Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  Houston pressed him on Goliad. “If you feel excused for your conduct at San Antonio, you have not the same excuse for the massacre of Colonel Fannin’s command.” As if twisting the sword, he went on. “They had capitulated on terms proffered by your General. And, yet, after the capitulation, they were all perfidiously massacred.”

  Again, Santa Anna deflected, refusing responsibility. “I was not apprised of the fact that they had capitulated,” he claimed, then he blamed General Urrea. “And if the day ever comes that I can get Urrea into my hands, I will execute him for his duplicity in not giving me information of the facts.”

  Aware of his men and their angry murmurs, Houston realized that pursuing these questions would only fire their fury. They already wished to exact retribution. Another thought surfaced: He must keep His Excellency alive. As a matter of honor, he could not execute this man. Furthermore, his corpse would be of little value, but alive, Santa Anna carried authority with his troops. He could be an instrument, useful in negotiating a formal armistice and in securing the surrender of the other Mexican forces in Texas.

  With that, Houston veered the conversation away from confrontation.

  He ordered Santa Anna’s tent be set up nearby, that his trunks be brought to him. The time had come for negotiation, and Secretary of War Rusk entered the conversation; the exchange that day would last nearly two hours. Rusk would ask His Excellency to order his other generals “to evacuate the country.” Santa Anna, according to one of Houston’s aides, “displayed great diplomatic skill in the negotiation.” He refused at first, but eventually he agreed to do as asked.4

  The agreed-upon terms would bring a complete stop to the fighting. Santa Anna would order his generals to retreat the way they had come. In time, a treaty would be negotiated and signed (neither Houston nor Rusk could speak for the Texas government), but an armistice had been reached between these men. Provided with his own writing desk, Santa Anna wrote out orders.

  Once the letters were done, Deaf Smith stowed them in his saddlebags. He would gallop that night toward the banks of the Brazos River, where Santa Anna’s orders would be delivered into the hands of General Filisola.

  “I am a prisoner,” His Excellency wrote to his generals, “in the hands of the enemy.” More important, he informed them, “I have agreed with General Houston for an armistice.” Then he issued a command: The other Mexican regiments in Texas were to countermarch to San Antonio. All prisoners were to be freed. No inhabitants of Texas were to be interfered with. “Negotiations are under way to bring the war to an end for ever.”5

  The fight for Texas’s freedom had been won.

  SEVENTEEN

  President Sam Houston

  My venerated friend, you will perceive that Texas is presented to the United States as a bride adorned for her espousal.

  —SAM HOUSTON TO ANDREW JACKSON

  Two weeks after the battle, infection threatened Houston’s leg. He rested on a cot, a mile or so from the battlefield but within range of the stench of unburied and rotting Mexican corpses. Without proper medicines and treatment, Dr. Ewing warned, lockjaw might kill him. Houston agreed to travel to New Orleans to seek the medical care he needed after handing off his duties to Secretary of War Rusk.

  Several days earlier, the Yellow Stone had returned to Lynch’s Ferry. The riverboat’s passengers included President Burnet and the cabinet, who arrived to take charge of the peace. Never an admirer of Houston and jealous at his success, Burnet was angered that a preliminary treaty had been signed without his consultation; he had few good words for the victorious general. He held Houston in low regard, despite the events of April 21, blaming him for the long campaign, for the plight of the fleeing settlers—the “Runaway Scrape,” as it would be known—and even the failure of the Texian army to capture the entire Mexican force.

  On May 5, the feverish Houston bade his soldiers farewell. Unlike Burnet, the troops now revered their general, and he returned their esteem. “Your valor and heroism have proved you unrivalled,” Houston told them. “You have patiently endured privations, hardships, and difficulties.” He promised them that, one day, they would be justly famous and would proudly say, “I was a member of the army of San Jacinto.”1

  When Rusk and his brother brought Houston, still prone on a cot, to the dock, President Burnet refused Houston passage on the Yellow Stone. The ship was to carry the president and his cabinet, along with Santa Anna, back to Galveston, where they planned to complete the peace negotiations. According to Burnet, Houston, having resigned his commission, was no longer welcome aboard the vessel.

