographical File, DRT.

  82 There are, of course, the numerous stories of Bowie's duels and fights that can be regarded as nothing more than frontier myth, and they will be dealt with subsequently. Prior to the encounter with Norris Wright of about December 1826, however, not a shred of reputable evidence survives of any Bowie fight or duel.

  83
Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP.

  84 Receipts and Expenditures of the United States, 1818, 88-89; 1819, 85; 1820, 62-63, Record Group 217, NA.

  85 Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnson Papers HSP.

  86 Journal of the House of Representatives During the First Session of the Eighth Legislature of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1827), 3, 4.

  87 Flint, Recollections, 242.

  88 Alexandria, Louisiana Messenger, October 31, 1826, quoted in New Orleans, Louisiana State Gazette, November 13, 1826.

  89 The episode of the Wright-Bowie fight is difficult to pinpoint, there being virtually no directly contemporaneous sources. This account is drawn chiefly from Caiaphas Ham's “Recollections of Col. James Bowie,” 1887, in the John S. Ford Papers, UT. It has all the earmarks of considerable circumstantial accuracy, and Ham himself must either have witnessed the affair or more likely heard Bowie tell about it. There is no question that they were well acquainted in Avoyelles, as court documents establish, and Ham frequently spent time with Bowie at least until 1833. On April 10, 1827, Ham signed an Avoyelles document as witness for Rezin Bowie, and thereafter crops up from time to time in legal proceedings as an associate of the Bowies. Thus his account—which is remarkably accurate in most other events as well—may be regarded as very reliable. Ham says nothing about Bowie having any weapon other than the clasp knife.

  John Bowie in “The Bowies,” 381, says of the event only that the fight took place “about the year 1826,” that Wright shot Bowie while he was unarmed, and that James responded with his fists. This is also the authority for the statement that as a result of the fight, Bowie decided to make the scabbard to keep his hunting knife with him at all times. Rezin Bowie also referred briefly to the episode in an August 24, 1838, letter published in “The Bowie Knife,” Nile's Register 55 (September 29, 1838): 70. In it he states only that “James Bowie had been shot by an individual with whom he was at variance.” A report in the Baltimore Commercial Transcript, June 11, 1838, gives a very garbled account of the affair, making it Rezin who had come off a steamboat, and further making him a participant in the fight. Rezin himself repudiated this account in his letter (above) but it may at least confirm that the brawl occurred shortly after James arrived in Alexandria. There is also a very garbled account of a Bowie duel in Alexandria in the Houston, Tex., PetrelApril 4, 1860, but it is too heavily embellished to be trusted. John S. Moore to W. W. Fontaine, April 25, 1890, W. W. Fontaine Papers, UT, is the source for the statement that Wright's bullet may have been deflected by a coin, and the only source that gives Bowie a pistol that misfired. Moore was Rezin's grandson and James's great-nephew, but born too late to know either of them, and therefore everything he had to say about James came to him thirdhand at best, and much of it is unreliable.

  As for the dating of the fight, Ham states that it took place immediately upon James's arrival after “the absence of Col. Bowie in the North,” Kemper to Johnston, December 14, 1826, Johnston Papers, HSP, establishes that James had returned a day or two previously, yet says nothing about the altercation, indicating that it probably had not happened yet. Unfortunately, for all that Josiah S. Johnston's Rapides correspondents kept him informed of the gossip and the violence in the parish, none made any mention of this fight in his surviving correspondence. Moreover, a search of several Louisiana newspapers for the period failed to find any mention of such an event, though many of them, especially those from Alexandria, no longer survive. Thus the only logical placement of the event that fits all the evidence is sometime soon if not immediately after Kemper's December 14, 1826, letter, and it may be significant—and more than coincidental—that the Alexandria Louisiana Messenger of December 15, 1826, and knives in the streets. Thus, until better evidence should surface, a date of December 13-14 seems the most likely.

  Chapter 7 Crockett 1829-1831

  1 Promissory note, February 24, 1829, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Research Center, Canyon, Tex.

  2 Crockett letter to the editor, January 14, 1829, Jackson Gazette, February 7,1829.

  3 Folmsbee, “West Tennessee,” 9.

  4 Crockett to William Seat, January 26, 1829, Crockett Letters, Correspondence by Author, TSL.

  5 Crockett to Joseph Gales and William Seaton, April 18, 1829, Personal Miscellaneous Papers, New York Public Library, N.Y.

