Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
An interim government was elected in convention: David G. Burnet, President; Zavala, Vice-President; and Thomas Rusk, Secretary of War. Sam Houston, earlier, had been appointed Commander in Chief, this time with a commission that spelled out complete power to command all armed men in Texas, regular and/or volunteer. He received these powers on March 3, and immediately departed south. He had what he had come for.
The convention closed March 17, and shortly afterward, the government prudently moved its seat to Galveston Island, since the problem of live Mexicans was becoming dangerously acute. When Andrew Jackson, in April, was apprised of these actions, he stated the moves were rash and premature. Actually, all but one of them came too late; only Houston's reappointment as Commander in Chief helped save Texas and win the war.
Houston was the most remarkable figure, and most unusual agent of destiny, that ever appeared on the old frontier. He was a man of his times, like Travis and Andrew Jackson, but something more. He was one of those Americans of power, vigor, and determination, who in the early decades of the century seem to come primarily from the border country of Tennessee. He was an Anglo-Celt of the old tradition. He despised Europe, all its works, and its so-called cultured men who willingly seemed to bow to tyrants and aristocracy. He had a limited but adequate education; his favorite author was Alexander Pope. He was born in Virginia, then taken across the mountains; he refused to learn a trade, and spent much time among the Cherokees. He served as a regular officer with distinction against the Creeks, when the British government incited them to war in 1812. He became Andrew Jackson's protégé, eventually a militia major general, a Congressman, and Governor of Tennessee.
At the apex of this career, which might have led to the White House, his personal life destroyed him. A young bride left his bed and board, under circumstances never told. Most historians, but not his numerous enemies of the time, believe this girl neurotic, and Houston entirely blameless. Still, the event, and Houston's determined silence toward it, destroyed his political career. Like David Crockett, another well-known but far lesser man, he drifted West, to Texas. He lived for some years among the Cherokees, known to them simply as Big Drunk.
The disturbances in Texas revived him, and he joined the colonists' revolt of 1832. There is evidence that he never lost Jackson's confidence or friendship, or ceased to work at a grand design the President had already stated, to explode the United States from sea to sea. Like Jackson, he was more than a Southerner, and a Unionist to the end. In one drunken letter, Houston wrote he intended to conquer Mexico, or Texas, and be worth two millions in two years. He had his dreams, but they were big ones, and the measure of the man was that he fulfilled them. To history, motives are less important than results, and Houston served his nation well.
He was another man moderns find difficult to understand. His mother once gave him a small gold ring, in which inscribed was the single word
Honor
; his most determined enemies rarely accused him of lacking it. He was a great man, with the passions of a great man, but in the crucial moments, he could exert the iron restraint and discipline of heart and mind all great men must have.
These qualities, his former fame, and the certain knowledge he had the ear of the powerful President of the United States brought Houston to prominence in Texas. The delegates who appointed him military commander had no real prescience of destiny, but they appointed better than they knew.
He was six feet three, two hundred forty pounds of muscle in early middle age, a giant. He was never "six foot six," as the border legends ran, but when he put his iron-hard eyes on men, they gave him extra stature. In Texas in the spring of 1836, Sam Houston needed every inch.
After the battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna found himself unable to proceed until the army could recoup. He sent Ramírez y Sesma's cavalry brigade east on harrying missions, but these did not reach the Brazos. Thus he was inactive when Houston hurried southward to Gonzales, still the Texan's marshaling point. Houston's army consisted of exactly four men, not a general's escort but more a corporal's guard. At Gonzales Houston planned to take charge of the assembling militia and lead it to the Alamo. He came into the anxious town on March 11.
Here he found a total of 374 "effective men," with no food, and some without arms and ammunition. These were men who had assembled on their own, without leadership, to help Travis at the Alamo. The best of these, in arms and appearance, was the company of 50 Kentucky rifles Sidney Sherman had brought, at his own expense, from the United States. Houston organized this group into a "regiment," with Edward Burleson as colonel, Sherman as lieutenant colonel, and a man named Somervell as major.
