by H. W. Brands
As it happened, the family’s sacrifices in the service of swifter travel came to naught. After only an hour on the road the Taylors overtook a family from farther up the Guadalupe, traveling with an oxcart. Despite their slow pace, they talked the Taylors into traveling with them, for mutual protection. Before long the crowds on the road forced all to move at the pace of the slowest. “People were trudging along in every kind of conveyance, some on foot carrying heavy packs,” Creed Taylor said. “I saw every kind of conveyance ever used in that region . . . hand-barrows, sleds, carts, wagons, some drawn by oxen, horses, and burros. Old men, frail women, and little children, all trudging along.” Taylor later fought in the Mexican War, but he believed the Runaway Scrape—as Texans later called the flight of 1836, with the relieved humor of having survived it—was as bad as anything he ever saw. “I have never witnessed such scenes of distress and human suffering. True, there was no clash of arms, no slaughter of men and horses, as on the field of battle; but here the suffering was confined to decrepit old men, frail women, and little children. . . . Delicate women trudged alongside their pack horses, carts, or sleds, from day to day until their shoes were literally worn out, then continued the journey with bare feet, lacerated and bleeding at almost every step. Their clothes were scant, and with no means of shelter from the frequent drenching rains and bitter winds, they traveled on through the long days in wet and bedraggled apparel, finding even at night little relief from their suffering, since the wet earth and angry sky offered no relief.”
Predictably, disease descended on the refugee columns. Measles and other contagions laid many low and carried the weak away. The dying received no shelter, succumbing beneath the heedless sky at the edge of the road, where they were buried in hasty graves and forgotten by all but their kin.
Yet at times the exodus brought out the best in the living. A woman with four children had lost her husband in the Alamo; she became a mother for the fifth time just as her party was crossing the Colorado. “A family having a rickety open wagon drawn by two lean ponies gave the helpless mother bed and transportation by throwing part of their belongings from the wagon to make room for a woman they had never seen before,” Taylor recalled. “During rains, by day or night, willing hands held blankets over the mother and babe to protect them from the downpours and chilling storms.”
Many men from the army, like the Taylor boys, had abandoned their soldierly duties to help with the evacuation, but enough stayed with Houston to make the flight an affair mostly of women, children, and old folks. “It was no uncommon sight to see women and children without shoes, and otherwise thinly clad, wading in mud and chilling water almost to their knees,” Taylor said. “When a cart or wagon became mired—which was an hourly occurrence east of the Brazos—there was no dearth of helping hands. But in proportion the men were few, and so the women and children were forced to perform most of the labor. Thus these half-clad, mud-besmeared fugitives, looking like veritable savages, trudged along.”
Houston’s retreat was better organized and slower than that of the refugees but not much less inexorable. Hard upon the report of the Alamo’s fall, Houston learned that the enemy was hastening toward Gonzales. “The army of Santa Anna had encamped on the Cibolo on the night of the 11th inst., after a march of twenty-four miles that day,” Houston informed James Collinsworth, the chairman of the Texas government’s military affairs committee. “The army was to encamp on the 12th at Sandy, and proceed direct to Gonzales.” Santa Anna’s numbers couldn’t be calculated precisely but were estimated as “exceeding two thousand infantry.” Against Houston’s 374 men, this made for an impossible Texan disadvantage and dictated a Texan retreat. “I deemed it proper to fall back and take a post on the Colorado, near Burnham’s.” Subsequent intelligence suggested that Mexican forces in Texas totaled five or six thousand, although a few estimates ran much higher. “Some say thirty thousand! But this can not be true.” It was partly to stifle rumors like this that Houston tried to prevent the men still in camp from following the lead of the deserters. “They have disseminated throughout the frontier such exaggerated reports that they have produced dismay and consternation among the people to a most distressing extent.” The truth was bad enough. “Gonzalez is reduced to ashes!”—burned by the Texans to prevent its provisions’ falling into enemy hands.