  6 Jackson Gazette, March 7, 1829.

  7 Scrapbook Number 4, 19-21, June 20, 1848, Cooper Family Papers, TSL. This account was related by Sam Houston on the date cited, aboard the steamboat Peytona. Essentially the same story, with minor differences, appeared in 1873 in Davis, Memphis, 150-51. Shackford, Crockett, 83, cites this account from Davis but places it during the 1827 campaign. This is most unlikely. There is no evidence that Crockett “backed out” any candidates in that canvass, whereas by his own statement in his April 18, 1829, letter to Gales and Seaton, he had backed out three by mid-April. He does not name them, but Cooke was almost certainly one of them. Moreover, Houston related the story in 1848 as having been told to him by Crockett, and Crockett's very same April 18 letter also states that he had been with Houston and spoken with him a few days before.

  8 Alexander to Polk, April 25, 1829, Weaver and Bergeron, Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1, 258.

  9 Keating, Memphis, vol. 1, 175-76.

  10 J.J.B., “Crockett's Electioneering Tour,” 610.

  11 Jacobs to the Morristown Gazette, November 22, 1884, Correspondence by Subject, TSL.

  12 J.J.B., “Crockett's Electioneering Tour,” 608-9.

  13 Crockett to Gales and Seaton, April 18, 1829, Personal Miscellaneous Papers, New York Public Library.

  14 Crockett to John H. Bryan, May 26, 1829. John H. Bryan Papers, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C.

  15 Jackson Gazette, August 15, 1829.

  16 Stout, “David Crockett,” 18-19.

  17 Quoted in Heale, “Self-Made Man,” 405.

  18 Arpad, “Crockett,” 85-86.

  19 Shackford, Crockett, 127; Receipt, September 2, 1829, Christie's Auction Catalog. May 17, 1996 (New York, 1996): 170.

  20 Shackford, Crockett, 102.

  21 Crockett to Hugh D. Nelson, January 24, 1820, Miscellaneous Collection, Tennessee Historical Society, TSL.

  22 Keating, Memphis, vol. 1, 178.

  23 Jackson Gazette, May 22, 1830.

  24 Ibid., May 15, 1830.

  25 Shackford, Crockett, 110 argues that this relationship was “too complex for David's reasoning,” which seems clearly unwarranted, and not a little uncharitable.

  26 Keating, Memphis, vol. 1, 176, 178.

  27 Jackson Gazette, March 27, 1830. With what seems to be wholly inadequate support, Shackford, Crockett, 126, concludes that Crockett did not write this letter. Certainly it shows much better grammar, syntax, and spelling than his holograph documents, but it would have been quite commonplace for an editor to clean up that sort of thing without changing the sense of the document at all. In general Shackford is far too prone to conclude that letters that were published displaying good grammar did not therefore originate with Crockett. Had he known more of the journalistic practices of the time he might not have leaped to this conclusion so easily.

  28 Shackford, Crockett, 123-25, dates Crockett's defection from Jackson somewhat earlier, to the fall of 1828. This is too early, and he confuses Crockett's defection from Jackson's Polk-led supporters with Crockett's disavowal of Jackson himself.

  29 The May 24 dated text appears in the Jackson Gazette, June 26, 1830, the May 19 dated text in Speeches on the Passage of the Bill for the Removal of the Indians Delivered in the Congress of the United States, April and May 1830 (Boston, 1830), 251-53. Folmsbee. “West Tennessee,” 16, speculates that Crokett might actually have delivered the speech in Congress, but persuaded Gales and Seaton to leave it out of their published Register of Debates. This is impossible, not least because Gales and Seaton did not become official publishers of the House debates until Feb
ruary 1833. But more immediately, if Crockett had made such a speech, it is inconceivable that Polk and his other Jackson foes who were present to hear it would not have leaped on it and promoted it extensively to injure Crockett. Yet such was not the case, and other than appearing in the Jackson Gazette, in Crockett's own district, it was entirely overlooked by the national press, lending further support to the notion that Crockett himself sent it to the Gazette.