The road to glory

by E. Alexander Powell

“I don’t know,” repeated the minister. “You are getting a noble bargain, monsieur, and you will doubtless make the best of it.”

As a matter of fact, Talleyrand was telling the literal truth (which must have been a novel experience for him): he did not know. The boundaries of Louisiana had never been definitely established. It seems, indeed, to have come under the application of

“The good old rule ... the simple plan,

That they shall take who have the power,

And they shall keep who can.”

Hence, though American territory and Spanish marched side by side for twenty-five hundred miles, it was found impossible to agree on a definite line of demarcation, the United States claiming that its new purchase extended as far westward as the Sabine River, while Spain emphatically asserted that the Mississippi formed the dividing line. Along about 1806, however, a working arrangement was agreed upon, whereby American troops were not to move west of the Red River, while Spanish soldiers were not to go east of the Sabine. For the next fifteen years this arrangement remained in force, the strip of territory between these two rivers, which was known as the neutral ground, quickly becoming a recognized place of refuge for fugitives from justice, bandits, desperadoes, adventurers, and bad men. To it, as though drawn by a magnet, flocked the adventure-hungry from every corner of the three Americas.

The vast territory beyond the Sabine, then known as New Spain and a few years later, when it had achieved its independence, as Mexico, was ruled from the distant City of Mexico in true Spanish style. Military rule held full sway; civil law was unknown. Foreigners without passports were imprisoned; trading across the Sabine was prohibited; the Spanish officials were suspicious of every one. Because this trade was forbidden was the very thing that made it so attractive to the merchants of the frontier, while the grassy plains and fertile lowlands beyond the Sabine beckoned alluringly to the stock-raiser and the settler. And though there was just enough danger to attract them there was not enough strength to awe them. Jeering at governmental restrictions, Spanish and American alike, the frontiersmen began to pour across the Sabine into Texas in an ever-increasing stream. “Gone to Texas” was scrawled on the door of many a deserted cabin in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. “Go to Texas” became a slang phrase heard everywhere. On the western river steamboats the officers’ quarters on the hurricane-deck were called “the texas” because of their remoteness. When a boy wanted to coerce his family he threatened to run away to Texas. It was felt to be beyond the natural limits of the world, and the glamour which hovered over this mysterious and forbidden land lured to its conquest the most picturesque and hardy breed of men that ever foreran the columns of civilization. A contempt for the Spanish, a passion for adventure were the attitude of the people of our frontier as they strained impatiently against the Spanish boundaries. The American Government had nothing to do with winning Texas for the American people. The American frontiersmen won Texas for themselves, unaided either by statesmen or by soldiers.

Though these men wrote with their swords some of the most thrilling chapters in our history, their very existence has been ignored by most of our historians. Though they performed deeds of valor of which any people would have reason to be proud, it was in an unofficial, shirt-sleeve sort of warfare, which the National Government neither authorized nor approved. Though they laid the foundations for adding an enormous territory to our national domain, no monuments or memorials have been erected to them; even their names hold no significance for their countrymen of the present generation. In short, they were filibusters, and that, in the eyes of those smug folk who believe that nothing can be meritorious that is done without the sanction of congresses and parliaments, completely damned them. They were American dreamers. Had they lived in the days of Cortes and Pizarro and Balboa, of Hawkins and Raleigh and Drake, history would have dealt more kindly with them.

The free-lance leaders, who, during the first quarter of the nineteenth century made the neutral ground a synonym for hair-raising adventure and desperate daring, were truly remarkable men. Five of them had held commissions in the army of the United States; one of them had commanded the French army sent to Ireland; another was a peer of France and had led a division at Waterloo; others had won rank and distinction under Napoleon, Bolivar, and Jackson. But because they wore strange uniforms and fought under unfamiliar flags, and because, in some cases at least, they were actuated by motives more personal than patriotic, the historians have assumed that we do not want to know about them, or that it will be better for us not to know about them. They take it for granted that it is better for Americans to think that our territorial expansion was accomplished by men with government credentials in their pockets, and when these unofficial conquerors are mentioned they turn away their heads as though ashamed. But I believe that our people would prefer to know the truth about these men, and I believe that when they have heard it they will agree with me that in their amazing exploits there is much of which we have cause to be proud and surprisingly little of which we have need to feel ashamed.

