Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
The President had already decided to press a claim for the land between the Sabine and the Neches. This was based on an argument originated by Anthony Butler, who was Jackson's minister to Mexico, that in 1819 the Spaniards had mistakenly written "Sabine" into the treaty when they really meant "Neches." Jackson was cocking the United States for some kind of action in the Southwest—but his devout attention to appearances and legalisms merely infuriated the Texans, whose own inclination was to do what came naturally, and damn the hypocrisy.
If there was one crime the Mexicans were not guilty of, it was allying with or instigating the Comanches or other dangerous Indians. But the accusation opened a door quite a few Americans, including the President, seemed willing to pass through. From Baton Rouge, on his way to Natchitoches, General Gaines informed the Secretary of War that he "should deem it his duty to anticipate the lawless movements of the Mexicans and their red allies." If it appeared American soil was menaced in any way, Gaines was prepared to cross "our supposed or imaginary national boundary and meet the savage marauders wherever to be found in their approach to our frontiers."
General Gaines's instructions allowed him sufficient latitude to start a war, and he showed no signs of being afraid of one. In the Congress, John Quincy Adams and other Easterners attacked Gaines's orders in the most violent terms; these men wanted no part of a Mexican war, and above all, no extension of American slave territory. Both the old North and old South were adopting an increasingly parochial viewpoint, often masked by hypocritical ideologies. The West, with men like Houston and Jackson, still clung to Unionism and the notion of one nation, expanding, right or wrong. In the West, men could see far horizons, and more rivers to cross, and they had a thirst to cross them.
In Natchitoches General Gaines was bombarded by Texan alarums, Mexican atrocities, and tales of Indian uprisings across the border. The streams of pitiful refugees pouring through Natchitoches heightened the tension. Companies of volunteers were also passing west, and Gaines maintained close liaison with these. He had good intelligence of the state of affairs in east Texas. He was also contemptuous of certain large numbers of armed men who now began passing through to the east, from Texas—apparently American volunteers who changed their minds when they ran into the headlong Texan retreat toward the Sabine.
Gaines felt the situation was dangerous enough to call out the militia or national guards of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. His orders did not include this. If Jackson had cocked the nation for trouble, Gaines was now splashing powder in the priming pan. However, the trigger was never pulled. Gaines reached Natchitoches in early April 1836, and the news of San Jacinto reached him three weeks later. What might have occurred had Gaines marched over the Sabine earlier will never be known.
The word of the victory on the San Jacinto raced up the muddy trails and quagmire roads by horse courier, overtaking thousands of women and children still trying to get out of Texas. It passed across into Louisiana, reaching company after company of approaching "armed emigrants." The news cheered these Americans immensely; they hastened onward into Texas, and more ships set out from New Orleans, carrying men and arms to Houston.
The word rolled slowly through the South, and up the Mississippi Valley. It was greeted everywhere with cheers, prayers, bonfires, and rejoicing. It was a remarkable reaction to an event in a "foreign" war. On May 16, 1836, Gaines's dispatch rider pounded into Washington and rode up to the White House. This officer had a report from General Gaines, and a personal message for the President from west of the Sabine.
Jackson, in great excitement, seized the letter from Texas. He said, "Yes, that's his writing! I know it well! That's Houston's hand—there can be no doubt of what he states!" The contents of this letter were never revealed. Houston had written it immediately after finishing his official report for the Texas government. The President demanded a map. He wanted to find the San Jacinto, but the tiny river was not marked. Jackson's finger moved across the map enthusiastically: "It must be there! No, it must be over there!"
Cabinet officers and dignitaries high and low gave parties or held celebrations. Even John Quincy Adams, Texas's principal enemy in the United States, seems to have forgotten himself. In his diary for this day he wrote: "Glorious news from Texas that Santa Anna has been defeated and taken by Houston, and shot, with all his officers." The public celebrations dismayed the Mexican minister. He delivered a note expressing "shock and astonishment at this intemperate joy."