Houston’s army reached the Colorado the same day Fannin abandoned Goliad. Houston still anticipated a rendezvous with Fannin, which, if accomplished, would have augmented his force substantially. But even without Fannin the army began to grow. Volunteers arrived from the east, their journey shortened by Houston’s own progress in that direction. Though Santa Anna still pursued him—“The Mexican army will not leave us in the rear,” Houston said—the Texan commander was more hopeful than he had been in weeks. “The force of Santa Anna has been greatly overrated. He must have lost one thousand, or perhaps more, at the Alamo. It is said the officers have to whip and slash the soldiers on the march. And, if they should advance to the Colorado, it will be some time, as there is such scanty subsistence for animals.” The critical question was whether Texans, as a group, would rise to the challenge their country faced. “Our own people, if they would act, are enough to expel every Mexican from Texas. . . . We can raise three thousand men in Texas, and fifteen hundred can defeat all that Santa Anna can send to the Colorado. We would then fight on our own ground, and the enemy would lose all confidence from our annoyance.” But time was short and growing shorter. “Let the men from the east of the Trinity rush to us! Let all the disposable force of Texas fly to arms! If the United States intend to aid us, let them do it now! . . . Send all the good horses you can get for the army. . . . Send ammunition for fifteen hundred men; but first send eight hundred men.” Whatever might happen, Houston vowed to do his part. “If only three hundred men remain on this side of the Brazos, I will die with them, or conquer our enemies.”
Houston had always been emotional, but the strain of the flight from Santa Anna pushed him to the edge, causing some to assume, perhaps correctly, that he was still on the bottle. From exhilaration one day he plunged to despair the next. “I am not easily depressed,” he wrote Thomas Rusk from the Colorado, “but, before my God, since we parted, I have found the darkest hours of my past life!” The enemy was close behind, and the army unready to meet it. “My excitement has been so great that, for forty-eight hours, I have not eaten an ounce, nor have I slept. I was in constant apprehension of a rout; a constant panic existed in the lines.”
The panic in the lines increased the panic in the population. Deserters from Houston’s army rationalized their flight by exaggerating the Mexican threat, prompting civilians to believe they wouldn’t be safe west of the Sabine. Houston tore his hair in frustration. “All would have been well, and all at peace on this side of the Colorado, if I could only have had a moment to start an express in advance of the deserters,” he wrote. “But they went first, and, being panic struck, it was contagious, and all who saw them breathed the poison and fled.”
Houston’s spirits sank further on hearing that Fannin had been surrounded on the retreat from Goliad. Houston didn’t yet know the outcome of the battle, but he had to assume that Fannin wouldn’t be joining him after all, which added another grim element to his situation. “If what I have heard from Fannin be true,” Houston wrote, “I deplore it, and can only attribute the ill luck to his attempting to retreat in daylight in the face of a superior force.” Speaking better than he knew, Houston added, “He is an ill-fated man.”
Houston learned at the Colorado that the interim government, seized by the same panic that afflicted the whole populace, had abandoned Washington-on-the-Brazos. Although the squabbling among the politicians during the previous months had led him to expect nothing good from the governing class of Texas, he thought this decision revealed a particular want of character, besides making his job harder. “The retreat of the government will have a bad effect on the troops,” he predicted.
Am
id the gloom, Houston grasped at any cause for hope. His scouts captured two Mexican spies, who revealed that Santa Anna’s forces were smaller than Houston had thought. The arrival of some fresh recruits, followed by word that more were coming, suggested that the panic might be easing. “Men are flocking to camp,” Houston wrote on March 24, with suddenly renewed optimism. “And I expect, in a day or two, to receive two hundred volunteers and regulars. Forty-eight muskets and a supply of ammunition came opportunely last night. In a few days my force will be highly respectable.”
For obvious reasons, the strategies of opposing generals in war tend to be inverse images of each other. Thus it was with Santa Anna and Houston. Where the Texan leader wished to avoid battle, to give space and get time, Santa Anna aimed to provoke battle, to save space and steal time. Any general in Santa Anna’s position would have adopted the same strategy, for Houston’s army would only get stronger the nearer it got to the heavily settled regions of Texas, and the closer it drew to the United States.
