Lone Star Nation (34 page)

“When the fog lifted, we found ourselves pretty well surrounded,” Noah Smithwick wrote, “though the bluff and heavy timber on the west side of the river secured us against attack in the rear. In front was a field piece flanked by several companies of infantry; and across the river, to cut off retreat, were two companies of cavalry.” The Mexicans opened fire with cannon loaded with grapeshot. “But we lay low and their grape and canister crashed through the pecan trees overhead, raining a shower of ripe nuts down on us, and I saw men picking them up and eating them with as little apparent concern as if they were being shaken down by a norther.”

Bowie's famous coolness under fire paid dividends. “Bowie was a born leader, never needlessly spending a bullet or imperilling a life,” Smithwick said. “He repeatedly admonished us, ‘Keep under cover, boys, and reserve your fire; we haven't a man to spare.' ” Between the cannon volleys, the Mexican infantry charged, only to be decimated by the rifle rounds of the Texans, who similarly harassed the cannon crews. “Our long rifles—and I thought I never heard rifles crack so keen, after the dull roar of the cannon—mowed down the Mexicans at a rate that might well have made braver hearts than those encased in their shriveled little bodies recoil,” Smithwick said, not bothering to disguise his scorn for the foe.

Three times they charged, but there was a platoon ready to receive them. Three times we picked off their gunners; the last one with a lighted match in his hand; then a panic seized them and they broke. They jumped on the mules attached to the caisson, two or three on a mule, without even taking time to cut them loose, and struck out for the fort, leaving the loaded gun on the field. With a ringing cheer we mounted the bank and gave chase. We turned their cannon on them, giving wings to their flight. They dropped their muskets, and, splashing through the shallow water of the river, fled helter skelter as if pursued by all the furies.

It was a stunning victory for the Texans. Less than a hundred rebels, in a precarious position, had repulsed four times as many Mexicans. The latter lost some sixty dead or wounded, the former but one, killed by a Mexican musket ball. Austin, arriving with the main column of the rebel army shortly after the battle ended, was amazed at what Bowie and the others had accomplished. “The overwhelming superiority of force, and the brilliancy of the victory gained over them, speak for themselves in terms too expressive to require from me any further eulogy,” the commander in chief recorded.

C h a p t e r   1 3

Behind Ben Milam

I
n the heady aftermath of the battle of Concepción, the long-awaited consultation took place. Considering the mood of the rebels, its proceedings were remarkably cautious and its results surprisingly restrained. Fifty-five delegates from thirteen municipalities convened at San Felipe; the principal question before the body was whether the fight currently under way was for independence or something less. The independence advocates had the benefit of the blood that had flowed between the Texans and the Mexican forces; to assert that the dead and wounded had suffered simply to restore the status quo ante–Santa Anna was both anticlimatic and at least mildly implausible. Such a halfhearted claim would also complicate the call for aid from the East. Noah Smithwick remembered Sam Houston advocating independence to the volunteers. “He made a speech to us, urging the necessity of concerted action among the colonists, arguing that it should be for independence; otherwise we could expect no assistance from other powers.” (Smithwick also remembered that Houston initially cut an unprepossessing figure among the officers. “He rode into our camp alone, mounted on a little yellow Spanish stallion so diminutive that old Sam's long legs, incased in the conventional buckskin, almost touched the ground”). Whatever Houston's continuing connections in Washington, he knew—from his own futile experience promoting aid to Greek freedom fighters, if from nothing else—that diplomatic recognition would have to precede any official American support for the Texas rebels, and that diplomatic recognition required a declaration of independence.

Against the advocates of independence were the conservative defenders of the status quo. These included, as always, those early settlers who had grown comfortable under Mexican rule and who now became alarmed at the ascendancy of such late arrivals as Houston and Travis and Bowie. Mexico—before Santa Anna—had been good to them, granting them more land and opportunity than they had ever possessed and experienced in the United States. Independence was a stormy ocean and Texas a small bark; better the safe harbor they had known. As for attachment to the United States: what had the United States ever done for Texas? Some slaveholders in Texas contended that the peculiar institution would be secure only under the protection of the American Union; skeptics—including many from Texas's majority of nonslaveholders—pointed out that with the recent rise of abolitionism in America, slavery might be no more secure under Old Glory than under the eagle of Mexico.

