Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
Some of these men had come to Texas seeking their fortune. Others came in sympathy with the plight of the people they perceived as their fellow Americans. Daniel Cloud, a young attorney from Kentucky, had journeyed through several states seeking gainful employment; in the Arkansas Territory, he had found what appeared to be a gold mine of opportunity. But upon hearing more about the situation in Texas, he had decided to continue to the Mexican province. “The reason for our pushing still further on,” he wrote his brother, “must now be told…. Ever since Texas has unfurled the banner of freedom, and commenced a warfare for liberty or death, our hearts have been enlisted in her behalf.” His friend and traveling companion Peter James Bailey, another Kentucky lawyer, shared his sentiments and agreed to join the cause.
For one of their number, the reason lay deeper.
Forty-one-year-old Micajah Autry had lived in a fine whitewashed house on the highest hill around Jackson, Tennessee, not far from the home of Andrew Jackson, a neighbor and friend, for whom the town was named. Though frail as a child, Autry had grown to be tall and slender, with dark hair and eyes. As a seventeen-year-old he had served in the army during the War of 1812. He had a loving wife and three children, and a large law practice. But when he gambled a great deal of money speculating in dry goods, the venture failed. He was forced to sell all the property he owned: his house, the land surrounding it, his carriage and horses, and his slaves. Then something far worse happened.
Autry, his wife, Martha, and his family attended a camp meeting a few miles from their house and left their little boy, Edward, in the care of a nurse. They returned home to find the child dead, drowned accidentally after climbing into a bathtub. When a grief-stricken Martha Autry awoke the next day, her glossy hair had turned snowy white. The change in Micajah Autry was no less extreme. “It was on one of his trips north that he became quite enthusiastic over Austin’s colony,” his daughter, Mary, remembered later, and he made up his mind to “view the prospects himself.” He left his wife and children with his stepdaughter—Martha’s daughter from her first marriage—and her husband, closed his law practice, and in November 1835 headed for Texas to find a new home for his family.
At Memphis, he boarded a boat and steamed down the Mississippi. Aboard were about twenty other Tennessee men bound for Texas, and Autry fell in with them. The word was that the fighting at Béxar would be over before they got there, but that Santa Anna would invade Texas in the spring. The men had no horses, but they were excited at their prospects. On December 13, they reached Natchitoches, Louisiana, on the Red River. When they found no mounts there, Autry determined to reach Nacogdoches, a hundred miles west, on foot. He followed the Old San Antonio Road to San Augustine, where he joined up with another small company of volunteers, four of whom were lawyers, including Cloud and Bailey, his fellow young Kentuckians. They continued west, slogging their way through torrents of rain, mud, water, and cold. Autry’s new companions alleviated his sorrows somewhat, as did the physical misery—“the very great fatigue I have suffered has in a degree stifled reflection and has been an advantage to me,” he wrote to his wife when he reached Nacogdoches:
I have reached this point after many hardships and privations but thank God in most excellent health…. I go the whole Hog in the cause of Texas. I expect to help them gain their independence and also to form their civil government, for it is worth risking many lives for. From what I have seen and learned from others there is not so fair a portion of the earth’s surface warmed by the sun.
About twenty miles west of Nacogdoches, the piney woods of east Texas gave way to rolling prairies dotted with clusters of trees. Along the road, Crockett and his companions found sustenance and shelter at regularly spaced “stands”—rough houses that supplied supper, lodging, and breakfast, as well as corn for the horses, for a dollar apiece. The food was simple and unvaried: cornbread and meat, never garden vegetables, and rarely butter or milk. But the stands provided shelter from the elements and an opportunity to relax after a long day’s ride—and gather around a fire with a cup of coffee or something stronger and listen to Crockett, in that distinctive drawl, spin more of his yarns.
