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 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 DISTINGUISHED MEXICANS WHO TOOK I'ART IN THE REVOLUTION OF 
 TEXAS, WITH (;LANCES AT ITS EARLY EVENTS 
 
 r!'M^ POTTER, U. S. A. 
 
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 Reprinted from the Magazirie of American History for October, 1878 
 
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THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 DISTINGUISHED MEXICANS WHO TOOK PART IN THE REVOLUTION OF 
 TEXAS, WITH GLANCES AT ITS EARLY EVENTS 
 
 IT may not be generally known that a few Mexicans of talent and 
 standing-, by identifying themselves with the cause of Texas in her 
 early struggles, have acquired a place in the history of one of our 
 States ; and their names and characters may not be without interest to 
 a portion of the public. Though they represented but a fraction of the 
 population, which was politically insignificant, being mostly unenlight- 
 ened they may well be remembered more on account of personal traits 
 and 'adventures than because of any potent influence which they 
 exerted on the destinies of Texas. Among the strange re-appearances 
 which occur in history, we find one in the fact that the first Vice Presi- 
 dent and one of the founders of the Republic of Texas, had been one 
 of the founders also of the Mexican Republic. He assisted in framing 
 the constitutions of both, and at an earlier day had figured in the Span- 
 ish Cortes of Madrid. It would not have seemed more singular (allow- 
 ing it chronological possibility) if one of the authors of the act of 
 settlement, which gave the crown of Great Britain to the House of 
 Hanover, had turned up in our Continental Congress. 
 
 Zavala, Navarro and Ruiz, who were members of the Convention 
 of 1836, which declared the independence and framed the Constitution 
 of Texas, are to be counted among the founders of that Republic, and 
 consequently among the founders of the State of Texas. They were 
 all Mexicans of respectable Spanish descent ; and there was another 
 leader of the same nativitv and descent named Padilla, who, though his 
 name is not found in the 'roll of the Convention, figured prominently 
 during 1835 in the movements which originated that convocation. All 
 our were men of superior or respectable talent, anu the first two merit 
 
2 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 a place in history ; Zavala, from his whole political career, which began 
 long before the Revolution of Texas, and Navarro for his patriotic suf- 
 ferings and constancy after that event. The careers of the other two 
 were less distinguished, and I shall have occasion to mention them only 
 incidentally. Ruiz, a native of San Antonio, had been a respectable 
 office holder under the Mexican Government, and Padilla had held 
 prominent positions in the Government of the State. He was born I 
 think at Saltillo, then the capital of Coahuila and Texas. 
 
 Don Lorenzo de Zavala was born at Merida, in Yucatan, in 1789. 
 His mind was early turned to political speculations. In 1809, when he 
 left college, there being no press in Yucatan, he formed an association 
 of liberals, with the view of disseminating his principles by reading his 
 manuscript essays to the members. Two years after he established the 
 first political newspaper which ever appeared in the province. In 18 14 
 he was elected a deputy from Yucatan to the Spanish Cortes ; but when 
 he was about to embark for Europe, a decree of Ferdinand VII. 
 arrived, annulling the Spanish Constitution of 1812, and proscribing its 
 known and zealous supporters. Zavala, being unmistakably one of 
 these, was arrested, fettered and imprisoned in the Castle of San Juan 
 de Ulloa, at Vera Cruz, where he remained over three years. During 
 this time he succeeded in obtaining books, and lightened the hours of 
 confinement by studying medicine, in which he made himself proficient. 
 On being liberated in 18 18, he returned to Yucatan, and found himself 
 destitute under the process of official pillage which had followed pro- 
 scription, and now his prison studies brought him the means of sub- 
 sistence. He maintained himself for some time by the successful 
 practice of medicine. 
 
 The Spanish Constitution being at length for a short time reestab- 
 lished, he was again in 1820 elected a deputy to the Cortes, and took his 
 seat in that body in September of that year. He was the most zealous 
 advocate of the rights of Spanish America, and proposed to the Cortes 
 a plan for a separate parliamentary administration for Mexico. Soon 
 after the news of the revolution of Iguala, in that country, arrived at 
 Madrid. It was the rising effected by Iturbide at the head of a portion 
 of the native Royalist forces of Mexico, which he had brought over to 
 sustain him; and the first plan which he offered to his country and to 
 Spain was a separate constitutional monarchy, under the same sover- 
 eign. This coincided with the views which Zavala had already 
 offered, and appeared to comprehend as much independence as was 
 attainable. He accordingly urged on the Cortes the acceptance of the 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 3 
 
 offer, but it was rejected with scorn. This soon led to the entire sepa- 
 ration of Mexico from the mother country, which proved to be far 
 more easy of accomplishment than was then apprehended in Spain ; for 
 the native Royalist troops in Mexico turned over in mass to Iturbide, 
 and they outnumbered the European regiments too greatly to leave 
 any hope of successful resistance to the latter. Iturbide's offer to 
 Ferdinand, which was afterwards modified into a similar offer to Don 
 Carlos, was a sham, by which he beguiled his Spanish supporters in 
 Mexico till strong enough to throw off the mask, when he took to him- 
 self what he had proffered to the Bourbons, and was proclaimed by his 
 army Emperor of Mexico. 
 
 Before this result had come, however, the position of Zavala had 
 become such that his continuance in Madrid was neither desirable nor 
 prudent. He left there, and went by way of Paris to London, whence 
 he addressed the Spanish American deputies who remained in Madrid 
 an able and lucid political note, which has been looked upon as a stand- 
 ard declaration of the rights of the Mexican people. He returned to 
 Yucatan in 1822. The independence of Mexico was now dcfacto estab- 
 lished, and he was elected to the first Mexican Congress called by Itur- 
 bide, and was deputed from that body to a National Junta, chosen to 
 deliberate on national affairs during recess. In that body he organized 
 an opposition to the imperial usurpation of Iturbide, which eventually 
 aided in effecting its fall. 
 
