Lone Star Nation (57 page)

Filisola's retreat hardly settled the issue of Texas independence. The rebels had won the latest battle, but the war continued. Until Mexico conceded defeat, the Texans must prepare for further invasions.

Yet Filisola's retreat bought the rebels breathing space, which was more than Houston had enjoyed for months, and he made the most of it. The Mexican ball that blasted his ankle left shards of bone embedded in the flesh; these invited infection, which spread up his leg and threatened gangrene or septicemia. No surgeon in Texas possessed the skill and equipment to perform the operation that would save Houston's life. Labadie and the other medics told Houston he'd better get to New Orleans. In mid-May he sailed from Galveston.

Santa Anna hoped to leave for Mexico shortly thereafter. The Mexican general's charm never served him so well as in the weeks following his defeat. It kept him alive in Houston's camp, and it caused the Texas government to promise his release. President Burnet and Santa Anna signed a treaty by which the latter, “in his official character as chief of the Mexican nation,” acknowledged “the full, entire, and perfect Independence of the Republic of Texas.” The Mexican army would retire across the Rio Grande, and Santa Anna, on his “inviolable parole of honour,” would not resume hostilities against Texas. In exchange, Burnet and the Texas government guaranteed Santa Anna's life and agreed to transport him to Veracruz, “in order that he may more promptly and effectually obtain ratification of this compact.” Commissioners from Texas to Mexico would negotiate final terms of peace and a treaty of amity and commerce.

Burnet had little besides Santa Anna's word that he would do what he promised once he reached Mexico. And in fact Santa Anna had no intention of making more than a pro forma effort, if that, on behalf of his agreement with the Texans. “I did promise
to try
to get a hearing for the Texas commissioners,” he said later. “But this in itself did not bind the government to receive them, nor if they were received did it have to accede to all their pretensions. . . . I offered nothing in the name of the nation. In my own name I pledged myself to acts that our government could nullify.”

Yet Santa Anna had a knack for making the unlikely plausible. He avowed that he'd learned his lesson in Texas and wished, for himself and his country, to move on. Anyway, he argued, he was the only one who could make peace stick in Mexico. No one else had the stature to acknowledge defeat. Whether or not it was in his own interest to return to Mexico, it was in the interest of Texas for him to do so.

Unfortunately for Santa Anna, his persuasiveness didn't reach beyond his voice and personal presence. Burnet prepared a boat to take him south, but even as he did so, volunteers from the United States continued to arrive in Texas. Two hundred reached Velasco on the very day that Santa Anna was embarking. Frustrated to learn that the fighting was over—which, among other consequences, jeopardized the land bounty they had been promised—the volunteers vented their anger by crying for the blood of the beast of the Alamo and Goliad. Burnet, who hoped to continue in Texas politics, acceded to the popular will so far as to order the prisoner ashore.

Santa Anna was stunned. He had already composed a farewell letter to the Texans. “My Friends,” he said, “I have been a witness to your courage in the field of battle, and know you to be generous. Rely with confidence on my sincerity, and you shall never have cause to regret the kindness shown me. In returning to my native land, I beg you will receive the thanks of your grateful friend.” Now it appeared his “friends” were going to kill him. From the baying on the beach, he was sure his time had come. “I immediately wrote to Mr. Burnet an official communication which I concluded by saying
that I was determined not to leave the ship alive,
” he recalled. Better to die by his own hand, he reasoned, or by a swift bullet aboard than to be torn asunder by the mob. Only on receiving assurance that his person would be respected and his confinement continue no more than a few days did he allow himself to be taken off.

He survived the landing, but his imprisonment stretched from days to several weeks. Nor was he safe behind bars. “Every private felt called to assassinate me,” he remembered. “On the 27th of June a pistol was fired at me through a window near my bed and almost caused the death of Colonels Almonte and Nuñez. Finally, on the 30th of June, orders were issued for our removal from Columbia”—to which the prisoners had been taken lest they be seized by lynchers on the coast—“to Goliad where we were to be executed in the place that Fannin and his men had been shot.”

Houston had saved Santa Anna after the battle of San Jacinto; now it was Stephen Austin's turn. On July 1 Austin arrived back from the United States. Following its promising start in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, Austin's diplomatic mission had stalled on the Atlantic seaboard. The Texans' long delay in declaring independence deterred Congress and the Jackson administration from supplying official support, and the grim news from the Alamo and Goliad frightened bankers and others who might have tendered financial backing. The bad tidings also discouraged Austin personally. “Desolation it seems is sweeping over Texas,” he wrote. “My heart and soul are sick.” Yet having come so far—in time, distance, and effort—he refused to surrender hope. “My spirit is unbroken. . . . Texas will rise again.” When Austin learned that Texas had indeed risen at San Jacinto, sooner than expected, he hailed the victory as a sign from heaven and immediately turned west. “Much more now depends on a correct course and union at home, than on any thing else,” he wrote Mary Holley. “Nothing shall induce me to leave home again until all is settled there.”

