Dac Crossley's Western Blog

The Massacre at Goliad

Today is the anniversary of the slaughter of unarmed Texas solders who’d surrendered to Mexican General Jose de Urrea. The General had promised to send them to New Orleans. But General Santa Ana countermanded Urrea and insisted that all rebels should be shot.

The prisoners were marched out of the fort at Goliad for a few miles, then lined up. Mexican soldiers opened rifle fire. A few Texans managed to escape the slaughter, swimming across Coleto Creek, and carried the news to General Sam Houston. And thus the battle cry at San Jacinto: “Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad!”

I blame in all on James W. Fannin, one of the most inept officers ever to be placed in command of troops. Fannin intended to march to the aid of the Alamo defenders, but he couldn’t get organized. When he did take to the trail he halted after a few miles when a wagon broke down. And he discovered he’d forgotten to bring food for his troops. Back to the fort and start over.

Eventually Fannin bivouacked in a small depression, where Urrea surrounded him, taking the high ground. Fannin believed that surrender was his only option.

Fannin was executed at Goliad, shot when seated in a chair because of his leg wound. He requested that he be shot in the heart and not the head, that his belongings be returned to his family, and that he given a Christian burial. In fact he was shot in the head. Mexican soldiers appropriated his belongings and threw his body onto a heap of corpses.

James W. Fannin’s name survived him, in a way. The State of Georgia named a County after him.

Dac Crossley
March 27, 2017.

“Fate is a rat.” – Leo Durocher.

Springtime in Texas, 1836

The month of March. I can hear my mother’s voice in my ear, as she tells me of the Texans burning their homes and fleeing from Santa Ana and the Mexican army, after the Fall of the Alamo.

Texans didn’t have much time to enjoy new grass and bluebonnets, early springtime in 1836. Citizens of the new Republic were headed toward Louisiana as fast as the could go. Swollen streams from spring rains weren’t helping a bit. That race away from Santa Ana’s army has been called the “runaway scrape.” And runaway it was. Right in the middle of those runners was the Texas Army, too.

Santa Ana was on the move; nobody knew exactly the Mexicans were but clearly they intended to attack. Texans burned the towns as they ran for safety. The President of the Republic, David Burnet, called on Houston to stand and fight. The General promised they’d stand at the next river crossing. And the next. But the army kept retreating.

March, 1836 found the Texans at the Rio Brazos, disgusted with Houston’s continued retreat. President Burnet and his cabinet abandoned their capitol, Washington-On-The-Brazos, and scooted north. The village of San Felipe, Steven Austin’s own town was abandoned. That was too much!

Texan morale hit rock bottom. Soldiers questioned Houston’s continued retreats. Captain Moseley Baker insisted on keeping his company on the Brazos to protect the San Felipe crossing. And Wiley Martin started his company down the river to defend the Fort Bend crossing. When it became clear that those men were determined, General Houston ordered them to do what they were gonna do anyway. No fool, he.

Houston was left with some 500 men. He began the trek northward to Groce’s Plantation, promising to fight the Mexican army there. The Texans had heard such promises before. But they went with General Houston.

April would turn out to be a happier month for the Texans.

Dac Crossley
March 21, 2017

“One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” – Henry Ward Beecher.

We, The Mechanics

I’ve been pondering this rapid sea change in our contemporary society. It’s all happening so fast, more than we can follow, for those of us of a certain age. And I think it might be because us elders are, in essence, mechanics.

My parents were among the first of the automobile generation. No horse-and-buggies like the grandparents. Cars were simple machines. You did basic repairs yourself. The old meat grinders, coffee grinders, all hand cranked like Model T’s and Model A’s. Electricity was for lights and a few motor-driven gadgets. Things you could fix yourself.

You see what I mean? We were all mechanics.