Gonzales was in a state of fear and horror. On March 11 a Mexican came into town, and stated that the Alamo had fallen. Houston sent three of his invaluable scouts, "Deaf" Smith, Henry Karnes, and R. E. Handy, riding west for news. These scouts found Mrs. Dickenson and the pitiful female survivors of the Alamo stumbling down the road and brought them back to town. Now, twenty widows and a hundred children heard of the death of Gonzales's gallant men, amid "almost indescribable scenes in the streets." Houston also learned from Mrs. Dickenson that General Sesma was close behind.
Now, Houston did the hardest thing any general could be called upon to do; in the face of disaster he ordered a general retreat. He had his reasons, some of which in Texas were never understood. His regiment was small and undisciplined and untrained; it could never meet Santa Anna in a war of maneuver in the field. Also, this was the edge of Mexican country; Houston preferred to pull the enemy into Anglo-Texas, with its numerous defensive rivers. He counted, too, upon accumulating some thousands of Texas men on the way.
He wrote Fannin at Goliad unequivocal orders to blow up the fortress and retreat; he needed Fannin's 500 men. Then Houston took charge of his hungry, grousing regiment; set fire to Gonzales, and marched northeast. He reached
Burnam's Crossing on the Colorado on March 17. He now had 600 men. Houston, whom Bowie's father-in-law Veramendi had once described as a deep, inscrutable, and dangerous man, kept his own counsel, and the army in iron order. He halted nine days at the Colorado, to teach the men to drill. On March 28, he marched further north, to San Felipe on the Brazos. He came to Groce's plantation, where he camped and trained ten days. His army swelled to approximately 1,400.
At Goliad, Colonel Fannin's Greek tragedy continued. He sent one third of his force to Refugio, a nearby town, to assist the evacuation of Anglo settlers, whom he advised to flee. This force, under King and Ward, was snapped up by the main body of Urrea's army. Captain King and some 20-odd men were caught in the open and cut down; Ward retreated into the crumbling, two-thirds-destroyed Refugio mission. Here his riflemen knocked several lancers out of the saddle, and later repulsed a determined assault. But Ward ran out of ammunition, and with dark on March 14 ordered his men to scatter and filter through the nearby woods and swamps. Urrea took Refugio, and turned toward Goliad.
Here, Fannin refused to move until he had word from Ward and King. A scout, Frazier, returned with news of the defeat at Refugio on March 16. Fannin called a council of war, and now everyone decided it was time to go north, to Guadalupe Victoria.
But now Urrea was in contact; a skirmish was fought on the 18th. Still, Fannin decided to abandon the walls of La Bahía fortress and take his chances on the plains. The army, shielded by a ground fog, moved out March 19.
The sun burned, the fog disappeared, and after a few miles Fannin's transport animals, burdened by too many heavy guns, weakened. Fannin demanded a halt, though some officers insisted on reaching a nearby creek.
Now, Urrea had him fixed, in a small depression in the open prairie, away from water, away from the sheltering woods. In the timber of the close-by Coleta, or Encinal del Perdido, the Georgians and others could have fought well. As it was, they performed creditably, under a sweltering sun, in a hollow square, until the sun went down. The big guns that delayed the column fatally were of little use. There was no water to cool the pieces after firing, and the one man who knew how to handle artillery in the field was wounded.
Fannin, enveloped by Urrea's vastly superior force, was unnerved all night by the cries of his suffering wounded, begging for water. At daylight, Urrea's field guns began to spray the Americans with grape and canister. In the end, Fannin took out a flag for parley, and capitulated.
For years Texans insisted Fannin got honorable terms. The evidence is otherwise; Mexican army archives hold a document with Fannin's signature, in which he surrendered at discretion, meaning, unconditionally, and put himself and his men at the Supreme Government's mercy. But it is absolutely certain, from the survivors' statements and those of some of the Mexican army, that Fannin's men believed they would be permitted the honors of war. Urrea knew Santa Anna's and the Supreme Government's standing orders, but he promised to intercede with the
Presidente
.
