Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  “I am General Houston,” he replied. “Let me pass on.”

  The guard would have none of it. His orders forbade him to permit any stranger to enter the camp.

  “I don’t know you to be General Houston,” he said, raising his gun. “Don’t you move or I’ll shoot.”

  Houston swallowed his surprise—and he couldn’t help but be pleased.

  “Well, my friend,” Houston allowed, “if such were your orders, you are right.” Houston took a seat on a nearby stump and waited patiently. Only after the officer of the day was summoned and the visitor’s identity confirmed was Major General Houston permitted to reenter the camp.3

  With boys like this one—many of Houston’s soldiers were teenagers, very few aged thirty or more—he might yet lead a fine fighting force into battle with Santa Anna. Still, just as new men were coming, others were going, impatient and tired, returning to their homes. Somehow Sam Houston had to hold this army together. He had to keep his volunteers with him—and avoid confronting his larger and more experienced enemy.

  THE ENEMY

  Santa Anna expressed no regrets. “The capture of the Alamo,” as he saw it, “gave us a prodigious moral prestige. Our name terrified the enemy, and . . . they fled disconcerted.”4

  The victory also made the Mexican want to go home, believing he had accomplished his goal of suppressing the uprising. But after consulting with his generals—some of whom argued the fight had only begun—His Excellency accepted that he had business to finish in Texas. And a tricky business it was.

  On the one hand, he wanted to avoid provoking a fight with Andrew Jackson and the United States. That the American president coveted Texas was hardly a secret, and the longer Santa Anna stayed and the closer he got to the Louisiana border, the greater was the risk of escalating what, in his opinion, was a matter for the Mexican nation. Although he hoped that many of his troops would settle in Texas after the war, he would bring the fight to a rapid and, if necessary, brutal close.

  Santa Anna wasn’t wrong to worry about President Jackson: Sam Houston’s mentor still shared his interests in Texas’s independence. In not-so-far-away Washington, as news of the fighting in Texas reached him, Jackson considered his country’s western boundaries, looking down his hawk-like nose at the map of the country he wanted to expand. If Texan refugees—most of them American—began to pour into the United States, he might well have the excuse to engage Mexico and wrest control of Texas on the battlefield. And maybe more than Texas? Jackson’s generals—one of whom was poised very near that border—kept him in the picture and, though his on-the-record instructions were measured, General Jackson and his former aide-de-camp Sam Houston understood one another as only old friends can.

  Santa Anna had spent weeks at San Antonio after the fight at the Alamo. It was a civilized place, where he found a young woman for company and he contented himself with shaping a plan. Three divisions of his army would march on the enemy. In order to drive the rebels out of Tejas, he aimed at the more populous East Texas. One force would take a northern route. The second, led by General Urrea, would veer south to capture Goliad before continuing toward the coast to take control of the port towns and shut off Texian sources of supply. The third and largest expeditionary force, led by Santa Anna himself, would be the tip of the arrow. Then the separate forces would reunite along the Brazos River and pursue the rebel army to its end.

  A MISERY OF MUD

  Fearing the Mexicans now knew his whereabouts and might destroy his army before they were ready, Houston and his army stole into the night on March 26. To mislead any Mexican scouts keeping watch at a distance, the Texians lit blazing campfires before they slipped into the shadows. A few infantry sentinels remained behind as the rest of the army began the trek toward San Felipe de Austin. Five miles later the troops rested, waiting while the pickets caught up, then resumed the march.

  But the tide of soldiers had turned again in recent days. The ranks of the army now shrank, with more men drifting away than arriving. Fannin’s capture hadn’t helped, and a growing number of men wondered at the prospects of the campaign in the face of Santa Anna’s army; some reported the enemy force numbered in the tens of thousands. Worse yet, Houston was still falling back, meaning more families would be left exposed as the battle line shifted east. Many of the departing soldiers left to return to their homes to help loved ones. Noah Smithwick, veteran of the Battle of Gonzales, described the abandoned homesteads he saw. “Houses were standing open, the beds unmade, the breakfast things still on the tables, pans of milk moulding in dairies.”5 Countless settlers up and ran for their lives.