  The ship’s captain disagreed. “This ship is not sailing,” he said firmly, “unless General Houston is on it.”2

  Captain John Ross knew and admired Houston; Ross’s ship had played a crucial role earlier in the fight, ferrying Houston’s army across the Brazos River at Groce’s Landing. In the face of Ross’s insistence, Burnet had no choice but to watch Major General Rusk and his brother, David, carry the ailing Houston aboard.

  When the Yellow Stone reached Galveston, the parties went in separate directions. Burnet and his cabinet, together with their prisoner, Santa Anna, proceeded to Velasco, where they negotiated what would become known as the Treaty of Velasco. The terms were much as Houston and Rusk had suggested in the articles of understanding they prepared: Santa Anna pledged not to attack Texas and, on his return to Mexico, to use his influence on his government to agree to the peace. Santa Anna also signed a second, secret document in which he agreed to try to persuade his fellow Mexicans to recognize the Republic of Texas as an independent state and to accept the Rio Grande as the international boundary.

  As for Houston, he found passage aboard the schooner Flora, and lay semiconscious on the narrow deck. The ship’s captain believed his famous passenger, his leg loosely wrapped in a bloodstained shirt, to be a dying man. But word of Houston’s imminent arrival preceded him, and on May 22, when the Flora arrived in New Orleans, a cheering throng lined the levee. Some of the crowd surged aboard the little merchant vessel, nearly swamping the two-masted merchantman. All had come to see the general.

  With a great effort, Houston rose to his feet to greet them. The man that many Texans now thought of as “Old San Jacinto” had become a hero, but the crowd fell silent when, after briefly bracing himself against the gunwale to greet them, he collapsed onto a litter. As she would recall years later, the sight of the great man so perilously ill caused a seventeen-year-old named Margaret Lea to burst into tears.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE SAME SURGEON WHO, twenty-one years before, treated the wounds Houston sustained at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend removed twenty shards of bone from Houston’s ankle. The patient improved slowly, recuperating in the home of a friend, a fellow soldier with whom he had marched into battle during the War of 1812. A week passed before he felt able to sit up for more than a few sips of water.

  Although still weak, he began the trip back to Texas in mid-June. He regarded Nacogdoches as his home, but the ambitious Houston, a veteran of more than a few political battles, understood he now possessed real clout in Texas—and in these formative weeks in Texas’s quickly evolving history, he couldn’t afford to be out of sight and out of mind. He made it to Nacogdoches on June 26. Exhausted by the journey, he had no choice but to rest a few days before moving on to San Augustine, arriving there on July 5.

  He corresponded constantly with friends, worrying about the state of the army and the continuing Mexican threat. General Rusk kept him apprised of political events and, in particular, of interim president Burnet’s proclamation, issued July 23, calling for a general election so Texians could choose the newly independent state’s president and vice president and the first Congress. The ballot also contained two crucial referenda: One sought approval of the new constitution; the other was a vote on whether the republic’s citizens desired annexation by the United States. Six
weeks later the people would cast their ballots.

  Given his fame, he seemed a logical candidate for president, but Houston played hard to get. He insisted he could not run against the two announced candidates, his respected colleagues Stephen Austin and former governor Henry Smith. Only after repeated popular outcries—among them a mass meeting in San Augustine and a petition with six hundred signatures from Columbia—did Houston agree to run. “You will learn that I have yielded to the wishes of my friends in allowing my name to be run for President,” he announced in a letter published in the Telegraph and Texas Register. “The crisis requires it or I would not have yielded.”3

  A week later, on September 5, Texians spoke with one voice. The voters approved the proposed state constitution by an overwhelming margin. Virtually every voter favored annexation. And Sam Houston won in a landslide, elected the republic’s president by a margin of almost nine to one (5,119 for Houston, 743 for Smith, and 587 for Austin). Gracious in victory, he named Austin secretary of state and Smith secretary of the treasury. Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, the man Houston promoted to colonel on the San Jacinto battlefield, was seated as vice president.

