"Life on the Precipice"

The Mier Expedition: Drawing of the Black Bean
Frederic Remington, 1896
The Museum of Fine Arts - Houston, Texas

"Life on the Precipice: The Republic of Texas"

Factors Producing Vulnerability
The Santa Fe Expedition
Mexican Retaliation
The Somervell/Mier Expedition and the "Black Bean Incident"
Impact on Annexation

___________________________________________________________________________________

Texas revolutionairies, having lost every truly significant military engagement with Mexican forces from the time Santa Anna's armies crossed the Rio Grande River, rejoiced at the miracle of San Jacinto. In just seventeen minutes the course of the entire revolution to break free from Mexico reversed itself, the main Mexican forces had been routed, and Santa Anna himself had been captured and was their prisoner. Before he was released, Texans forced him to sign two treaties at Velasco by which he agreed to an end to the hostilities, a prisoner exchange, the evacuation of Mexican forces from Texas, and a promise to support on his return to Mexico a treaty whereby Mexico would recognize Texas independence with the Rio Grande River as its southern boundary. In the aftermath of San Jacinto, however, Texans found that defeating a Mexican army was much easier than truly gaining and maintaining independence. For ten years after San Jacinto, Texas tottered on the very precipice of disaster.

In many ways, Texans were incredibly lucky to hang on during the decade it took to achieve annexation by the United States after the miracle of San Jacinto. Several factors left the Republic extremely vulnerable. First, despite Santa Anna's signature on the Treaties of Velasco [accomplished under duress], Mexico steadfastly refused to accept the loss of what she still considered her northernmost province, warned that she would eventually put down the rebellion, and invaded Texas on several different occasions.

Second, Texas was vulnerable because its population was so very small and the area to be controlled and defended was so very, very large. In the aftermath of San Jacinto there were but 39,000 Texans - 30,000 Anglos, 4,000 Hispanics, and 5,000 blacks. This incredibly small population was called upon to defend an area which stretched from the Sabine River halfway to the Pacific Ocean and from the Rio Grande halfway to Canada.

Third, the Republic would be especially difficult to defend successfully because so much of it was unsettled, open frontier. For all intents and purposes, perhaps only fifteen percent of the total area claimed was actually settled and occupied by citizens. Texans would learn what the Spanish and Mexican before them had - it's almost impossible to defend vast stretches of unoccupied territory.

Finally, currency and financial problems plagued the Republic during its entire existence. Texans found it difficult to defend their newly-won independence when they could not afford a large, adequately-equipped military force and instead had to depend upon temporary volunteers who were never well-equipped and were rarely willing to obey orders or directions for very long. Given these considerations, it is no wonder Texans were so desparate for annexation by the United States.

Perhaps you can see the precariousness of life during the years of the Republic best by examining two particular cases - the ill-fated Texas expedition against Santa Fe in 1841 and the Mexican invasions of Texas in 1842 along with the tragic Texas counterattack.

During Mirabeau Lamar's presidency, Texans sought to impose their control on the westernmost provinces they claimed to rule - the Santa Fe area. It was presumed by many Texans that the Mexican government could not defend the area and that the residents there would greet the Texas government and its representatives with open arms. Furthermore, Texans would benefit tremendously if they could control the commerce between Americans and residents of Santa Fe that had developed along the Santa Fe Trail. These motivations influenced President Lamar, who encouraged and authorized the expedition despite Congress' refusal to finance it. Colonel Hugh McLeod shared Lamar's unwarranted optimism. McLeod led the 270-man military escort accompanying the several commissioners appointed by Lamar to negotiate acceptance of Texan control. The audacity of these men is illustrated by the fact that as they departed from their rendezvous point just north of Austin on Brushy Creek not one of the 270 had ever been to Santa Fe, knew of its location, or had any real idea about the physical nature of the terrain to be crossed to the northwest.

Keep in mind that this was a volunteer force not a regular army. They were ill-provisioned and totally unprepared for what lay ahead of them. Marching thirteen hundred miles to their distant target, they were repeatedly attacked by hostile Indians. Moreover, they were decimated by the Great Plains environment. Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion befell them before they staggered into Santa Fe where they were quickly and easily captured by a Mexican army. The people of Santa Fe refused to help them and wanted no part of the Texas government located so very far away. The survivors of the expedition (many had died along the way) were marched in chains to Mexico City where they would remain in the fortress prison of Perote until April, 1842.

As historian T. R. Fehrenbach states: "The Spanish had learned some centuries earlier that troops could not march at will across the High Plains; now, the Texans, who had never explored the region, had to learn their own lessons, painfully, The province of New Mexico was weak enough; the Texas government had claimed everything east of the Rio Grande - but the territory was effectively beyond their reach."

