Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
Travis was a revolutionary, of the most extreme type. He had already demonstrated, more than once, his willingness to sacrifice his life for the cause of freedom for Texas. Just a few months earlier, it was his leadership during the assault on Anahuac that had galvanized the rebellion. His War Party held political sway, the revolution was in full swing, and the colonists now overwhelmingly favored independence. Whatever might happen next, William Barret Travis had already made his mark. But the new commander of cavalry was not a happy man as he rode west.
This dissatisfaction would have been hidden from the men he commanded. By nature, Travis kept his own counsel. Not even the detailed diary he maintained, in which he listed (in Spanish, to be discreet) his many romantic conquests, told all, though it did reveal his innate stubbornness. After failing to ford a surging creek on a visit to one inamorata, he had written, “This is the first time that I have given up.”
He possessed other qualities that shaped him every bit as powerfully. He was intelligent and good with words, both spoken and written. A born romantic, he had been raised on Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels and Jane Porter’s
The Scottish Chiefs,
a glorified account of Scotland’s fight for freedom. Like Samuel Adams in the American Revolution sixty years before, he was an effective and energetic firebrand, and no man in Texas could claim more credit for the present uprising. The grand gesture, the dramatic phrase, appealed to Travis, and he made good use of it. He was also a man who not five years earlier had deserted his wife and family, who had slunk virtually penniless out of Alabama to escape debtors’ prison. He was living proof of the widely held belief that a man could remake himself in Texas. And like many of the men of the American Revolution, or any other revolution, he was fortunate in that his ambition did not interfere with his patriotism.
W
ILLIAM
B
ARRET
T
RAVIS HAD COME
into the world August 1, 1809, in Edgefield, South Carolina, the first of ten children born to Mark Travis, a farmer, and his wife, Jemima. His father moved his large family to Alabama when William was eight. His was a family with deep American roots: Travises (or Traverses) had emigrated from England to the colonies almost two hundred years before William Barret’s birth.
Near the small town of Sparta, Alabama, young Travis attended a better school than most rural areas could boast of, then finished his education with a few years at a local academy that stressed classical learning. During these years he developed a passion for reading that would never flag.
The boy with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes grew into a tall, handsome man. Not long after finishing his studies, during a brief stint as a teacher, Travis fell in love with one of his students, the lovely Rosanna Cato. They married in October 1828—he was barely nineteen, she was sixteen—and moved into a small house in the town of Claiborne, Alabama. Nine months and thirteen days later they were blessed with a son, Charles Edward.
Travis’s ambitions could not be contained by a classroom, however. Several months before he married he cast about for a more lucrative profession. He soon found it, and made the acquaintance of James Dellet, one of the best attorneys in the area, who agreed to take him on. After a year of intense study, Travis passed the state bar. He began practicing in February 1829; he was not yet twenty. He also became involved in other activities. He was appointed adjutant of the local militia regiment, and joined the Masonic order. But a plethora of attorneys in the area made work for a new one hard to come by, and his earnings were meager. The cost of maintaining a household consisting of a young wife, an infant, and three slaves on loan from his parents was more than he could afford. So the enterprising Travis bought a printing press and began a newspaper, publishing and editing it himself. He even took on outside printing jobs to pay his mounting bills, but those jobs soon dried up, and the newspaper failed early in 1831.
That same year he abandoned his pregnant wife and son. The reasons bandied about were varied: Travis suspected Rosanna of infidelity; he killed a man, perhaps the object of her indiscretions; he lost a heated political dispute. These and other explanations circulated for decades afterward. In fact, Travis would later write in his autobiography that “my wife and I had a feud which resulted in our separation”—but he assured his wife that he would return for them or send for them as soon as he could. But the main reason he left was the least glamorous one: debt. A judgment for several unpaid bills was brought against him in court, and he faced a possible prison term. And while Travis may have genuinely planned to send for his family, or return at some point, as he told his wife, he would do neither.
