Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
Someone leaped to his feet and proposed that the entire body adjourn and ride to Béxar. His suggestion was greeted with cheers, and almost every member of the convention announced his intention to immediately depart for the front.
Sam Houston stood and implored them to stay, stressing the importance of finishing the job they had begun. Without a constitution and some sort of government, they would be considered little more than pirates, or an unorganized—even criminal—revolutionary movement. Much-needed American and international support would be minimal. Houston would leave as soon as possible to organize the army and ride to the aid of the Alamo garrison.
The delegates saw the wisdom of his argument and returned to their seats, where they were joined by Samuel Maverick, who had finally arrived in Washington. Houston left that afternoon with a few companions, riding south to San Felipe, then west to Burnham’s Crossing on the Colorado. He remained there for two days, much of his time spent dispatching express riders in several directions with orders and requests for reinforcements and supplies. He sent a courier to Fannin with orders to proceed to the west bank of the Cibolo and await the arrival of the forces in Gonzales. At last report, James Neill was there with a small group of men preparing to return to Béxar. But there was no point in rushing to Béxar until a sufficient number of volunteers had mustered.
Two days later, at four in the afternoon of March 11, Houston rode into Gonzales. He found Neill in charge of about three hundred volunteers bivouacked on the southern edge of the town. Most of them had only arrived in the last two or three days. Many were without arms. A few days earlier, on Monday, March 7, John Smith had finally headed west, leading another group of well-armed and well-provisioned volunteers, almost thirty men, with the goal of reinforcing the Alamo.
Houston assembled the men in town. He apprised them of the convention’s work and read the declaration of independence, his commission, and his orders. Then, remembered one young colonist, “he delivered a short speech setting forth in stirring words the complications of troubles that threatened our Republic, finally closing with a rousing appeal to every Texan to be loyal and true in that hour of need and peril.” They would begin organizing the army the next day.
Around sunset, two Tejanos rode into town from the west. Their names were Anselmo Vergara and Andres Barcena, and the news they brought was dire—“disagreeable intelligence,” as the man assigned to record their interview put it. They described the March 6 early-morning assault by Santa Anna’s army in sufficient detail, including the most important: “All within the Fort perished.”
Despite some contradictions in the men’s accounts, Houston suspected the story to be true—Travis had told John Smith that he would fire the eighteen-pounder every morning, noon, and evening as a signal that his garrison still held the Alamo, and no cannon had been heard since early Sunday. To prevent panic, Houston publicly pronounced the two Tejanos spies and ordered them taken into custody. But he could not prevent the spread of the news of the catastrophe to the townspeople of Gonzales. The town had contributed significantly to the Alamo garrison, and if the news was true, a dozen or so women, several of them expecting, were left widowed. “For hours after the receipt of the intelligence,” remembered a witness, “not a sound was heard, save the wild shrieks of the women, and the heartrending screams of the fatherless children.”
The story was further corroborated later that evening with the return of John Smith and his group of volunteers. On Tuesday night, they had reached Cibolo Creek, twenty-four miles from Béxar, and bivouacked. A heavy silence raised Smith’s suspicions. On Wednesday morning, he sent eight men as scouts toward the town. They had only proceeded six miles when they ran into an advance force of Mexican cavalry, which pursued them. They managed to gallop back to the Cibolo and warn Smith in time for the entire group to escape.
Houston had Captain Juan Seguín send two men to Casa Blanca, Seguín’s ranch, to ascertain the truth of the story, though by now he was sure it could not possibly be false. He dispatched another express rider to Goliad with the news of the Alamo’s fall and a change of orders: Fannin was to blow up the presidio there—one fort had fallen; they could not afford the fall of another—and immediately go back to Victoria, thirty miles northeast, on the Guadalupe’s east bank. “The immediate advance of the enemy may be confidently expected,” Houston concluded. “Prompt movements are therefore highly important.” Privately, he had no confidence in Fannin, and expected no cooperation from him. He quietly made preparations to retreat with his small army to the Colorado River, which, because it was wide, deep, and swiftly running, would make a more formidable natural defensive line.
