Secret War for Texas

8. From Sea to Shining Sea

8 • From Sea to Shining Sea on the same day Grant was killed, the reconvened Texian Convention issued the long-expected formal declaration of independence from Mexico. Few of the signatories, who included Sam Houston, seem to have been in any doubt at all that this declaration was merely a temporary arrangement pending an annexation of Texas by the united States. Just five days afterward Houston asked a fellow delegate’s opinion regarding a resolution “that Texas is part of Louisiana, and the u. States by treaty of 1803,” as earlier noted.1 Grant, it seemed, had fought and died in vain to prevent this, but it took more than two months for the news of his death to reach London, and a great deal happened in that time as Mexico first came close to regaining Texas before dramatically losing it forever; and in the process American ambitions were quite unexpectedly thwarted. Two days after the declaration Houston, in the ascendant once again, was reconfirmed as commander in chief of the Texian army, “regulars, volunteers and militia, while in actual service.” He insisted on this reaffirmation ostensibly because his earlier appointment had been made under the authority of the Mexican Constitution of 1824 and now had no legal standing under the new regime. Strictly speaking this might have been so, and given the number of lawyers involved it was only prudent, but no one was in any doubt that his real purpose was to gain undisputed command of both the volunteers and the militia as well as his little handful of regulars. Recognizing the sense of this, the government agreed to the extension of his authority but insisted that his first job was to organize a relief force to go to the aid of the Alamo. Yet this was something he seemed oddly reluctant to do, and he delayed leaving Washington until March 6. Even then it took a clear threat of dismissal to get him going, and all the while he was assuring anyone who would listen that “all those From Sea to Shining Sea • 19 reports from Travis & Fannin were lies, for there were no Mexican forces there.”2 it is inconceivable he actually believed this, but he was shrewd enough to realize the futility of tackling the Mexican Army head on with the slender resources then available, and so he dragged his feet, taking five days to reach the rendezvous at Gonzales. There he was justified in his reluctance with the news that it was all over. “upon my arrival here this afternoon,” he told Fannin, “the following intelligence was received through a Mexican, supposed to be friendly. . . . i fear a melancholy portion of it will be found too true. He states that he left Fort San Antonio on Sunday, the 6th inst; that the Alamo (citadel) was attacked on that morning at the dawn of day, by about 2,500 men, and was carried a short time before sunrise with a loss of 520 men, Mexicans, killed and as many wounded. Col. Travis had only 150 effective men, out of his whole force of 187. After the fort was carried, seven men surrendered, and called for Gen Santa Anna and quarters. They were murdered by his order. Col. Bowie was sick in his bed, and was also murdered.”3 Sadly, all the intelligence except the overoptimistic assessment of Mexican casualties was indeed true. On March 3 Santa Anna had heard from urrea that the rebels had been routed at San Patricio and that he was in pursuit of Grant. There was no longer any danger of a federalist uprising in his rear, and so the assault was fixed for the predawn hours of March 6. it was, as he afterward declared, “a small affair.” Two or three men may have escaped during a mass breakout over the east walls, but otherwise the whole garrison was massacred. in both human and political terms the fall of the Alamo was a disaster of the first magnitude for the Texians, and Houston never really lived down his failure to try and save its defenders. For the present, however, he immediately sent Fannin instructions to evacuate Goliad and retreat to the line of the Guadalupe. unfortunately, only a day or two earlier, nearly half of Fannin’s men, under Lieutenant Colonel Ward, had gone down to Refugio to evacuate the Ayers family and other American colonists, only to be caught by urrea before they could get away. After a...