Instead, Travis left for the Mexican province of Texas, the destination for many a desperate man running from the law, creditors, or any number of other troubles or mistakes—even from himself. GTT, for “gone to Texas,” was a familiar catchphrase in the Southeast, often seen scrawled on an empty shack after its inhabitant had packed up and left, usually in the middle of the night. Land in Texas could be had for a pittance. Word was that a man could make a new beginning there, even forge a new life, free from lawmen or creditors once he crossed the Sabine River, separating Mexico from the United States.
Though a law the previous year had made immigration from the United States illegal, it did little to stem a steady tide of newcomers to Texas. In the spring of 1831, Travis crossed the Sabine and made his way to the heart of Anglo settlement in Texas—San Felipe, the bustling town of about fifty log houses and stores in Stephen Austin’s colony, the earliest and the largest of the chartered settlements granted by Mexico. There he introduced himself to the slight, soft-spoken Austin, and met Frank Johnson, the local
alcalde,
an official whose duties combined those of mayor, marshal, and judge. In May, just a few weeks after his arrival, Travis made a down payment of ten dollars for a title to land—the standard 4,428 acres (one league) due a single man, as he listed himself. He would never settle on it, but he was a landowner, at least, and commanded all the respect due to one. His new life had officially begun.
But since San Felipe had its share of enterprising young attorneys, he soon moved sixty miles east to Anahuac, on the northeastern end of Galveston Bay near the mouth of the Trinity River. Located on a bluff near the water, the sparse settlement comprised a couple dozen small log houses and shops, and served as the customs port of entry into Texas. That meant paperwork and negotiation, and Travis soon found legal employment. He began learning the official language, Spanish, and the laws of Mexico. Before he left San Felipe, he had asked Austin to recommend him to the U.S. Senate in a bid to become the American consul for the Galveston coastal area. Austin had agreed to do so, and though in his letter of recommendation he admitted that his knowledge of Travis was limited, he mentioned that Travis was well thought of by other respectable citizens. Though Travis never pursued the post, Austin’s letter indicates how quickly Travis was accepted into the community, and how impressive other men found him. In Anahuac, he shortly made a name for himself as a capable attorney—and enough money to begin looking for more land in the area. He also became known as an activist in local politics. For more than a decade, the Anglo colonists had gotten along fine without any help from Mexico. But the Mexican government’s increasing intrusion into their lives in the way of import duties and taxes, and curtailment of rights they had become accustomed to as Americans—such as an efficient local judicial system—was not appreciated by the settlers. Rebellion was simmering, and Travis eagerly jumped into the cauldron.
His baptism by fire came in the spring of 1832. Late in the previous year a Mexican garrison and customs house had been installed on the northeastern edge of Galveston Bay. Colonel John (Juan) Davis Bradburn was sent there to enforce the collection of duties and help control the increased smuggling of goods, slaves, and illegal immigrants through the area. He named the settlement Anahuac—which means “place by the water” in the Aztec language. Bradburn’s seventy-five soldiers built a barracks and office a half mile south of town and settled in, and with the arrival of a customs collector, began to uphold the law. Colonists had enjoyed a seven-year exemption from tariff duties, and they resented the resumption of charges—though according to the agreements negotiated by the
empresarios,
or land agents, the exemption period had expired in November 1830.
Bradburn, a Virginia-born mercenary, had served in the same militia unit as frontiersman and land speculator James Bowie during the War of 1812. Soon after, he fought for Mexico’s independence and was rewarded with a colonelcy. At first the Anahuac community greeted him warmly, hoping for leniency from a fellow American. But Bradburn had become a Mexican citizen, and a staunch patriot, and their feelings cooled as he made clear his enthusiasm for his work—indeed, he had been promised a promotion for a job well done.
The April 6, 1830, ban on immigration had placed the still-in-process legal titles of many long-established settlers in jeopardy—many
empresario
contracts were in danger of suspension, and others in colonies with few inhabitants would be canceled. When the tactless Bradburn refused to allow the Mexican authorities to issue settlers’ titles, tension was further increased. Colonists held meetings down the coast in Brazoria, and sent a delegation to protest the continual collection of tariffs, to no avail. The fact that Bradburn’s soldiers—some of whom were conscripted convicts—terrorized the citizenry without reprisal, by means of drunken insults, fights, and at least one reported rape, only raised the temperature. A showdown was inevitable.
