THE ARMY IN THE MEXICAN WAR.

BY CHARLES M. HARVEY.

[Charles M. Harvey, editor; born Boston, Mass., 1848; has done editorial work for New York, Chicago and St. Louis papers and since 1886 has been associate editor and chief political writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and reviews, writing chiefly on political and sociological topics; author of History of the Republican Party, Handbook of American Politics, History of Missouri, etc.]

The demands of physical geography which necessitated the annexation of Florida forced the acquisition of Texas. The conditions prevailing at the time made the acquisition of Texas bring war. By gaining Florida-the western extension of the region of that name as well as the present state of Florida-the territory of the United States on its southern as well as its southwestern side was rounded out to the boundaries which nature prescribed. The United States obtained command of the border of the Atlantic down to Key West and the control of the shores of the gulf of Mexico from that point to the mouth of the Mississippi (and by the purchase of Louisiana sixteen years earlier the shore westward to the mouth of the Sabine). The accession of Texas extended the country's control of the north and west shore of that body of water from the mouth of the Sabine onward to the mouth of the Rio Grande, made the gulf of Mexico a United States lake and gave the country a southwestern extension to its natural line, or near it. The war which this accession of territory brought carried the country's western boundary to the Pacific ocean

Ethnical considerations reinforced the geographical influences in making Texas an object of much interest to the United States before the close of the first third of the last century. A few Americans had drifted to Texas even before the annexation of Louisiana in 1803. The conquest of Texas was one of the objects of the Burr conspiracy in 1806. Burr undoubtedly relied on the aid of the Americans in Texas in the accomplishment of his plans. Moses Austin, a native of Connecticut, but a resident of Missouri at that time and engaged in lead

mining, obtained permission in 1820, from the authorities in Mexico to establish a colony of 300 families in Texas. Dying in 1821, before the project was carried out, his son, Stephen F. Austin, in 1822, got a confirmation of the grant and planted the colony near the site of the present city called by his name. At this time Mexico had gained its independence from Spain, and Texas was part of Mexico. Austin's colony of Americans grew rapidly. Americans, too, under other auspices went to the new country.

Race troubles, however, began very early in the history of Texas. An overwhelming majority of the residents of that locality were Americans. By the Mexican constitution of 1824, however, the province of Coahuila, peopled almost wholly by Mexicans, was joined to Texas, the two becoming a single state, and as Coahuila had more inhabitants than Texas, the consolidated state was under the control of the Mexicans, between whom and the Americans a strong race prejudice had sprung up. The anti-American prejudice prevailing throughout the whole republic, Bustamente, the republic's president, issued a decree in 1830 forbidding further American immigration into Texas. Then the Texans, under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, tried to have their province separated from Coahuila and make a distinct state of the Mexican republic, but failed. In 1835 Mexico's president, Santa Anna, revoked the federal system established by the constitution of 1824, abolished the state divisions with the limited share of home rule which the states possessed, and transformed the government into a centralized republic, or rather into a military despotism, for this was the form which the government assumed when Santa Anna's revolution of 1832 put that potentate in the presidency.

War began sooner than any of the Texan leaders expected. The ports of Texas were declared by the Mexican government in September, 1835, to be in a state of blockade, and a Mexican force, under Gen. Cos, started about the same time to attempt to bring Texas into subjection. Landing at Matagorda, Cos reached Goliad with 500 men on October 2, 1835, and was at Bejar or San Antonio de Bejar, on the 9th. Cos's design was to capture certain proscribed Texans, and to drive many

other Texans out of the country. But the first blow had beer struck a few days earlier than this latest date. Col. Ugartechea, the Mexican commander at Bejar, before Cos's arrival, sent Lieut. Francisco Castenada with 100 men to seize a cannon at the town of Gonzales, on the Guadalupe river. Reaching the river on September 29, he found that the ferryboat had been removed, and he was unable to get over to that town. In Gonzales at this time many volunteers had gathered, and these crossed the river on the night of October 1, taking the cannon with them; attacked Castenada on October 2, and drove him and his men to Bejar. The loss on each side was trifling, but the fight occupies a prominent place in Texan history, nevertheless. It was the Lexington of the Texan war of independence.

The Yorktown of the war came a little over six months later. The committees of public safety appointed Austin temporary commander in chief of the Texas army, and he, Houston, Thomas F. Rusk, and others then or later distinguished in Texas history, went to Gonzales, where the first fight had taken place, and from which point an advance was at once made on Bejar, to capture Cos. A small party of Texans in the meantime, on October 9, made a dash, surprised Goliad, and captured it and its Mexican garrison. At the battle of Concepcion, just outside of San Antonio de Bejar, on October 27, a force of ninety two Texans, under Col. James Bowie and Capt. James W. Fannin, defeated a large body of Mexicans, and Bejar itself was stormed and captured on December 10, after a cannonade of six days, Cos and his army of 1,100 being allowed to march out and go beyond the Rio Grande. This fight cleared the last of the Mexican soldiers out of Texas.

