Lone Star (94 page)

In June 1841, Lamar sent what Andrew Jackson called "the wild-goose campaign to Santa Fe." Its survivors were surrounded, they surrendered to keep from starving, and some were shot, all mistreated, but due to United States' diplomats' efforts, most were eventually returned. This raid caused the Mexican government to retaliate with the expedition against San Antonio, in March 1842.

Hays had to let Vásquez take the city, since he had only about 100 men. He followed Vásquez back to the Rio Grande, but could not attack. The Ranger captain was never foolhardy. He was not involved in the clash between several hundred Texas volunteers under Davis and Ewen Cameron at Lipantilicán with General Canales.

Despite the fact that war was not open on the Nueces frontier, the Republic disbanded Hays's troop, except for himself and a few "spies," as scouts were then officially called. The reason was Houston's bankruptcy. Hays was "authorized" to raise and equip 150 men; he never did so because he could not pay or arm them.

On September 11, 1842, General Adrian Woll and some 1,200 Mexican soldiers again captured San Antonio. Woll meant this to be merely a demonstration in force, with the triple purpose of asserting Mexican sovereignty, chastising the Texans, and giving U.S. annexationists and Texas's European allies pause. Woll remained only a short time, but did succeed in capturing the district court, which was in session, and a number of prominent Texans.

Hays carried the word to the eastern settlements beyond San Antonio, and soon "Old Paint" Caldwell had raised 225 militia volunteers. Caldwell, with this small force, actually brought Woll to battle along Salado Creek on September 17. From the brush and timber Caldwell knocked back 200 horse and about 600 regular infantry. He sent out calls for more men: "The enemy are all around me on every side, but I fear them not. I will hold my position . . . Come and help me . . . There are eleven hundred of the enemy. I can whip them on my own ground without any help, but I cannot take prisoners. Why don't you come? Huzza! huzza for Texas."

Caldwell was doing splendidly, because he knew how to fight both Mexicans and Indians and knew better than to give either an even break. The Mexican heavy cavalry could not ride into his timbers, and no Mexican infantry force of only three-to-one could assault Texas rifles firing from a rest. Woll retreated, carrying away his dead. But Caldwell's appeal resulted in Texan disaster.

Captain Nicholas Dawson rushed from La Grange with 53 men. Woll's horsemen spotted him in open country, and surrounded him, keeping out of rifle range. Mexican field artillery pounded Dawson brutally, and he surrendered under the white flag. Dawson did not know how to fight Mexicans.

The cavalry refused to accept the white flag, and Yoakum detailed how Dawson's men were cut down after giving up. Only fifteen got away, but Woll's triumph was very mixed. The long rifles killed 60 Mexican regulars.

Hays, at the head of a Ranger force, harassed Woll all the way back to the Rio Grande. On one occasion, Hays actually led a cavalry charge into a Mexican artillery position, killing every gunner with pistols and the shotguns many Rangers had now begun to carry in place of rifles. Woll is said to have offered five hundred dollars in silver for the head of this twenty-five-year-old, which, as the Texans gleefully said, was a lot of coin for a five-feet-ten youth who weighed about 160 pounds.

Sam Houston, the President, agreed to a demonstration in force to the Rio Grande under General Somervell. This, called the Mier Expedition, suffered from a historic flaw so many previous expeditions had; it was recruited from a rabble more intent on plunder than defeating Mexican arms. Somervell left San Antonio with 750 men on November 8, 1842, but in this army the frontier militia and Hays's force of Rangers were only a tiny segment.

Somervell easily captured Laredo, and his army, without orders, engaged in a rape of the town. Somervell arrested some stragglers and returned the plunder he could find, though he was unable to restore any women to their former state. This provoked a rebellion in the ranks. Two hundred men deserted. The remaining five hundred soon refused to obey General Somervell's orders in all things.

Somervell declared the demonstration aborted, and marched home. Major Hays and Ben McCulloch went with him, but about 300 men, including the Ranger Captains Ewen Cameron, Samuel Walker, and Big Foot Wallace, stayed for the fun.

