Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  A fog rose off the river as daylight approached, offering a welcome shroud for the break-of-day surprise to come.

  When the boom of the single cannon fractured the silence at 5:00 A.M., the waiting Texians listened. Within moments they heard “the brisk rattling of drums and the shrill blast of bugles.”22 Judging by the direction of the trampling feet, many Mexicans soldiers were headed toward the river to help defend the Alamo. “Our friends,” said one of the New Orleans Greys of the gunners, “had done the trick.”23

  Then came the firm but quiet order to march. “Forward, boys! We’re going to town.”24

  The Texians closed on San Antonio as planned, and Milam’s men reached their objective without incident. But a Mexican sentry spotted Deaf Smith as his team approached Casa Veramendi. The enemy picket fired once before Smith silenced him, but the report of the gunshots led to a general alarm. The artillery diversion had worked, getting Milam and his men close to the central plazas without a single casualty. But now the enemy knew they were there.

  Suddenly the world was shooting at them as a storm of musket fire came their way. The main plaza at the town center had been closed off with barricading, and the muzzles of cannons protruding through portholes were soon spitting fire, too. With the narrow streets raked with canister shot, the invaders turned to the nearest houses, breaking through their doors to find cover. Some of the homes they entered were very much occupied. “Men, women and children began to run out,” reported one of the invaders, “in their night clothes and unarmed.”25

  When and where they could, the Texians returned fire. Again their Kentucky long rifles and superior powder proved lethal, effective at two hundred yards. “No sooner did a head appear above the walls than it served as a target for a dozen hunting rifles, and there was always another dead Mexican.”26 But as the sun rose, the “heavy cannonading from the town was seconded by a well directed fire from the Alamo.”27 General Cos, no longer deceived by the lone gun firing from the east—which the Texians had already withdrawn—had pivoted his array of cannons to bombard the rebel position in the town.

  At midday the firing slowed as both sides considered the new terms of the fight. The two field pieces the invaders had brought with them had been of little value; although the Texians had finally taken the fight to the streets of San Antonio, the Mexicans, after weeks of preparation, still held a strong defensive position. Pinned down, the invading force of Texians could clearly see that unlike their battlefield successes at Gonzales and Concepción, this fight wouldn’t be over in a matter of minutes or even hours.

  From their new headquarters, in town but also inside a set of Spanish-style houses, the rebels would face five days of overcoming the enemy’s “obstinate resistance” to decide this first battle for San Antonio.28

  DOWNTOWN SAN ANTONIO

  Out of fear of Indian attack, the founders of San Antonio de Béxar had arranged their streets for easy defense. The town’s homes were fortress-like, consisting of thick adobe or limestone walls with iron grates on the windows and solid oak doors. The Texians, once inside the dwellings, set about further adapting them to their purposes. “With crow bars we perforated the walls of the houses,” remembered physician Joseph Field, “making port holes, through which we kept up a constant fire.”29

  The sightlines weren’t perfect, so ten of the Texians, led by Deaf Smith, climbed to the roof of the Veramendi house. They made their way to the parapet that surrounded the roof but were quickly spotted by Mexicans in the tower of the San Fernando church. The Texians soon paid a heavy price. Half the men were hit, including Smith. His wound was serious enough that a hole had to be chopped in the earthen roof so that he could be lowered back into the house using an improvised sling made of blanket.

  To ease communications between their two divisions, the Texians had spent the night hours trenching the nearby street. Using the excavated dirt, they raised a breastwork of dirt, stone, and sandbags. Meanwhile, Burleson consolidated the reserves back at the White Mill and dispatched a messenger to San Felipe, urgently requesting more troops and ammunition. “Considerable reinforcements” were said to be on the way to aid the Mexicans—and the Texians needed all the help they could get.30 Artillery at the Alamo was steadily firing into their midst, and the Mexican small-arms fire persisted.

  When day two of the fight ended with no notable gains, the Texians realized that if they wanted to more than hold their ground, they needed to dislodge the well-entrenched Mexicans; in short, they needed to advance on the square where they could mount a direct offensive. At midday on day three, December 7, Henry Karnes led one such raid.