Lamar's expedition against Santa Fe was not only an unmitigated failure, it provoked Santa Anna, once again president of Mexico. Partially in retaliation for the Santa Fe expedition and partially to strengthen Mexico's continuing claim on Texas in international diplomatic circles, Santa Anna sent five hundred troops under General Rafael Vasquez to harrass Texans in March of 1842. In a show of force not really designed to reconquer Texas, the Mexican troops attacked and briefly captured San Antonio, Goliad, and Refugio. They were unopposed - Texans didn't even know they had crossed the Rio Grande River until the attacks upon these three settlements. Knowing how weak and vulnerable they were, many Texans began fleeing to the east for the safety of the United States in what many have described as a repeat of the "Runaway Scrape" of 1836. When volunteers swarmed to retake San Antonio, they found that the Mexican army had already withdrawn. The Texas Congress passed a declaration of war against Mexico. This action, however, was vetoed by President Sam Houston who had resumed the Republic's presidency. He felt that Texas had neither the money nor the manpower to wage all-out war with Mexico and any such war could cost Texas its fragile independence. His attitude was to "let sleeping dogs lie" and not go looking for trouble.

G. W. Hockley, the Republic's Secretary of War, addressed this point when he later wrote:

Those who were willing to enlist, were for the most part utterly destitute of means to fit themselves for the field - the government was equally so - it could neither furnish the means to equip and mount a force, nor sustain them for any length in the field. The consequence was a second surprise of San Antonio. San Antonio was indeed surprised a second time. On September 11, 1842 General Adrian Woll, at the head of a Mexican army of 1400 men, attacked and captured the town located in an area referred to by Texans themselves as "West Texas". So unaware were San Antonians of Woll's approach that the Mexican force captured the judge, jury, and attorney of the district court then in session as well as many other prominent citizens. That Woll and his forces could cross hundreds of miles of Texas territory before anyone even knew they had crossed the Rio Grande River speaks volumes about how sparsely settled and indefensible vast sections of the Republic were.

When word of the second attack spread like wildfire, volunteer militia began forming. Matthew Caldwell responded with 85 men who were joined by others along the way until they totalled 225. One of the groups that formed organized in Fayette County at La Grange under the leadership of Captain Nicholas Dawson. Unfortunately, before he and his fellow volunteers could rendezvous with Caldwell in the Alamo City, they were intercepted by four hundred Mexican troops alongside Salado Creek near San Antonio. Faced with an impossible situation, they still foolishly chose to fight until Mexican cannon fire decimated their ranks. Dawson then raised a white flag and the Texans laid down their arms in an attempt to surrender, but it was too late. The Mexican cavalrymen continued their charge, killing Dawson and thirty-five others. Ironically and tragically, the Dawson "Massacre" occured at the same time that other Texans under Colonel Matthew Caldwell were only two miles away, trapped the main force of the Mexican army, and won a decisive victory.

Despite Caldwell's victory, General Woll and his prisoners from San Antonio marched back to Mexico. A number of Texans, throwing caution to the wind given their lack of preparation and equipment and acting without government support, decided to counterthrust in an attempt to rescue prisoners and retaliate for the attack upon San Antonio. Volunteers assembled under General Alexander Somervell and marched southward where they captured Laredo and then Guerrero. On December 19, 1842, however, Somervell ordered the expedition abandoned, feeling that too much time had passed to catch Woll and that remaining on the border was dangerous. Only 189 of his men obeyed his order; over 300 men refused to retreat, deciding instead to continue the expedition under the leadership of William F. Fisher. After some spying and preparation, Fisher and 261 Texans crossed the Rio Grande River on Christmas Day, 1842 and attacked the Mexican border town of Mier. There, outnumbered ten to one, the Texans fought the forces of General Pedro Ampudia, losing only thirty men while killing some six hundred Mexican soldiers. Yet, they were hungry and thirsty and had nearly exhausted their ammunition. They therefore surrendered, according to them, as "prisoners of war". Shortly thereafter, the Texans began the long march to Mexico City to be thrown into Perote Prison with the prisoners taken by Woll's troops in San Antonio.

As they marched under the worst of circumstances to Camargo, Reynosa, Matamoras, and Monterrey, they began plotting to make a break for freedom and Texas. Paraded before the citizenry of each town as the spoils of war and forced to eat dogs captured along the way, the urge to escape intensified with each passing mile. Plans were formalized as they passed Riconda and Saltillo on the way to San Luis Potosi. Finally, at Hacienda Salado, approximately 125 miles from Saltillo, the Texans made their break. Bigfoot Wallace, a legendary Texas Ranger and a member of the Mier Expedition, later described the escape attempt.

When the signal was given, a yell that might be heard for miles, out we poured from our dens like a pack of ravenous wolves. In an instant, the sentinals who were stationed at the doors were knocked down and trampled underfoot, and we dashed forward as rapidly as possible to where the guns were stacked. The Mexican soldiers made a rush for them at the same moment, and a fierce struggle took place for their possession. As soon as we had secured the guns, the Mexicans fled in the wildest confusion, leaving ten of their number dead on the ground. Losing only five men, the Texans captured all the Mexican guns and equipment as well as mules and horses.