The first thing to settle was the war. Austin had dealt with the Mexican government during the entirety of its existence, and he knew how hard it was to get a decision out of Mexico City. Guessing that recognizing Texan independence would be more difficult than anything Mexico had ever done, Austin reasoned that something novel was necessary to spur Mexican decision making. He arranged for Santa Anna to approach Andrew Jackson. The American administration still hadn't recognized Texas and so wouldn't treat officially with its representatives, but it might treat with Santa Anna on Texas's behalf. Santa Anna, by making himself thus useful, could escape his appointment with the firing squad. Santa Anna explained how he learned of the scheme: “Stephen F. Austin, whom I had befriended in Mexico, moved by my unfortunate condition, told me that
if I would write a letter to General Jackson flattering the hopes of the Texans, even if I only used courteous phrases, the very name of that official, from whom Texans expected so much and whom they heard with the greatest respect, would restrain popular fury and facilitate my salvation.
”

Austin helped Santa Anna draft a letter to Jackson. Santa Anna wrote that his expedition to Texas had been “in fulfillment of the duties which a public man owes to his native country and to honor.” The American president could certainly understand this. The fortunes of war, however, had prevented Santa Anna's doing justice to country and honor, instead delivering him as prisoner to Jackson's protégé, “Don Samuel Houston.” Santa Anna gratefully acknowledged the respect Houston had accorded him, and he recounted how he and Houston had agreed on the withdrawal of Mexican forces. He explained that he had been on the verge of departing for Veracruz to pursue a definitive settlement when “some indiscreet persons raised a tumult, which obliged the authorities forcibly to land me and again to place me in close confinement.” This setback had revived the war spirit in Mexico, with the result that General Urrea—as Santa Anna and the Texans had lately learned—was returning north with a fresh army.

All this prefaced the main point of the letter: “The duration of the war and its disasters are therefore necessarily inevitable unless a powerful hand interpose to cause the voice of reason to be opportunely listened to. It appears to me, then, that it is you who can render so great a service to humanity by using your high influence to have the aforesaid agreements carried into effect.” Santa Anna asked Jackson to join him in negotiating a settlement of the Texas war. “Let us establish mutual relations, to the end that your nation and the Mexican may strengthen their friendly ties and both engage amicably in giving existence and stability to a people that wish to figure in the political world.” With Santa Anna's help, President Jackson and America could rely on Mexico. “The Mexicans are magnanimous when treated with consideration. I will make known to them, with purity of intentions, the reasons of conveniency and humanity which require a frank and noble conduct, and I do not doubt they will adopt it when conviction has worked upon their minds.”

Jackson would have given this remarkable letter a closer reading had he not already received notice from Mexico City that Santa Anna had been deposed in absentia. If Jackson had shown Santa Anna's letter to the Mexican minister in Washington, the Mexican government might well have indicted the ex-dictator for treason in seeking the detachment of Texas from Mexico. Jackson had never been a stickler for form, but in the last months of his presidency he declined to provoke Mexico by accepting Santa Anna's unauthorized offer of mediation. Better, he judged, to work with the regime that actually ruled in Mexico City. “Until the existing Government of Mexico ask our friendly offices between the contesting parties, Mexico and Texas, we cannot interfere,” Jackson answered Santa Anna. “But should Mexico ask it, our friendly offices will, with pleasure, be afforded to restore peace and put an end to this inhuman warfare.”

Jackson wrote in the same vein to Sam Houston, now returned to Texas. He went on to advise his old friend to hold on to Santa Anna, neither freeing nor executing him.

I have seen a report that General Santa Anna was to be brought before a military court, to be tried and shot. Nothing
now
could tarnish the character of Texas more than such an act at this late period. It was good policy as well as humanity that spared him—it has given you possession of Goliad and the Alamo without blood or loss of the strength of your army. His person is still of much consequence to you. He is the pride of the Mexican soldiers and the favorite of the priesthood, and whilst he is in your power the priests will not furnish the supplies necessary for another campaign, nor will the regular soldier
voluntarily
march when reentering Texas may endanger or cost their favorite general his life. . . . Let not his blood be shed, unless it becomes necessary by an imperative act of just retaliation for Mexican massacres hereafter.

Houston agreed with Jackson regarding Santa Anna's value but explained it slightly differently. “While Santa Anna was held a prisoner,” Houston said afterward, “his friends were afraid to invade Texas because they knew not at what moment it would cause his sacrifice. His political enemies dared not attempt a combination in Mexico for a Texas invasion, for they did not know at what moment he might be turned loose upon them.”

In terms of popular reaction, Stephen Austin's return to Texas after six months in the United States stood in sharp and discouraging contrast to his earlier return after eighteen months in Mexico City. Then he had been hailed as a savior, the unifier who would bring together the contending parties in the struggle for Texas's future. Now he was hardly noticed. The hero of the hour was Houston, limping on his bad leg but walking taller for the infirmity. The founder, the one who had made Houston's victory possible by making Texas what it became, was all but forgotten amid the praise for the liberator.

Texans, most of whom by now owed nothing directly to Austin, tossed him aside casually but definitively two months after his arrival. Elections to replace provisional president Burnet with a permanent chief executive were scheduled for September. Austin, hoping to reclaim his role as paterfamilias of Texas, announced his candidacy. For several weeks he had reason for optimism, as his principal opponent was Henry Smith, who remained as controversial as when the general council impeached him. Yet at the last moment Houston entered the race, and the liberator overwhelmed the founder by a margin of nine to one.