As electronic devices came along, they still followed a mechanical mind-set. Components were assembled – vacuum tubes, condensers, resistors, all connected by wires on a circuit board. (And here’s another vanishing profession: TV repairmen. Born in the 1950s, died in the 1980s. Did they re-train?}.

Today we live in such a full-blown electronic age, where gadgets are throw-away. This year’s model is much advanced; you must have it, toss the old one. Our cars, our houses, our lives all overseen by devices we don’t quite understand. We talk, we write, we learn in strange new avenues.

Where are we all going? Are we no longer mechanics? I’m an old ecologist. Modern times are giving me the willies. What about you?

By the way – my grandmother would feel at home in my kitchen. Gas range, electric refrigerator, toaster, all familiar to her. But not my main implement – the microwave.

Dac Crossley
March 15, 2017

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” – Henry David Thoreau.

Fall of the Alamo

March 6, 1836, 81 years ago, the Alamo fortress was overrun by soldiers of the Mexican Army under the leadership of General Antonio López de Santa Anna. The general called it “a small affair,” but it became a myth of epic portions.

“They all died bravely, fighting to the last man.” So the story ran, as told by Suzanna Dickinson, a survivor. That’s the narrative my mother told me, the tale I read in “Texas History Movies.” Then, in 1955, came the diary of Mexican General José Enrique de la Peña.

It was my mother who first told me of de la Peña’s account, which told of Davy Crockett captured alive and executed. Some Texans broke out of the back of the Alamo compound and attempted to escape, only to be run down by Mexican lancers.

Some Texas historians hit the roof. “A forgery.” The surviving version does appear to be a copy of an earlier document. Today, de la Peña’s diary has been accepted as authentic by many – but not by all!

There were other Texan survivors of the Alamo battle. Women and children who hid in the chapel. At least one man who insisted he was a captive, not a Texan fighter. Some of these survivors were interviewed in the early 1900’s by a reporter on the San Antonio Express. One or two were obvious liars. Others have the ring of truth. These reports are chronicled in a volume, “Eyewitness to the Alamo,” by historian Bill Groneman. There were always those rumors, in San Antonio, that Davy Crockett had been executed. Walter Lord, in his definitive Alamo history, “A Time To Sand,” included the Crockett surrender story.

The Alamo story lives in the hearts of us old Texans. And it continues. Saving the site from destruction, the battle between Adina de Zavala and Clara Driscoll, the ownership contest between the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and the state government.

I don’t fail to visit the Alamo when I’m back in San Antonio. I join the gawking tourists. “Hats off. No pictures inside!”

Dac Crossley
March 6, 2017

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that in never occurs to you to question them,” – Adina de Zavala.

Happy Birthday, Sam Houston

On March 2, 1836, Sam Houston turned 41 years old. And the 41 delegates to the Convention gave him a present. They declared independence from Mexico. The Republic of Texas was born, on Sam Houston’s birthday.

Meanwhile, down in San Antonio at the Alamo, courier James Bonham brought the news that Colonel Fannin would NOT be coming to their aid. The Alamo defenders were on their own. Sam Houston had ordered them to blow up the Alamo and join him at Washington-On-The-Brazos. They refused.

Houston was one of the more remarkable characters in American history. He was the only person to act as Governor of two different states. He became President of a foreign nation. A one-time member of the US House of Representatives (he was censured for taking his walking stick to a fellow Congressman) and a member of the Senate, representing the state of Texas.

He was also an adopted Cherokee, a famous drunkard, and possibly a bigamist – although his Cherokee wife, Tiana Rogers, may have been an informal arrangement.

Sam Houston refused to sign the Articles of Confederation. He remained loyal to the United States, and sat out the Civil War in Huntsville, Texas until his death.

His most memorable achievement? The eighteen minutes it took the little Texas army to defeat Mexican General Santa Ana, thus ensuring the survival of the Republic of Texas.

Happy Birthday, Sam.

Dac Crossley
March 2, 2017. And happy birthday, Bruce W.

“All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.” – Sam Houston.