  Eyeing a large stone house across the street, Karnes instructed his fellow soldiers, “Boys, load your guns and be ready.” Indicating his destination, he explained, “I am going to break open that door, and I want you to pour a steady hot fire into those fellows on the roof and hold their attention. . . . When I break [the door] in I want you boys to make a clear dash for that house.”31

  With an iron bar in one hand, his rifle in the other, he sprinted across to the doorway and made short work of bashing in the door. When he and his company burst in, they saw Mexicans escaping into another room. Some Mexicans fired back, but the invaders knew what they had to do. Using bars and axes, they pounded through interior walls, moving room by room, gradually getting closer to the square.

  The Texians scavenged food where they could, including slaughtering and butchering an ox and cooking it over open fires. But the Mexicans peppered their fires with musket fire, making food preparation a dangerous occupation.

  Late on the afternoon of December 7, the Texians sustained a major loss.

  Their leaders met at Casa Veramendi to lay out the plan of attack. Colonel Ben Milam crossed Soledad Street to join the conference, where he and the others sat down to plot out an after-dark surprise attack on the Mexican position on the plaza. In order to better understand the topography, Milam stepped out into the courtyard of the Veramendi house. All day gunfire had echoed around the square, but Milam ignored it. Protected by the garden wall, he wanted to get a better view of the enemy guns and command post.

  Before departing two weeks earlier, Stephen Austin had given Milam a field glass. The big man held the telescopic lenses to his eyes, scanning the enemy stronghold. As he took in the view, planning the Texians’ next step, he caught the attention of a Mexican positioned in a tree by the river. The Mexican aimed. He fired. And Ben Milam collapsed to hard ground. The ball that entered his brain killed him on the spot.

  One soldier who turned in the direction from which the shot had been fired saw a telltale puff of smoke amid the thick greenery of a cypress tree near the river. Texian rifles were quickly readied, aimed, and fired; the report of the rifles was followed by the fall of another corpse, as the rifleman tumbled through the evergreen branches before crashing to the ground and rolling into the San Antonio River.32

  The day’s casualty list for Texians was small—one dead, two slightly wounded—but the loss of Milam weighed heavily on Texian morale. He had inspired this assault on the town; now he was dead. Adding to a sense of alarm, the enemy raised a black flag.33 Though this was the rebels’ first sighting of the dreaded pennant, they knew its message. The enemy would give no quarter; the Mexicans would offer no mercy and take no prisoners. To be captured would likely mean being put to death. This was Santa Anna’s way.

  Everyone knew, as one captain put it, “This army is in danger—Texas is in danger.”34

  “THE ENEMY GAVE WAY INCH BY INCH”35

  The battle had become a struggle for survival. The dogged, rugged fighting continued on the streets, but, out of reach of the raking musket and cannon fire, the rebels advanced, house by house. Like moles tunneling unseen, the Texians broke through the interior adobe walls that separated one house from the next. “Using battering-rams made out of logs ten or twelve feet long . . . stout men would punch . . . holes in the
walls through which we passed.”36

  They worked toward the plaza, but time was tight with the arrival that day of a convoy of Mexican troops, which had eluded Burleson’s scouting parties, and the prospect of more. The Mexican reinforcements were a mixed bunch, experienced infantry, cavalry, and artillery men, along with untrained conscripts and even convicts. One Texian soldier expressed his worry: He reported that he and his fellow fighters feared that they would be “sweap of [swept off] by a general charge.”37 The new arrivals—they numbered about six hundred—could tip the balance.

  Then, during the night of December 8, the Texians captured an important prize: They gained control of the priest’s house; from there rebel riflemen could sweep the Plaza de las Islas—and the Mexican gun emplacements—with direct and deadly fire. They set about cutting portholes to make the most of this commanding vantage. Despite the loss of Milam, this new development gave hope to the tired men.