The next day was spent organizing the men and electing officers. By Sunday, March 13, Seguín’s two Tejanos had not returned. But scouts Deaf Smith, Henry Karnes, and Robert Handy assured Houston that they would get within sight of Béxar, accurately assess the situation, and return within three days. They left that morning.
Sometime between eight and nine o’clock that evening, the redheaded Karnes rode into Gonzales with the news of Susanna Dickinson’s approach. Her eyewitness account of the Alamo’s fall served as final confirmation. Karnes also delivered more dire intelligence: according to Mrs. Dickinson, as many as two thousand Mexican soldiers were on the march eastward, and had spent the night of March 11 at Cibolo Creek. Santa Anna’s army might be just hours away from Gonzales.
Two thousand regulars, including a company of the feared Mexican lancers, against some four hundred untrained and undisciplined volunteers, many of them without arms or ammunition: Houston’s decision required little deliberation. “It would have been madness to hazard a contest,” he wrote two days later. “By falling back, Texas can rally, and defeat any force that can come against her.” Houston gave orders to immediately take up the line of retreat. He also dispatched some two dozen of Seguín’s Tejanos to the ranches on the lower San Antonio River to help protect the families there from Indian depredations, and put Seguín in command of the rear guard, with orders not to leave anyone behind. Twenty of Houston’s men immediately deserted, either to guard their families or to save their own skins. They would no doubt spread panic among the settlements to the east, which would make recruitment that much more difficult. But there was nothing to be done about that now.
Most of the few wagons Houston had brought with him were given to the families of Gonzales, and it was strongly suggested that they head east also, and as soon as possible. The army moved out around midnight, coming up from their campsite south of town and marching through the streets, most of the houses already empty and dark, others lit as their owners prepared to leave; the army’s only remaining cart, pulled by four oxen, carried the force’s meager supply of ammunition. With no way to transport their two cannon, the men tossed them into the Guadalupe.
During all this, Deaf Smith and Robert Handy rode in with Mrs. Dickinson, her daughter, Angelina, and their two companions. Wives and mothers surrounded Susanna, screaming and begging for news of their husbands and sons. She could only muster one answer: “All killed, all killed.” She was escorted to the house of James Tumlinson, whose wife, Elizabeth, took her in and comforted her. The Tumlinsons’ son George was with the Alamo garrison, and on the Sunday previous, they had been awakened by the rumble of distant cannon fire. When it ceased, Tumlinson had said, “Our boy is gone.” Mrs. Dickinson told them of the battle, and of the death of every man in the fort. Houston came to the house and listened with tears in his eyes. Then he advised everyone to leave with the rest of the families.
He returned to his men with the proclamation Mrs. Dickinson had carried from Santa Anna, which offered a pardon to all who would lay down their arms and submit, and certain death to anyone who did not. Houston read it to the men, then threw it down and stamped on it, shouting, “Death to Santa Anna, and down with despotism!” The men joined in on the shout. Some of the men were infuriated at the retreat orders. They were convinced they could “whip ten-to-one the carrion-eating convicts under Santa Anna,” as one cocky fifteen-year-old, a veteran of the battle of Béxar, would claim years later. A few of them would never forgive Houston, and would continue to criticize his every move over the next several weeks.
Left behind were ten men with orders to burn the town. “Not a roof large enough to shelter a Mexican’s head was to be left,” recalled one captain. A five-man squad started at each end of the town and with their torches made quick work of it. Kimble and Dickinson’s hat factory… the modest hotels of Turner and Smith… the mercantile stores of Miller and Eggleston… Sowell’s blacksmith shop… the unfinished log schoolhouse… all these and every residence in sight were set ablaze. Within minutes flames shot up into the sky.
In wagons, on horseback, and on foot, some leading animals packed with their belongings, the citizens of Gonzales moved eastward, aided by the few able-bodied men left in town. “Red Adam” Zumwalt, assisted by David Kent and a few of the older boys, directed the exodus of his family and the Kents. Byrd Lockhart led his large family and others along the road he had cleared almost a decade ago. Sidney Gaston Miller Kellogg, who had lost a brother and her first and second husbands in the Alamo, carried a baby, John B. Kellogg III, born the night before. Another ten widows walked through the streets of Gonzales with their children, as had the other evacuating families, leaving all they owned except for what they could carry.
