Lone Star Nation (29 page)
If Travis wasn't the reflexive rebel he had been at twenty-two (he turned twenty-six in 1835), he remained touchy on the issue of Texan rights. In the spring of 1835 trouble again developed at Anahuac, and again over import taxes. Since 1832 the collection of the duties had been intermittent and haphazard; those importers who seriously objected to paying resorted to smuggling, with little worry about legal sanction. But as part of Santa Anna's campaign for law and order in Texas, a new contingent of troops was sent to Anahuac to ensure collection of the customs duties. This irked the merchants there, one of whom, Andrew Briscoe, sputtered his exasperation:
I landed at this place near 4 weeks. Since, I have had some damned rough usage, having my goods landed against my will by military force. The people would calmly stand by and see me lose all. God damn them. I went to Miloska to get justice but failed. The roughest affair and most dangerous exertions implied. My business has been delayed. My provisions and groceries have been [confiscated] as contraband, and the whole duties claimed on balance and the goods withheld till the duties shall be paid. And all this by deputy collector and 40 soldiers!!!
The merchants' annoyance prompted acts of sabotage and evasion, which provoked a further crackdown. When a cargo of lumber consigned to the government and landed at Anahuac mysteriously caught fire, the authorities stepped up patrols and confiscations. When passengers aboard a schooner belonging to one of Travis's clients were discovered without passports, the schooner was seized and its cargo impounded. The boat, with the offending passengers as prisoners, was taken to Veracruz.
Nearly every American in Texas knewâand the few who didn't were quickly informedâthat precisely such actions had triggered the American Revolution, which started with disputes over import taxes and escalated when offenders were hauled off to Britain for trial. Travis appreciated the parallel, and the fact that his friends and clients were among the victims of the new crackdown gave him additional reason to get involved. In June, Andrew Briscoe and another man tussled with some Mexican soldiers enforcing the customs rules; the two men were arrested. Although the second man was soon released, Briscoe remained in custody. The news of the arrest reached San Felipe roughly coincident with word of the approach of General Cos, and with the publication of an intercepted letter written by Colonel Domingo Ugartechea, the Mexican commander in Texas, predicting, “In a very short time the affairs of Texas will be definitely settled. . . . These revolutionaries will be ground down.”
This was more than Travis could bear. He organized a band of volunteer soldiers, who elected him captain. They rode to Anahuac, where, supported by a boat bearing a small cannon, Travis ordered the Mexican commander to surrender his post. When the commander demurred, Travis threatened to kill every member of the garrison. Unsure how large the rebel force was, and how committed his own men were to holding the fort, the commander put the question to his officers, who voted for discretion over unthinking valor. Upon receiving assurances that they wouldn't be harmed if they complied with Travis's ultimatum, the Mexicans evacuated Anahuac and rode off toward the Rio Grande.
Travis was understandably proud of himself for facing down those he deemed the minions of the tyrant Santa Anna, but not everyone in Texas shared his pleasure. Most of the established property owners continued to hope the current troubles would blow over, and they feared anything that might bring Santa Anna's wrath upon them. They muttered against Travis and considered how to rein him in.
Travis grew more popular when Cos ordered his arrest. “As it is impossible that the attack made upon the garrison of Anahuac should pass with impunity,” Cos wrote to Colonel Ugartechea, “I require and stimulate the patriotism of your honor to proceed immediately and without excuse to the apprehension of the ungrateful and bad citizen, Juliano Barret Travis, who headed the revolutionary party. . . . He ought to have been punished long since.”
The old settlers worried more than ever at this escalation of events, but among the newcomers Travis again became a hero. The local authorities refused to carry out the arrest orders, and by their refusal joined the resistance to Santa Anna. When the Mexican government placed a thousand-dollar bounty on Travis's head, his reputation was ensured.
Travis was delighted. “I discharged what I conceived to be my duty to my country to the best of my ability,” he said, as modestly as he could. Lowering his reserve, he added, “Thank God! Principle has triumphed over prejudice, passion, cowardice, and slavery. Texas is herself again. . . . I feel the victory we have gained, and I glory in it.”
Arrest did even more for James Bowie than for William Travis. The two years till 1835 were the most difficult in Bowie's life: hard on his reputation and hard on him personally. His personal troubles began with the cholera outbreak that had coincided with Austin's departure for Mexico City. Bowie was traveling in the United States at the time, and Juan Veramendi evacuated himself and his family, including Bowie's bride, Ursula, to Coahuila to escape the infection. But the epidemic outpaced them, and first Veramendi's wife, then the governor himself, then Ursula succumbed to the disease. As it happened, Bowie, at Natchez, Mississippi, fell gravely ill with malaria at about the same time, and though he managed to beat back the parasites that infested his bloodstream, the news of Ursula's death provoked a relapse. Bowie's marriage had begun in part as a match of (his) convenience, but it had grown into much more, and with Ursula's passing he wondered whether his own life was worth living. For months he could think of little besides his loss. “Strong man that he was,” said Noah Smithwick, who had known Bowie before and reencountered him in the wake of Ursula's death, “I have seen the tears course down his cheeks while lamenting her untimely death.”