 Iturbide, who had shown great daring and ability in the attainm. . 
 of power, evinced no capacity for keeping it, and fell as rapidly as he 
 had risen. i\fter he was deposed and banished, Zavala was in 1823 
 elected to the convention which formed the Federal Constitution of 
 Mexico, known as that of 1824, and he was president of that assembly 
 when the above instrument was signed. We then find him successively 
 a Senator in the first Constitutional Congress and Governor of the 
 State of Mexico. In 1828, while he was still in the latter office, the 
 animosity of parties rose to a height which it was plain could end only 
 m bloodshed. The Liberals were apprehensive of Spanish influence 
 and monarchical tendencies, while their opponents were no less fearful 
 of the disorders and proscriptions incident to popular sway, of which 
 latter the recent arbitrary banishment of the Spanish residents had given 
 a foretaste. Well-meaning men partook of the ultra views of the popu- 
 lar party, believing that violence alone could crush the influence they 
 dreaded, while a large number of designing aspirants on both sides 
 sought to drive matters to extremity, in the hope of working out their 
 
4 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 own advancement. In such a state of affairs a man so prominent and 
 zealous as Zavala could not fail to be drawn into the vortex. He was 
 not only strongly attached to the Federal system, but rather a Red Re- 
 publican in his views, deeming inferiority of race and intelligence not 
 wholly incompatible with safe democracy. A presidential election, 
 which it was alleged the conservatives had brought about for their can- 
 didate by bribery and corruption, and which perhaps they really had, 
 received the forms of legalization, but was annulled by their opponents 
 with force of arms. It would probably have been difficult to ferret out 
 all the corruption on both sides, and ascertain which was heaviest; but 
 it would have been well for Mexico had the legalized side of fraud been 
 allowed to pass. The success of the Liberals inaugurated that course 
 of periodical revolution which has ever since become chronic in that 
 wretched country. The City of Mexico, on being taken by the insur- 
 gents, was plundered by the soldier}' and the mob, and although order 
 was soon restored, the example of this first outbreak under the Repub- 
 lic has had the most fatal effects. Zavala took a leading part in this 
 revolt, and his enemies have even charged him with encouraging the 
 worst disorders which ensued ; but as such calamities never fail to 
 beget calumny, the charge ought to be received with caution. In 
 going into the movement I believe he was actuated by sincere views of 
 what the necessities of the country' demanded, and it is to be hoped 
 that the heat of revolutionary conflict and the contagion of disorder 
 did not hurry him into steps which in cooler moments he would have 
 shrunk from. 
 
 These events occurred early in 1S29, during a part of which Zavala 
 filled the office of Minister of Finance under the administration of 
 Guerrero. Towards the close of the year he was appointed Minister 
 to Rome ; but a new revolution prevented him from proceeding on 
 that mission. President Guerrero was deposed by Bustamente, and 
 subsequently executed. Zavala was for a time imprisoned ; but being 
 subsequently released, made, in 1830, a visit to the United States and 
 Europe. While abroad he wrote an historical work, entitled Ah Essay 
 on the Revolutions of Mexico. The style of it is lively and entertaining; 
 but it seems to have been penned too hastily to admit of the accuracy 
 which history demands. 
 
 In 1833, new revolutions having brought again into power the party 
 to which he belonged, he returned to Mexico, and was for a short time 
 Minister of Foreign Relations, while Pcdraza was President. During 
 the same year he was simultaneously elected a representative from 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 5 
 
 Yucatan, and Governor of the State of Mexico, which latter office he 
 accepted for the second time. He filled it during the season of cholera, 
 when his scientific as well as his administrative ability were of great 
 service to the public. In Toluca, the capital of the State, there is a 
 street called by his name to commemorate his exertions in the cause 
 of humanity during that time of pestilence. 
 
 In 1834, during Santa Ana's first Presidency, he was appointed 
 Minister Plenipotentiary to France. While on that mission, the last 
 office he filled under the Mexican Government, he published a 
 book of travels in the United States. I have never seen the work, but 
 I am told that his reflections on our institutions, and his speculations on 
 the future destinies of Mexico, show great sagacity and depth ; and that 
 among the latter are surmises of the eventual annexation of Mexico to 
 the United States. 
 
 Zavala had not been many months in Paris when the news arrived 
 there that Santa Ana had consummated the usurpation he had long 
 contemplated by subverting the Constitution of 1824, and making 
 himself the head of a Central Government, with dictatorial powers. 
 Zavala immediately sent home his resignation, accompanied by a protest, 
 in which he denounced Santa Ana in the most indignant terms. He 
 was ordered by Santa Ana to return home ; but he had in effect 
 renounced his allegiance to the then Government when he gave vip his 
 mission, the same as he had done his allegiance to Spain when he left 
 his seat in the Cortes. He soon left Europe, and after another visit to 
 the United States, repaired to Texas, the only part of Mexico which bid 
 fair to hold out against Santa Ana's usurpation. The hope of aiding in 
 resisting it was the only motive which drew him thither ; for though he 
 owned some lands in that province, their extent and value was too 
 inconsiderable to create any interested object in the course he took. 
 
 Texas was often, for want of a better term, called a province while 
 under the Mexican Federation, and I use that word as meaning a 
 topographical section. There never was a Mexican State of Texas, 
 though this is often implied by the misuse of terms ; and the revolt of 
 Texas against Mexico has no analogy with the secession of one of our 
 States on the plea of sovereignty. In former times I often met with 
 silly editorials in which that analogy was assumed, with much unmean- 
 ing twaddle about the original compact of the Mexican States. There 
 never was such a compact ; for the Mexican States were made by the 
 nation, not the nation by the States, as in our case. When those 
 States were formed, two adjoining sections, which had been under the 
 
6 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 Spanish Government, the provinces of Coahuila and Texas, were united in 
 one State, and the old names were combined in its designation to indicate 
 a design of erecting Texas into a separate State whenever the increase of 
 population should justify it. The seat of Government of the double- 
 named State was remote from Texas, being at Saltillo, which had been 
 of old the chief city of the Spanish province of Coahuila. 
 
