by H. W. Brands
Smithwick discovered that the Mexican insistence on Catholic conversion had an odd effect on certain social practices. For weddings to be legal, they had to be solemnized by a priest. But priests were rare, and young lovers often couldn’t wait. So they had the local alcalde officiate at a ceremony in which they exchanged promises and put their signatures to a bond saying they would find a priest to finish the job at first opportunity. Yet such were the vagaries of love that the newlyweds might fall out before the priest appeared, in which case they would simply reclaim their bond from the alcalde, tear it up, and resume their single lives.
The priests who were present were often no recommendation for their faith. Miguel Muldoon, the cleric who visited Austin in the Mexico City prison, was a regular at San Felipe (where he reverted to Michael). “Padre Muldoon was a bigoted old Irishman, with an unlimited capacity for drink,” Smithwick declared. One day Muldoon and a fellow convivialist were making the rounds of San Felipe’s watering holes when the pair wandered into the grocery store of Frank Adams, where a group of townsfolk were already at work on a bottle. “Frank politely invited the newcomers to join them. Old Muldoon elevated his nose. ‘No, I never drink with any but gentlemen,’ said he. Adams promptly drew back and dealt the Padre a blow between the eyes which had the effect of considerably modifying his ideas of gentility.” Stephen Austin, knowing the respect in which priests were held by most Mexicans, and fearing repercussions from the government, attempted to persuade Adams to make amends. “But the sympathy of the populace was with Adams, regardless of consequences. Muldoon, who was no fool, seeing that he had few friends, apologized for his offensive language and accepted the proffered drink to assist him in swallowing his medicine.”
Another regular at San Felipe prompted Smithwick to reflect on what brought people to Texas. This person, a man named Clay, was highly intelligent and of good family and means. Although he drank heavily, his brilliance shone more clearly the drunker he got. “I have seen him sit and talk politics when he could not rise from his seat, and not a man among us could begin to hold his own against him.” His evident gifts made Smithwick wonder why he had come to Texas. “There was nothing whatever to indicate that Clay’s emigration had been compulsory, but with a family educated and refined, and ample means, it was difficult to account for his presence in the colony on any other hypothesis.”
Smithwick’s emigration to Texas hadn’t been compulsory, but his emigration from Texas was. Weary of smithing, he ventured into smuggling: of tobacco southwest across the Rio Grande. He managed to avoid arrest, but the overhead of the operation consumed nearly all the profits. He briefly hunted for silver in the Mexican mountains, but that yielded even less return. He traveled to Nacogdoches, which he found to be a “gamblers’ heaven” with “a regular organization for roping in the greenhorn and relieving him of his cash.” (Smithwick added, in hindsight: “Several of its members afterward took an active part in the revolution, one at least being a signer of the Declaration of Independence.”) Smithwick ultimately returned to San Felipe, where he nearly killed a man he had hired to cut wood for his forge, but who had drunk away his advance wages without delivering any wood. “I told him I would give him no more till he cut wood enough to pay for what he had already. Upon that he grasped his ax in both hands and, raising it above his head, came at me. I was working at the anvil with a heavy hammer, and, being quicker than my assailant, planted it between his eyes, felling him senseless to the ground.” Blood burst from the man’s nose and mouth, and he lay as one dead. But he eventually came to, and the authorities accepted Smithwick’s argument that he was merely defending himself.
