Alamo Traces (23 page)
Authors: Thomas Ricks Lindley
Robert “Three-Legged Willie” Williamson
Photo courtesy The Center for American History,
The University of Texas at Austin
The 1836 siege of the Alamo, however, was a far different situation. Organization and delivery of an adequate reinforcement to the Alamo would be even harder than the formation of Austin's 1835 federalist army of volunteers. Two enormous obstacles stood in the way of getting relief to Bexar. After the December 1835 victory in San Antonio, the colonists began fighting over the political objective of the war. The provisional government split into two persuasions and the military forces into three
factions. Lieutenant Governor James W. Robinson and the council, using Colonel James W. Fannin Jr. and his volunteers, were operating in the name of Mexican federalism. Governor Henry Smith, Sam Houston, and James Bowie, with only the Alamo soldiers on their side, supported independence and separation from Mexico, so that the country could be annexed to the United States. James Grant and F. W. Johnson, using the American volunteers from the storming of Bexar, hoped to unite with northeastern Mexican federalists and create a new republic made up of several Mexican states and Texas that would not be joined to the U.S. The result was that in January 1836, when Houston should have been organizing a defensive line along the San Antonio River, Texas was plagued by three military commanders: Houston, Johnson, and Fannin, who were, albeit for different political goals, attempting to turn a defensive war into an offensive campaign by attacking the port city of Matamoros. If any of the commanders had ever studied Napoleon's rules of war, they appear to have forgotten what the great general said about offensive war and leadership. Firstly: “The passage from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations of war.” Secondly, he observed: “Nothing is more important in war than unity in command. When, therefore, you are carrying on hostilities against a single power only, you should have but one army acting on one line and led by one commander.”
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Travis had summed up the Texas situation pretty well on his way to San Antonio in January 1836, when he wrote Henry Smith: “The people are cold & indifferent. They are worn down & exhausted with the war, & in consequence of dissensions between contending rival chieftains, they have lost all confidence in their own govt. & officers. You have no idea of [the] exhausted state of the country â volunteers can no longer be had or relied upon. A speedy organization, classification & draft of the Militia is all that can save us now.”
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Governor Smith seems to have either ignored Travis's advice or was too busy with his own political schemes to understand what was happening in the country. On February 5, at a time when San Antonio was garrisoned by perhaps one hundred fifty men, Smith wrote: “This country can never prosper until a few of that baneful faction [F. W. Johnson, James Grant, James W. Robinson, and the Council] are immolated on the altar of their own perfidy. The convention will, I hope, afford the grand corrective. Owing to their base management, much confusion prevails
among our volunteer troops on the frontier, but, by using much vigilance, I have now got Bexar secure.”
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Lieutenant Governor Robinson and the Council were equally blind to their own behavior and the manpower needs of the Alamo. On January 31 Robinson and the Council's military committee, on hearing of Houston's recommendation that the Alamo be destroyed and the troops moved to Gonzales, demanded that Houston be required “to put the place in the best possible state for defense, with assurances that every possible effort is making to strengthen, supply and provision the Garrison, and in no case to abandon or surrender the place unless in the last extremity.”
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Then, in direct opposition to what they had recommended for the Alamo, they wrote: “The advisory Committee are of opinion that no further necessity exists of increasing the number of troops now at Bejar, beyond those that are already there, or on their way to the place.”
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Thus, the evidence shows that Smith, Robinson, and the Council believed that two hundred men were sufficient to defend the Alamo. That belief was shared by many of the Texians. Many years later Lancelot Abbotts, an old Texian who had been at the convention, observed: “A public meeting was called for the purpose of enlisting volunteers for the relief of the Alamo. At this time there was living in Washington a doctor by the name of Biggs, or Briggs [Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, brother of Alamo defender John C. Goodrich], who was a big, burly, brave Manifest Destiny man. He made a speech, in which he declared his unbelief in the dispatch [Travis's March 3 letter] and the utter impossibility of any number of Mexicans to take the Alamo, when defended by near 200 men.”
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Austrian George Bernard Erath, a veteran of San Jacinto, later reported:
After the fall of Bexar, in the month of December, 1835, the people became overconfident in their own ability and Mexican insignificance. A land speculating element of immigration, who did not remain, induced them to lean too much to private interest, and when the Alamo was besieged, no entreaties could bring men in the field, believing the handful of men under Travis sufficient to repulse 7,000 Mexicans who advanced from the Rio Grande. When Travis and his men fell and were put to the sword by Santa Anna's proclamation for the extermination of the American
people from the soil of Texas, terror took the place of self-confidence and boasting.
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Moseley Baker described General Houston's failure in preparing the country for Santa Anna's advance into Texas. He wrote:
While the coming of Santa Anna was daily expected in the month of January, 1836, you [Houston] deliberately took your departure for Nacogdoches, on a plea of going to pacify the Indians, without having previously organized a single company for the defense of the country. You remained absent, and was still so, when the Mexicans actually invaded the country and besieged the immortal Travis in the Alamo, and he in calling for assistance writes to the Convention, on account, as he [Travis] himself says, “of the absence of the commander-in-chief.” But sir he called in vain â you had left no one whom to look for orders in your absence, and before the people could recover from their consternation â the Alamo had fallen. . . .
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A speedy reinforcement of the Alamo would be hampered by the lack of a general officer to coordinate relief activities and by the Texians' delusional belief that two hundred men could hold out against Santa Anna's two thousand soldiers. Regardless, a small number of patriots attempted to save Travis and his troops.