The men in Anahuac organized a militia company, ostensibly for protection against Indians, electing as their captain attorney Patrick Jack, who shared an office with his friend William Barret Travis. Jack was arrested for accepting the position, since a militia was in violation of Mexican law, but was soon released. Meanwhile, the owner of two runaway slaves had hired Travis to recover the men; Bradburn had given them sanctuary and used them as laborers on his barracks, and he refused to yield them despite repeated prodding from Travis. When a mysterious cloaked figure delivered letters to a Mexican sentry that announced a militia marching on Anahuac for the purpose of taking the blacks by force, a nettled Bradburn suspected a hoax, with Travis behind it. On May 17, he sent a dozen soldiers to the attorneys’ office to take Travis into custody for questioning. When Jack barged into Bradburn’s office demanding his friend’s release, he, too, was arrested. Fifteen other purported troublemakers would eventually join the pair as Bradburn attempted intimidation.
Travis and Jack were first placed in the guardhouse, then moved to an empty brick kiln. No formal charges were filed, though Bradburn announced a military trial for the prisoners to be held in Matamoros, three hundred miles away in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. These developments further enraged the Anglo colonists, who sometimes failed to remember that they were no longer in the United States and that their civil rights were no longer protected by the U.S. Constitution. “They all go about with their constitution in their pocket, demanding their rights,” wrote one Mexican general after an 1828 tour of Texas. Soon, about 160 settlers from Austin’s colony organized and marched toward Anahuac. Led by Frank Johnson, the vocal leader of the independence movement, and Robert “Three-Legged Willie” Williamson, the handsome, fun-loving San Felipe attorney whose wooden leg never seemed to impede his movements, the group reached the town on June 10 and approached the garrison.
Bradburn ordered the two prisoners bound and staked to the ground. Guards were posted around them, their rifles pointed at the pair. The colonel threatened the prisoners with death if the colonists opened fire. Travis, his hands tied over his knees, shouted at Johnson’s group to ignore his personal safety and attack the fort in the name of a higher duty. He would die like a man, he told them.
Both sides stood down. The colonists left after issuing a warning to Bradburn threatening action if any harm should come to the two attorneys. Over the next few days there were skirmishes, including a small battle at Velasco, seventy miles down the coast, and a near siege of Anahuac. Finally Bradburn’s superior arrived from Nacogdoches and negotiated a truce, removing the colonel from command. Travis and Jack were released on July 2, after seven weeks of imprisonment. Bradburn, fearful for his life, stole out of town and made his way east to New Orleans.
Stephen Austin was eventually able to persuade the authorities that the fracas merely indicated the colonists’ hatred of Bradburn, not a desire to rebel against their adopted homeland. But Travis and his compatriots were feted as heroes of the emerging Texian cause—whether it be independence, statehood, or just the civil rights every American immigrant expected.
Perhaps in an effort to capitalize on his newfound fame, in August Travis moved inland, west to San Felipe and its five-hundred-odd inhabitants. He had been an unknown when he arrived there a year earlier; now he hoped his celebrity and experience would bring in enough business to support him. His gamble paid off. Though there were still several capable attorneys in the area, this time he found all kinds of work, from land dealings and slavery transactions to wills and colonization cases and criminal defense. He soon developed a thriving practice, earning enough to rent a house for a year and buy another house and a hundred acres east of town for investment purposes. He also sent a man back to Alabama to pay his debts there. Travis continued to buy even more land, and eventually owned so much that he was able to donate five hundred acres on the Brazos River to an enterprise attempting to introduce a steamboat into the interior waterways of Texas. He employed a French gardener, and rented or bought a few slaves, among them a woman named Matilda and a twenty-year-old man named Joe, who hailed from Kentucky—“five feet ten or eleven inches high, very black, and good countenance,” according to a friend of Travis’s.