Lone Star Nation (42 page)

But they needed help. Every few days Bowie, Jameson, or Neill (sometimes all three) wrote to Houston, Smith, or the council pleading for reinforcements. “
Relief
at this post, in men, money, and provisions is of
vital
importance and is wanted instantly,” Bowie told Smith in the letter in which he announced his decision to fight to the end at the Alamo. “Our force is very small; the returns this day to the commandant is only one hundred and twenty officers and men.” The latest intelligence from the Rio Grande was that Santa Anna had more than five thousand men. “It would be a waste of men to put our brave little band against thousands.”

In answer to the pleas, Smith ordered William Travis to join Bowie and the others at the Alamo. Travis was reluctant at first, sensing that neither Smith nor Houston nor anyone else except Bowie and those already at Béxar was serious about defending the place. Travis asked for five hundred men to accompany him; Smith said he could have one hundred and would have to raise them himself. In the event, Travis was able to raise fewer than three dozen, outfitted from his own pocket. “I must beg that your Excellency will recall the order for me to go to Bexar in command of so few men,” he wrote Smith. “I am willing, nay anxious, to go to the defense of Bexar, but, sir, I am unwilling to risk my reputation (which is ever dear to a soldier) by going off into the enemy's country with such little means, so few men, and with them so badly equipped.”

Smith, however, who was more intent on fighting his enemies in the provisional government than on fighting the Mexicans, neither recalled the order nor increased the resources to carry it out. Travis, perhaps deciding that his reputation as a soldier would suffer more from refusing to accept this assignment than from complying, reluctantly headed off to San Antonio with his small company. “I shall march today with only about thirty men,” he told Smith. “I shall, however, go on and do my duty.” He was not hopeful. “Our affairs are gloomy indeed. The people are cold and indifferent. They are worn down and exhausted with the war, and, in consequence of dissensions between contending and rival chieftains, they have lost all confidence in their own government and officers. . . . The patriotism of a few has done much; but that is becoming worn down. I have strained every nerve; I have used my personal credit, and have neither slept day nor night since I received orders to march, and, with all this, I have barely been able to get horses and equipments for the few men I have.”

Travis's gloom persisted after his arrival at San Antonio on February 3. His commission as lieutenant colonel placed him in rank below James Neill, who nominally commanded the entire garrison but in reality controlled only those men who had enlisted in the regular army and the organized volunteers. About half the garrison still consisted of individuals who had never enlisted for anything and who—as before—insisted on choosing their own officers. These men elected Bowie, who shared their independent spirit and their scorn for such niceties as chains of authority. Yet Bowie habitually deferred to Neill, which made for an orderly, if tenuous, command of the post.

Ten days after Travis arrived, however, Neill received word of serious illness in his family, and he took a leave of absence. He conferred his command on Travis—to whom Bowie, with the advantage of thirteen years and considerably more fighting experience, saw no reason to defer. A divided command resulted, with the regulars following Travis and the volunteers Bowie.

“My situation is truly awkward and delicate,” Travis complained to Smith. What made it even more awkward was that Bowie was behaving with utter irresponsibility. “Since his election he has been roaring drunk all the time, has assumed all command, and is proceeding in a most disorderly and irregular manner—interfering with private property, releasing prisoners sentenced by court martial and by the civil court, and turning everything topsy turvy.” Only Travis's sense of honor kept him at his post. “If I did not feel my honor and that of my country compromitted I would leave here instantly for some other point with the troops under my immediate command, as I am unwilling to be responsible for the drunken irregularities of any man.”

Travis would stay, but for the sake of Texas he must have reinforcements. “I hope you will immediately order some regular troops to this place, as it is more important to occupy this post than I imagined when I last saw you,” he told Smith. “It is the key of Texas. Without a footing here, the enemy can do nothing against us in the colonies.”

Eventually Bowie sobered up, and when he did he agreed to share the command with Travis. Although this was hardly less awkward than the situation Travis complained of to Smith, it improved morale. Meanwhile, the approach of Santa Anna encouraged cooperation between the Texas commanders. Travis couldn't claim the loyalty of the volunteers, but Bowie could; and if Travis hoped to keep the volunteers in the fort, he had to heed Bowie's advice and opinions. Bickering continued but less egregiously than before.

Santa Anna knew of the hardships suffered by de la Peña's brigade and the rest of the Army of Operations. But he deemed swiftness essential in crushing the Texas rebellion before it advanced any further. Among the Mexicans of Texas were many who willingly provided intelligence to Santa Anna against the Americans. He probably knew that Houston and the others weren't expecting to have to fight till spring (“By the 15th of March, I think, Texas will be invaded,” Travis wrote on February 13), and he knew that more Americans were arriving in Texas by the week. Indeed, Santa Anna's foreign minister made regular complaints to the Jackson administration in Washington about the raising of Texas-bound volunteers in the United States. Jackson's secretary of state, John Forsyth, replied that President Jackson had taken “all the measures in his power . . . to prevent any interference that could possibly involve the United States in the dispute, or give just occasion for suspicions of an unfriendly design on the part of this Government to intermeddle in a domestic quarrel of a neighboring state.” Santa Anna could not have been reassured by this bland statement, which left a great deal of room for persons not associated with the American government to intermeddle as they chose—as Forsyth himself acknowledged in saying, “For the conduct of individuals which the Government of the United States cannot control, it is not in any way responsible.”

