Chapter 1: A Call to Arms

The case can be made that the war for Texas independence began over a single cannon.  Being a settler in the Texas coastal plains region in the 1820’s was no easy task.  Indian raids were a constant threat and Mexico was in need of men with the pioneer spirit to tame the region.  Generous offers of land proved ineffective in encouraging Mexican families to move to the untamed region.

Beginning in 1821, Moses Austin, and later his son Stephen, was granted permission from Spain to distribute land among former U.S. citizens and some 300 families answered the call. In these early years of settlement, loyalty to the Mexican government was strong.  In the spirit of cooperation, Green C. DeWitt named his colony after Rafael Gonzales, Governor of Coahuila y Tejas.  In 1831, they were rewarded with a six pound cannon to assist in defending themselves against the many Comanche, Kiowa and Apache raids.

In 1830, the Mexican government passed what is known as the Colonization Law forbidding further immigration from the U.S.  A rather ironic action considering today’s problems of illegal immigration from Mexico.  It was also rumored that Mexico would soon begin sending their convicts to Texas.  Settlers feared Texas would become little more than a Mexican penal colony.

President-General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had come into power in 1824 and had overthrown the constitutional government.  Hence the flag which would eventually represent the Texas fight for independence, the Mexican flag emblazoned with the year, 1824 across it. Santa Anna ordered all illegal settlers expelled and all Texians disarmed.  Stephen F. Austin journeyed to Mexico City to plead for separate statehood for Texas and was imprisoned for his efforts.  He was released two years later, convinced that resistance to centralist tyranny was the colonists’ only recourse.

In 1835, when centralists in Zacatecas rose in revolt, Santa Anna’s forces crushed the rebellion and rewarded his soldiers with two days of rape and pillage in which more than two thousand defenseless noncombatants were killed. In September of that same year, at the DeWitt colony, a Mexican soldier bludgeoned a store keeper with his musket.  This event turned the tide on the loyalty the colonists had towards Mexico.  Things came to a final head when Colonel Domingo Ugartechea, commander at San Antonio de Bexar, recalled the Gonzales cannon.

It bears mentioning here that at this time, there were two main roads that led into Texas from the Mexican interior. The first was the Atascosito Road, which stretched from Matamoros on the Rio Grande northward through San Patricio, Goliad, Victoria, and finally into the heart of Austin's colony. The second was the Old San Antonio Road, a camino real that crossed the Rio Grande at Paso de Francia (the San Antonio Crossing) and wound northeastward through San Antonio de Béxar, Bastrop, Nacogdoches, San Augustine, and across the Sabine River into Louisiana. Two forts blocked these approaches into Texas: Presidio La Bahía (Nuestra Señora de Loreto Presidio) at Goliad and the Alamo at San Antonio. Each installation functioned as a frontier picket guard, ready to alert the Texas settlements of an enemy advance.

The cannon became an issue of honor and symbolism which the Texian settlers rallied around. They had no intention of handing over the cannon without a fight and promptly escorted the detachment sent to retrieve it, out of town.

Ugartechea responded by dispatching Lieutenant Francisco Castaneda and a hundred dragoons to retrieve the cannon. The troops arrived at Gonzales on September 29 and found themselves facing 18 armed Texians. A standoff insued over the next couple of days, during which, several other settlers arrived.  A Coushatta Indian scout told Castaneda the Texian force numbered some 140 men. Shortly after midnight on October 2, a heavy fog set in and the Texians, eager for a fight, used the dense cover to close the distance on the Mexican camp.  Around 3 o’clock, as they neared the camp, a dog yelped and gave away their position.  A Mexican carbine broke the night silence and a Texian horse reared and threw its rider.  The thrown horseman suffered a bloody nose, and was the first casualty of the Texas Revolution.

 

No one else was wounded in the initial fighting.  After day break, the Texians set up the cannon.  They raised a white banner with the image of the cannon painted on it and the words, “Come and Take it!”   They then proceeded to fire the first cannon shot of the revolution across the GuadalupeRiver.  By the time they were able to reload the cannon, the Mexican force had left the field and returned to San Antonio.  Later, historians would loosely term the event, the “battle” of Gonzales. Some sources indicate the Mexican forces did suffer one or possibly two casualties.  The Texians suffered one bloody nose.

In Matagorda, some twenty volunteers had formed a militia to oppose the Mexicans.  They soon found themselves facing General Martin Perfecto do Cos, who was Santa Anna’s brother-in-law.  He had been sent to Texas to expel the troublemakers and disarm all colonists.  The threat of losing their ability to defend themselves alarmed even the peaceful colonists, and even a large number of tejanos, many of which were staunch federalists.