Near the Trinity River, they left the old road and turned south toward Washington. There, on a steep slope on the west bank of the Brazos, the group entered a village of two crude hotels, a few shops and taverns, and several small residences—a place so new that there were still stumps standing in the middle of the only street in town, which was just an opening cut through the woods up from the ferry landing. Crockett and his men stayed at John Lott’s hotel, if it could be called that—“a frame house, covered with clapboards, a wretchedly made establishment, and a blackguard, rowdy set lounging about,” according to one visitor. There were not sufficient beds in the large one-room structure, so as many as thirty lodgers shared cots or slept on the floor. The dinner fare consisted of fried pork, coarse cornbread, and bad coffee. Breakfast was the same. The only saving grace was the presence of two large fireplaces, one at each end of the building.
There was another disappointment: Sam Houston was not in town. He had his hands full down near Goliad, trying to stop the Matamoros expedition. In his absence, Lott was the nascent government’s local agent, and the man charged with directing recruits to the places where they were needed.
A week or so later, Lott would receive orders from acting governor James Robinson to henceforth direct volunteers to Goliad, or the port of Copano—there were enough troops already at Béxar, or so the advisory committee determined. But now, before the end of January, Béxar was the destination. Word of the Mexican army preparing to march into Texas had recently reached the settlements on the Brazos, and Colonel James Neill was in sore need of men to garrison Béxar. The one thing both deposed governor Henry Smith and his replacement appeared to agree on was the importance of maintaining the post there. As the only town on the main road from Mexico, Béxar served as a picket guard to the Anglo colonies.
That is where Lott sent Crockett and the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers—to Béxar and the old mission turned military post called the Alamo.
Soldiers! Your comrades have been treacherously sacrificed at Anahuac, Goliad and Bexar; and you are the men chosen to chastise the assassins.
S
ANTA
A
NNA TO
HIS ARMY
, F
EBRUARY
17, 1836
F
rom Saltillo, the discrete units of Santa Anna’s Army of Operations wound their way toward Monclova, 120 miles north, through the mountain passes on the edge of the Eastern Sierra Madres and to the eastern edge of a huge desert that continued all the way to the Rio Grande. Though most of the region El Camino Real ran through was semiarid and not extreme desert, it was an inhospitable stretch of land. Typical of the region, the weather remained cool at night but warmed once the sun was up. Here, the first cases of large-scale desertions occurred. It was the rare day that did not see missing troops; many mule drivers also disappeared, some taking their animals with them. The problem became so bad that Santa Anna ordered local
presidiales
to patrol the roads and apprehend the deserters. The lack of water and forage could be seen in the condition of the horses and mules, some of which could not continue.
On February 2, a week after leaving Saltillo, Gaona’s First Infantry Brigade reached Monclova. Though many citizens of Monclova did not welcome Santa Anna and his
soldados
with open arms—quite a few of them were federalists, and had resisted El Presidente’s centralist takeover, though they had stopped short of armed confrontations such as Zacateca’s—the authorities had managed to stockpile a considerable amount of basic foodstuffs, most of it seized from the ranches and poverty-stricken villages in the area. (Throughout the campaign, food was hard to find for everyone except those of high enough rank to pay graft, a practice that had reached epidemic proportions.) Along with something to eat, some of the units finally received a portion of their pay. The grateful troops were able to rest a few days before the arduous journey north continued.
Two days later Santa Anna’s entourage arrived. For some undisclosed reason, His Excellency was in a foul mood, and officers avoided him whenever possible. Four days later, on the morning of February 8, Gaona’s brigade departed Monclova. Santa Anna, in a coach drawn by six fresh mules, his staff, and small escort accompanied the column. The remainder of the expedition was still several days behind. The day before he left, Santa Anna ordered that all troops be placed on half rations of hardtack. His simultaneous assurance to his officers that provisions would be found at the Rio Grande was of little consolation.
General Cós arrived in the city a few days later, accompanied by Captain José Juan Sánchez, his adjutant, and Colonel Nicolás Condelle’s weary Morelos Battalion. Cós had lost thirty-two men, women, and children in pressing on through the rough country between Laredo and Monclova to join Santa Anna as ordered, and an irritated Sánchez was puzzled at His Excellency’s haste to leave his army behind. Why assemble such a large force if he did not need it? Did he think his name alone was enough to defeat the colonists?