The ragtag army marched to Mier, an adobe town in the northern Mexican desert. Here the Texans were surrounded by a large Mexican force. They could have fought their way out, but Colonel Fisher, the commander, was wounded, and in this mutinous-minded force no one had control. An election was held, and the majority of American volunteers insisted on surrendering, especially since Mexican terms involved their being treated as prisoners of war, and being held near the border.

After laying down arms, they were marched rapidly into the interior of Mexico. Cameron and Walker led a successful escape from Saltillo; in this escape the Americans captured a number of Mexican soldiers, but released them after stipulating the wounded men left behind must be treated with the honors of war.

The escapees became lost in the desert above Saltillo, and wandered hopelessly under hideous conditions. Some men ate insects, other dug feverishly for wet earth to wet their swollen tongues. A few, mad, drank their own urine and died a ghastly death. The Mexicans followed with cavalry, and when the escapees had thrown away their arms, rode down and put them all in irons.

Santa Anna, again in power in Mexico, at first angrily demanded that all should be executed. The American and British ministers put up a fearful protest at this, and Santa Anna relented. The Mier Expedition would only be decimated, in the Latin fashion—one in ten would be shot. A pitcher with 159 white beans, 17 black ones, was set in front of the prisoners. Those who drew black were to be shot. Big Foot Wallace, who cannily noticed the black beans were poured in on top of the white, "dipped deep." He lived. Ewen Cameron drew a white bean, but General Antonio Canales, who hated the big Scot, ordered him shot anyway.

The remaining white-bean men, were "horribly mistreated," as Webb and others reported, but again American and British diplomats eventually got them out. They lived to return to Texas just before annexation.

Their experiences were to have a decided effect on the Mexican War of 1846–48, because the Ranger detachment with the Mier Expedition saw Mexican soil again, as conquerors. In such ways cruelty begat cruelty, and bloodshed shed blood.

Chapter 26

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Hays's Rangers have come, their appearance never to be forgotten. Not any sort of uniform, but well mounted and doubly well armed: each man has one or two Colt's revolvers . . . The Mexicans are terribly afraid of them.

ETHAN ALLEN HITCHCOCK, MAJOR GENERAL, U.S. ARMY

The commanding general took occasion to thank them for the efficient service they had rendered, and we saw them turn their faces toward the blood-bought State they represented, with many good wishes and the hope that all honest Mexicans were at a safe distance from their path.

LUTHER GIDDINGS, SKETCHES

AROUND the cold camps in cedar brakes along the Nueces and the Colorado, Hays's boys frequently discussed the invention of Samuel Colt. They had adapted the six-shooter to their use, but these fighting men were concerned with its salient faults. The breakdown in three parts, the disappearing trigger, the small bore (caliber .34), and the balance were all wrong. Colt's first six-gun was not a military or range weapon; it was more an Easterner's toy.

Some time after 1840 Captain Samuel H. Walker went East, to the United States. His was an official trip, to buy the latest Yankee arms. Walker, who had served first with Hays, was born in Maryland, and arrived in Texas after fighting in the Florida Seminole campaign. He was remarkable, like Hays, for a brilliant coolness; he was only a few years older. Samuel Colt, Walker, and Hays were actually all of the same generation, and their histories were to be inseparably linked across almost 2,000 miles.

Sam Walker looked up Sam Colt in New York City. The young Ranger told the young inventor that his pistols were the best seen yet, but the Texas Rangers had some improvements in mind. Delighted, the Connecticut-born Colt took Walker to his Paterson plant. Out of this visit came the world's first martial revolver, which was to become world-famous, and which was called the Walker Colt.

This pistol had a heavy, strong frame, able to withstand rough use and wear. The grip was natural, slipping easily into a large hand. It had a sturdy trigger guard, so it could be worn in a belt. The new caliber was .44, and the balance was beautiful in the palm. Captain Walker was delighted with two improvements above all: the pistol could be used profitably as a club, on someone "not worth shooting," and it could be reloaded by a lever rammer, solidly affixed beneath the newer, longer barrel, without breaking the gun apart. This was a horseman's weapon. It, and its series of modifications and improvements, was to kill more men than any other handgun ever made.

