Lone Star (69 page)

When Santa Anna was brought before him, and a blood-thirsty mob clamored for the Mexican's blood, Houston never thought of anything except to use the captive President for his country's advantage. When he dreamed huge dreams and plotted the explosion of the United States westward with Andrew Jackson, he found it expedient "not to let his right hand know what his left hand was about," and to "keep his own counsel." Let others believe what they wanted to believe; Sam Houston did what he thought was required.

He had no great faith in lesser men, and time and time again they justified
 

him fully. Yet, Houston held his own word and honor sacrosanct. No Texan ever inspired more confidence to men around him. He had monstrous ambitions; even as late as 1860, he had never given up hope of becoming President of the United States. Yet, he sacrificed ambition to honor many times, from the governorship of Tennessee to his nomination for President.

He was hard—rocklike on the battlefield—and he had in one way or another killed many men. But he had a streak of magnanimity broader than most Americans of his time. Few men ever showed less rancor for his former enemies, above all when they were at his feet.

He was a difficult man for even his own age to understand; genius always is. During the grim months of 1860, he posed as a new American Alexander, preparing to bring American civilization to Mexico at the point of a Texan sword. Houston was surely sincere in thinking Anglo-Saxon conquest would have been good for Mexico, and here he was by no means alone. But his actions in 1860 must be measured against his acts as President of Texas, when he almost singlehandedly damped a Texas-Mexican war. And when he tried to gather guns, ammunition, and Rangers to invade the south, Houston was scrupulous every step of the way to compromise neither the honor of his subordinates nor of the United States. Houston was the kind of man who could envision an appalling conflict between the states, and coldly choose to avert it by shedding Mexican blood instead. He was a patriot in the oldest, Roman, sense.

In his last years Houston compromised his future image as a Texan hero. But then he had never been a "Texas" hero, anymore than Jackson was a "Southern" President. He was an American patriot, soldier, and statesman, first and last. In the Jacksonian age, he was better understood. He died at Huntsville in July 1863, at the age of seventy-one, a generation past his time.

Three months after he was buried, the Confederate legislature of the State of Texas passed a resolution that stands, like the state itself, as his epitaph: "His public services though a long and eventful life, his unblemished patriotism, his great private and moral worth, and his untiring, devoted, and zealous regard for the interests of the state of Texas command our highest admiration, and should be held in perpetual remembrance by the people of this state."

The historian Webb said it better, when he wrote: "Whether we like him or not . . . the fact remains that Sam Houston was no ordinary man."

Chapter 19

THE BONNY BLUE FLAG

Texas has furnished to the Confederate military service thirty-three regiments, thirteen battalions, two squadrons, six detached companies, and one legion of twelve companies of cavalry . . . making 62,000 men, which with the state troops in actual service, 6,500 men, form an aggregate of 68,500 Texans in military service . . . an excess of 4,773 more than her highest popular vote, which was 63,727. From the best information within reach . . . of the men now remaining in the state between the ages of sixteen and sixty years . . . the number will not exceed 27,000.

GOVERNOR FRANCIS R. LUBBOCK, FEBRUARY 5, 1863

ON April 12, 1861, Confederates in South Carolina fired upon the United States garrison at Fort Sumter. Blood was shed, and three days later President Lincoln called for volunteers to preserve the Union. This precipitated war. Each state and each individual American now had to choose sides, and only a few were able successfully to remain neutral.