They were less accepting of his part in another act of violence. An acquaintance of Smithwick murdered the alcalde of Gonzales, and despite a common feeling in Gonzales that the alcalde (“an overbearing man,” Smithwick said) deserved killing, the murderer fled to San Felipe, where he thought he’d have a better chance at trial. The authorities in San Felipe, however, said he’d have to be sent to Saltillo for a crime such as this, and they asked Smithwick to fashion shackles for the prisoner. Along with many other Americans in Texas, Smithwick questioned Mexican justice and was reluctant to see the man sent so far away for trial. “The prisoner was a friend of mine, and, becoming incensed at the treatment to which he was subjected, I gave him a file to cut his irons off, also providing him with a gun and other essentials with which to leave the country.” Smithwick’s good deed backfired when the escaped prisoner, instead of departing, loitered about the town. In time he was shot and killed—with Smithwick’s gun in his possession. For his complicity in the escape, Smithwick was banished from San Felipe and Texas. As he was being taken from the town, a friend approached him with a bottle and a glass and asked if he wanted to deliver a final toast to the community. Raising his glass, Smithwick said, “If there is an honest man in the place, may he be conducted to a place of safety, and then may fire and brimstone be rained down upon this iniquitous town.”
Smithwick’s exile from Texas lasted four years, which he spent in western Louisiana, where he got to know James Bowie and others who wandered back and forth between Mexican territory and American. He returned to Texas in 1835, “just at the time the growing dissension between Mexico and the colonists began to assume warlike proportions,” as he put it—and at a time when Austin and the respectable element in Texas might be willing to overlook his past indiscretions. With war approaching, Austin recognized the virtue in the kind of unruliness he had previously tried to bar from the province. Smithwick’s contempt for authority, troublesome when Austin sided with authority, became useful when Austin opposed it.
Smithwick discovered that though the Texans were increasingly willing to fight against Santa Anna, they couldn’t agree on what they were fighting for. “Some were for independence; some for the constitution of 1824; and some for anything, just so it was a row,” he remembered. “But we were all ready to fight.”
Smithwick also discovered how ignorant the Texans were of what a war against Mexico would entail, and how unprepared they were for it.
Our whole available force could not have amounted to more than 250 men, while Mexico had an organized army of several thousand, and there were thousands of Indians eagerly watching for an opportunity to swoop down on us and wipe us from the face of the earth and thus regain their lost hunting grounds, which they had always been able to maintain against the Mexicans. . . . Our only arms were Bowie knives and long, single-barreled, muzzle-loading flintlock rifles, the same that our fathers won their independence with, and that the famous Kentucky brigade used with such telling effect in the battle of New Orleans.
What the Texans did know of the Mexicans inclined them to anticipate success.
The Mexican soldiers had not shown themselves brave, the army, indeed, being largely composed of peons and convicts—men who had no incentive to patriotism or bravery, and over whom it was necessary to keep a strong guard to prevent them from deserting. Then, too, the seat of war was a long way from the Mexican base of supplies, a weary waste of desert infested by hostile Indians intervening, and no means of communication except by courier. Perhaps, too, we unconsciously relied on the active sympathy of the United States, whose offspring we were; still, as a rule, I do not think we apprehended the remotest possibility of such assistance being necessary.
The self-confidence of the Texans rose on the first battle of the war. Actually, the clash at Gonzales in early October 1835 was hardly more than a skirmish. A few years earlier, Green DeWitt, the empresario whose Guadalupe River colony included Gonzales, had requested a cannon from the Mexican authorities at San Antonio to defend the town against Indians. The government complied, sending a small bronze cannon, which was installed in a blockhouse at Gonzales. In September 1835, as part of the campaign by General Cos to disarm the Texans, Colonel Ugartechea of San Antonio requested the cannon’s return, and sent several soldiers to retrieve it. As Ugartechea’s bad luck would have it, a Mexican soldier had re
cently got in a fight with a Gonzales townsman, leaving the townsman injured and community feelings bruised. With Santa Anna obviously determined to suppress Texas liberties, many in the formerly loyal DeWitt colony experienced a change of heart, becoming suspicious of Mexican motives. Their suspicion prompted the alcalde and other town leaders to refuse Ugartechea’s request that they return the cannon. To underline their point, they seized the soldiers sent to retrieve it.