The Texians decided to attack the Mexican garrison at La Bahia, near Goliad. On the way, they picked up numerous other volunteers.  It is believed there may have been as many as 125 Texians when they finally reached La Bahia.

While resting at Victoria, the Texian militia drafted and 49 members signed the “Compact of Volunteers under Collinsworth, dated Oct. 9, 1835. The compact laid to rest the fears of the local tejanos by declaring their desire was simply to stand firm to the Republican institutions of the Constitution of 1824.

Only about 50 men guarded the presidio at La Bahia, and on Oct. 10, and in less than 30 minutes, the fort fell to the Texians. Little was gained by the battle as the fort at La Bahia held few military provisions, but the ease in which the fort was taken went far in bolstering the moral of the Texian forces. With confidence high, they were eager to continue the fight.

Cos had moved his forces into Bexar to join with Ugartechea, but they now faced serious supply problems with the fall of La Bahia.  Now their replenishments must take the long and slow overland route from the Mexican interior.

On October 12, the Texian forces began their march on Bexar. When they arrived at Salado Creek 5 miles east of San Antonio, on October 19, they found themselves ill equipped to take the city. The Texian forces lacked artillery and numbers to break through the breastworks. Cos had barricaded the town well and was prepared for the Texians arrival.

But the Texian forces had continued to grow.  On Oct. 15, they were joined by Placido Benavides and thirty mounted rancheros. On October 22, Juan Seguin arrived with word that many of the Mexican citizens of Bexar also wished to join the Texian forces.

General Austin, who was now commanding the Texian forces outside of Bexar, needed a more efficient base headquarters, closer into the town.  He divided forces into three reconnaissance forces, placing them under the command of James Bowie, James Fannin and Andrew Briscoe.

On October 27, Jim Bowie with his forces, led by Juan Seguin and some of his ranchero cavalry serving as guides, rode up the San Antonio River. They examined two other missions before arriving at nightfall at Mission Purisima Concepcion, where they found the spot they were looking for. There was a horseshoe shaped bend in the river, a tree lined riverbank about 10 feet above the river, and the land on the opposite bank lacked cover. A perfect spot for Bowie’s forces to defend. Bowie pitched camp on the bank of the river that night and sent a dispatch back to Austin at Mission Espada.

General Cos had learned of Bowie’s encampment and knew he was far separated from the main forces at Espada. He roused his men that night and rode them right into the trap Bowie had set. As the dawn burned away the early morning fog, the battle at Concepcion began around eight that morning. Texian sharpshooters soon silenced the Mexican cannons and went about the business of picking off the Mexican foot soldiers who were ineffective with their inferior muskets. They soon had the Mexican soldiers in the center of the horseshoe, caught in a crossfire.

The battle ended with the Mexican forces fleeing the field, abandoning their cannon.  The Texians turned the artillery and peppered them with their own grapeshot. It is documented that the Mexican forces suffered some seventy-six killed or wounded, the Texians had but one casualty. The relative ease of victory at Concepcion, while certainly an overwhelming victory, would serve to give the Texians overconfidence in their long rifles and contempt for their adversaries. This would prove faulty thinking.

While the Texians celebrated the end of October with the victory at Concepcion, November would prove to be a month of disarray. While most of the old settlers were fighting simply to restore the Constitution of 1824, newcomers were clamoring for a complete separation from Mexico.

Austin found himself having a difficult time of holding his forces together, until his health finally got the best of him.  On November 24, Austin relinquished his command to Colonel Edward Burleson and left for San Felipe and the United States.  By early December, Burleson found his army melting around him.

The Texas cause at San Antonio de Bexar may have ended if not for the arrival of Ben Milam on December 4. Milam was enraged to discover the sorry shape of the Texian forces and soon roused the remaining volunteers to follow him in the storming of Bexar. Over the next four days, the siege of Bexar ended and the battle began.  It proved costly as Ben Milam was killed along with thirteen other Texians, but the Mexican forces suffered as many as 150 killed or wounded (some sources say as many as 300, but this is doubtful and unverifiable).

After their eventual surrender, Cos and his men were allowed to leave with their weapons and ten rounds of ammunition.  They were allowed to recuperate in Bexar for six days before returning to Mexico.  In return, Cos and his men pledged that they would “in no way oppose the re-establishment of the Federal Constitution of 1824.”  San Antonio de Bexar had been won by the Texians and the Mission San Antonio de Valero, the Alamo, soon became their home.