The road to glory

by E. Alexander Powell

Houston quickly climbed the ladder of promotion, obtaining a commission within a year after he had enlisted as a private. He first showed the stern stuff of which he was made when taking part in General Jackson’s campaign against the Creek Indians. His thigh pierced by an arrow during the storming of the Indian breastworks at Tohopeka, Houston asked a fellow officer to draw it out. But it was sunk so deeply in the flesh that the attempt to extract it brought on an alarming flow of blood, whereupon the officer refused to proceed, fearing that Houston would bleed to death. Thereupon the fiery youngster drew his sword. “Draw it out or I’ll run you through!” he said. Out the arrow came. General Jackson, who had witnessed the incident and had noted the seriousness of the young officer’s wound, ordered him to the rear, but Houston, mindful of his mother’s parting injunction, disregarded the order and plunged again into the thick of the battle. It was a breach of discipline, however, to which Andrew Jackson shut his eyes.

Opportunity once more knocked loudly at young Houston’s door when the Creeks made their final stand at Horseshoe Bend. After the main body of the Indians had been destroyed, a party of warriors barricaded themselves in a log cabin built over a ravine in such a situation that the guns could not be brought to bear. The place must be taken by storm, and Jackson called for volunteers. Houston was the only man who responded. Snatching a rifle from a soldier, he shouted, “Come on, men! Follow me!” and dashed toward the cabin. But no one had the courage to follow him into the ravine of death. Running in zigzags, to disconcert the Indian marksmen, he actually reached the cabin before he fell with a shattered arm and two rifle-bullets through his shoulder. It was just the sort of deed to win the heart of the grim old hero of New Orleans, who until his death remained one of Houston’s staunchest friends and admirers.

Seeing but scant prospects of promotion in the piping times of peace which now ensued, Houston resigned from the army, took up the study of law, and was admitted to the bar within a year from the time he opened his first law book. He practised for a few years with marked success, gave up the law for the more exciting field of politics, was elected to Congress when only thirty, and four years later became Governor of Tennessee. As the result of an unhappy marriage, and deeply wounded by the outrageous and baseless accusations made by his political opponents, he resigned the governorship and went into voluntary exile. In his trouble he turned his face toward the wigwam of his adopted father, Oolooteka, who had become the head chief of his tribe and had moved from the banks of the Tennessee to the falls of the Arkansas. Though eleven eventful years had passed, the old chiefs affection for his white son had not diminished, and the exile found a warm welcome awaiting him in the wigwams and beside the council-fires of his adopted people. Learning of the frauds by which the Indian agents were enriching themselves at the expense of the nation’s wards, Houston, who had adopted Indian dress, went to Washington and laid the facts before Secretary Calhoun, who, instead of thanking him, rebuked him for presuming to appear before him in the dress of an Indian. Thereupon Houston turned his back on the secretary, and went straight to his old-time friend, President Jackson, who promptly saw to it that the guilty officials were punished. When the story of Calhoun’s criticism of Houston’s costume was repeated to the President, that rough old soldier remarked dryly: “I’m glad there is one man of my acquaintance who was made by the Almighty and not by the tailor.”

After three years of forest life among the Indians Houston decided to emigrate to Texas and become a ranchman, setting out with a few companions in December, 1832, for San Antonio. The romantic story of Houston’s self-imposed exile had resulted in making him a national figure, and the news that he had come to Texas spread among the settlers like fire in dry grass. Before reaching Nacogdoches he learned that he had been unanimously elected a member of the convention which had been called to meet at Austin in the spring of 1833 to draft a constitution for Texas. From that time onward his story is that of his adopted country. When the rupture with Mexico came, in 1835, as a result of the attempt to disarm the settlers at Gonzales, Houston was chosen commander of the volunteer forces to be raised in eastern Texas, and after the battle at the Mission of the Immaculate Conception he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan army.

When Santa Anna, flushed by his bloody successes at the Alamo and Goliad, started to invade central Texas, in the spring of 1836, Houston, who had been able to raise a force of barely five hundred untrained and ill-armed men, sullenly retreated before the advance of the dictator. On the 18th of April, however, his plan of campaign was suddenly reversed by the capture of two Mexicans, from whom he learned what he had not positively known before: that Santa Anna himself was with the advance column and that he was temporarily cut off from the other divisions of his army. The chance for which Houston was waiting had come, and he seized it before it could get away. If Texas was to be free, if the Lone Star flag and not the flag with the emblem of the serpent and the buzzard was to wave over the region above the Rio Grande, it was now or never. There were no half-way measures with Sam Houston; he determined to stake everything upon a single throw. If he won, Texas would be free; if he lost he and his men could only go down fighting, as their fellows had gone before them. Pushing on to a point near the mouth of the San Jacinto, where it empties into the Bay of Galveston, he carefully selected the spot for his last stand, mounted the two brass cannon known as “the Twin Sisters,” which had been presented to the Texans by Northern sympathizers, and sat down to wait for the coming of “the Napoleon of the West.” On the morning of the 20th of April his pickets fell back before the Mexican advance, and the two great antagonists, Houston and Santa Anna, at last found themselves face to face. The dictator had with him fifteen hundred men; Houston had less than half that number—but the Texans boasted that “two to one was always fair.”