Ugartechea responded by dispatching a much larger force—some hundred dragoons—to Gonzales to insist on the cannon’s return. But by now the word had spread that trouble was brewing, and volunteers began arriving by the score. Late-summer rains had swollen the Guadalupe River, and the defenders of Gonzales had removed the ferry to the east bank of the river, beyond the reach of the arriving Mexican troops. When the Mexicans got to the west bank, their commander, Lieutenant Francisco de Castañeda, was forced to shout across the stream that he had a message for the alcalde. The defenders of Gonzales replied, similarly shouting over the rush of the river, that the alcalde was absent. Castañeda, whose orders from Ugartechea were to avoid violence if possible, said he’d wait for the alcalde to return. He had his men pitch camp on the west bank of the river, opposite the town.
While Castañeda waited, more volunteers arrived at Gonzales, until they substantially outnumbered the Mexicans. Following the frontier tradition, they elected officers, including John Moore as colonel. During the night of October 1, the Texans crossed the river, carrying with them the controversial cannon, mounted on a makeshift carriage. Their plan was to attack and disperse the Mexican force at first light. But a heavy fog developed before dawn, obscuring the vision of both sides and casting confusion over the whole scene. Nonetheless, on the morning of October 2, the Texans, approaching the Mexicans in the mist, opened fire.
Castañeda wanted neither to start a war nor to see his troops decimated, and so, after retreating to a more defensible position, he offered to parley with the Texans. A participant on the Texas side left an account of the discussion:
The Mexican commander, Castañeda, demanded of Colonel Moore the cause of our troops attacking him, to which Colonel Moore replied that he had made a demand of our cannon, and threatened, in case of refusal to give it up, that he would take it by force; that this cannon had been presented to the citizens of Gonzales for the defense of themselves and of the Constitution and laws of the country; that he, Castañeda, was acting under the orders of the tyrant Santa Anna, who had broken down and trampled underfoot all the state and federal constitutions in Mexico, excepting that of Texas, and that we were determined to fight for our rights under the Constitution of 1824 until the last gasp.
Castañeda replied that he himself was a republican . . . that he did not wish to fight the Anglo-Americans of Texas; that his orders from his commander were simply to demand the cannon, and if refused, to take up a position near Gonzales until further orders.
Colonel Moore then demanded him to surrender with the troops under his command, or join our side, stating to him that he would be received with open arms, and that he might retain his rank, pay, and emoluments; or that he must fight instantly.
Castañeda answered that he would obey orders.
Castañeda was obviously surprised at the aggressiveness of the Texans, although perhaps he shouldn’t have been. Their attitude reflected both the alarm they felt at the recent political developments and the entirely practical consideration that they weren’t regular soldiers and had farms and ranches to tend to. Castañeda might enjoy the luxury of patience, of awaiting further orders, but they did not—and anyway, acknowledging no higher authority than themselves, they had no one to await orders from. In coming to Gonzales, the Texans had left their homes unguarded; for all they knew, Indians even at that moment might be taking advantage of their absence and wreaking havoc on their families and homesteads. Under the circumstances, prudence dictated a forward defense of their rights against Santa Anna.
By this time some of the Texans had raised a banner beside the disputed cannon, with black letters on a white field issuing a challenge: “COME AND TAKE IT.” As soon as Moore returned to the Texan lines, the cannon roared a challenge of its own, firing a charge of metal scraps toward the Mexicans. The Kentucky rifles of the Texans threatened more actual damage as the Texans advanced. But neither the cannon nor the rifles in fact inflicted much harm, for Castañeda quickly abandoned the field and headed for San Antonio. “Your Lordship’s orders were for me to retire without compromising the honor of Mexican arms,” he reminded Ugartechea, by way of explanation.
The casualties from this first clash were light: a handful on the Mexican side, and even fewer among the Texans. Yet the Texans accounted it a stirring victory and a fateful step, as Noah Smithwick explained (in simultaneously tallying its cost): “It was our Lexington, though a bloodless one, save that a member of the ‘awkward squad’ took a header from his horse, thereby bringing his nasal appendage into such intimate association with Mother Earth as to draw forth a copious stream of the sanguinary fluid. But the fight was on. Not a man of us thought of receding from the position in which this bold act had placed us.”
