Read Online The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Donovan
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wedding dress for a proper flag—a white banner bearing the words COME AND TAKE IT above the outline of an unmounted cannon.
Castañeda moved his company upriver in search of a crossing. That night, to the howling of a distant wolf pack, the Texians crossed the Guadalupe with the six-pounder, now mounted on a pair of oxcart wheels. They decided to take the offensive. At four the next morning, in a dense fog, a skirmish broke out when the Mexican pickets fired on the Texian advance guard. After a parley that produced nothing, James C. Neill, a Bastrop man who had served under Andrew Jackson against the Creek Indians, fired the first cannon shot of the resistance. The Texians opened fire and charged. The Mexicans, who had been instructed to retire if the opposing force was superior, wheeled around and fled, having already lost one soldier.
Over the next week, men continued to arrive in Gonzales, until about three hundred colonists, embracing a dozen or so militia companies from various settlements, were gathered there. Turner’s two-story hotel continued to serve as the rallying point. Each company elected its own captain, but none recognized a commander in chief. There was no consensus of opinion regarding Mexico: “Some were for independence; some for the constitution of 1824; and some for anything, just so it was a row,” remembered one volunteer. The one thing they agreed on was the need to march to Béxar and finish the job. General Martín Perfecto de Cós, commander of the Eastern Interior Provinces, was probably there by now, with seven hundred troops or so. The son of a doctor, Cós was a small, elegant man—he wore gold earrings and traveled with gold candlesticks—and a longtime supporter of Santa Anna. Most believed he would march to Gonzales to take care of the problem himself. But save for their effective cavalry and the recently arrived Morelos Battalion, a regular army unit of two hundred veteran infantrymen, the Texians were unimpressed with the Mexicans’ show of force. Many troops sent to the northern border states were convicts given the thorny choice of prison or Texas, and the Mexican army in general was underfed, underpaid, undersupplied, and unmotivated to fight a war few of them understood.
It was vital to whip Cós before he received reinforcements. The officers sent a rider with an express message to Stephen Austin in San Felipe, imploring him to come lead the Army of the People, as they now called themselves. Just a few weeks earlier, Austin had been told that Mexican troops would march into the colonies and take care of the rabble-rousers whether things calmed down or not. That had prompted him to write a broadside on September 19 that was circulated throughout Texas, in which he said, “Nothing was to be gained by further conciliatory measures…. War is our only resource.” In private letters he had expressed his feelings even more strongly. “The country has a cause; and a just and glorious cause to defend,” he wrote a friend on October 5. “From this time forward those who are not for the cause ought to be treated as enemies—there is no middle ground.” Mexico’s most loyal colonist had finally concluded that independence was the only answer.
The forty-year-old empresario was in poor health, and his military experience consisted of seven uneventful weeks in the Missouri militia and a few raids he had led against the Indians; he knew his limitations better than anyone. But he was the one man all the colonists respected, and upon his arrival in Gonzales on October 11, he was unanimously elected commanding general of the Texian forces. The ragtag army, including nearly every able-bodied man in DeWitt’s colony, began a slow march westward the next day, following the rudimentary road laid out several years earlier by Byrd Lockhart, the colony surveyor. (For his considerable efforts in clearing a path from Béxar to San Felipe wide enough for an oxcart, Lockhart had asked for and
Castañeda moved his company upriver in search of a crossing. That night, to the howling of a distant wolf pack, the Texians crossed the Guadalupe with the six-pounder, now mounted on a pair of oxcart wheels. They decided to take the offensive. At four the next morning, in a dense fog, a skirmish broke out when the Mexican pickets fired on the Texian advance guard. After a parley that produced nothing, James C. Neill, a Bastrop man who had served under Andrew Jackson against the Creek Indians, fired the first cannon shot of the resistance. The Texians opened fire and charged. The Mexicans, who had been instructed to retire if the opposing force was superior, wheeled around and fled, having already lost one soldier.
Over the next week, men continued to arrive in Gonzales, until about three hundred colonists, embracing a dozen or so militia companies from various settlements, were gathered there. Turner’s two-story hotel continued to serve as the rallying point. Each company elected its own captain, but none recognized a commander in chief. There was no consensus of opinion regarding Mexico: “Some were for independence; some for the constitution of 1824; and some for anything, just so it was a row,” remembered one volunteer. The one thing they agreed on was the need to march to Béxar and finish the job. General Martín Perfecto de Cós, commander of the Eastern Interior Provinces, was probably there by now, with seven hundred troops or so. The son of a doctor, Cós was a small, elegant man—he wore gold earrings and traveled with gold candlesticks—and a longtime supporter of Santa Anna. Most believed he would march to Gonzales to take care of the problem himself. But save for their effective cavalry and the recently arrived Morelos Battalion, a regular army unit of two hundred veteran infantrymen, the Texians were unimpressed with the Mexicans’ show of force. Many troops sent to the northern border states were convicts given the thorny choice of prison or Texas, and the Mexican army in general was underfed, underpaid, undersupplied, and unmotivated to fight a war few of them understood.
It was vital to whip Cós before he received reinforcements. The officers sent a rider with an express message to Stephen Austin in San Felipe, imploring him to come lead the Army of the People, as they now called themselves. Just a few weeks earlier, Austin had been told that Mexican troops would march into the colonies and take care of the rabble-rousers whether things calmed down or not. That had prompted him to write a broadside on September 19 that was circulated throughout Texas, in which he said, “Nothing was to be gained by further conciliatory measures…. War is our only resource.” In private letters he had expressed his feelings even more strongly. “The country has a cause; and a just and glorious cause to defend,” he wrote a friend on October 5. “From this time forward those who are not for the cause ought to be treated as enemies—there is no middle ground.” Mexico’s most loyal colonist had finally concluded that independence was the only answer.
The forty-year-old empresario was in poor health, and his military experience consisted of seven uneventful weeks in the Missouri militia and a few raids he had led against the Indians; he knew his limitations better than anyone. But he was the one man all the colonists respected, and upon his arrival in Gonzales on October 11, he was unanimously elected commanding general of the Texian forces. The ragtag army, including nearly every able-bodied man in DeWitt’s colony, began a slow march westward the next day, following the rudimentary road laid out several years earlier by Byrd Lockhart, the colony surveyor. (For his considerable efforts in clearing a path from Béxar to San Felipe wide enough for an oxcart, Lockhart had asked for and
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