In Texas, a vast surge of popular patriotism replaced the "Great Fear" of the year before. With the issue defined, almost all prominent men loyally supported the state. J. W. Throckmorton was commissioned a Confederate brigadier. The people who still remained Unionist, or neutral, the more common reaction among the dissidents, were noticeably of Northern or foreign birth. Pockets of Northern immigrants in north Texas resisted allegiance to the Confederacy, and the Germans spread through the hill country above the Balcones Scarp did not rally to the Stars and Bars. Yet this reaction was hardly universal. A large number of merchants and planters born in New York, Pennsylvania, and other far-off states were now strong Confederates, choosing their neighbors over broken or forgotten ties. The switching of political allegiances to conform with immediate environments was already an American phenomenon; ideology itself was weaker in America than social pressures. A majority of the German and other European immigrants, though little publicized, supported their new state. Those Europeans who were most integrated and not living in separated communities with their own kind were the staunchest Confederates; in communities like Fredericksburg and San Antonio, social pressure worked in the opposite way, because here a majority tended toward neutrality. Recent immigrants provided a number of distinguished leaders to Texas: Colonel Augustus Buchel, born in Germany; Colonel John C. Border and Generals Walter Lane and Thomas Waul, all from the British Isles, and General Xavier Debray, of Epinal in France. The dissent of the foreign-born, out of loyalty to the Union and opposition to slavery, has always been exaggerated.

Ninety percent of the population eventually stood by the state. The Mexican minority, located almost entirely south of San Antonio, was politically inert. A few prominent families, such as the Benavides of Laredo, came out for the Confederacy. The majority, who took no part in Anglo-American politics, regarded the war as a gringo affair and opted out. Efforts of Union officers to stir up rebellion along the Rio Grande failed. Because of the remoteness of the areas of Mexican population from the rest of the state, Mexicans were largely left to themselves.

Several thousand men who could not or would not support the Confederacy did leave the state. Most of these congregated across the border in Mexico, where U.S. consuls helped some return to the United States, and recruiting officers enlisted others in the U.S. Army. Other men simply hid out or "laid low." Both slackers and those who joined the Union armies were generally thought of as traitors throughout Texas.

On Confederacy Day, March 16, 1861, most Texans believed that the mere declaration of the new nation made it so. They expected the North to fight, but no one thought it would be a serious war. The Confederacy would be sustained. There were, of course, three fatal flaws in this belief: The relative power of the older Southern states vis-à-vis the industrial North—the South contained only one-third the people and 8 percent of the North's productive capacity—was not understood. Foreign alliances, above all with Britain and France, were expected; Texans had played that game before. The last great error was mistaking, as Houston warned, the will and determination of the American North.

In the spring of 1861 the Union was already destroyed, and the loyal states gave every evidence of indecision and confusion. Abraham Lincoln's superb ability to raise the concept of the Union to the "sublimity of religious mysticism" in the North was not anticipated, nor was the President's determination to prosecute the preservation of the nation ruthlessly, regardless of ultimate cost. The great majority of Southern lawyers believed their own rhetoric.

The first months of 1861 were an unbroken chain of triumphs for the rebellious state. The Convention aggressively applied itself to reducing the Federal power in Texas, and to seizing Federal property. Committees of safety were formed, militia units raised under veteran state officers. The Convention resolved that all U.S. property was "renationalized" upon secession, and thus became the property of the state. The militia, under old Rangers John S. Ford and Ben and Henry McCulloch, marched to enforce the order. State units headed for north Texas, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande, where there were concentrations of Federal troops.

Ten percent of the U.S. Army, 2,700 soldiers under Major General D. E. Twiggs, was stationed in the state. Twiggs himself was a Georgian and not disposed to fight Texans. From his headquarters at San Antonio, he queried Washington for orders. He got none, and this must be credited to his reputation, because in February 1861, no one in Washington knew what to do. Twiggs found himself surrounded by a hostile militia force in San Antonio, demanding his surrender, while none of his superiors would take responsibility for what he was supposed to do.

Twiggs at San Antonio had only 160 men, headquarters troops. The regular army was scattered at small garrisons and Indian-watching forts along a thousand miles of Mexican and Comanche frontier. Feeling his position was impossible, General Twiggs chose to resign his post. But this did not provide him with a solution. The Texans demanded that he make a protocol before he left. He was forced to turn over all Federal property and munitions, while his troops were to be permitted to march to the coast with their personal arms. This compact was extended to include all Federal military units in Texas.