  Even before firing could begin at first light, the Mexicans recognized they had no choice but to pull back. In the middle of the night, hundreds of soldiers began hauling nine of the ten artillery pieces, munitions, wounded soldiers, and everything of value to the Alamo. The sudden retreat inspired numerous officers and their companies—some two hundred Mexicans—to set out in the direction of the Rio Grande. They deserted rather than stay and face defeat.

  The Mexicans had managed to get out of the town, but the scene across the river at the Alamo was chaotic. The mission enclosure was simply too small to accommodate all the men, along with the women and children, not to mention the horses.

  Cos was in deep trouble and he knew it. His supply line had long since dried up; the six hundred arrivals had brought no supplies, only more hungry mouths to feed. There was insufficient firewood and water inside the Alamo, and replenishing the supplies required venturing out to face Texian rifle fire. The days of fighting had taken a toll, too, with wounded officers and men to care for. And the cannoneers were running short on ammunition.

  At 6:00 A.M., General Cos, still in his bed, rose to a sitting position and issued the order to surrender. “I authorize you to approach the enemy and exact of him whatever may be possible.”38 Three officers, accompanied by a trumpeter, rode into town.

  The trumpeter sounded the call for a parley; the Texians did not reply. They now occupied all the houses that lined the north side of the plaza, and their rifle barrels were visible protruding through windows and holes cut into the walls. Cos’s emissaries resorted to a handkerchief, mounted on a pole. Raising the white flag got a reaction: Thirty Texians emerged from the priest’s house. The Mexican officers asked to see the Texian commander; Burleson was duly summoned. After a delay, he arrived and immediately agreed to a suspension of fighting.

  Only the terms of the surrender remained to be settled; the fight for San Antonio de Béxar was over. Unlike the Mexicans and their flag of no quarter, however, the Texians would be fair and merciful. An honorable fight would conclude with honorable terms.

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  More than a dozen hours of negotiation concluded, at 2:00 A.M., Thursday, December 10, 1835. The terms of surrender permitted the defeated army to depart with arms and private property. They would take one cannon, a four-pounder, for protection in the event of Indian attack. The sick and wounded would remain and be cared for. Most important, General Cos and his officers gave their word of honor that they would not “in any way oppose the reestablishment of the federal constitution of 1824.”39 They were not to rejoin the fight to suppress the uprising.

  Not every Texian was happy with the terms of surrender. Many thought the Mexicans had been let off easy. Lieutenant William R. Carey probably spoke for many when he called it a “disgraceful treaty” and a “childs bargain.”40

  Nonetheless, on December 14, General Cos led an ignominious march toward the Rio Grande. He departed with 1,105 men, a count that did not include hundreds of troops who had deserted the day before or the wounded who remained in San Antonio. They left to the victors twenty-one artillery pieces, five hundred muskets, and other supplies.

  The Texians had defeated a well-entrenched foe with substantially more manpower. The cost had been the life of Ben Milam, buried with his boots on in the dooryard of Casa Veramendi. Another five rebels died; though one man lost an eye and another a leg, fewer than three dozen were wounded. That seemed a small price to pay for a large prize in the fight for freedom. The Mexican losses were harder to calculate, but their casualty count was in the hundreds.

  This felt like victory. When, on Christmas Day 1835, Cos and his army arrived at the Rio Grande, they were the last Mexican troops in Texas. They had vowed never to serve again against the rights of the Texians, and most of the Texian fighters felt safe in returning to their homes and families, where they could bask in the glory of their accomplishments. As the Texas General Council proclaimed, “You are the brave sons of Washington and freedom.”41

  The victory at San Antonio appeared to be a giant step closer to independence. The capture of the Alamo was a triumph, and the retreat of the Mexican force cause for great rejoicing. Could the war even be over? Sam Houston didn’t think so. He suspected it was a fight they should not have had, and the Alamo a fort that could not be held: Preparing for the worst, he kept busy trying to raise an army, offering a cash bonus, eight hundred acres of land, and immediate Texas citizenship to fresh volunteers.