Under a moonless sky, they trudged along the San Felipe road for hours, through scattered forests of oak and mesquite and long, open prairies of sandy loam, until they could barely lift their legs. Fortunately, the night was warm. Just before dawn the army halted at Peach Creek, about ten miles from Gonzales. As exhausted soldiers dropped to the ground, and Texian families continued to straggle into camp, a bright orange glow lit up the horizon behind them. When a series of explosions was heard on their backtrail, it touched off a panic. Many feared that the Mexican army and its artillery were close on their heels. Only when someone ventured that the cause of the explosions could have been the powder stores in the shops—someone else said it might have been the whiskey barrels, or barrels of some other liquor—did the bedraggled company settle down to a fitful attempt at rest and sleep.
Ahead of them the deserters and couriers spread the word of the fall of the Alamo and the rapid advance of the Mexican army, and hundreds of families packed up and set out on the roads east, toward the imagined safety of the Sabine River and the United States border. The Runaway Scrape, as the exodus would come to be known, had begun.
I
N
B
ÉXAR
, the disparate elements of Santa Anna’s army finally began to arrive in the days after the battle: General Gaona’s brigade on March 7, General Filisola on the ninth, Andrade and the cavalry brigade on the tenth, and Tolsa’s brigade right behind them on the eleventh. That same day, units began moving out. General Morales left for Goliad to reinforce Urrea’s command with two infantry battalions. He was followed by Ramírez y Sesma—with two infantry battalions, fifty cavalrymen, and two cannon—who marched east over Powder House Hill toward Gonzales and the heart of the Anglo colonies: San Felipe. His immediate goal was the destruction of any rebel units, particularly those commanded by Sam Houston. His ultimate destination, if necessary, was Nacogdoches, near the Louisiana border.
Near Santa Anna’s quarters on Main Plaza, a tent was set up where various goods and supplies seized from the rebels were sold. They netted only $2,500—the best of the items had already been taken by His Excellency and his favorites.
For the town’s residents, life gradually returned to something close to normal. Although the soldiers occasionally took possession of materials and foodstuffs, there was no large-scale sacking, rape, or murder, as had happened in Zacatecas the previous May. So most of the
bexareños
who had fled before Santa Anna’s arrival gradually began to return to their homes, finding the town even more battered and shell-scarred than before. Others remained at their houses along the many rivers and creeks in the area—memories of Arredondo’s brutal retribution in 1813 were still fresh in their minds, and there were many townspeople who might reveal, to the new centralist authorities, the names of those who had cooperated with the rebels.
For his part, Santa Anna dallied with his young “bride,” and planned his strategy. Though some of his officers suggested he lead a fast-moving strike force east to find Houston’s army and crush the last of the rebel resistance, he felt no such urgency. The campaign was essentially over, it appeared. The three columns sweeping through Texas—Gaona to the north, up El Camino Real by way of Bastrop; Ramírez y Sesma through the central region, toward San Felipe; and Urrea to the south, along the coast—would quickly mop up the disintegrating colonists and their filibustering friends from the United States.
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W
ASHINGTON,
the convention had continued to work on hammering out a proper constitution, their work in the unheated hall made more comfortable by the arrival of warmer weather. It had been more than a week since Sam Houston rode out of town on March 6, in response to Travis’s stirring plea for reinforcements. Since that day, there had been no further word from the Alamo.
In the afternoon of Tuesday, March 15, a man arrived from Columbia, near the coast, with the news that the Mexican army had attacked the Alamo, but had been repulsed with great loss to the enemy. “The rumor was doubted, on account of the circuitous route by which it came,” recorded an observer in his diary. “All hoped it true, but many feared the worst.” A half hour later, an express rider rode in from Gonzales with reports from Houston detailing the fall of the Alamo and the death of every man in it save a few Negro servants. A subsequent letter from Juan Seguín to delegates Ruíz and Navarro confirmed the news. “Still some did, or affected to, disbelievement,” wrote the diarist.