The first of these adventurous spirits who for more than twenty years kept the Spanish and Mexican authorities in a fume of apprehension, was a young Kentuckian named Philip Nolan. He was the first American explorer of Texas and the first man to publish a description of that region in the English language. He spent his boyhood in Frankfort, Kentucky, and as a young man turned up in New Orleans, then under Spanish rule, having been, apparently, a person of considerable importance in the little city. Having heard rumors that immense droves of mustangs roamed the plains of Texas and seeing for himself that the Spanish troopers in Louisiana were badly in need of horses, he told the Spanish governor that if he would agree to purchase the animals from him at a fixed price per head and would give him a permit for the purpose, he would organize an expedition to capture wild horses in Texas and bring them back to New Orleans. The governor, who liked the young Kentuckian, promptly signed the contract, gave the permit, and Nolan, with a handful of companions, crossed the Sabine into Texas, corralled his horses, brought them to New Orleans, and was paid for them. It was a profitable transaction for every one concerned. It was so successful that another year Nolan did it again. On the proceeds he went to Natchez, married the beauty of the town, and built a home. But along toward the close of 1800 the governor wanted remounts again, for the Spanish cavalrymen seemed incapable of taking even ordinary care of their horses. So Nolan, who was, I fancy, already growing a trifle weary of the tameness of domestic life, enlisted the services of a score of frontiersmen as adventure-loving as himself, kissed his bride of a year good-by, and, after showing his passports to the American border patrol and satisfying them that his venture had the approval of the Spanish authorities, once more crossed the Sabine into Texas. For a proper understanding of what occurred it is necessary to explain that, though Louisiana was under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Foreign Office (for this was before the province had been ceded to France), Texas was under the control of the Spanish Colonial Office. Between these two branches of the government the bitterest jealousy existed, and a passport issued by one was as likely as not to be disregarded by the other. In fact, the colonial officials were only too glad of an opportunity to humiliate and embarrass those connected with the Foreign Office. But Nolan and his men, ignorant of this departmental jealousy and conscious that they were engaged in a perfectly innocent enterprise, went ahead with their business of capturing and breaking horses. Crossing the Trinity, they found themselves on the edge of an immense rolling prairie which, as they advanced, became more and more arid and forbidding. There were no trees, not even underbrush, and the only fuel they could find was the dried dung of the buffalo. These animals, though once numerous, had disappeared, and for nine days the little company had to subsist on the flesh of mustangs. They eventually reached the banks of the Brazos, however, where they found plenty of elk and deer, some buffalo, and “wild horses by thousands.” Establishing a camp upon the present site of Waco, they built a stockade and captured and corralled three hundred head of horses. While lounging about the camp-fire one night, telling the stories and singing the songs of the frontier and thinking, no doubt, of the folks at home, a force of one hundred and fifty Spaniards, commanded by Don Nimesio Salcedo, commandant-general of the northeastern provinces, creeping up under cover of the darkness, succeeded in surrounding the unsuspecting Americans, who, warned of the proximity of strangers by the restlessness of their horses, retreated into a square enclosure of logs which they had built as a protection against an attack by Indians. At daybreak the Spaniards opened fire, and Nolan fell with a bullet through his brain. The command of the expedition then devolved upon Ellis P. Bean, a boy of seventeen, who, from the scanty shelter of the log pen, continued a resistance that was hopeless from the first. Every one of the Americans was a dead shot and at fifty paces could hit a dollar held between a man’s fingers, but they were vastly outnumbered, they were unprovisioned for a siege, and, as a final discouragement, the Spaniards now brought up a swivel-gun and opened on them with grape. Bean urged his men to follow him in an attempt to capture this field-piece. “It’s nothing more than death, boys,” he told them, “and if we stay here we shall be killed anyway.” But his men were falling dead about him as he spoke, and the eleven left alive decided that their only chance, and that was slim enough, Heaven knows, lay in an immediate retreat. Filling their powder-horns and bullet pouches and loading the balance of their ammunition on the back of a negro slave named Cæsar, they started off across the prairie on their hopeless march, the Spaniards hanging to the flanks of the little party as wolves hang to the flank of a dying steer. All that day they plodded eastward under the broiling sun, bringing down with their unerring rifles those Spaniards who were incautious enough to venture within range. But at last they were forced, by lack of food and water, to accept the offer of the Spanish commander to permit them to return to the United States unharmed if they would surrender and promise not to enter Texas again. No sooner had they given up their arms, however, than the Spaniards, afraid no longer, put their prisoners in irons and marched them off to San Antonio, where they were kept in prison for three months; then to San Luis Potosi, where they were confined for sixteen months more, eventually being forwarded, still in arms, to Chihuahua, where, in January, 1804, they were tried by a Spanish court, were defended by a Spanish lawyer, were acquitted, and the judge ordered their release. But Salcedo, who had become the governor of the province, determined that the hated gringos should not thus easily escape, countermanded the findings of the court, and forwarded the papers in the case to the King of Spain. The King, by a decree issued in February, 1807, after these innocent Americans had already been captives for nearly seven years, ordered that one out of every five of them should be hung, and the rest put at hard labor for ten years. But when the decree reached Chihuahua there were only nine prisoners left, two of them having died from the hardships to which they had been subjected. Under the circumstances the judge, who was evidently a man of some compassion, construed the decree as meaning that only one of the remaining nine should be put to death.