  For the families, the journey posed immense dangers and hardships. Just ten at the time, one girl later recalled her father piling the family into a wagon. She and her three sisters, including a three-month-old baby, left almost everything behind, including the ten-year-old’s treasured books. On the journey they witnessed death and illness, experienced dangerous river crossings and all-night travels, and ended up with nothing but “what clothes we were wearing.” Fear was a constant; in the midst of the trip, they learned of the terrible events at Goliad. One night her father, a veteran of the War of 1812, recognized the boom of cannon fire not so far in the distance. By early April, she later wrote, “we were as wretched as we could be; for we had been five weeks from home, and there was not much prospect of our ever returning.”6

  For families and soldiers alike, the retreat wasn’t easy. No true roads existed in Texas, only paths through undeveloped lands made by travelers on foot, horseback, and cart. The name by which many such routes were commonly known—“trace”—was accurate. A journey of any distance was a slog, since the traces were frequently interrupted by rivers, creeks, and bayous, few of which were spanned by bridges.

  Despite the difficulties, Houston persisted in drawing the men back. Perhaps he considered the Alamo proof that his strategy of waiting until he was strong enough to fight was correct. Perhaps he remembered his own youthful insistence on fighting while wounded—a fight that had hurt more than helped the cause. Whatever his reasons, one thing was clear: no matter how eager his men were to face their enemy, Houston’s strategy was to play keep-away for now.

  When he reached the Brazos River, Houston faced a new challenge to his authority: Some of his men now threatened to defy his orders. One of the mutinous voices belonged to Captain Moseley Baker, another second-chance man. He had left large debts behind in Alabama (and an accusation of defrauding a bank). More recently, having established himself in Texas as a lawyer, he was quick to join the rebel cause. He had fought at Gonzales, and when he gathered a group of volunteers together in his adopted town of San Felipe de Austin, he took a hard line. “Let us all, with one accord, raise our hands to heaven and swear,” he insisted. “The Texas flag shall wave triumphant, or we shall sleep in death.”7

  Baker took it personally that Houston was leading the army away from central Texas. As a married man with a daughter, he understood the hardships of the settlers as they left their homes and marched to who-knows-where; as a fighter, he accused Houston of avoiding a battle. “You had before you the example of Fannin, of Burleson and Milam [but] . . . you determined that your first military act should be a retreat.” Instead of attacking, as Baker saw it, Houston was “content to hear yourself spoke of as the Patrick Henry of revolution.”8

  In order to deflect the rumblings in the ranks, Houston ordered Baker and Major Wyly Martin—the latter was a veteran of Horseshoe Bend who, like Baker, also wished to take an immediate stand—to defend the Brazos River. The two men could hardly say no when asked to prepare for the action they said they wanted. Baker and his men took up a position on the east bank, ready to slow the advance of any enemy force near San Felipe de Austin, while Martin and company were to defend the Fort Bend crossing a short distance downstream. Houston thus defused the ire of the unhappy fighters and also managed to avoid a premature confrontation with
the Mexican troops on his trail.

  Secretary of War Rusk had become Houston’s main confidant within the government. Like so many others, Rusk came to Texas as a seeker; in his case, he was in pursuit of men who had embezzled a small fortune from the Georgia mining company that had been his business. The son of an Irish immigrant stonemason, the broad-shouldered Rusk had stayed and made a place for himself. Though just thirty-two, he had a native authority about him, and believing fervently in a free Texas, he had organized a company of volunteers in Nacogdoches to join the fight.

  Houston explained his actions concerning Baker and Martin in a letter to Rusk. “Had I consulted the wishes of all, I should have been like the ass between two stacks of hay. Many wished me to go [downstream], others above. I consulted none—I held no councils of war. If I err, the blame is mine.”9 Houston’s thinking put him at odds with his men, but he saw no alternative. He would have to square his shoulders and tough it out. Texas’s survival depended on him, and he was not going to let a desire for revenge lead to a premature fight and defeat.