But, whatever the joy of private Americans and official Washington, for sixty terrible days Anglo-Texas had fought alone. None of the money and none of the volunteers raised in 1836 reached Sam Houston before San Jacinto. His supplies were mainly those bought by Texans' credit in New Orleans. The American volunteers who had come in 1835 were mostly slaughtered at Goliad and San Patricio, because they refused to obey orders or accept a Texan command. Houston's army, by the time he reached the Brazos, was overwhelmingly composed of colonists.
These facts were not completely lost on the true Texans, and they had their historic effect.
Santa Anna and many of his officers had been taken, but by the grace of Sam Houston's vision, he had not been shot. On April 22, the day after the battle, the Mexican dictator and his brother-in-law, General Cós, were both rounded up by Texan patrols. Santa Anna was not recognized at first, because he had escaped the battlefield only in his silk shirt and drawers, and had somewhere dressed himself in a private soldier's rough gray trousers. The Texans smelled him out only because of his own men's immediate deference when he was marched into the prisoner compound.
When word reached him of Santa Anna's capture, Andrew Jackson wrote Houston immediately that he must not be executed, for political and propaganda reasons. But Houston never had any intention of shooting Santa Anna, although he utterly despised the Mexican ruler, and was under no illusions as to the kind of man he had taken. Santa Anna gave Houston immediate leverage to follow up his field victory with a total political triumph in the war. Houston had that common Southwestern American trait: a man of firm honor himself, he possessed no idealism about the honor of others, or scruples about using them to political advantage. In 1832, he had written Jackson that the Mexican government was "essentially despotic and must be so for years to come. The rulers have not honesty and the people have not intelligence." Houston saw the true situation and did not mince words. Now, on April 22, his grasp of the Mexican situation allowed him to play the splendid fish he had caught with considerable cleverness.
Santa Anna and Houston seemed to have understood each other well enough, though Houston did improve his case with a sort of war of nerves against the President. He refused to talk directly with Santa Anna about a treaty, but insisted, as he was legally bound to do, on going through the Texas government. Meanwhile, the captive was exposed to Texan hostility and threats—the majority of Houston's army were eager to hang him to the nearest oak. Santa Anna quickly realized Houston wanted to buy a peace for Texas, and that Houston had the price—Santa Anna's neck. With mounting hope, each man realized they could make a deal.
Houston was in agony, and in danger, from his bullet-smashed foot. He had to sail to New Orleans for treatment, but before he left, he got the Mexican President to cooperate in everything he asked. Santa Anna immediately penned orders to his commanders in Texas to retire to Béxar pending a total cessation of the war, and agreed to negotiate a treaty of peace with the Republic of Texas. Houston then turned Santa Anna over to President Burnet, who had the same goals and same understanding as the General, and left Texas.
Burnet now entered into negotiations with Santa Anna, much against the will of the Texas army and public opinion generally. The colonists were now streaming home to ruined farms and burned-out plantations; the widows, the farmers, and the soldiers were all athirst for personal vengeance. Santa Anna was denounced in the Texas congress as a murderer, who should be shot out of hand. Burnet treated these complaints with cool contempt, reminding his critics that there was no law, national or international, and no legal usage anywhere, by which the commander of an enemy army could be tried or punished for his official acts. If Texas intended to behave as a responsible nation, then Santa Anna was immune. This public uproar, however, unquestionably had its effect on the dictator's mind.
On May 14, 1836, at Velasco, Santa Anna signed a public and a secret treaty with the Republic of Texas. By the public treaty he agreed to the following points:
He swore personally never to take up arms again against Texas.
All hostilities between the two nations would cease immediately.
The Mexican army in Texas would withdraw below the Rio Grande.
All American prisoners still held would be released.
The treaty would immediately govern General Filisola, now in command of the Mexican army.
Santa Anna would be shipped to Vera Cruz as soon as "deemed proper."
By the secret treaty, Santa Anna pledged himself to work within Mexico to achieve four things: diplomatic recognition of Texas; Texan independence; a treaty of commerce; the Rio Grande acknowledged as the Texas–Mexico boundary.