  After his swearing in, on October 22, Houston faced many challenges, but one of the most immediate was the matter of His Excellency. Despite having been promised his freedom after the Treaty of Velasco, Santa Anna remained a prisoner of the Republic of Texas.

  SANTA ANNA MEETS ANDREW JACKSON

  His Excellency lived in limbo. On May 14, he had signed the two treaties with the Republic of Texas. The documents stipulated that he was free to return home, and on June 1, he boarded the armed schooner Invincible, ordered to carry him to the Mexican city of Vera Cruz. Suddenly, however, the rules changed and Santa Anna embarked instead on a bizarre, nine-month odyssey.

  Before the Invincible could put to sea, a mob of Texian volunteers interceded. Against his will, His Excellency was escorted back to shore, where, “in accordance with the overwhelming public will of the citizens of the country, he should . . . await the public will to determine his fate.”4 In spite of what their government had agreed, many citizens wanted this man to face court-martial for war crimes. In one widely distributed pamphlet published that summer, the Mexican general’s fall from grace was put in mythological terms: “Don Antonio, Icarus, in attempting to soar too high, was precipitated into the abyss below.” The pamphlet condemned him as a “monster.”5 There were rumors of a plan to take him to Goliad for execution.

  In July, Stephen Austin attempted to resolve the dispute. Having recently returned from the United States, Austin visited the Mexican general, whom he knew from his own time of incarceration in Mexico City two years before. Austin suggested that perhaps the American government might mediate. Impatient and nervous at his fate, Santa Anna promptly wrote directly to Andrew Jackson, complaining of his “close confinement.”6 The recuperating Sam Houston added his voice to the conversation, writing on Santa Anna’s behalf to President Jackson.

  Jackson took no action; he had carefully maintained his country’s neutrality throughout the conflict. But he did register his opinion with his friend Sam Houston. A trial and execution of the foreign leader would be contrary to the rules of civilized warfare. “Nothing could tarnish the character of Texas more,” Jackson argued. “Let not his blood be shed . . . both wisdom and humanity enjoin this course.”7

  Santa Anna had spent six weeks with a ball and chain on his leg after a suspected escape plot. Little changed until Houston was sworn in as the first duly elected president of Texas, when he took immediate charge of the matter. First, he visited the prisoner and came away persuaded that Santa Anna was the best advocate for the new nation’s quest for formal recognition by Mexico. Santa Anna had already signed a treaty in which he acknowledged “in his official character as the chief of the Mexican nations . . . the full, entire, and perfect Independence of the republic of Texas.”8

  Santa Anna agreed to undertake a mission to Washington, D.C. “Convinced as I am that Texas will never be reunited with Mexico,” he promised to negotiate for peace and a final resolution of boundaries.9 After another hot debate with the Texas government about Santa Anna’s fate—the Texas Congress passed a resolution to further detain Santa Anna—Houston, claiming executive privilege, authorized the departure of his old nemesis. Santa Anna quietly headed for the American capital via an overland route, accompanied by his aides and a military escort led by Colonel Hockley.

  Unlikely as it seemed, the defeated dictator had become an emissary for Sam Houston and the Republic of Texas. The United States had yet to recognize Texas and thus would not meet officially with its representatives. But in an oddity of diplomatic formalities, Santa Anna could sit down with Old Hickory—a man whose interest in Texas had never waned—and speak on Texas’s behalf.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE ROUTE TOOK His Excellency to the Sabine River, then across Louisiana. “We traveled in the Tennessee up the Mississippi for twenty days, then continued up the Ohio river, landing close to Louisville.”10 On the stage journey that followed, Santa Anna fell ill and spent a few days with a severe cold. But he managed to charm many of the Americans he met, impressing them as a man “pleasant of countenance and speech . . . very polite, and using stately compliments.”11 Finally, on January 17, 1837, Santa Anna’s entourage arrived in Washington.