  The army’s retreat resumed. Leaving Martin and Baker behind, Houston and his troops headed upstream along the west bank of the Brazos River. Houston was continuing to play his cards close to his vest: The only certainty was that the army needed to stay ahead of the Mexicans—until the time (and no one knew when that would be) that Houston chose to turn and fight.

  BORROWED TIME AT BERNARDO PLANTATION

  Was this trek across Texas an act of cowardice? More and more of Houston’s young detractors had begun to think so. But people old enough to recall the American Revolution discerned a method where others saw madness.

  The elders could remember that General George Washington, fearful of losing his army, retreated out of enemy range more often than not. Washington wished to fight battles he could win, to wait for the days when the odds favored him. Might General Houston be thinking the same way?

  Some wise men also recalled that Baron Von Steuben, Washington’s Prussian-trained inspector general, introduced a rebel rabble to the essentials of order and discipline, to drills and tactics. Perhaps at their April encampment, just across the Brazos River from a place called Groce’s Landing, Houston could finally shape this haggard, rain-soaked, underfed, and undisciplined bunch of stragglers into a fighting force.

  The man who welcomed Houston and his army, Jared Groce, was among the richest settlers in Stephen Austin’s district. He grew cotton and owned Texas’s first cotton gin, as well as a sawmill and land as far as you could see. From the columned porch that ran the length of his rambling plantation home, called Bernardo, he took in a panoramic view of the Brazos River. But his plantation amounted to much more than a homestead. When the army pitched its camp, twenty miles north of San Felipe, on April 1, Groce had the fields, flocks, fodder, and livestock to provide for a hungry army.

  The weather refused to cooperate, and with nearly constant rain, the “camp became extremely muddy and disagreeable.”10 But the sickest soldiers recuperated in the Bernardo mansion house, which became a hospital. After weeks of exposure and tainted water, many men suffered from colds, whooping cough, or persistent diarrhea. This period of rest at Groce’s permitted a reorganization of the medical staff, too, consisting of a half dozen physicians, and the installation of the medicine chest into a designated cart for transport in the battles to come.

  As the Texians settled in, however, Santa Anna’s army was never far from Sam Houston’s mind.

  SANTA ANNA ON THE MOVE

  On the last day of March, Santa Anna had begun to march his force eastward, leaving San Antonio for the first time since the fall of the Alamo. He reached Gonzales on April 2. His troops crossed the prairie, passing small wooded areas—“a vast garden,” according to one of his officers, “beautifully interrupted by woods.”11 They saw lilies and poppies coming into spring bloom, a stark contrast to towns burned beyond habitation. Many fields and pastures had been torched by departing citizens or Houston’s army, in keeping with the American commander’s wish that nothing be left behind that might be of use to the enemy army on his trail.

  Rains slowed the march, but by Easter Sunday, April 3, Santa Anna led an advance force consisting of five hundred infantry, fifty cavalry, and scouts. The rest of his army would follow after a barge got the heavy loads of baggage and ammunition and the pair of eight-pound cannons safely across the Guadalupe River.

  On April 5, His Excellency’s force crossed the Colorado, a few miles downstream from the Texians’ recently abandoned camp at Beason’s Ford. Houston’s trail was far from cold—he was still at Groce’s Landing—but when the main Mexican column reached San Felipe on April 7, Santa Anna found that “the town . . . no longer existed, because the enemy had burned it and sent the inhabitants into the interior.” Baker’s company had burned the place and, by coincidence, three of his men had returned to inspect the ruins the day the Mexicans arrived. Caught by surprise, two of them got away—but the third got caught. When interrogated, the captive revealed he knew Houston’s whereabouts (a few miles upstream at Groce’s crossing) and the size of his force (he said eight hundred men), and “that [Houston’s] intention was to retire to the Trinity river, in case the Mexicans cross the Brazos.”12

  Santa Anna was gaining on the Texians. But first he had to cross the Brazos and that, he found, would take some time. He confronted two problems. One, Houston had ordered every vessel in the vicinity destroyed; and two, Captain Moseley Baker and his skilled riflemen awaited across the water, ready to pepper anyone who tried to come ashore at the landing with deadly rifle shot.

