Under Six Flags: The Story of Texas

by M. E. M. Davis

General Ampudia, who had so basely betrayed the trust of the Texans after their surrender at Mier in 1843, was in command of the Mexican forces. After three days of desperate fighting he surrendered the city of Monterey to General Taylor.

The officers commissioned by Taylor to draw up the articles of capitulation on the American side were Generals Worth and Henderson (governor of Texas) and Colonel Jefferson Davis.

Texas furnished above eight thousand soldiers for this war, and the “murderous ring of the Texan rifle” was heard on almost every field.

In New Mexico, where there was considerable fighting, the cannon taken from General McLeod in the fatal Sante Fé expedition in 1841 was discovered by the American soldiers, where it had been hidden in the mountains. “It is,” says the record, “a six-pounder, bearing the ‘Lone Star’ of Texas and the name of her ex-President, Mirabeau B. Lamar.” The Americans adopted it as a favorite, and used it in firing their morning and evening signals. The Lone Star, they declared, brought them good luck.

The war ended in the storming and capture of the city of Mexico by General Winfield Scott, commander-in-chief of the United States army. Santa Anna, once more defeated and humbled, hid himself with the remains of his army in the mountain passes of Mexico.

Benjamin M^cCulloch.

In one of the last battles of the war Colonel Samuel H. Walker was killed. This dashing young Texan, had been again and again selected by General Taylor for dangerous service, and his gallantry was a by-word in the army. He had been one of the unfortunate Mier prisoners, and was among those who overpowered the guard at Salado and escaped, only to be recaptured. In the death-lottery he had drawn a white bean, and had afterward endured the miseries of the Castle of Perote. In the neighborhood of that prison he fell mortally wounded, but flushed with victory, and soon afterward expired. “Few men were more lamented. When the cry ‘Walker is dead’ rang through the company, the hardy soldiers burst into tears.”[34]

Mexico signed at Guadalupe, Hidalgo, a treaty with the United States (February 2, 1848), and abandoned forever all claim to Texas.

The governors who succeeded Henderson in Texas from 1847 to 1859 were Governors George T. Wood, Hansborough P. Bell, Elisha M. Pease, and Hardin R. Runnels.