In the morning, at San Antonio, a party of Mexican solders, commanded by Lieutenant Manuel Manchaca, a member of the permanent second company of Tamaulipas cavalry and a San Antonio native, left the city for the Seguin and Flores ranches, southeast of the city on the San Antonio River, to collect corn, cattle, and hogs for Santa Anna's mess tables. The ranches appear to have been selected because those families had sided with the rebels.
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Sometime during the day, however, Fannin's advance relief force, commanded by Captains John Chenoweth and Francis De Sauque, beat Manchaca to the punch and arrived at the Seguin ranch. The Texian troops quickly collected corn, cattle, horses, and mules for the trip to San Antonio. When the collection was finished, they rode back toward Goliad
to wait for Fannin's infantry and artillery at the Cibolo Creek crossing of the Bexar/Goliad road.
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At Gonzales, Major Williamson continued to recruit men for the Gonzales ranger company. At that time the unit was probably nowhere near its authorized complement of fifty-six troopers. Still, other men appear to have joined the company by that date. They were John Cain, Isaac Baker, Freeman H. K. Day, William Dearduff, James George, William George, William Garnett, George W. Cottle, Thomas Jackson, William P. King, Claiborne Wright, Benjamin Kellogg, George Taylor, Edward Taylor, James Taylor, William Taylor, Andrew J. Sowell, Ben McCulloch, Benjamin Kellogg, and ______ Rigault, a Spanish Creole. Ben Highsmith may have been a member of the unit.
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Weapons, ammunition, and provisions were collected. One government claim shows that Second Lieutenant Kimbell purchased fifty-two pounds of coffee at Stephen Smith's store “for the use of the men that has volunteered to go to Bexar to the Relief of our Boys [at the Alamo].” At that point the coffee likely broke down to more than a pound per man for the ride to San Antonio.
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Also, Fannin's courier, Edwin T. Mitchell, probably arrived sometime that evening with Fannin's request that the Gonzales men “effect a junction with him below Bexar, at a convenient point.” The Cibolo Creek crossing of the Goliad/San Antonio road, halfway between the two settlements, appears to have been the rendezvous location.
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Fannin's force, however, had other problems to attend to that day. Shortly after daylight, the command discovered their oxen had wandered off during the night and could not be located. Then a soldier arrived from Refugio with the news that Colonel F. W. Johnson's small cavalry unit had been annihilated in an ambush. Only Johnson and two other men had escaped to report the centralist advance from Matamoros. After hearing the depressing report, one of Fannin's volunteer captains requested, in the name of his company, that a council of war be called to reconsider the idea of reinforcing the Alamo. Fannin convened a meeting of the company officers. After a decision had been made, he wrote acting governor Robinson: “. . . The Council of war . . . unanimously determined, that, in as much as a proper supply of provisions and means of transportation could not be had; and, as it was impossible, with our present means, to carry the artillery with us, and as by leaving Fort Defiance without a proper garrison, it might fall into the hands of the enemy, with provisions, etc.,
now at Matagorda, Dimmitt's Landing and Cox's Point and on the way to meet us; and, as by report of our spies. . . . We may expect an attack upon this place, it was deemed expedient to return to this post and complete the fortifications, etc., etc.”
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The war council's decision was a good one because a local Tejano, a Santa Anna loyalist, was at that time riding to Bexar to inform the general that Fannin and his men were on the road to San Antonio.
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That afternoon Fannin, after having learned more of the enemy advance, again wrote Robinson and bemoaned: “. . . we hope that before this time the people have risen and are marching to the relief of Bexar & this post â but should the worst happen â on whose head should the burden of censure fall â not on the heads of those brave men who have left their homes in the United States to aid us . . . but on those whose all is Texas & who notwithstanding the repeated calls have remained at home without raising a finger to keep the Enemy from their thresholds â What must be the feelings of the Volunteers now shut [up] in Bexar?”
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As Fannin wrote of his reinforcement concerns, Henry Smith, at San Felipe, issued an “Appeal to the People of Texas” that pleaded:
I call upon you as an officer, I implore you as a man, to fly to the aid of your besieged Countrymen and not permit them to be massacred by a mercenary foe. I slight none! The call is upon ALL who are able to bear arms, to rally without one moment's delay, or in fifteen days the heart of Texas will be the seat of War. . . . Do you possess honor? Suffer it not to be insulted or tarnished! Do you possess patriotism? Evince it by your bold, prompt and manly action! If you possess even humanity, you will rally without a moment's delay to the aid of your besieged countrymen!
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That morning a courier from San Felipe most likely rode into Mina (Bastrop) with the Council's orders for Captain John James Tumlinson's rangers to reinforce the Alamo. The messenger reported to Edward Burleson, the former commanding general of the volunteer forces at the storming of Bexar. The orders also contained instructions for Burleson “to organize the militia and to raise volunteers for the draft.”
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Later that afternoon or evening, Tumlinson's ranger company probably departed Mina for Gonzales to join the Gonzales ranger unit. The Mina rangers had been organized in mid-January 1836, the men enlisting
for twelve months. A muster roll for the company does not exist, but other sources identify the following members: Captain John James Tumlinson, Lieutenant Joseph Rogers, Timothy McKean, William Johnson, Felix W. Goff, Robert Owen, James E. Edmiston, Joseph Cottle, Joseph Weakes, Hugh M. Childers, James Curtis Sr., James Curtis Jr., Gany Crosby, Joshua Gray, Thomas Gray, Novet Haggard, James Haggard, William Leech, J. G. Dunn, Andrew Dunn, and James P. Gorman. Other probable members were Robert E. Cochran, Lemuel Crawford, James Kenny, James Northcross, Charles S. Smith, James E. Stewart, and Ross McClelland.
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