  * * *

  • • •

  LITTLE MORE THAN a dozen miles north, Houston’s officers drilled the healthy troops almost nonstop. He reorganized the regimental command structure. The infantry learned military basics, including line tactics, in which two or more ranks of soldiers march in close alignment toward the enemy, then fire in unison for maximum effect.

  Houston spent much time in his tent, studying maps and tending to his correspondence. He dispatched letter after letter to East Texas and to the government, seeking supplies and more manpower. He addressed one “to the Citizens of Texas,” assuring them that “the enemy . . . are treading the soil on which they are to be conquered.”13 He issued orders to Baker and debriefed his scouts, who were constantly coming and going, doing their best to keep him apprised of enemy movements. “Mr. E. Smith is out, and, if living, I will hear the truth and all important news,” Houston told Rusk.14

  Bad news arrived: Three survivors of Goliad, “wounded, barefoot, and ragged,” staggered in with the first word of the slaughter.15 Houston learned the details of a demise he had feared, when the Texians who surrendered as POWs had been divided into groups, marched out of town, and shot like dogs. To an army preparing to fight, the news was a terrible shock; the manpower would be missed. According to the rolls, Houston’s army now numbered nearly a thousand men. But that included substantial detachments that remained under the command of Baker and Martin; by Houston’s calculation, the Army of Texas at Groce’s land barely exceeded five hundred effectives.

  The politicians felt the reverberations, too. Commander in Chief Houston got a desperate letter from the Texas president, David Burnet. “Sir: the Enemy are laughing you to scorn. You must fight them. You must retreat no farther. The country expects you to fight. The Salvation of the country depends on your doing so.”16 Secretary of War Rusk arrived in person, looking to encourage Houston to take on the enemy but also adding his gravitas and support to Houston’s leadership. Eighty volunteers arrived from East Texas, regulars from the U.S. Army, some of them still wearing their uniforms. Then cannon fire in the distance, on April 7, announced the presence of Mexican troops in San Felipe de Austin, though Houston did not know whether or not Santa Anna was in command.

  DIG THE GRAVES

  Discontent remained common in the ranks. Many an impatient soldier was
heard grumbling that “it was time to be doing something besides lying in idleness and getting sick.” No longer ignoring the rising volume of complaints, Houston ordered two graves dug and issued a notice, which appeared on trees around the camp. The first man who called for volunteers to strike out on their own would be court-martialed and shot. The threat—together with a rumor that the army would break camp in a matter of days—defused the situation.17 Houston was walking a delicate line, weighing matters of discipline even as he worried about his soldiers’ devotion to the cause. They needed to be together to right the wrongs perpetrated by Santa Anna.

  The appearance of a gift from the people of Cincinnati lifted plummeting morale. On hearing of the uprising in Texas the previous fall, citizens of the Ohio city commissioned the manufacture of two cannons. Shipped via New Orleans, the cannons arrived at Groce’s on April 11. Colonel James Neill took charge of a new artillery battery, with nine volunteers manning each of the cast-iron guns, which were christened the “Twin Sisters.” Blacksmiths set to work cutting up horseshoes and other available iron scrap for use as canister shot.

  The blacksmiths shared Groce’s shop with gunsmiths. Both groups kept busy. Groce had donated his plantation’s plumbing pipes—they were made of lead, an expensive import in frontier Texas—and the smiths melted the lead to cast as bullets.

  It was with the blacksmiths—for barely a moment and for the first time in a month—that Houston relaxed enough to allow his lighter side to show.

  When a new volunteer arrived carrying an old flintlock rifle in need of repair, some wag in the ranks pointed. “The blacksmith is there,” the recruit was told; looking up, he saw a man dressed in a well-worn leather jacket, watching the other smiths at work.