Tactical matters shaped the arguments over independence. The independence advocates were at a disadvantage from the fact many of those most ardent for freedom from Mexico were closest to the front—that is, not at San Felipe for the consultation. In addition, the independence men had to answer the objection that independence was a leap that didn't have to be made all at once. The consultation could continue the war under the banner of the constitution of 1824 and thereby continue to appeal to Mexican federalists. If the federalists failed to respond, or if conditions in Mexico deteriorated further and the constitution of 1824 became an undeniably dead letter, Texas could then take the next step, to independence.

This was the argument that ultimately carried the consultation. The independence party offered a motion for an immediate break with Mexico; it lost by a vote of fifteen to thirty-three.

Yet if the consultation failed to take the most decisive action, it did accomplish two important feats. First, it created a provisional government for Texas. In form this was a state government, with a governor (Henry Smith of Kentucky, an early Texas settler and political activist) rather than a president, but little imagination was required to envision the state government evolving into the government of an independent Texas. In any event, under the Texans' states'-rights interpretation of the 1824 constitution, their state government would have nearly all the prerogatives and privileges of an independent government, save on matters of foreign policy.

The consultation's second accomplishment was the replacement of Stephen Austin as commander of the army by Sam Houston. What might have been a difficult decision was made easier by Austin's ill health, and by his belated recognition that he wasn't cut out to be a general. Austin had never recovered from his ordeal in Mexico City, and his condition worsened during the autumn campaign against Cos. “My health has been very bad since I left the Cibolo more than a month ago,” he wrote to James Perry in November, “and I have been unable to attend personally to the duties of my station with that activity which the service required.” Looking ahead, he added, “My constitution is much too worn out and too feeble for the exposure and hardships and activity of a winter's campaign, destitute of everything like comforts. . . . I have had a hard and difficult task to perform, and am
really so worn out,
that
I begin to require rest
.”

Had Austin been more gifted at command, he might have borne the trials of the field better. His initial appointment had served its purpose: to hold the various militia companies together at a crucial moment. But with the war now truly begun, the command of the army ought to go to someone with greater experience. Austin didn't dispute this judgment, and in fact seconded it. “It is an office I never sought, and tried to avoid, and wish to be relieved from if another who is more competent can be appointed,” he told the consultation. “I believe that my worn out constitution is not adapted to a military command; neither have I ever pretended to be a military man.”

Conveniently, but not by accident, the consultation had an able replacement for Austin in its midst. While many of the other independence men remained at the front, disdaining the politics of the consultation, Houston went to some effort to get himself elected a delegate and to attend. He campaigned for the command, but not so blatantly as to put off sensitive souls. “He made the best speech yesterday I have ever heard,” wrote delegate Gail Borden (who would gain fame as the inventor of a process to condense milk). “The whole tenor of it went to harmonize the feelings of the people and to produce unanimity of sentiment.” Houston's tact and diplomacy counted for more in the minds of the delegates than reports that he was drinking again, and the consultation unanimously elected him general in chief of the Texas army.

Meanwhile the consultation assigned Austin work better suited to his native skills: as envoy to the United States. Austin's abilities had always been in the diplomatic realm; for more than a decade he had shown unmatched adroitness in coaxing, cajoling, appeasing, and misleading the Mexican government, to the benefit of Texas. Now he would turn his gifts upon the American government, seeking aid that might prove crucial in keeping the Texan army in the field. And if his health improved in the American East, all the better for Texas and for him.

Houston's appointment as commanding general was a large first step toward achieving his ambition of liberating Texas. But the appointment came with a catch: the army he would command didn't exist. The fighting thus far had been the work of irregulars, men who fought when the spirit struck them. They reported for battle when they chose and took leave when they felt like it, and acknowledged as commanders none besides officers they elected themselves. Austin's role as commander in chief had been largely symbolic and exhortatory. Following the victory at Concepción, he called for an immediate attack on San Antonio. Some of the men were ready to follow orders; Andrew Briscoe reported, regarding his company of three dozen from Liberty: “Of these I think there are six or eight who will refuse to follow me into San Antonio. The rest will go, intending to conquer or die.” But a majority of the officers—including Bowie and Fannin, the heroes of the hour—took a different view and effectively overruled Austin. He might have tried to demand compliance, but between his appreciation of his own military inexperience and his recognition that he couldn't court-martial anyone or shoot deserters, he was compelled to accede to what amounted to insubordination. “We are all captains and have our views,” wrote Robert Coleman, a volunteer from Columbia whose fellows had been unable to choose a single captain and so elected a committee. Coleman's statement might have been the motto of the Texas army.