Sánchez would have an opportunity to find out. After eight weeks of near-constant marching through desolate stretches of northern Mexico, Cós and the four hundred men of the Morelos Battalion were officially incorporated into Tolsa’s Second Infantry Brigade, and would once more trudge into the wilderness—Sánchez himself on a burro. Their comrades on the long trip from Béxar, most of them cavalry and infantry companies from several different states in northern Mexico, would be posted to other garrisons. Behind them, in a makeshift hospital in Monclova, the army left one hundred sick men, most of them laid low with dysentery and other stomach ailments. Units came together, units came apart, human wreckage was scattered across the desert—such was the dismal pattern.
O
N
F
EBRUARY
8, the same day Santa Anna left Monclova, Ramírez y Sesma received an order from His Excellency directing him to continue to Béxar, making moderate daily marches to conserve his troops. The Vanguard Brigade had reached Guerrero, a small town five miles south of the Rio Grande, in mid-January. They had spent the next few weeks resting and reprovisioning at the presidio there, and gathering intelligence from
soldados
recently arrived from Béxar. The returning soldiers and Santa Anna’s spies had told him that there were no provisions there, so Ramírez y Sesma bought what he could and impressed the rest from villages and ranches in the area. Several of the region’s presidial companies were gathered at Guerrero, and the general picked up one hundred of the best armed and mounted
presidiales
—they knew the terrain well and were hardy soldiers, long accustomed to fighting Indians.
Santa Anna reached Guerrero on the afternoon of February 12. Ramírez y Sesma had just crossed the Rio Grande five miles away and was on his way to Béxar. Some of the army’s mules and horses came down with
telele,
a sickness caused by drinking stagnant water. Others collapsed due to exhaustion and overwork. Almost all suffered badly from lack of forage. An epidemic of dysentery hit the troops after many of them ate the small red berries growing abundantly in the woods along the road. Without even the most basic medical care, several unfortunates died of the ailment.
And while they may have been on Mexican soil, the men were constantly reminded that the region more properly belonged to someone else. One day they marched past a camp of five hundred Lipan Apaches that lay alongside the road. The Lipans were at peace with the Mexicans, but that did not prevent them from stealing mules and horses as the army marched by. Far more dangerous were the Comanches. They could often be seen in the distance, to the rear and on the flanks of the columns, biding their time until they could fall on stragglers and deserters, killing soldiers and
soldaderas
indiscriminately. The Comanches also stole caches of food that had been placed at small ranches along El Camino Real. Improperly packed cases of hardtack soaked by rain went bad and reduced the soldiers’ meager rations. Eventually the road north from Monclova was strewn with the detritus of an army in trouble—more like a defeated one in retreat than one advancing.
With the combined effects of malnutrition, disease, Indian attacks, and the elements, the Army of Operations would lose between four hundred and five hundred men on the march to Béxar, and twice as many women and children. Only the weather had so far been largely on their side, delivering cool evenings and pleasant days with only the occasional shower to alleviate the choking dust and ease the noontime heat. That changed on February 13.
The thirteenth dawned cold and wet, and by seven that evening the rain turned to sleet, then thick snow. The Cavalry Brigade promptly got lost in a huge thicket of mesquite. General Andrade ordered a halt in the woods: other units doubled back on the trail. The countermarch quickly degenerated into chaos. Several women and boys attached themselves to one young officer’s party, and they all gathered together as he vainly tried to start a fire. Around other flames huddled shivering groups of officers, enlisted men, women, and children, many of them cursing in desperation and anger. Few of the troops were from northern Mexico, and many had never seen snow before. By sunrise, the snow was knee deep and covered everything in sight. Splotches of blood marked where dead horses and mules had expired trying to rip themselves away from their loads. Others had frozen to death or suffocated under the snow.