The political part of the revolution began to take shape before the capture of San Antonio de Bejar. The consultation which Austin urged, which was composed of fifty five delegates from the different municipalities, met at San Felipe de Austin on November 3, 1835, and passed an ordinance on the 13th organizing a provisional government, of which Henry Smith was made governor, James W. Robinson lieutenant governor, and Sam Houston was chosen commander in chief of the provisional army, with the rank of major general.

Austin, B. T. Archer, and W. H. Wharton were sent as commissioners to the United States, from which country much of the money, men and inspiration of the revolution came. A convention of delegates met at Washington, on the Brazos, on March 1, 1836, and on the 2d issued a declaration of independence from Mexico, a provisional government was chosen, of which David G. Burnet was made president, and on the 17th the constitution was signed. This instrument, less liberal in this respect than Mexico's, established slavery in Texas.

Immediately before and immediately after these political events stirring military scenes were being enacted. Even before the news of Cos's surrender, on December 10, 1835, had reached Mexico, Santa Anna determined to invade Texas with an overwhelming force, to chastise that rebellious province. With an army of 5,000 men he arrived at Bejar on February 23, 1836, and took possession, Col. Travis, with his force of 145 Texans, retiring to the old mission of the Alamo, near by. Travis, determined neither to surrender nor to retreat, sent messengers for aid to different points in Texas. On March 1, Capt. J. W. Smith and thirty one men from Gonzales entered the Alamo unknown to the Mexicans, who had begun their siege, and shortly afterward J. B. Bonham, who had also already figured gallantly in the Texas war and who had been sent for aid to Goliad, returned. Among the other members of the garrison were Col. James Bowie, the hero of the battle of Concepcion, and David Crockett, the latter an ex-member of the Tennessee legislature, an ex-congressman and a veteran of the Creek war of 1813, in which he served with Jackson and Houston. Col. James Fannin, who had figured with Bowie in the battle of Concepcion, was not at the Alamo but met the same fate as the Alamo's defenders three weeks later.

The day of doom came for the Alamo and its gallant defenders on March 6, 1836. Enraged at the havoc caused among his men by Travis and his companions, Santa Anna prepared to carry the Alamo by storm on that day. At 4 o'clock on the morning of the 6th, 2,500 Mexicans divided into four parties, assaulted the Alamo on four sides, and, though repeatedly driven back by the handful of defenders, they at length surged through a breach in its walls made by their

cannon, and then the work of destruction was quickly finished. All-Travis, Crockett, Bonham, Bowie and the other defenders who were left alive on that fatal Sunday morning-were massacred immediately except eleven. Five of these were found secreted in the buildings and were brought before Santa Anna, where, by his orders, they were shot. The lives of the other six-two American women, their two children, a negro boy and a Mexican woman-were spared. The loss to the Texans was about 180, their whole force, with the exceptions mentioned. The Mexican who superintended the burial of Santa Anna's men places their loss at 1,600 killed or died of wounds, while other authorities put the number at a smaller figure.

Just three weeks later another tragedy was enacted. Col. Fannin with 300 men was surprised and surrounded by Gen. Urrea, with about 1,000 Mexicans, near the Coleto river on March 19, and, after a desperate battle, in which they repulsed the Mexicans, they surrendered on the 20th, when 500 of a reinforcement reached Urrea, the agreement being that they were to be treated as prisoners of war. The prisoners were taken to Goliad, where, by Santa Anna's orders, all were commanded to be executed except four physicians and their assistants. The order was carried out, though strongly against the wishes of Urrea and of Portilla, the Mexican commandant, at Goliad, on the following day, Palm Sunday, March 27. When the Texans learned the fate decreed for them, many of them rushed through the Mexican lines, and it is believed that twenty seven of them escaped.

The Alamo and Goliad atrocities, which constitute the reddest tints on Santa Anna's crimson career, cast a gloom from the Rio Grande to the Sabine. It was the Valley Forge period of the Texan war of independence. Its Yorktown, however, was nearer at hand than any patriot had dared to hope. Houston, the commander in chief of the Texan army, retreating in March and April, 1836, before overwhelming numbers of Mexicans, and waiting for promised batteries of artillery which never came, excited dissatisfaction among many of his troops. It was lack of caution, coupled with contempt for the fighting qualities of the Mexicans, which cooped up Travis in the Alamo and corralled Fannin at the