Very shortly thereafter, however, the Texans probably regretted their escape. With few supplies and only half the horses needed to transport their number, they set out for Texas. Making a tragic mistake almost immediately, they left the main road to elude any Mexican troops. They thus ventured into an area where they didn't know their way and could find neither food nor water. Soon they were in desperate trouble. I'll let Bigfood Wallace describe their plight.

It was deemed impossible to take our poor jaded horses any further through the rugged mountainous country ahead of us, and as there was not a blade of grass in all that barren region, we determined, as a matter of humanity, to kill them all, and thus save them from the miseries of a prolonged death from starvation...When the horses had all been killed, we selected a few of them that were in the best condition (and a decent Mexican buzzard would have disdained to whet his bill upon any of them), skinned and cut them into small strips, which we "jerked" over fires...

...the suffering of the men became so intolerable that many of them, to relieve themselves of all superfluous weight, threw away their guns and equipment, and what remained of their rations of jerked meat - - for hunger was not felt nor feared - - our whole craving was for water! water! Many of the men gave out entirely, and laid down by the wayside to die, but no one paid any attention to them, for great suffering, such as we were enduring, is apt to render men callous and unfeeling toward each other. Still the rest of us struggled on, hoping that our strength might hold out until we came to water....

If you want to know what that 'nectar' is which is said to be imbibed by the gods alone, travel for six days under a burning sun, without a drop of water to cool your 'coppers,' and then take a long swig at a Mexican gourd, filled to the brim with the pure element. Then, and not till then, can you fully appreciate its great superiority over all other drinks.

Just as Wallace described, the Texans finally got their drink of water but only after mistakenly staggering into a camp of Mexican soldiers. The Texans, without weapons, put up no resistance. Over the next three days the Mexican soldiers captured all but thirteen of the escapees. Of the thirteen, only three made good their escape to Texas - - ten died in the mountains. After their capture, the Texans were returned to Salado.

President Santa Anna decreed that all 176 of the recaptured Texans were to be executed. However, when Governor Fransisco Mexia of Coahuila refused to carry out the order, foreign ministers to Mexico succeeded in getting the decree modified so that only every tenth man was to be executed. Thus it was that the Black Bean Incident took place. According to Bigfoot Wallace:

...a squad of Mexican officers came into the corral, proceeded by a soldier bearing an earthen vessel. One of them proceeded to count out so many white beans, which he poured into the vessel, and then dropped in the fatal seventeen black ones on top of them, covering the whole thing with a thick napkin or cloth. Those who drew black beans seemed to care very little about it. Occasionally one would remark, as he drew out the fatal color, "Well, boys, the jig is up for me"; or, "They've taken my sign in at last."

Those that had drawn black beans were kept separate from the rest of us, and, in a few moments after the drawing was concluded, they were marched off in two squads, and shortly afterwards repeated volleys of musketry were heard, and we knew that their cares and troubles were forever ended in this world.

After being forced to view "the bloody and stiffened forms" of their slain comrades to discourage further escape attempts, the survivors once again resumed their march for the capitol of Mexico. Resistence temporarily ceased. Arriving in Mexico City, they were incarcerated at Perote Prison with the prisoners General Woll had taken in San Antonio. For nine months they were pressed into service repairing the streets of the capitol, a source of ridicule among the Mexican citizenry.

But even after the execution of their comrades, the Mier men refused to give up their dreams of escape. Shortly after the Bexar prisoners were freed by decree of Santa Anna, sixteen of the Mier prisoners tunneled their way out of Perote and eventually made their way to freedom without being recaptured. Over the next six months, pressure from the United States Congress, ex-President Andrew Jackson, and various foreign ministers induced Santa Anna and the Mexican government to release the Mier prisoners. On September 16, 1844 - - two years after the attack on San Antonio - - the last of the Mier men left Mexico City for Texas.

During the subsequent war between the United States and Mexico, Texas troops were once again in Mexico. They located the graves of the men shot at Hacienda Salado, exhumed their bodies, and transported them to La Grange after the war. During the same year of 1848, the remains of the Dawson Massacre victims were exhumed from their temporary graves along Salado Creek and returned to La Grange by N. W. Faison, himself a survivor of the ill-considered rescue attempt in San Antonio. Sam Houston and other prominent Texas gathered at La Grange on September 18, 1848, the sixth anniversary of the Dawson Massacre, to reinter the remains of the victims of the Dawson Massacre and the Black Bean Incident in a burial with full military honors.

The ill-fated Santa Fe and Mier expeditions reflect the fragile nature of life during the years of the Republic of Texas. While Texans even today brag of the years of the Republic and some even dream of a return to those days, Texans of that day and time had very little desire to remain an endangered independent nation. Annexation by the United States would mean inclusion in that nation's economic system, a stable currency, and military support for defense of Texas' border to the south as well as on the Indian frontier. Realizing that their independence was fragile and that any well-planned, full-blown Mexican invasion to retake Texas could well be successful, Texans voted overwhelming in favor of annexation by the United States when offered the chance in 1845. Indeed, the vote was 4,254 to 257, a margin of over 16 to 1. Nationalistic chauvanism took a back seat to security. Texans crawled back from the precipice and the Republic of Texas was at an end.