 Though Texas, when Zavala arrived there, had not yielded to the 
 Central Government, she was not yet in arms. The part}' decidedly re- 
 solved on resistance was but small, and its leaders met with much opposi- 
 tion in their efforts to rouse the country. In no part of Mexico was the 
 change in the form of Government so undesirable as in Texas, where a dif- 
 ference of race and language from the rest of the country more forcibly 
 called for home rule and local laws ; yet as revolt would have to encounter 
 terrible odds, the change would perhaps have been eventually submitted 
 to if Mexico had refrained from seeking to enforce it by arms. General 
 Stephen F. Austin had been arrested in the city of Mexico on some 
 vague charge or suspicion, and had been held there in confinement for 
 several months ; but as there still seemed to both sides some prospect of 
 averting hostilities, he was now released, that he might aid in concilia- 
 tion ; but as his return was soon followed by the arrival of troops, he 
 had to take the opposite course. 
 
 The arrival of Zavala in Texas, where he was received with much 
 cordiality, tended greatly to prevent an adjustment, not so much from 
 any direct influence he could exert upon the inhabitants of Texas, as 
 from the adverse influence which the Government attributed to him, and 
 supposed he would there exert. The Government of Mexico alwa3'S 
 overrated what was Mexican ; this identilication of Texas with Zavala 
 put an end to their conciliatory steps, and they demanded that this 
 enemy of Santa Ana should be given up. This of course was refused. 
 
 In the meantime the leaders of the war party had, after much 
 exertion, suceeded in procuring the call of what was termed a Consulta- 
 tion. That name, in preference to Convention, was suggested by some of 
 the more moderate of those who came into the measure, as being likely 
 to seem less defiant towards the Government, and was adopted by 
 the rest. The body was to consist of delegates from the several 
 municipalities, and their business was to consult and deliberate on 
 public affairs ; but before it could meet the province was roused by the 
 arrival of a Mexican brigade under General Cos; he occupied San 
 Antonio, with the intent of moving upon the Anglo-American colonies of 
 Texas ; and it was well known that a part of his programme was a general 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 7 
 
 disarmment of the population. In most cases it would be absurd for the 
 inhabitants of a still peaceful district to view as invasion the entrance of 
 troops of the Government they are not quite unwilling to acknowledge; 
 but the situation and experience of the people of Texas justified them in 
 such a view at this juncture. They had joined themselves to a nation 
 which, after a trial of some years, seemed to appreciate political rights 
 too little to deem them worth defending, a nation whose authorities 
 could not be trusted, and whose Government was liable to change with 
 the wind. They had to choose between using their arms and giving them 
 up ; and it was a fair case of resistance for self preservation. Whatever 
 motives the leaders may have entertained, this was the feeling which 
 actuated the masses of Texas when they took up arms against Mexico. 
 The originators of the consultation did not create revolt. Had no such 
 body be'en called, the approach of Mexican troops would have caused 
 an armed uprising. Had no troops entered Texas the consultation, I 
 believe, would have peacefully adjourned after making an earnest remon- 
 strance against the measures they deprecated, and offering a plan for 
 the administration of their province. 
 
 As it was, armed forces assembled by the spontaneous action of the 
 people, and after they were organized by election, they moved on San 
 Antonio, where Cos was besieged by an army of raw levies, as Howe 
 had been in Boston, and with a like result. General Austin, who had 
 come as a pacificator, and clung to the hope of peace even after the 
 uprising begun, soon felt compelled to take part in it, and as he was the 
 only on'e who could unite the factions in camp, was elected to the com- 
 mand of the forces. Though he commenced the siege of San Antonio, 
 he was, before it ended, called away from his command for a mis- 
 sion to the United States. Many of the members elect of the Consulta- 
 tion were brought together by mustering in arms with their neighbors, 
 and when a sufficient number had thus met, they adjourned to San Fel- 
 ipe, and being there joined by others from their homes, the Consultation 
 was organized, and proceeded to act as a Convention. Most of the 
 members, as well as a large majority of the inhabitants, did not yet con- 
 template the final separation from Mexico, which necessity ere long 
 forced upon them ; for notwithstanding the disastrous failure^ which the 
 great State of Zacatecas had made in resisting usurpation, it was still 
 hoped that the example of Texas would reawaken revolt in other parts 
 of Mexico. The stand taken by the Consultation and its supporters 
 was for the Constitution of 1824, and their war cry was " Federacion." 
 In accordance with this, the flag they adopted was merely a modifica- 
 
8 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 tion of the old one. The Mexican banner is a tri-color of perpendicular 
 stripes, red, white and green, with the national eagle in the middle 
 white stripe. That of the insurgents bore the number 1824 in the place 
 of the eagle. 
 
 The Consultation proceeded to form a Provisional Government, con- 
 sisting of a Governor and Council, and invited other sections of Mex- 
 ico to join their uprising. Having taken these and other needful steps, 
 and provided for the election and assembling of a new Convention dur- 
 ing the following spring, the Consultation adjourned. The Provisional 
 Governor chosen was Henry Smith, one of the early settlers of Austin's 
 colony, and a patriot of more zeal than tact. Zavala and Padilla were 
 members of the Consultation, and the latter was chosen a member of 
 the Council, whose sessions were to be permanent. 
 
