Sam Houston.
Governor Smith was angry, too. He ordered General Houston to take command, to locate his headquarters at Bejar or some other post on the western frontier, and to begin a campaign. That would occupy the troops and defend Texas. He wrote a letter to the council also, hotly reproving them for interfering with the commander-in-chief, and for encouraging officers to disobey his instructions.
When General Houston arrived at Goliad, he found that almost the whole of the army, being mainly the volunteers from the United States, were assembled down here on the Gulf Coast, ready for the Matamoros march. Colonel Fannin had been elected their colonel, and Major William Ward, of the Georgia volunteers, their lieutenant colonel. Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Johnson claimed that by the appointment of the council he was the rightful commander. Dr. Grant, another commander, had passed on, after stripping the Goliad post of its horses. But General Houston, in a speech at Goliad and at Refugio nearby, assured the volunteers that by the direction of the governor he himself was here to be the leader in whatever was done—although he was sure that any invasion of Mexico, now, would result in only defeat and death to all concerned.
Listening to the advice of Sam Houston, many of the volunteers decided not to go to Matamoros unless he favored it. Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson’s force for the march overland dropped to only sixty, and he did not go. Colonel Fannin was not able to sail from Velasco, and instead garrisoned Goliad. Dr. Grant remained out on the prairies to the westward, collecting more horses. The soldiers were very discontented, being without money and supplies.
After having done the best that he could, General Houston learned that the council had suspended Governor Smith, on account of the letter that he had written to them, and had appointed Lieutenant-Governor Robinson to serve in his place until the next convention met, on March 1. So back north to Washington on the Brazos hastened Sam Houston, now well discouraged. The army were presumed to make their winter quarters at Refugio, near Goliad in the south.
In the United States Stephen Austin, Dr. Branch T. Archer, and Mr. William H. Wharton, the Texas commissioners appointed by the convention of last November, were busily obtaining loans of money for the Texas government, with which supplies were being bought. This was one bright spot.
Such was the news as received in Gonzales, by the columns of the San Felipe weekly Telegraph, and by letters and word of mouth. Indeed, what with the disputes among the army officers, the quarrel between the governor and the council, and the opposition to General Houston himself, as commander-in-chief, things, to Ernest (trying his best to understand), looked black for Texas. He was glad that the Matamoros expedition was given up, for Leo probably would have joined and have been killed. But here was Texas at helpless sixes and sevens—and General Santa Anna, according to reports, was at Saltillo, preparing to march with a great army against the “rebels.”
Bejar surely would be among the first places attacked. Lieutenant-Colonel Neill was there, with scarcely 100 men to man it and the Alamo and to support the twenty-four cannon. He had sent for help. Near the close of the third week of January, this 1836, had ridden into Gonzales, from Goliad sixty miles south, Colonel James Bowie, and Colonel Bonham, the South Carolinan, with a handful of recruits.
“Where you going, Jim?”