The Federals were not evacuated, however, by the Navy as planned. Before the scattered garrisons could march to the coast, the news of Sumter reached Texas. Considering the state now at war with the United States, the Convention voided the protocol and made the Federal troops prisoners of war. This action was sustained by the Confederate government in Alabama. Without firing a shot, Texans disposed of a large part of the Federal army and seized $3,000,000 in military stores.

Many regulars, particularly officers, were Southerners. A high proportion resigned their commissions and joined the Confederate forces.

Then, in May, 2,000 Texans under Young pushed north over the Red River and captured three Federal forts in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. The remaining Union forces retreated all the way to Kansas. Texas was freed from any immediate invasion danger.

As a border state of the Confederacy, Texas was removed from the centers of action in Virginia and along the Mississippi. The desert and Indian-infested areas north and west of settled Texas counties made Union invasion from that direction almost impossible. The greatest peril lay along the Gulf coast, where Texas was exposed to the operations of the superior United States Navy. Another peril, not at first realized, was the hostile Indian frontier, from which the cavalry was now withdrawn. Somewhat ironically, the Texan defense of the seacoast was to be one of the Confederate States' most brilliant feats between 1861 and 1865; but the defense of the interior frontier was to prove a disaster for the state.

In the general euphoria of early 1861, the secessionists believed it would never be necessary to send Texans across the Mississippi to sustain the Southern Confederacy. As in the ominous days of the Revolution, Texas farmers thought mainly about getting their crops planted. Most of the militia disbanded. The new government took only certain defensive measures. Governor Clark and the legislature created 32 militia districts, each commanded by a local brigadier, and a few state troops were dispatched to take over the abandoned Federal forts in the west and on the Rio Grande. The western counties up against the Indian danger were instructed to organize companies of minutemen. Clark further ordered that all arms and ammunition in the hands of private merchants be surrendered to the state, but very little was ever turned in. A canvass of firearms in private hands was also ordered, but this proved something of a fiasco. Only 40,000 weapons, mostly obsolete, were reported. Few Texans were willing to list their firearms, fearing eventual confiscation.

The surveys, however, still revealed a dangerous situation. Despite the windfall provided by General Twiggs, Texas was poorly supplied to fight any kind of sustained war. As a frontier community, Texas depended upon the industrial resources of Europe and the North for firearms. Guns had always been one thing the self-sufficient frontiersmen could not make themselves.

Meanwhile, all partisan political activity ceased. The majority Democratic Party did not bother to make endorsements in the summer elections of 1861. The various contests for state and Confederate posts—Texas was reorganized almost as before, the Federal capital merely being moved to Richmond—devolved into personal popularity contests, and revolved around which candidate would do most to support the war. On this platform Francis R. Lubbock, a sometime lieutenant governor under Hardin Runnels, won the governorship by 124 votes.

Lubbock was energetic, and a deep believer in the South. He traveled up to Richmond while still governor-elect. He arrived in the post-Manassas hour of truth, when both Richmond and Washington were realizing what had been wrought. This was going to be a long, bitter, costly war. Lubbock saw President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, and asked them what Texas might do to support the war.

Francis Lubbock was one of the few Southern governors who ever asked this question sincerely, and he was one of the few who won Jefferson Davis's undying gratitude and friendship. The parochialism of the South had not ended with secession, as Davis and his government were already discovering.

Lubbock, even more strongly than many men in Richmond, was convinced that the fate of the Confederacy depended upon quick and decisive military action. Lubbock said that the North must be defeated before it could bring superior manpower and resources to bear. His viewpoint was radical to many Texans, who neither saw their state in danger nor accepted the fact that the fate of Texas would be decided eventually along the Potomac. But Lubbock rode home determined to throw Texas into the War Between the States, to the hilt.