The Texas campaign of 1836 laid the foundations for a deep sense of national humiliation in Mexicans, which the events of the coming decade only made immensely worse. Mexicans found it psychologically unbearable to accept the fact that a few thousand colonists had inflicted hideous losses on their best soldiers and captured the greatest Mexican general of the time fleeing in his shirt and drawers. Understandably, it became almost articles of faith that United States intervention won the war (and American numbers were greatly exaggerated) and that the whole debacle was the result of an American conspiracy. While there is no doubt of a continuing United States "conspiracy" against Mexican soil in Texas, and Sam Houston in the historic sense was an American agent, the victory, and whatever glory might ensue, belonged to the men who had emigrated from the United States. Yet Mexican propaganda, completely submerged during the war by Texans, in later years almost won the point: the world came to believe that even in 1836 the "powerful" United States wrenched Texas from "poor, bleeding Mexico."
The Mexican effort in Texas should not be considered despicable. The Mexican army was effective; the rot was hardly at its roots but near the top. The attacking columns at the Alamo—ordered into an unfavorable tactical situation—displayed great discipline and courage, and initiative by junior officers. Urrea's lancers swept every American they found in arms from the field, and did it neatly—with the single exception of the time they tried to assault riflemen behind Refugio's walls. Shooting Fannin's men after their surrender reflected no credit on that commander—but it was done by Santa Anna's express order. The crime of Urrea and his soldiers, which other men before and afterward had to face, was that they marched under a dictator's command.
Santa Anna had planned a bold sweep into Texas; he had moved with almost incredible speed. He came within an ace of succeeding. He would have succeeded, but for Travis at the Alamo. But he had paid a price for speed. His columns in Texas in the spring of 1836 found themselves without sufficient guns, and worse, desperately short of supplies. It is taking nothing from Houston's glory at the San Jacinto to read the Mexican orders of the day and discover that General Filisola, even before he received Santa Anna's orders written on April 22, was in retreat. Filisola, following Santa Anna into East Texas with a powerful column, was logistically in trouble.
The Mexican army, like the British army in the American Revolution, was an effective instrument, but its leaders met a kind of opposition and field circumstances they had never seen and did not understand. They failed to
credit frontier marksmanship. Equally important, the Mexican Army of Operations in Texas entered a country without towns, without a countryside it could live off, and without roads. The Texan flight, and Houston's scorched-earth policy, greeted Filisola, after marching across a veritable desert of several hundred miles, with desolation of another kind. The Italian-born General Filisola's description of Texas is significant. The Americans who called it the best and richest country in the world were farmers, or land-hungry men with an eye for fertile soil; the professional soldier Filisola described Texas as endless and everlasting mud.
He had tried to march through the coastal plains during the rainy season, and he pushed his men not through hell but a ghastly quagmire. He found himself mired down hundreds of miles from the nearest magazine. By April, many of Filisola's columns were ragged, and thousands of Mexican soldiers were going hungry.
An enormous, often overlooked factor in the Mexican debacle was the control of the Gulf by the tiny Texas navy. Since the Mexican army was separated from its bases by the "Desert of Dead Horses" along the Rio Bravo, resupply by sea, even along the treacherous Texas coast, was necessary. Mexico was not a maritime nation, but it did have a navy, and sufficient merchant sail under its flag to support Santa Anna's army.
One of the first acts of the Texas Council in November 1835, had been to authorized letters of marque and a regular navy of four ships. The privateer
William Robbins
, a ship bought by private Texas citizens, put to sea and took the Mexican warship
Bravo
and other vessels. However, Jean Lafitte had destroyed the favorable image of the privateer. Opinion in the United States strongly disapproved this form of enterprise; the government of Texas therefore purchased the William
Robbins
, rechristened her the
Liberty
, and sent her to sea again with the same captain and crew. The commissioners in the United States also bought three other armed vessels: the former American revenue cutter
Independence
and the schooners
Brutus
and
Invincible
. These sleek, swift men of war terrorized the Mexican merchant marine and paralyzed its operations off the Texas coast. All of them took valuable prizes, filled with cargo consigned to the Mexican Army of Operations.