 An eventful and critical recess occurred between the sittings of the 
 Consultation and Convention, the latter of which met at Washington 
 on the Brazos on the ist of March, 1836. The siege of San Antonio 
 had been successful; General Cos, having capitulated, was permitted to 
 withdraw his forces from Texas under a parole, which in a few months 
 was basely broken. No central troops then remained in the province ; 
 yet no response to the voice of revolt came from the interior of Mexico. 
 On the contrary, all other parts of the central Republic either con- 
 tinued inertly submissive, or were zealous in seconding the usurper's 
 plans to crush the alien rebels, and for this extensive preparations were 
 in movement. The Provisional Government of Texas, moreover, was 
 virtually dead from dissension. The hard-headed Governor and fac- 
 tious Council had deposed each other, and the public accepted their 
 opposite decrees so far as to ignore the authority of both The care- 
 less presumption, which early success often creates, was followed by 
 panic, and anarchy looked invasion inertly in the face. Santa Ana, 
 with a part of his forces, was already in San Antonio, and had invested 
 the Alamo, while Urrea's brigade was advancing on Fannin's post at 
 Goliad. The hostile army now within or entering Texas amounted to 
 about 7,500 men, and the Texan forces at the Alamo and Goliad, all that 
 were yet in arms, did not exceed 700 in number. All hope of coopera- 
 tion in the interior had ceased, while the position which Texas occu- 
 pied as a revolted province in a great measure shut out the hope of 
 help from abroad. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the Convention of Te.xas met. 
 The time had come when the only course left was a formal and final 
 separation from Mexico, and no deliberation was needed for reaching 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 9 
 
 that conclusion. On the ist of March the Convention organized. On 
 the 2d they declared the independence of the Republic of Texas. The 
 declaration, drawn up under circumstances which often cause words to 
 drown ideas, was a weak document, and would have been stronger had 
 it said less. The substance of it might properly have been that the 
 declarants had blundered into bad company, and would have to fight 
 their way out of it or perish. 
 
 That Convention was a motley assemblage, comprising men of the 
 highest order of talent, with others, rude, ignorant, and narrow-minded, 
 but none, I think, deficient in hard sense and shrewdness. Among them 
 were Houston and Rusk, who afterw^ards figured so conspicuously, not 
 only in Texas, but in the United States Senate, and were often men- 
 tioned in connection with the Presidency. Two of the members of 
 Spanish descent may be ranked among the superior class. There were 
 two delegates from each municipality, a Spanish term which corresponds 
 closely to the English word county. Zavala was from Harrisburgh, 
 and had an Anglo-American Constituency. San Antonio de Bexar was 
 represented by Don Francisco Ruiz and Don Jose Antonio Navarro. I 
 consider the latter as morally and intellectually superior to the rest of 
 the Spanish-American group, and equal to any man in the assemblage, 
 though fortune never pushed him into the prominence which some of 
 them reached. The Texans of Mexican blood had been naturally the 
 last to be reconciled to the idea of Independence ; but necessity now 
 preached too strongly to be withstood. Zavala, a man of revolutions, 
 now went readily into the movement. So, I think, did Padilla, an old 
 Saltillo politician, who readily appreciated political needs. Though 
 not a member he was present. Ruiz was a man of large mind, given to 
 political speculation, and having long viewed the Mexican Republic as 
 a failure, fostered a hope that he might live to see his own section 
 annexed to the United States. Independence, as a step that way, was 
 welcome to him ; but Navarro, probably the most deeply conscientious 
 of the group, felt a painful shrinking from a step which he knew to be 
 needful. Though his will was brought over, the pang of severing national 
 allegiance unnerved him for the act, till Ruiz took him by the arm and 
 led him to the desk where the instrument awaited his signature. He 
 signed it, and felt that the first plunge which puts an end to all shrinking 
 was over. From that moment he never swerved from the obligation he 
 then incurred. Ruiz was by several years the senior of Navarro, and 
 did not, I think, live to the end of that year. Padilla died two or three 
 years later, but did not again take part in political affairs. The three 
 
lO THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 last named of the Dons had to speak through an interpreter, but Zavala 
 was able to express himself with some fluency in English, and in the 
 debates showed much of the sagacity of a statesman, though his ideas 
 were cast in the mould of the Latin instead of the Saxon race. Though 
 well appreciated, his words of course could not there carry the weight 
 they had done of yore, when he rolled out his Castilian periods to those 
 who shared his nativity of language ; and it must at times have occurred 
 to him with half sad, and half comic effect, how oddly history can 
 repeat herself, when he compared his labors of 1824 and 1836, and 
 contrasted the convention which assembled in the palace of an old 
 stately city, and the more pompous assemblage at Madrid, with the knot 
 of frontier leadej^s who gathered at a shabby frame building in a hamlet 
 of log cabins. Zavala, who was not wholly free from the pedantry of a 
 doctrinaire, was addicted to citing ancient examples more often than was 
 entertainingf to men of losf-cabin education, or than suited to those more 
 intent on business than edification. On one occasion, rather late in the 
 session, when he commenced his speech with, "A Roman once said," 
 Rusk was moved to interrupt him, and exclaimed, " We had better think 
 about the live Mexicans instead of the dead Romans, and finish up our 
 work in time for one good sleep before we have to run." 
 
 One of the most gifted men and pestilent disturbers of that 
 Convention was a namesake, whose cognomen every old North Caro- 
 linian will remember, a name which for a time introduced a new word 
 into our language, a man of singular adventures and unique deeds of 
 violence, one in whom unusual powers of brain and tongue were 
 perverted by evil impulses, which brought him to a tragic end. in his 
 prime. His disorganizing propensities proved a serious bar to business, 
 till Rusk checked him, in the onl}' way which with him was effective. 
 Immediately after the declaration of Independence, the Convention had 
 entered upon the hurried formation of a Constitution for the new 
 Republic, and concluded their work on the 17th. That instrument 
 provided for a provisional President and Vice President, for the first 
 year to be chosen by the Convention — their successors to be elected by 
 the people ; and so soon as the Constitution was finished, David G. 
 Burnet, a native of New Jersey, and an old resident of Texas, was 
 chosen President, and Lorenzo de Zavala, Vice President. Although 
 the latter was almost a stranger to the Convention and its constitu- 
 ents, his standing as the most zealous and distinguished advocate of 
 Rej:)ublicaii principles in Mexico, and the sacrifice he had made of high 
 position in that country, to share the doubtful fortunes of Texas, 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION II 
 
 demanded this tribute of respect and gratitude. The Convention 
 wished also to show to the world that the cause they sustained was not 
 a war of races, but a contest based on principle. The executive branch 
 of the Government being installed, the Convention adjourned to Harris- 
 burgh. That adjournment was a flight and dispersion, perhaps without 
 the one good sleep which Rusk had coveted. Some of the delegates 
 hastened to Houston's camp, and others to their homes to place their 
 families in safety, for the whole population, save what was in the army, 
 was in flight ; and the army itself in retreat. 
 