One reason, probably, that the Americans were confident of being disarmed and exiled back to the United States was that the foreign professionals with Urrea's army—the only officers who could speak English—cheerfully told them so. These men, Captain Dusague, who interpreted at the surrender,
Lieutenant Colonel Holzinger, and Colonel Guerrier (sometimes spelled Garay), unquestionably believed this themselves. Holzinger actually stated, "Gentlemen, in ten days liberty and home!" The "Georgia Battalion," the "Red Rovers," and the others, now heartily sick of war and Texas, marched willingly back to Goliad and jail.
Urrea personally mentioned to Fannin that the Mexican government did not execute prisoners, even pirates, who appealed for clemency. But Urrea reckoned without General Santa Anna, who was forging a new Mexican state of affairs. Urrea did write the President. The President wrote back a rather rambling letter, the force of which was to state he had no power to remit the Supreme Government's instructions pertaining to such criminals as these. In the meantime, on March 24 and 25, Ward's survivors, who had been rounded up, and some Nashville volunteers who had just landed unknowingly at Cópano Bay, were brought into the crowded brick
cuarteles
.
On Palm Sunday, March 27, Colonel Guerrier came into the room where the American surgeons, who had volunteered to care for Mexican wounded, were kept. White-faced, he said, "Keep still, gentlemen, you are safe; these are not my orders, nor do I execute them." Several other Americans, not knowing what was afoot, were hidden and kept out of barracks by the wife of a Mexican officer named Álvarez. The rest were divided into three columns and marched out on three roads under heavy guard, believing they were going home. A little way from Goliad they were shot. Only a handful, in the confusion, broke away.
The wounded prisoners were dragged into the streets and shot there. The officers were shot last, after they had learned what happened to their men. There are accounts that Fannin took the news calmly, and that he did not, that he asked merely not to be shot in the head and given decent burial, and that he begged for mercy. At any rate, he was shot in the head and dropped into the common grave. Three hundred and ninety Americans died. Twenty-seven, saved in various ways, escaped. When the army left, Guerrier saw to it that the men he had hidden got away.
Urrea himself refused to be on hand for the executions. He professed that he "and every soldier in his division was confounded, amazed, and thrown into consternation" by the order. He wrote later that Fannin had "certainly surrendered in the belief that Mexican generosity would not make their sacrifice sterile," otherwise, they would have fought to the last. The professional officers were particularly outraged; naturally, no class of men clung more strenuously to the notion of the "honors of war." But Urrea obeyed orders. He would not, like Colonel Guerrier, who risked being shot himself, have escaped judgment at Nuremberg a century later.
This execution of pirates was not a crime under international law. Fannin's men were foreigners, not part of any recognized or proper army, in arms on Mexican soil. It was a blunder; as Talleyrand described one of Napoleon's executions, it was worse than a crime. As the Texas historian Davenport wrote, if Fannin's motley starvelings had been shipped to New Orleans, they would have spread tales of folly, mismanagement, and disaster; "Texas's standing with the American people would have fallen to a new low." Instead, Santa Anna made 400 martyrs, and even immortalized James Fannin. Here, he lost, forever, the propaganda war in the civilized world. Years later, rather pathetically, he was still writing letters trying to absolve himself from
responsibility.
At the end of March 1836, Santa Anna felt supremely confident that at Béxar and Goliad Texan resistance had been broken. He believed the entire "Texian" army was destroyed, and he decided to return to Mexico. Only the advice of his officers, who argued the Presidential presence was needed with the troops, dissuaded him. Now, Santa Anna divided his thousands of soldiers into five divisions or columns. In retrospect, this was to seem sheer folly. At the time, Santa Anna saw no further mission than to pursue and destroy. Columns under Santa Anna, Ramírez y Sesma, Filisola, Amat, and Urrea began a massive sweep toward the Sabine.
Their orders were to burn every town, plantation, farm, and dwelling in their path. The Anglo-Saxon presence was not to be conquered or cowed; it was to be erased.