  Yes, the Texians had proven themselves on some level, but now they would have to confront a profoundly angry and vengeful enemy in the person of His Excellency Santa Anna. Houston would see that they were prepared.

  SIX

  The Defenders

  [We have] no remedy but one, which is an immediate declaration of independence.

  —STEPHEN AUSTIN, JANUARY 7, 1836

  The new year brought bad news. On January 4, 1836, the Telegraph and Texas Register, the San Felipe newspaper launched three months before as “a faithful register of passing events,” published a chilling warning. President Santa Anna, along with a reported ten thousand troops, was bound for Texas to do battle with the rebels, to avenge their victory over General Cos. His stated intention? To leave nothing of the rebels “but the recollection [they] once existed.”1

  Major General Sam Houston felt ready to seize the moment. Focused on his duties in Texas’s newly designated capital, Washington-on-the-Brazos, the usually hard-drinking commander in chief had even set aside liquor. “I am most miserably cool and sober,” he assured a member of the General Council, “instead of Egg-nog; I eat roasted Eggs in my office.”2 He ordered clothes sent from Nacogdoches to his new headquarters, now located in Washington-on-the-Brazos. His personal library came, too, including Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a history of Texas, and a volume of army regulations. He would need all the knowledge and wisdom he could find as he confronted the many obstacles facing the Texian army.

  The deeply divided provisional government of Texas posed one large challenge. Governor Henry Smith and the General Council seemed unable to agree on anything, including the very goal of the present war: Was Texas fighting to be a Mexican state or a “free, sovreign” republic?3 The two branches of the young government differed on military matters, too, starting with whether Houston was commander in chief. Governor Smith thought he was, but the General Council regularly ignored the chain of command, issuing orders directly to various officers in the field.

  By mid-January, the divide was so great that the governor proclaimed the General Council dissolved (he called its members “scoundrels”) and the council, dismissing him as a “tyrant,” impeached Smith.4 That left Texas governance effectively paralyzed until the next meeting of Texas’s delegates, scheduled to convene on March 1.

  Caught in this political crossfire, Sam Houston looked for the best strategy to defend Texas. But the military situation was no less chaotic.

  In the weeks after the capture of San Antoni
o, the Army of Texas splintered. Many Texians headed home, thinking the war had been won. Then, on January 3, 1836, two hundred of those who stayed to defend San Antonio packed their bedrolls, grabbed their guns, and headed for Goliad. The General Council, ignoring Houston, had decided to take the fight to the border; headed for Matamoros, Mexico, they hoped that by capturing the port town on the south bank of the Rio Grande, they might take the action out of Texas and into Mexico. James Fannin, veteran of the successful fight at Concepción, worked to raise an auxiliary corps for an expedition to “reduce Matamoros.” With no money in the treasury, the Texian soldiers were promised they could ravage the town if they took it, collecting “the first spoils taken from the enemy.”5 Fannin and his men departed with the bulk of the provisions, horses, and medicines, leaving a mere 104 soldiers at the Alamo. The Texians who stayed, some of them sick and wounded, faced “all the hardships of winter”—and the task of defending the town.6

  “Oh, save our poor country!” Houston exclaimed when he heard what had happened. “[We must] send supplies to the wounded, the sick, the naked, and hungry, for God’s sake!”7

  He recognized the Matamoros plan for what it was—an “absurdity.”8 He regarded the Texas Revolution as a fight for right, and to give the men license to loot the Mexican town? That would make the Texians pirates and predators.9 The planners believed that the Mexican inhabitants of the town would rise up, embrace the invaders, and join their rebel ranks, but that sounded like wishful thinking to Houston. So he set off to meet the men at Goliad, hoping to lead the army in a different direction.

  When he got there, on January 14, Fannin was off recruiting soldiers. In his place, Houston found a pretender to his own role, a man named Dr. James Grant, who styled himself “Acting Commander-in-Chief.” Wounded in the fight at San Antonio, the educated Scotsman had won the respect and admiration of many of the soldiers as a man who had fought for Texas, something Houston had yet to do.