 On the sixth day of the session General Houston had left the Con- 
 vention to take command of the few volunteers who were mustering at 
 Gonsales. On that day the Alamo fell with its last defender, and on 
 the next a body of invaders, far outnumbering Houston's meagre band, 
 moved on Gonsales, whence he retired in haste, after a rather needless 
 burning of the village, an example which the enemy thereafter took up. 
 Three days after the close of the session Fannin and his command 
 surrendered, and were soon after massacred. Though Houston's force 
 had considerably increased, he felt compelled to retreat successively 
 across the Colorado and the Brazos, leaving behind a panic which emptied 
 every house, and sent the inmates flying towards the Sabine and Gal- 
 veston Island. The President, Vice President and Cabinet reassembled 
 at Harrisburg, near which Burnet and Zavala had their homes ; but the 
 enemy's approach soon drove them to the aforesaid coast island, where 
 a crowd of fugitives of all ages and sexes had taken refuge, and were 
 bivouacked, for the island had till then been almost uninhabited. Fam- 
 ine and the sea were before that multitude, and the sword behind it ; 
 and in a few days the anxiety which reigned among them was intensified 
 by the booming of cannon, which faintly reached them from the main- 
 land. It seemed like the forerunner of doom ; but soon a messenger 
 boat came, and mystery and dread at once vanished. 
 
 " O stunning joy, when hope had fled 
 Our cause had risen from the dead." 
 
 The battle of San Jacinto had been fought, and invasion crushed at one 
 blow — by what seemed the last blow of despair ; and the captive usurper 
 was a suppliant for his life. Exultation, whose intensity cannot be 
 realized, now succeeded to flight and dismay. 
 
 The President and other members of the new Government immedi- 
 ately repaired to Houston's camp, near the field of San Jacinto ; and 
 there Zavala had an interview with his former friend and more recent 
 enemy, Santa Ana. The latter, who knew that the sword of justice 
 
12 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 hung over him by a hair, was keenly alive to every chance which offered 
 of moving any influence in his favor, and sought, in the insinuating way 
 he knew so well how to exercise, to appeal to the gencrositv of the 
 exile. Zavala sternly replied : " Vou have not only subverted the liber- 
 ties of my country and butchered my new friends, but have sought to 
 destroy me, and have pursued me almost to my own door in the land of 
 my exile. I am not the man whom you can expect to plead for you." 
 I have always viewed the sparing of Santa Ana, from unmanly motives 
 of policy, as a bartering of justice, which brought no compensating 
 return ; and though Zavala was not a bloodthirsty man, 1 believe Texas 
 would have escaped that reproach, had the fate of the felon chief 
 depended on him. 
 
 But though Zavala, I think, never favored the design of making 
 Santa Ana available as a medium for negotiation, I am told that he was 
 willing to make his captured officers and men available, if it could be 
 done, as a military resource for securing the independence of Texas and 
 retrieving his own fortunes in Mexico. 1 have heard that about this time 
 he entertained a vague plan of this nature ; but nothing came of it. It 
 was impracticable in itself, and received no countenance from the Gov- 
 ernment of Texas. Many of Zavala's friends in his new adopted country 
 were also much displeased to find that he could still entertain any 
 political aspirations looking to the land of his birth ; but I am confident 
 that those dreams, of which he spake openly and freely, did not contem- 
 plate aught which would involve a betrayal of the cause he had 
 espoused ; but that he looked forward to a time of peace and intimate 
 relations, but not of political reunion between Mexico and Texas. He 
 must have known that the day for that was forever past. 
 
 The time, however, was near when all visions of an earthly future 
 for Lorenzo de Zavala were to cease. The autumn of 1836 proved to be 
 a very sickly season in Texas, and the severe mental trials he had lately 
 undergone may have impaired his vital forces. He did not outlive his 
 term of Vice-Presidency, but sickened and died at his home near Harris- 
 burgh, on the 25th of November, 1836. His death was followed in 
 about six weeks by that of General Austin. Zavala had been twice 
 married, and left a widow, an American lady, who may be still living in 
 Texas. A son by his first marriage, already grown up, came with the 
 father to his adopted country, and distinguished himself in the battle of 
 San Jacinto. 
 
 Zavala, though a man of talent, energy and resource, and in many 
 hings of deep discernment, was too much of a doctrinaire antl visionary 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 1 3 
 
 to have made a first class, practical statesman. Like many other ultra 
 Democrats of a reddish tendency, he combined with that trait some 
 vague idea of a head which, in certain straits and contingencies, might 
 exercise dictatorial powers ; and he never fully appreciated the Anglo- 
 American conception of wholly distinct and independent functions in the 
 legislative, executive and judicial departments, without a head over all; 
 yet the sincerity of his zeal as a friend of human liberty and progress 
 cannot be doubted, and in any good cause his aid in conjunction with 
 men of more sober intellect would always have been valuable. The fact 
 that he had for over three years trod the dungeon stones of San Juan 
 de Ulloa as a suffering friend of liberty, would entitle him to our ven- 
 eration, had there been nothing else in his history to claim it. 
 
 The story of the birth of that short-lived nation — the Republic of 
 Texas — which I have endeavored briefly to relate, considering the 
 shortness of time and the limited numbers involved, contains a big vol- 
 ume of the romance of history ; of that kind of romance which com- 
 bines farce with tragedy. In going through it we are continually 
 stepping from the sublime to the ridiculous. The defiance of a nation 
 of 8,000,000 by a province containing 20,000 souls seemed a piece of 
 farcical presumption, and the Provisional Governor Henry Smith made 
 it seem more so by a silly threat in his inaugural to carry his conquests 
 to the walls of Mexico ; and this bravado was uttered when Texas was 
 anxious to conciliate the liberal element of Mexico. The revolt would 
 have been an atrocious farce had it failed ; but eventual success con- 
 verted the defiance into a sublime act of daring. 
 