At daybreak on the 21st Houston sent for his chief of scouts, the famous Deaf Smith,[D] and ordered him to choose a companion, take axes, and secretly destroy the bridge across the San Jacinto. As the bridge was the only means of retreat for miles around, this drastic step meant utter destruction to the conquered. Talk about Cortes burning his boats behind him! He showed not a whit more courage than did Houston when he destroyed the bridge across the San Jacinto. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon he quietly paraded his little army behind the low range of hills which screened them from the enemy, who were still drowsing in their customary siesta. At this psychological moment Deaf Smith, following to the letter the instructions Houston had given him, tore up on a reeking horse, waving his axe above his head, and shouted: “Vince’s Bridge is down! We’ve got to fight or drown!” That was the word for which Houston had been waiting. Instantly he ordered his whole line to advance. The only music of the Texans was a fife and a drum, the musicians playing them into action to the rollicking tune of “Come to the Bower.” And it was no bower of roses, either. As they swept into view, rifles at the trail and moving at the double, the Mexicans, though startled at the unexpectedness of the attack, met them with a raking fire of musketry. But the sight of the brown-faced men, and of the red-white-and-green banner which flaunted above them, infuriated the Texans to the point of frenzy. Losing all semblance of formation, they raced forward as fast as they could put foot to ground.

In front of them rode the herculean Houston, a striking figure on his white horse. “Come on, boys!” he thundered. “Get at ’em! Get at ’em! Texans, Texans, follow me!” And follow him they did, surging forward with the irresistibility of a tidal wave. “Remember the Alamo!” they roared. “Remember Goliad! Remember Travis! Remember Jim Bowie! Remember Davy Crockett! Kill the damned greasers! Cut their hearts out! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

In the face of the maddened onslaught the Mexican line crumbled like a hillside before the stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Before the demoralized Mexicans had time to realize what had happened the Texans were in their midst. Many of them were “two-gun men,” who fought with a revolver in each hand—and at every shot a Mexican fell. Others avenged the murdered Bowie with the wicked knife which bore his name, slashing and ripping and stabbing with the long, savage blades until they looked like poleaxe men in an abattoir. In vain the terrified Mexicans threw down their arms and fell upon their knees, pattering out prayers in Spanish and calling in their broken English: “Me no Alamo! Me no Goliad!” Within five minutes after the Texans had come to hand-grips with their foe the battle had turned into a slaughter. Houston was shot through the ankle and his horse was dying, but man and horse struggled on. Deaf Smith drove his horse into the thick of the fight and, as it fell dead beneath him, he turned his long-barrelled rifle into a war-club and literally smashed his way through the Mexican line, leaving a trail of men with broken skulls behind him. An old frontiersman named Curtis went into action carrying two guns. “The greasers killed my son and my son-in-law at the Alamo,” he shouted, “and I’m going to get two of ’em before I die, and if I get old Santa Anna I’ll cut a razor-strop from his back.”

The commander of one of the Mexican regiments attempted to stem the tide of defeat by charging the Texan line at its weakest point with five hundred men. Houston, instantly appreciating the peril, dashed in front of his men. “Come on, my brave fellows!” he shouted, “your general leads you!” They met the charging Mexicans half-way, stopped them with a withering volley, and then finished the business with the knife. Only thirty-two of the five hundred Mexicans were left alive to surrender. Everywhere sounded the grunt of blows sent home, the scream of wounded men, the choking sobs of the dying, the crack-crack-crack of rifle and revolver, the grating rasp of steel on steel, the harsh, shrill orders of the officers, the trample of many feet, and, above all, the deep-throated, menacing cry of the avenging Texans: “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Kill the greasers! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

In fifteen minutes the battle of the San Jacinto was over, and all that was left of Santa Anna’s army of invasion was a panic-stricken mob of fugitives flying blindly across the prairie. Hard on their heels galloped the Texan cavalry, cutting down the stragglers with their sabres and herding the bulk of the flying army toward the river as cow-punchers herd cattle into a corral. And the bridge was gone! Before the Mexicans rolled the deep and turbid San Jacinto; coming up behind them were the blood-crazed Texans. It was death on either hand. Some of them spurred their horses into the river, only to be picked off with rifle-bullets as they tried to swim across. Others threw down their weapons and waited stolidly for the fatal stroke or shot. It was a bloody business. Modern history records few, if any, more sweeping victories. Of Santa Anna’s army of something over fifteen hundred men six hundred and thirty were killed, two hundred and eight wounded, and seven hundred and thirty taken prisoners.