As long as the army consisted of barely organized militia, the problem of indiscipline persisted. The Texan soldiers made fierce fighters, but for the other aspects of soldiering they had no patience. Any protracted operation—a siege, for example—drove them away. And who could blame them? Their defense of Texas against Santa Anna left no one to defend their homes against Indians. William Dewees, who fought at Gonzales before joining Austin's larger force before San Antonio, wrote, “While we were busy in Gonzales preparing for more active exertions in the tented field, the Comanche Indians came down with a considerable force near the town and committed some depredations.” As it happened, the Texans took time from their anti–Santa Anna efforts to inflict reprisals on the Comanches, but the mere fact of the Indians' appearance so far into the settled regions of Texas suggested how vulnerable the settlers—meaning, in particular, the wives and children of the soldiers—were. Under the circumstances, one didn't have to be a sunshine patriot to be a summer soldier.

Beyond this, camp duty could be hazardous to a man's health—even a man less delicate than Austin. With no organized supply chain, the soldiers foraged in the countryside or went hungry. Foraging alienated the locals, which did nothing good for the rebel cause; going hungry alienated the soldiers, whose homes and hearths looked better with each meal skimped. Moreover, these soldiers knew nothing about digging latrines and employing other sanitation measures; they were a medical disaster waiting to happen. Upon appointment as general in chief, Houston wrote to James Fannin urging a withdrawal from San Antonio. “The army at present without tents and the necessary comforts for the men, I fear may produce an epidemic and destroy more than would have fallen in storming the place,” Houston explained. The current strategy, such as it was, entailed starving the Mexicans into surrender. Houston thought the hunger weapon cut both ways. “So long as there is subsistence in the neighborhood, the enemy will command it as well as you! So that by the time they are starved out, you will have nothing to subsist the troops or the people.” To ease their hunger and boredom, the men turned to alcohol, which had predictable effects on discipline. Austin, before relinquishing his command, wrote an urgent letter (“By express—very important, to be sent without delay”) to the president of the provisional government pleading with him to do something about the liquor problem. “In the name of Almighty God,” Austin told Henry Smith, “send no more ardent spirits to this camp. If any is on the road, turn it back or have the head knocked out.”

Houston never succeeded in shaping his men into a regular army. From the beginning of the Texas revolution to the end, the rebel troops were irredeemably democratic. This was hardly surprising in an age that made a mantra of democracy, and on a frontier where the democratic ethos was especially pervasive. But it drove Houston to distraction and almost despair. And it nearly cost Texas its revolution. In real armies, authority flows from the top down; in the Texas army it bubbled from the bottom up. Gravity being more reliable than effervescence, authority among the Texans often failed, sometimes at critical moments.

But Houston never stopped trying to make soldiers of his men. From the start he harangued the provisional government to put its resources where its proclamations were. “An immediate organization of the army should take place,” he wrote in early December. The government said it wanted an army, yet it was withholding the means to create one. “The field officers proper to command and superintend the several recruiting rendezvous have not been appointed. The regiment of artillery so necessary for the defense of our seacoast, as well as for field service, has no basis on which it can be raised. No officers are appointed, and it will be impossible for me ever to enlist the rank and file of the army until the officers are appointed.” The president and council, Houston said, were acting on the principle that officers would somehow spring from the ranks of the enlisted men. Militias might operate this way, but real armies worked differently. “An army has never been raised for regular service until the officers had all been appointed.” The council acted as though time was on the side of Texas. So it might seem at the moment, but that moment would pass. Recent intercepts of letters from Santa Anna revealed plans for a major offensive against Texas. “An army of the enemy amounting to 10,000 men, with suitable munitions of war, must be met and vanquished or Texas will be overwhelmed for years to come.” Texas might have three months to prepare, which meant that the preparations had to begin at once. “Unless the officers are appointed at an early day, it will be impossible to have an army at the opening of the campaign, which can not, in my opinion, be delayed with safety to the country longer than the 20th of February or the first day of March, at farthest.” Half measures would yield half results, when a wholehearted effort was absolutely essential. “We must have an army or abandon all hope of defending the country!”