Yet Santa Anna had special reason for wanting to end the Texas war quickly. As important as Texas was to the Texans, it was only a small part of Mexico, and was perhaps less important than its size suggested. However apt or inaccurate Santa Anna’s identification with Napoleon may have been, the Mexican president-general shared a signal liability with the French emperor-general: neither could leave his capital for long without worrying that his enemies were conspiring against him, and hence neither could afford an extended distant campaign. From the moment Santa Anna set out for Texas in December 1835, he reckoned how he might bring the war against the rebels to a rapid close. A patient man, or merely a general who wasn’t also president, could have taken the time to consolidate his victories over the Texans, to secure his lines of communication, and to drive Houston and his untrained troops across the Sabine and out of Texas, as other filibusters had been driven out before. By the same token, a president who didn’t owe his political position to his prowess at arms could have risked leaving the war in Texas to a subordinate. But Santa Anna couldn’t stand to let an underling wear the laurels that would come to the general who preserved the integrity of Mexico. The hero of Tampico must be the hero of Texas.
Through the end of March 1836, the hero’s campaign was on track. “The capture of the Alamo, in spite of its attendant disasters, and the quick and successful operations of General Urrea gave us a prodigious moral prestige,” Santa Anna declared. “Our name terrified the enemy, and our approach to their camps was not awaited. They fled disconcerted to hide beyond the Trinity and the Sabine. . . . The attainment of our goal was now almost certain.”
In some respects the war was going too well. As the Mexican forces marched east, the only sign that a rebellion even existed was the ruin in which the rebels left the countryside. Like the Russian army that had opposed Napoleon, the Texan army burned the towns from which it retreated, the fields through which it marched, and the supplies it couldn’t carry. It was a harsh policy, but it had the desired effect, rendering an occupation of Texas by Santa Anna’s army difficult and unattractive. The president-general admitted as much, regarding his hunt for Houston: “It was then, with sorrow on the part of the troops, that thought was given the need of garrisoning that vast territory in order to hold our conquest; and the mere idea of remaining in Texas dismayed the triumphant soldier more than defeat. Our campaign was a military parade; but to remain in Texas, perhaps forever, what a misfortune!”
José de la Peña judged the dismay of the Mexican soldiers to be the work of their own officers as much as that of the Texans. The Texans didn’t succeed in destroying all the crops and livestock of the district they abandoned. “There was a great abundance of pigs and chickens,” de la Peña wrote regarding the vicinity of Gonzales. But through mismanagement, corruption, or simply the arrogance of the ruling class, the officers withheld the best for themselves and let the rank and file suffer. “At the Colorado the soldier’s half-rations of corn tortilla terminated, and his total diet was reduced to one pound of meat and a half-ration of beans.” Hunger makes everything harder, and it made the Mexican soldiers, confronting the privations of an army long in the field, utterly miserable. “Think of the soldier so poorly fed, clothed and shod even worse, sleeping always in the open, crossing rivers and swamps, exposed to hours of burning sun, at other times to heavy downpours, and even during hours of rest having to protect his firearms from the rain, as he had no protective covers for them, though the campaign required crossing wilderness.”
The hungry soldiers were told to guard bags of corn reserved for the senior officers. They did so without open complaint, but not without resentment that became manifest in their behavior. “When by accident a sack would tear, we have had the unpleasant experience of seeing the soldiers and the women who accompanied them gather around like chickens in order to pick up the last grain.” Absorbing insult after injury, the soldiers were charged for their rations even when they received none.
To de la Peña, the worst aspect of the war was its wanton destructiveness. The fleeing rebels put the torch to the products of the Texans’ labor as they left; the Mexican soldiers and camp followers ravaged much of what the rebels didn’t ruin. “I found one house still standing and others that had been burned, among which there were indications that one had been a large one and that another cotton gin had been lost during the fire,” de la Peña wrote after investigating a neighborhood recently abandoned by the rebels. “There was also a medium-sized barn full of cotton bales, many of which had apparently been used for a trench, all scattered along the bank of the river. . . . It was really sickening to see so many of these destroyed.” One resident woman, a Tejana who hadn’t fled, told de la Peña that the cotton losses alone tallied more than ten million pesos. In a bitter tone she explained that the rebels had disseminated tales of terror that frightened even the law-abiding into leaving. Often the latter burned their property on the way out; when they didn’t, the rebels lit the match.