  President Jackson had closely followed the progress of the Texas war; during Houston’s retreat, one visitor to the president’s house had found him tracing the movements of both armies on a map spread before him. And he knew the score in Mexico, since the Mexican ambassador had told him officially that, as a prisoner, Santa Anna no longer spoke for his country. Nevertheless, Jackson treated him like a head of state.

  “General Jackson greeted me warmly,” Santa Anna reported, “and honored me at a dinner attended by notables of all countries.”12 The formal dinner with the cabinet and foreign diplomats wasn’t the end of it; over the coming days, the two leaders talked privately at least twice.

  At the first private meeting, Santa Anna spoke freely in favor of Texan independence. Jackson listened, dressed casually in an old calico robe and smoking a long-stemmed pipe. The Mexican reminded Jackson that, not so many years earlier, the American ambassador had offered to purchase Texas. The circumstances were different now, he admitted, but perhaps $3.5 million might be a reasonable amount. Both men knew the Texians would oppose any such deal—wasn’t Texas already independent?—and the conversation carried on.

  Santa Anna managed to ingratiate himself with Jackson, who commissioned his “court painter,” Ralph E. W. Earl, to take the Mexican’s portrait. Santa Anna went daily to the president’s house to sit for Earl, who, as an intimate friend of Jackson, maintained his studio there. After six days, Jackson authorized a U.S. Navy vessel, the Pioneer, to carry Santa Anna to Vera Cruz, the very destination designated many months before in the Velasco treaty. His Excellency sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, on January 26.

  Their conversations left President Jackson with much to think about. Perhaps Santa Anna would persuade the new Mexican administration to recognize the treaties of Velasco or the independence of Texas; maybe he wouldn’t. But Jackson did know the voters of Texas wanted to join the United States, a desire shared for many years by Houston and Jackson, who now served as presidents of their respective countries. Yet, for the moment, at least, the political realities in Washington made that impossible.

  The nation was grappling with a growing and angry debate about slavery. Powerful people in the North—among them Jackson’s old nemesis John Quincy Adams, now an outspoken congressman—zealously guarded a delicate balance in Congress, and the admission of Texas as a slaveholding state would topple that house of cards. Jackson couldn’t simply order annexation; the powers of the president did not extend that far. But he did have a hand he could play.

  In the waning days of his second term, he reached out t
o his allies in Congress and a resolution passed; it wasn’t annexation but the next best thing: recognition of the Republic of Texas as an independent nation. In Jackson’s last official act before leaving office, he named a chargé d’affaires to Texas. When the appointment was confirmed by Congress near midnight on Friday, March 4, Jackson invited two Texas officials to join him in a glass of wine. They toasted: To Texas!13 Officially, in the view of the United States of America, the Republic of Texas became an independent country.

  EPILOGUE

  The Founding and the Founders of Texas

  Our success in the action is conclusive proof of such daring intrepidity and courage; every officer and man proved himself worthy of the cause in which he battled, while the triumph received a lustre from the humanity which characterized their conduct after victory.

  —SAM HOUSTON, APRIL 25, 1836

  The men who fought for Texas in 1835–36 would fill the ranks of its first generation of leaders. Some held important political offices; others continued to serve in its army. They became a permanent part of Texas history.

  Not a few of those who fought—and some who died in the cause—became half-remembered names that appear on the map of today’s Texas. There are counties named for Bowie, Fannin, Karnes, Milam, Burnet, and Deaf Smith, along with uncounted cities and towns whose names commemorate soldiers and officers in the Texian army. These names—and a shared commitment by the state and its educators—help keep the Texas Revolution alive in the minds of the state’s citizens.