 The successful siege of San Antonio, where a well-appointed Mex- 
 ican army capitulated to a horde of rustics and bear hunters, com- 
 manded by men who had never set a squadron in the field, is sublime 
 enough to contrast farcically with the supineness which a few months 
 after made no efficient preparation or timely muster against invasion, 
 and with the panic and flight which left the country untenanted. The 
 Convention of Washington met, we may say, within the enemy's reach, 
 for a forced march of dragoons could have surprised them ; and there 
 they declared the independence of a country, whose inhabitants were 
 flying from their homes, apparently forever, and framed a constitution 
 for a Republic, which to all appearance would in a month be inhabited 
 only by the invaders ; and as soon as the constitution was signed the 
 framers dropped their pens, and fled from an approaching enemy. In 
 all this the sublime and ridiculous are so mixed up that we cannot sep- 
 arate them. When the Convention met, about seven hundred soldiers 
 
14 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 Stood between them and over seven thousand invaders. In six days near 
 a third of those defenders were slain, each man fighting till his last 
 breath ; and a few days after the flight of the lawgivers the remainder of 
 the seven hundred were butchered in cold blood by the perfidy of their 
 captors. There was no farce in this, nor in the eleventh-hour victory, 
 which plucked up the drowning honor of Texas by the locks. The 
 sparing of Santa Ana, the butcher of Goliad, would have been sublime 
 had not its motive made it contemptible. It was done to obtain from 
 him an order of retreat to his forces still in the field — an order from a 
 captive chief, whom they were no longer bound to obey, and for a 
 movement thev would have made in more haste, and under no protec- 
 tion of truce, had no such order been issued. They were so demoral- 
 ized that half their number could have routed them, and now, with the 
 return of fugitive Texans, a number almost equal to that of the re- 
 maining invaders could in a few days have been mustered. The assassin 
 ought not to have been left, to die in his bed and in his dotage after 
 thirty more years of mischief. Had he been shot, and Filisoli, his second 
 in command, been attacked by the exulting victors, not many of the 
 soldiers of the latter, nor any of his cannon or baggage, would have 
 recrossed the Rio Grande. 
 
 The campaign of 1836 in Texas exhibited in the space of little more 
 than forty days an epitome of the vicissitudes to which a nation may 
 be subjected in a long and desolating, but finally triumphant war of 
 defense. There was defeat, surrender and wholesale massacre ; storm- 
 ing of ramparts and putting to the sword of defenders ; a track of fire 
 and rapine ; forsaken homes, leaving league after league of country 
 unpeopled ; a squalid and destitute horde of fugitives, before whom 
 famine and pestilence yawned — and all this condensed into a space of 
 time that seems prescribed by the rule of dramatic unity. Then the scene 
 changes, as if by the working of high dramatic art, and in comes a victory 
 as sudden and rapid, but not as bloodless, as if wrought by the mimic 
 combat of the stage — a wide slaughter, almost without loss to the vic- 
 tors, with all the triumph that stage effect could ask to grace the last act 
 of the play. It ends with a grand tableau, in which the head of a nation 
 bows as a captive to the rebel chief, whose execution he had a few days 
 before been expecting soon to decree. What a mercy that the shifting 
 scenes passed so rapidly, with a loss of life so light compared with the 
 weight of vicissitude, and ended before famine and pestilence had time 
 to enter upon the stage; yet this immunity makes it all seem the more 
 dramatic and unreal. The direct victims of the sword probably did 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION I 5 
 
 not exceed eight hundred on the part of the victors, and fifteen hundred 
 on that of the vanquished, yet the fruit of victory was a domain as 
 wide as an extensive kingdom in the old world. Here again tragedy 
 takes on a farcical aspect. 
 
 The Constitution of the Republic of Texas, the throes of whose 
 birth I have described, had as a document a singular history which is 
 not generally known. About eight years after it was framed I heard 
 from Mr. Henry Smith, the ex-Provisional Governor, some casual 
 remarks in regard to that instrument. " There is something," said he, 
 " about that constitution which I cannot comprehend. I was present 
 when it was framed, and watched its formation closely all through, and 
 I am certain there were some good things put into it which I cannot 
 find there now." Another gentleman, who had been an attendant on 
 the Convention, told me at a still later day that had not the break up 
 arid flight from Washington occurred so soon, he would have been the 
 first incumbent of an office which he named. " But," said I, " there is 
 no such office provided for in the Constitution." After a moment's 
 reflection he replied : " I do not remember to have seen it in the present 
 printed form, but I am confident there' was such a provision in the orig- 
 inal." I was puzzled by the remarks of both, and it was not until some 
 years later that the mystery was explained to me, as a piece of secret 
 history, related by Dr. Miller, a gentleman who was prominent in the 
 affairs of Texas both before and after the Revolution. When victory 
 enabled the new Government to get into working order, the Constitu- 
 tion, that is, the enrolled form of it, which bore the signatures of the 
 framers, could not be found, and there was no complete or connected 
 copy. There had been a scattering of everything, and it could not then 
 be ascertained who had taken charge of the instrument. The time was 
 near when it ought to be submitted to the people for acceptance, but 
 there was no Constitution to offer them ; yet one must be had ; the 
 executive tub would not hold the little authority it had, if the public 
 should discover that its bottom had dropped out. To call a new con- 
 vention would stave the tub outright, and there was no knowing what 
 mischief such a bodv might do, when there was no fear of the sword to 
 keep them at their legitimate work. People returning to devasted 
 fields, moreover, had more important work in hand than even constitu- 
 tion making, as Houston seems to have thought when he announced his 
 late victory. His proclamation which gave the news ended with, " Let 
 the people plant corn." In this strait of the Government the only 
 resource that offered was that adopted by Tom Pipes, a nautical charac- 
 