The experience caused de la Peña—a professional soldier—to question the whole enterprise of the war. He conceded nothing to Santa Anna in love of Mexico or desire to defend it, but he thought the war disgraceful. “No one would disagree with me that provisions should have been made to prevent the war, or that, once begun in order to vindicate an injured nation, it should have been carried out in a less disastrous fashion.”
While de la Peña decried the destructiveness of the war, Houston and Santa Anna did their best to extend it. Destruction was an essential part of both generals’ war means. Each embraced a strategy of scorching the earth, although for different reasons. Houston wanted to deprive Santa Anna of sustenance for his Army of Operations, which to be successful, Houston knew, had to become an army of occupation. Houston guessed that he could supply himself from the east, from his rear, longer than Santa Anna could supply himself from the west, from his rear. And by burning whatever his men or the refugees couldn’t carry, Houston would prevent Santa Anna from living off the land. Santa Anna sought not to starve Houston but to terrorize the Texans into abandoning their rebellion. This strategy dictated the no-quarter policy on the battlefield; applied to the countryside at large, it called for laying waste to whatever the Texans had wrought for the good during the previous decade.
All this was obvious—often painfully so—to observers on both sides. What was not obvious was Houston’s second strategy, a secret alternative designed to guarantee victory even if the Texans didn’t win another battle, which appeared entirely possible. Not for nothing had Houston cultivated Andrew Jackson, and vice versa, all those years; not without cause, and consequence, had Houston huddled with America’s foremost expansionist in Nashville en route to Texas; not without reason had Houston posed as an Indian agent on arrival and renewed his Indian acquaintanceships even while the siege tightened around the Alamo. When Houston spoke of falling back to the Sabine if necessary, he did so with confidence that help waited there in the form of U.S. troops. Old Hickory’s impa
tience with border troubles that threatened American territory was a matter of historical record, as Florida-less Spain could have told anyone in Mexico (and probably did, now that Spain was speaking to Mexico again). Jackson’s desire to add Texas to the Union was also a matter of record. Jackson claimed the Neches River, rather than the Sabine, as the southwestern border of the United States, and the fact that almost nothing in diplomacy or prior usage supported this claim revealed it as the ruse, or rationale, it almost certainly was. Very little imagination was required to envision a scenario in which Santa Anna chased Houston toward the Sabine and sent a flood of Texas refugees into Louisiana, creating chaos that would trigger a clash between Mexican and American forces. American soldiers would be killed on what the American president would assert to be American soil; an outraged Congress would declare war on Mexico; a conflict would ensue in which the United States would seize Texas and perhaps additional territory.
Major General Edmund Gaines was the commanding officer of the Western Department of the U.S. Army, with responsibility for the defense of Louisiana and the southwestern frontier of the United States. Perhaps Gaines had studied the career of Jackson; certainly he knew Jackson’s reputation as the scourge of Spain and Britain. And Gaines was very much the man to make the most of whatever opportunities crossed his path. In the last week of March 1836, while Houston was retreating east, the American general informed War Secretary Lewis Cass of the measures he was taking to secure the border of Louisiana. He said he had checked his arsenals for adequate arms and ammunition, that he might carry out the duties assigned to him—“duties which derive great importance from the recent accounts of the sanguinary manner in which the Mexican forces seem disposed to carry on the war” currently raging across the border. So far he had kept aloof from the conflict, but perhaps not for much longer. “I take leave to suggest whether it may or may not become necessary, in our own defense, to speak to the contending belligerents in a language not to be misunderstood—a language requiring force and military supplies that shall be sufficient, if necessary, for the protection of our frontier.” Because the United States maintained correct relations with Mexico, communications from Washington to Gaines nearly always spoke in terms of defending the border against Indians, which was expressly allowed by treaty between the United States and Mexico. Gaines, writing in the other direction, included Indians in his threat assessment but more candidly mentioned Mexico. “Should I find any disposition on the part of the Mexicans or their red allies to menace our frontier,” he declared, “I cannot but deem it to be my duty not only to hold the troops of my command in readiness for action in defense of our frontier, but to anticipate their lawless movements, by crossing our supposed or imaginary national boundary.”