By all evidence, the Texas revolt united the Mexican people more effectively than anything Santa Anna had been able to do on his own. “This country is in a perfect tempest of passion in consequence of the revolt in Texas, and all breathe vengeance,” Jackson's minister in Mexico, Anthony Butler, informed the American president. Santa Anna was capitalizing on this support in waging his war against Texas, which he was portraying as a war against the United States. Butler was hardly an unbiased observer on the subject of Santa Anna, but he probably got the outlines of the president-general's reaction right when he said, “Santa Anna is perfectly furious, mad, and has behaved himself in the most undignified manner, boasting of what he would do not only with the insurgents of Texas but also with the United States, who he has identified with the revolt, charging our Government and people with promoting and supporting that revolt with sinister views, with the view of acquiring the territory. He has sworn that not an inch of the territory shall be separated from Mexico, that the United States shall never occupy one foot of land west of the Sabine.” Butler related a story he heard from an eyewitness regarding a reception given by Santa Anna for the British and French ministers. “Santa Anna as usual very soon began to speak of the affairs of Texas, and as a consequence introduced the United States. He spoke of our desire to possess that country, declared
his full knowledge
that we had instigated and were supporting the revolt, and that in due season he would
chastise us
for it.” Butler thought this threat so extraordinary that it required repeating. “Yes, Sir,” he told Jackson, “he said
chastise us
. He continued: I understand that Gen. Jackson sets up a claim to pass the Sabine, and that in running the division line hopes to acquire the country as far as the Neches. ‘Sir,' said he (turning to a gentleman present), ‘I mean to run that line at the mouth of my cannon, and after the line is established, if the nation will only give me the means, only afford me the necessary supply of money, I will march to the capital. I will lay Washington City in ashes, as it has already been done once' (turning and bowing to the British minister).”

Some of Santa Anna's expression of outrage was probably for effect, but he doubtless was sincere in believing that Mexico was under assault from the United States. It was this belief that led him to treat the Texas rebels as pirates and adventurers rather than disaffected citizens of Mexico. Politically, the rebellion in Texas served Santa Anna's purposes by letting him reprise his role as defender of Mexico against its enemies, and by this means rally the Mexican people around his banner. The farther north he got and the closer his army approached to the Americans defending San Antonio and the rest of Texas, the more plausible his patriotic role became. As his troops rested briefly on the banks of the Nueces before making the last march to San Antonio, the commander in chief appealed to their love of country:

Comrades in arms! Our most sacred duties have conducted us to these plains, and urged us forward to combat with the mob of ungrateful adventurers, on whom our authorities have incautiously lavished favors. . . . They have appropriated to themselves our territories, and have raised the standard of rebellion in order that this fertile and expanded department may be detached from our republic, persuading themselves that our unfortunate dissensions have incapacitated us for defense of our native land. Wretches!—they will soon see their folly.

Soldiers! Your comrades have been treacherously sacrificed at Anahuac, Goliad and Béjar; and you are the men chosen to chastise the assassins.

My friends! We will march to the spot whither we are called by the interest of the nation in whose service we are engaged. The candidates for acres of land in Texas will soon learn to their sorrow that their auxiliaries from New Orleans, Mobile, Boston, New York and other northern ports, from which no aid ought to proceed, are insignificant, and that Mexicans, though naturally generous, will not suffer outrages with impunity, injurious and dishonorable to their country, let the perpetrators be whom they may.

Until Santa Anna was almost within sight of San Antonio, the Texans knew nothing specific of his approach. The undermanned garrison couldn't maintain regular reconnaissance but had to rely on rumors filtered through the populace in the path of Santa Anna's army. The reliability of that populace, and hence of those rumors, was subject to the usual vicissitudes of war; like most ordinary people in most armed conflicts, the Tejanos wished primarily to be left alone. Some had sided with the Americans; even now Juan Seguín walked step for step with Travis and Bowie along the walls of the Alamo. Others cast their lot with Santa Anna. There weren't many convinced
centralistas
among the Tejanos (local control made as much sense to northern Mexicans as to western Americans), but many of the Tejanos took umbrage at the flood of illegal immigrants from the United States and agreed with Santa Anna that they were pirates and filibusters. Moreover, the example of Zacatecas wasn't lost on the Tejanos. Perhaps—just perhaps—the Americans in the Alamo could preserve themselves from Santa Anna's wrath. But who would save those outside the walls? A man might wish to oppose the dictator, and many had till now; but who would defend that man's family? Even Travis, at a moment when each man in the Béxar garrison might make the difference between survival and disaster, acknowledged the higher claim of family upon his troops, and after Seguín relayed an eleventh-hour request from several of the Tejano volunteers for furloughs, he let them go.

Between the lack of reliable intelligence and the speed of Santa Anna's approach, the Mexican army was almost upon the rebels before they realized the imminence of their peril. Travis had given his men the night of February 22 off from their labors about the Alamo; some were still carousing in the small hours of the next morning when they observed townsfolk loading wagons and carts as if for a journey. Inquiry elicited unhelpful answers: that they were going to visit relatives in the country, that with the approach of spring they needed to tend distant fields. Travis, alarmed, questioned them further, even threatening to lock them up till they told what they knew. At this point someone revealed what had started the exodus: Santa Anna's army was at the Medina River, less than ten miles away, and approaching fast.

Travis naturally sought to confirm the report. He ordered two good horsemen to ride toward the Medina till they made contact with the enemy or proved the rumor wrong. If they saw the Mexicans, they should gallop back at once.