Lone Star Nation (53 page)

C h a p t e r   1 8

A People in Arms

A
t the beginning of April 1836, Santa Anna felt victory over the Texas rebels to be within his grasp. “The capture of the Alamo, in spite of its attendant disasters, and the quick and successful operations of General Urrea gave us a prodigious moral prestige,” the president-general recalled. “Our name terrified the enemy, and our approach to their camps was not awaited. They fled disconcerted to hide beyond the Trinity and the Sabine. . . . The attainment of our goal was now almost certain.”

Santa Anna's sole problem was the result of his brilliant success—the very terror and disconcertion of the enemy. The president-general had hoped to crush Houston and the rest of the insurgents as he had crushed their comrades at Béxar and Goliad. But Houston knew only how to run. “The enemy was not undertaking a retreat but was in full flight.”

Chasing Houston further might be futile and even counterproductive. A rabble in flight traveled faster than any army could advance in decent order. And though Santa Anna couldn't know the intentions of General Gaines on the Sabine, he could guess. Andrew Jackson's scorn for international boundaries and the niceties of law was patent; Santa Anna saw no reason to give the American president—the father of filibusters—an excuse to invade Mexico.

That left two alternatives. The Army of Operations could transform itself into an army of occupation and remain in Texas indefinitely. Santa Anna found this personally distasteful (where was the glory in occupation?) and politically prohibitive (who would pay to keep the soldiers so far from home? How would the rest of Mexico be defended?).

The other alternative was to decapitate the rebellion by seizing the rebel government. Santa Anna learned that the ringleaders of the insurgency had abandoned Washington-on-the-Brazos, heading toward the coast. “Through some of the colonists taken, among them a Mexican, I discovered that the heads of the Texas government, Don Lorenzo Zavala, and other leaders of the revolution were at Harrisburg, twelve leagues distant on the right bank of Buffalo Bayou.” Because Houston had gone in the other direction—north, toward Groce's Crossing of the Brazos—the rebel government was undefended. “Their arrest was certain if our troops marched upon them without loss of time.”

This was the opening Santa Anna had been looking for. With typical audacity and decisiveness, and “without confiding in anyone,” he staked the outcome of the war on a gamble. Conventional wisdom dictated keeping his army together, lest he lose his most important advantage over the rebels. But like Napoleon, Santa Anna disdained convention. To deliver his coup de grace, he pulled some 750 dragoons, grenadiers, and riflemen out of their regiments. “I started with these forces toward Harrisburg the afternoon of the 14th.”

By then Houston had nearly lost control of the Texan army. During the final weeks of March and the first weeks of April, he continued to retreat, believing that his force was no match for Santa Anna's and hoping to draw the Mexican general toward the border and a collision with General Gaines and the U.S. Army. But as Santa Anna pressed forward and the refugee stream of Texas settlers swelled into a terrified torrent, demands that Houston stand and fight became shriller and more insistent. Sam Carson wrote to David Burnet from the banks of the Trinity River in early April, describing a scene unlike any he had ever imagined. “The panic has reached this place,” Carson said. “Destruction pervades the whole country.” Three hundred people were crowded to the river's edge, hoping to get across, but the spring rains were raising the river and soon they all would be trapped. “Never till I reached the Trinity did I despond,” Carson explained. The fear and flight were uncontrollable, short of a victory in the field by Houston. “Nothing can stop the people unless Houston is successful.” Houston simply must fight. A single victory could change everything. “If under the providence of almighty God he has whipped them, the panic can be allayed and the people will return and drive the enemy out of the country. But should it be otherwise . . .” Carson shuddered and declined to speculate.

David Burnet agreed. “Our friend the commander-in-chief has heavy responsibilities resting upon him,” the Texas president told War Secretary Rusk. “It were perhaps hyperbolical to say ‘the eyes of the world are upon him,' but assuredly the people of Texas are looking toward him with an ardent and anxious gaze. They regard his present conduct as decisive of the fate of their country.” Burnet asked why Houston's army should be retreating before a “contemptible Mexican force” of a mere thirteen hundred men. “Have we so far forgotten our wonted boasts of superior prowess as to turn our backs to an equal number of a foe that has given us every imaginable incentive to action—vigorous, prompt, daring action? I hope it will not be.” The people of Texas were crying for a battle, and Burnet shared their feeling. “A further retreat without a fight would be infinitely disastrous. . . . For our country's sake, let something be done, something that will
tell
upon our enemies and upon ourselves.”

To Houston himself, Burnet was even blunter. In a letter carried by Rusk to Houston's camp, the Texas president declared:

Sir: The enemy are laughing you to scorn. You must fight them. You must retreat no farther. The country expects you to fight. The salvation of the country depends on you doing so.

Houston bridled at the criticism from persons not even in the field. “Taunts and suggestions have been gratuitously tendered to me,” he complained, “and I have submitted to them without any disposition to retort either unkindness or imputation.” But a man could tolerate only so much. “What has been my situation? At Gonzales I had three hundred and seventy-four efficient men, without supplies, even powder, balls, or arms. At the Colorado, with seven hundred men, without discipline or time to organize the army. Two days since, my effective force in camp was five hundred and twenty-three men.” And with this he was supposed to defeat a Mexican force of thousands? “I have, under the most disadvantageous circumstances, kept an army together . . . but I can not perform impossibilities.”

The carping of his troops was harder to ignore. Throughout the retreat, grumblers asserted that they ought to be marching west rather than east, that in a real war real men wanted to fight. The first serious trouble surfaced at San Felipe, when it became clear that Houston wouldn't defend Austin's capital. Wiley Martin had fought under Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, where he outranked Houston, and he had emigrated to Texas long before Houston, as part of Stephen Austin's original three hundred. On both grounds he chafed at taking orders from Houston, and at San Felipe he decided he wouldn't do so any longer. When Houston ordered the town evacuated, Martin simply refused, and he became a focus of resistance to Houston and the strategy of retreat.