But its issue did not prevent Samuel Colt from bankruptcy in 1842. Texas was too poor to support mass production; not enough of the guns could be ordered or procured. These were the dark years in Sam Colt's life. He was a great man to certain quiet, cold-eyed, weatherbeaten men who occasionally came up from Texas, but he was a prophet with a prophet's usual honor on his native soil. For five years, no Colt's handguns were made. Sam Colt even gave away all the ones he owned.

Then, suddenly, there was war between the United States and Mexico, in early 1846. Texas was a state, and General Zachary Taylor, on the Rio Grande, had asked Texas for two regiments of horse. Jock Hays, barely thirty, raised one; his officers were Ben McCulloch, Sam Walker, Mike Chevaille, Big Foot Wallace, and John S. Ford. Hays and these men were clamoring for a thousand of something called a Colt.

Zachary Taylor gave in to their requests; he wanted none of the newfangled arms for his own U.S. infantry and dragoons, but politics had forced on him the use of Texas Ranger scouts. Taylor requisitioned Washington for 1,000 revolving pistols.

There were none. The government contacted Colt, who at that moment did not even possess a single model of his own. But Sam Colt behaved with the coolness and judgment that was to make him a millionaire. He advertised in New York newspapers for a Colt's pistol, in the meantime designing a few improvements, and signed a contract with the government to make 1,000 weapons at $28.00 each. Then he farmed the contract out to Eli Whitney, of cotton gin fame. But Whitney was not allowed to reveal this fact; each pistol bore the hallmark,
Address Samuel Colt, New York
. Colt lost $3,000 dollars on this deal. But after Jack Hays had his thousand pistols, Sam Colt's fame was to become worldwide, and his name a household word throughout the United States.

United States military historians, in remarking about the inability of high commanders on both sides to use cavalry in the American Civil War, have often commented that these incipient leaders found that in the Mexican War they were able to win without a mounted arm. This does not entirely state the case.

The United States Army had no cavalry arm in 1846, but had mounted infantry, called dragoons. These troops were heavy and cumbrous; they rode horses to battle, but much preferred to fight on foot. The reason the United States possessed no horse arm in 1846 was not military blindness but the fact that the entire population, save for a few Texans, were still living in a country dominated by woodlands. East of the Plains, cavalry could never be anything but an auxiliary arm.

The idea that the United States won the Mexican War without cavalry is not quite true. Hays's regiment, composed of West Texans, was cavalry. It performed all the normal tasks of cavalry—scouting, flanking, harassing, trail-blazing, and keeping Mexican cavalry from doing the same. Ironically, Hays's Texans achieved worldwide, popular acclaim but very little credit in U.S. Army annals. Here the reason was probably twofold. Hays's regiment of Rangers were irregulars, hardly proper soldiers, who fought like devils, but behaved like wildmen; and this, along with the fact that the generals knew nothing about cavalry, undoubtedly influenced their memoirs and minds.

An incident at the very beginning of the Mexican War is highly significant. Taylor, on the Rio Grande, found he did not know the country or the Mexican mind. Nor could his heavy, blue-uniformed, sweating dragoons perform the tasks they were assigned. Taylor asked for Walker's Scouts to keep his communications open, particularly after Arista's cavalry snapped up sixty of his own dragoons without a fight. Walker, with a few men, carried the vital messages between Taylor at Point Isabel and Major Brown on the river that set up the victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.

After these battles, company by company—they were raised by company on the Indian frontier—Hays's regiment filtered down into Mexico. Gillespie's company came by way of Laredo, Ben McCulloch's from the middle Guadalupe. The riders were all frontiersmen of the first tier, not farm boys following the colors. It was generally thought that McCulloch's company was the finest group that had ever assembled in the ranging service.

Ben McCulloch was blue-eyed and taciturn, with a strong face he kept under perfect control. No one ever knew what was in his mind until his words made it clear. He was cool—the word runs through all Ranger descriptions—and above all cool to the point of incredibility in combat. And, like all true partisans, McCulloch seemed to think best under fire. He gave few orders; those he gave were obeyed.