Like Lexington in April 1775, Gonzales in October 1835 signaled a transformation in the troubles between the insurgents and the government they opposed. In each case the insurgents had previously engaged in violence against the government (the Stamp Act riots and the Boston Tea Party in the first instance, the Anahuac and Nacogdoches disturbances in the second), but in each case the violence had been sporadic, more or less spontaneous, and inspired by particular, remediable grievances. At Lexington, and again at Gonzales, the insurgency became more deliberate, better organized, and more purposeful. In short, insurgency became rebellion—which would become revolution.
Before long the rhetoric of the American Revolution would trip off the tongues of the Texas rebels. Indeed, the parallels were already being drawn: the defenders of Gonzales rode into battle after hearing a sermon by a local Methodist preacher that perorated: “The same blood that animated the hearts of our ancestors in ’76 still flows in our veins.” But just as the American rebels of the 1770s required time to determine the ultimate objectives of their struggle against King George, so the Texas rebels of the 1830s had to argue about what their fight against Santa Anna should yield. As of the battle of Gonzales, there was no body that could speak for all the Texans—or even for the American majority. In other words, Texas lacked its Continental Congress. Stephen Austin and others were trying to remedy this deficiency, by means of the consultation Austin had endorsed at his welcome-home dinner. But as late as September, even this comparatively innocuous undertaking continued to meet resistance from those who hoped to avoid provoking Santa Anna. By backing the consultation, Austin increased the likelihood that it would take place, and the landing of General Cos made the consultation more likely still. With the outbreak of fighting at Gonzales, the question was no longer whether it would meet, but whether it could meet soon enough. Ironically, though, the fighting delayed the gathering by drawing many of the potential delegates to the front. Given a choice between fighting and talking about fighting, most Texans preferred the real thing. An October call to the delegates failed to achieve a quorum, which wasn’t attained till early November.
Yet the campaign against Cos and the Mexicans required some kind of organization, and the Texas rebels supplied it in their typical ad hoc mode. The various communities raised companies of volunteers, which elected their own commanders (with Gonzales choosing John Moore, San Felipe Stephen Austin, and Nacogdoches Sam Houston). As the companies coalesced after Gonzales, their officers recognized the need for a commander in chief. Several budding George Washingtons thought they fit the bill; unable to choose among them, the group offered the post to Austin, who accepted.
From the standpoint of politics, the choice was logical enough. Austin remained the most unifying figure in Texas. Although committed by now to independence, he appreciated the need to br
ing the diffident along slowly. “No more doubts, no submission,” he wrote privately. “I hope to see Texas forever free from Mexican domination of any kind.” He added, however, “It is yet too soon to say this publicly. . . . That is the point we shall aim at, and it is the one I am aiming at. But we must arrive at it by steps, and not all at one jump.”
Austin discerned a tactical advantage in appealing to Mexican federalists, who resented Santa Anna’s usurpation and might cooperate in his overthrow. One group of federalists was known to be in New Orleans, organizing an expedition against central Mexico. Austin and Texas were in no position to offer anything other than moral support to this venture, but to the extent it even began to succeed, it would distract Santa Anna and perhaps require him to pull Cos and his troops south. And this—the expulsion of Mexican forces from Texas—was the primary goal at present.
Austin, moreover, hoped to bring aboard as many Mexican Texans as possible. At this point, with the Americans in Texas outnumbering the Tejanos by about ten to one, many of the Americans were speaking of the struggle against Santa Anna as a contest of cultures or races. Noah Smithwick put this view quite baldly. “It is not in the nature of things for the superior race to long remain under the domination of the inferior,” he said. The Mexicans had had their chance to conquer Texas and subdue the Indians there, and had failed. “And it was mainly because of Mexico’s inability to hold the territory against them that it was thrown open to the Anglo-American. It was he who beat back the savage and converted the wilderness into civilized homes. Why then should he not control its destiny?”