Mosely Baker was another objector. Baker had run afoul of Houston at Nacogdoches, and he would remain at odds with Houston for the rest of their careers. Yet the nadir of their relationship occurred during the campaign of 1836. Even years later, Baker boiled to think about that trying period. “By your retreat you abandoned the whole country west of the Colorado to the enemy,” he accused Houston. “But what was still more disastrous than all, you infused a feeling of terror and dismay into the minds of the people.” At the time of the declaration of Texas independence, Baker said, the people of Texas were eager to fight the Mexicans and were confident they could win. “So soon, however, as it was found out that you were retreating, a new face was given to the whole matter.” The farther Houston retreated, the further public confidence fell. “So soon as you crossed the Colorado, the families all to the west side of that river hurried away to the settlements on the east side, and by the dreadful accounts given in their terror the feeling became general, and universal consternation seized the country.” With many others, Baker had expected Houston to make a stand at the Brazos; when the commander ordered San Felipe abandoned, Baker revolted. Like Martin, he insisted he would stay.

Houston faced a dilemma, either horn of which might gore him and eviscerate the revolution. To treat the Baker-Martin challenge as the mutiny it was risked rending the entire army; for all he knew, half his men would side with Baker and Martin against him. On the other hand, to acquiesce in their insubordination would certainly make discipline an even greater problem in the future.

Houston adopted the course of lesser resistance. If Baker and Mosely wanted to draw a line at the Brazos, he would let them. But to save face, he made permission mandatory: he
ordered
them to defend the Brazos. Baker and one company would guard the crossing of the Brazos at San Felipe, Martin and another company the crossing at Fort Bend, twenty-five miles downstream. Meanwhile Houston would take the balance of the army, about five hundred men, upstream to Groce's plantation.

As he guessed it would, Houston's refusal to confront this challenge to his authority merely borrowed time. The army spent two weeks at Groce's, during which Houston rested and trained the men and allowed the sick to recuperate. The time also allowed the malcontents to mutter that the army needed a new general. A principal among the complainers, Alexander Somervell, a lieutenant colonel of the volunteers, tested sentiment in favor of deposing Houston. “He came to the tents of the company to which I belonged, and talked with the men, expressing himself strongly,” recalled J. H. Kuykendall, the youngest of three Kuykendall brothers in the rebel army. “Should General Houston persist in avoiding a conflict with the enemy, and continue to march to the eastward, as it was generally believed he intended to do, he said he was in favor of depriving him of the command and supplying his place with a more belligerent leader, and wished to know whether our company favored such a course and would
take
it, should it become necessary. He was assured by both officers and men that he might rely upon their cooperation.” Somervell and his sympathizers then queried the rest of the army and apparently got much the same reply. What surprised Kuykendall was the openness of the insubordination. “There was no injunction of secrecy; no one disguised his sentiments; and General Houston could not have been ignorant of what was in agitation.”

Houston indeed was aware of the incipient mutiny. Nicholas Labadie, a French Canadian who had come south to fight the Mexicans, and a member of the Liberty company of volunteers, identified Sidney Sherman as the one the mutineers looked to. “Col. Sidney Sherman had been elected colonel of the Second Regiment, to which the Liberty Company belonged,” Labadie said, “and while all were saying it was time to be doing something besides lying in idleness and getting sick, upon hearing this challenge it was declared to be necessary that the army should have another commander, and Colonel Sherman was pointed out as the man best calculated to meet the emergency.”

Sherman did nothing to stop the talk, but Houston did. “This came to the ears of General Houston, who at once caused notices to be written and stuck on trees with wooden pegs, to the effect that the first man who should beat for volunteers should be courtmartialed and shot. One of these notices was pinned to a hickory tree not six feet from the tent of the Liberty Company.” The notes had a marginally sobering effect on the disgruntled, but what seems to have kept the mutiny in check at this point was a backfire rumor Houston started that the army would be marching soon.

Given the discontent in the Texas army during the retreat, and in light of the broad disdain for authority that characterized many of those drawn to Texas before and during the revolution, the surprising thing wasn't that the army was constantly on the verge of falling apart, but that it held together as long as it did. This cohesiveness, such as it was, reflected a common desire to defeat the enemy, but it also reflected the charisma of the commander. As exasperated as the men became with Houston, many of them grew to love him. Frank Sparks, a teenager from Mississippi, remembered that Houston wasn't above the practical jokes the men—especially the younger men like Sparks—played on one another. A new recruit had an old flintlock rifle that needed repair; he asked Sparks and some friends where he could find a blacksmith in camp. One of the friends pointed to Houston's tent. “The blacksmith is there,” he said. The new man nodded gratefully and presented his gun to Houston, whose dress and demeanor revealed nothing of his rank. “I want you to fix my gun,” the fellow said. “The lock is out of order; it won't stand cocked.” Houston, not recognizing the newcomer, guessed what was afoot and went along. “Set her down here,” he told the rifleman, “and call in an hour.” Houston cleaned the lock, and when the man returned, his rifle worked perfectly. The others weren't through with their tricks. They now revealed Houston's identity to the newcomer and told him that the general was angry at having been insulted and planned to have the new man shot. They let him sweat while he pleaded for help in finding a way out of his fix. Finally they told him to throw himself on the commander's mercy, which he did. Houston laughed and told the fellow to put his gun to good use against the enemy.