1 6 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 ter in one of Smollet's novels. His master had entrusted him with a 
 love letter, which the bearer put into his shoe as safer than his pocket, 
 and wore it out before suspecting the danger. Being anxious to fulfill 
 his duty without confessing his carelessness, he employed a village 
 schoolmaster to write another letter in place of that destroyed. One or 
 more persons connected with the Convention had preserved rough 
 draughts of contitutional sections, the papers by which they had been 
 introduced, or from which they had been enrolled. This data was not 
 complete, but the President and others remembered the substance of 
 other sections which could not be found in writing. One of the best 
 lawyers in Texas was employed to put all these written and remem- 
 bered fragments together in fitting order and connection. Thus a con- 
 stitution was made out, and this substitute was submitted to the people, 
 and ratified by a popular vote. Not long after its acceptance the orig- 
 inal document, like Hilkiah's book of the law, turned up. Here was a 
 new dilemma. A tub with two bottoms might be as embarrassing as one 
 with none ; and lest the question should be raised which was the true con- 
 stitution, that made by the Convention, or that ratified by the people, it was 
 thought safest to consign the former to oblivion. It was accordingly 
 sealed up and laid away among the secret archives of the Government 
 of Texas, where it may still remain, if it escaped a burning of records 
 which occurred some twenty years ago. The work above referred to 
 ought not to be classed among the pious frauds which really devout 
 men in early days occasionally committed. The fabricators aimed at 
 reproducing the same constitution which had already been made, and 
 were more nearly successful than Tom Piper's pedagogue. There was 
 no new matter forged, and very little of the old left out. Their pa- 
 triotic fabrication must have been carried through with great secrecy ; 
 for it was long unknown to those most likely to have discovered it. 
 Hard-headed Henry Smith probably went to his grave in California 
 without any solving of the mystery he complained of. 
 
 I return to what was the leading object of this article, that of giv- 
 ing a sketch of the most prominent of the Mexican citizens who took 
 part in the Revolution of Texas. 
 
 Don Jose Antonio Navarro, whose course in the Convention I have 
 already briefly mentioned, was born at San Antonio, Texas, in 1796. 
 His father, though of Spanish paternitv, was by birth a townsman of the 
 great Napoleon, being a native of Ajaccio, in the island of Corsica, 
 The grand-father of Jose Antonio Navarro was a Spanish army officer, 
 who, after marrying a Corsican lady of Ajaccio, took up his abode 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION ] ly 
 
 there for some years, and then removed with his family to Mexico, and 
 established himself at San Antonio. The Corsican element in Navar- 
 ro's ancestry has been commemorated by a local name. A county in 
 Texas called Navarro has a county seat named Corsicana. 
 
 In 1811, while Navarro's father was living, and the Mexican war of 
 Independence was in progress, a small auxiliary force was raised in the 
 United States with the view of aiding the insurgents, and planting the 
 banner of revolt in Texas, to which the rising had not yet extended. 
 The expedition was at first sucessful ; it was joined by a considerable 
 nomber of the natives of the province, and the town of La Bahia (now 
 called Goliad), and afterward that of San Antonio were taken. After 
 some other successes, however, the insurgents were, in 181 2, over- 
 powered and totally defeated on the Medina, by a strong body of 
 Royalist troops under General Arredondo. The larger portion of the 
 troops and most of the subordinate officers of this force were native 
 Mexicans ; and among others of this class was a sprightly, knavish 
 young cadet, about sixteen years of age, who was attached to the staff 
 of the Spanish General. He had just made his first essay in arms, in a 
 province where, twenty-four years later, he was very near making his 
 last. The name of that cadet was Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. He 
 became a guest of the Navarro family, when the victors, after the battle 
 of the Medina, occupied San Antonio. Young Navarro, the subject of 
 this sketch, was then absent from his home ; and though they did not 
 become personally acquainted, the guest came to know the other lad 
 by character. The latter, being the pride of the family, was often 
 mentioned as a youth of promising talents ; and some of his letters and 
 essays were shown to the General and his officers. It is probable that 
 the cadet at this time formed an opinion of Navarro's abilities, which 
 was of no advantage to him at a later period. Another thing occurred 
 which had the same effect. The cadet was detected in a fraudulent act, 
 which would have disgraced him had he suffered the justice which it was 
 so often his luck to escape. Though the matter was hushed up, it was 
 known to the Navarro family ; and Santa Ana, in his days of power, had 
 no kind feeling for those who knew of that early stain. 
 
 Jose Antonio Navarro was educated for an advocate, and though he 
 never went into regular practice, was well read in the system of Civil 
 Law which govern in Spain and Spanish countries. He was for some 
 years a Commissioner for the granting of donation land titles to the 
 settlers of DeWitt's colony on the Guadaloupe ; and it was, I think, while 
 holding that office that he met with an accident which made him a 
 
1 8 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 permanent cripple. He had the usual passion of Mexicans for skill 
 in horsemanship, and in throwing the lasso; and while engaged one day 
 in those exercises, his horse fell on him, and crushed his leg in such a 
 way as left him with a stiff knee for the rest of his life. He served one or 
 more sessions in the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas, and on the 2d of 
 March, 1835, was elected to the Congress of Mexico ; but ow- ing to the rev- 
 olutionary movements which followed he declined to take his seat, and on 
 the same day of the following year he signed the declaration of inde- 
 pendence of Texas. So soon as the Government of the new Republic 
 went into operation he was elected to the Senate, and continued a 
 member of that body as long as it existed, except during the interval 
 Avhen he was a prisoner in Mexico. 
 