But Bowie had survived bullets and arrows and infectious disease, and he survived his broken heart. He returned to Texas to settle the Veramendi estate (thereby letting himself off the hook he had fashioned by his exaggerated claims of prenuptial wealth). And notwithstanding his mourning, his old feistiness reemerged. After a brawl in San Antonio, he complained that a friend had witnessed the fight without coming to his aid. “Why, Jim,” the friend said (according to the recollection of a third party), “you were in the wrong.” Bowie replied, “Don't you suppose I know that as well as you do? That's just why I needed a friend. If I had been in the right, I would have had plenty of them.”
The speculative instinct also resurfaced. For several years the residents, merchants, and politicians of Monclova, the historic capital of Coahuila, had been trying to recapture the state government of Coahuila y Texas from Saltillo, the seat of government of the dual state since 1824. In 1833 the Monclovans succeeded. But the Saltillans contested the transfer, and the turmoil surrounding the fight produced unusual opportunities for turning state power to private purposes. Among the opportunists were speculators who persuaded the Monclova government to sell them public land in Texas for a small fraction of its market value. Samuel Williams, Austin's partner, was one of this clique, as was Bowie, who wound up with title to more than a half million acres near Nacogdoches. When word of the deal surfaced, Williams's reputation for probity was ruined among the Texans (as was his relationship with Austin, who furiously distanced himself from Williams and the sweetheart deal). Bowie's reputation suffered less damage, on account of having less far to fall. But to those who had hoped his connection to the Veramendis might make an honest man of him, the reeking scandal suggested a dismaying reversion to form.
Luckily for Bowie, he was arrested by General Cos's soldiers while heading from Monclova toward the Rio Grande. Cos wasn't after land jobbers but rather the Monclova officials with whom Bowie was traveling. And in fact the general lowered his guard long enough for Bowie to escape after two weeks in captivity. Yet in fleeing to the American settlements with word that Cos was right behind, Bowie became something of a Texan Paul Revere, and his speculative excesses were largely forgotten.
Bowie's reputation rose further in the weeks that followed. The alarm at the approach of the Mexican army spurred the spontaneous gathering of militia units, one of which, at Nacogdoches, elected Bowie its colonel. Seizing the moment, Bowie led his men to the local Mexican armory, where they helped themselves to its contents while the overwhelmed Mexican commander stood by speechless. With his men now armed, Bowie directed a flying squadron to intercept some dispatches addressed to the Mexican consul at New Orleans. When these were read in the town square at Nacogdoches, they confirmed the growing feeling that the Mexican government was engaged in a nefarious plot to subvert the rights and freedoms of the people of Texas.
While Bowie, Travis, and Houston were doing their best to start a war, Stephen Austin was trying just as hard to stop it. Part of Austin's pacifism was, as Houston and the others surmised, a reflection of the empresario's self-interest in maintaining his ties to the Mexican government. Another part of Austin's hesitancy reflected his stubborn belief that Santa Anna had the best interests of Texas at heart. And a final part reflected the simple weariness of a man imprisoned for many months very far from home. “You must look upon me as dead, for a long time to come,” Austin wrote James Perry in October 1834. “My innocence will avail me nothing. There seems to be a net wove around me which I cannot understand, and of course cannot resist. . . . A foreigner and a
North American
by birth, shut up in prison, almost destitute of friends and money, far removed from all resources, and in the midst of enemies . . . what have I reasonably to expect except a long imprisonment and perhaps total ruin?” Prison wore a man down, and for one whose health had never been robustâand who had been ill before entering prisonâa lengthy sentence might be a death sentence. Had Austin been wealthier, he might have hoped for early release. “It has been hinted to me more than once that a sum of money, say $50,000, would stop my enemies and set me at liberty,” he remarked. As it was, his prison time cost him dearly. Inmates were expected to pay for their upkeep; Austin reckoned his out-of-pocket expenses at $10,000, beyond his pain, suffering, and lost time.
The irony of his situation, as he saw it, was that he was being punished for being too loyal to his adopted country. “I have been much more faithful to the Government of my adopted country . . . than this Government deserved. What a recompense am I now receiving for all my fidelity to Mexico, all my labors to advance its prosperity, to settle its wilderness, to keep peace and tranquility in Texas? Do I deserve such treatment? No. In place of imprisonment I deserve rewards from the Government.”
Austin's one hope, he believed, remained Santa Anna. From prison Austin observed and applauded the developments that were delivering more and more power to Santa Anna, and he hoped that an expected reorganization of the government would make Santa Anna even less answerable to others. “If that change gives Santa Anna absolute power, or extra facultades [powers], I shall be set at liberty. He is my friend, and he is an honest man as well as an able one.”
More-wishful words were rarely written. Santa Anna indeed acquired more power, but Austin remained at the mercy of the Mexican system of justice. Although he was released from prison after posting bail and promising not to leave the capital, his case moved no faster during the first months of 1835 than it had during the previous year. Austin inferred that with Zacatecas and other states in revolt against the central government, Santa Anna was reluctant to intervene on behalf of one accused of separatism. But Austin didn't lose faith in the president-general. “Santa Anna leaves in three days for the interior (Zacatecas),” he wrote in April. “He informed me yesterday that he should visit Texas and take me with him, after these other matters are settled. He is very friendly to Texas and it would be an advantage to that country if he would pay it a visit.”