 The Mexican citizens of Texas who were loyal to the Republic often 
 had their loyalty severely tried by the illiberal suspicions and rough 
 bearing of the lower order of the Anglo-American element ; and it was 
 this, more than any normal tendency to disaffection, which drove 
 Seguin from the f^ag under which he had fought so gallantly. In no peo- 
 ple are race antipathies liable to be more bigoted and mean than in those 
 of Anglo-Saxon blood ; and of the under st';t:- of that breed the low 
 American is perhaps the worst sample. The Navarro family suffered a 
 terrible blow from the hand of such a specimen. In revolutionary times 
 families are liable to be divided, and brothers sometimes take opposite 
 sides. Don Angel Navarro, a younger brother of Jose Antonio, 
 adhered to the cause of Mexico, and was mustered into her service 
 under a commission he held as a Captain of the Mexican Militia. But 
 the brothers did not allow political difference to extinguish fraternal 
 affection. Don Angel return to, or remained in Texas after the Mexican 
 army retreated, and reported himself to General Albert Sidney Johnston, 
 then in command ; the same who, twenty-six 3'ears later, fell at Shiloh. 
 Don Angel frankly owned that he was unable to take sides with Texas, and 
 that he had served Mexico, and tendered to the General the surrender of 
 his sword, willing, if i-equired, to remain as a prisoner, or to go to the inte- 
 rior of Mexico ; but requesting that, if not incompatible with the General's 
 sense of duty, he might be permitted to remain, on the footing of an 
 alien, and under parole, at San Antonio, where his relations lived. This 
 soldierl)^ candor could not fail to tell with such a man as Johnston, and 
 he granted the request. Some month after this, and while the younger 
 Navarro was domiciliated at San Antonio w'ith his brothers, there came 
 to that place a young American, named Tinsley — a Captain in the service 
 of Texas. He may have been attached to a local garrison, but of that I 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION I9 
 
 am not certain ; but he was of that peculiar type of ruffianism which is 
 bred only by " the greatest nation on God's earth." As pretentious and 
 swaggering- as no one but a coward ought to be, yet without a white 
 feather in his gaudy plumage ; perfectly fearless, yet capable of the 
 most cowardly acts, such as stabbing in the back a man whom he would 
 not have shrunk from fronting openly. The peculiar position in which 
 young Navarro stood towards Texas, could not fail to draw to him the 
 attention of this bravo, who announced a determination to seek and find a 
 feud with the Mexican. The latter, who did not wish to compromise his 
 kindred, was guarded, but courteously unflinching in his deportment, 
 and for a while, avoided the collision which the other sought. At 
 length Tinsley took occasion to post up a pasquinade on the corner of 
 the Navarro residence, with an announcement that he would chastise 
 any one who should dare to take it down. It reflected, in scurrilous 
 terms, on a person in whom young Navarro was supposed to feel an 
 interest, and was, no doubt, put up as a decoy to a quarrel, and in the 
 expectation that he would remove it. The first person of the family 
 who saw the paper was the elder Navarro, then acting as a justice oi 
 the peace. He immediately removed it. The corner room of the 
 dwelling, which had been fitted for a store, and was now used as an 
 office by the Navarros, was soon after entered by Tinsley, who found 
 no one there at the moment but the man he sought. The few words 
 which passed between them — the last words of both — were heard, and a 
 glimpse of the last struggle was caught, through the open door, by 
 persons outside. "Did you take down that paper?" imperiously 
 demanded Tinsley. " No," replied Don Angel, " it was taken down by 
 my brother, the Justice of the Peace, in his official capacity." " I believe 
 you took it down yourself, or had it done," said Tinsley, " and I will 
 chastise you, as I promised." At this Navarro grasped his opponent 
 and demanded: " Do you threaten me with the cowhide?" While he 
 was i-epeating the question, Tinsley drew a pistol and shot Navarro 
 through the chest. But the latter retained sufficient vitality to keep his 
 hold till he drew a knife and buried the blade into the assassin's breast. 
 His grasp then relaxed, and Tinsley staggered out of the door, and to the 
 other side of a narrow street. There he sank upon a seat by the side of a 
 shop door, and in another moment, fell dead to the pavement. Navarro's 
 two brothers rushed to the office the moment they heard the pistol. 
 The dying man was still on his feet, with his back against the counter. 
 They spoke to him ; his eye seemed to recognize them, but he could no 
 longer speak. They laid him gently down ; but by the time they had 
 put him into a recumbent posture, life was gone. 
 
20 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 As soon as the news of the tragedy spread, Navarro's friends and 
 relations seized their arms and rushed to the spot where it had occurred, 
 for they knew not what outrages might follow this opening scene. 
 There were in the place a number of Americans of Tinsley's type, 
 though none perhaps who equalled him in its distinctive traits. They 
 also came rushing in arms to the spot, and each group was followed by 
 others, Mexicans and Americans, till the two half hostile elments of the 
 population confronted each other. Had only one of the antagonists 
 fallen, there would have been an attempt to avenge him, which would 
 have brought on a frightful collision, bloody enough to leave the town 
 half desolate ; but when the fierce factions saw that the representatives 
 of both lay dead within a few yards of each other, their excitement was 
 chilled, and the more peaceful of both races found no difficulty in 
 inducing them to disperse. The elder Navarro afterwards observed, 
 that since one of the two combatants had to fall, it was a mercy of Provi- 
 dence that both died in the first encounter ; for a survivor could not 
 long have outlived what would have followed such a beginning, and 
 the result would have been many deaths instead of two. The Navarros 
 received the deep sympathy of the whole Anglo-American population 
 of Texas, or at least of all whose sympathy was worth accepting, and 
 they had enough discernment to know that a calamity, resulting indi- 
 rectly from the contest in which they had taken sides, had no identity 
 with the aims and principles of the cause of Texas. 
 
 In 1841, during the administration of President Lamar, an ill- 
 devised and unfortunate expedition against New Mexico was under- 
 taken by the Government of Texas. A part of that province, lying east 
 of the Rio Grande, was within the bounds claimed by Texas, but never 
 yet held, and it was thought that as the claim of the Republic to the 
 Rio Grande boundary could only be established by possession, an effort 
 ought to be made to hold the country up to that line, at least on the 
 upper portion of the river, where no dense population stood in the way 
 of occupancy. The objection to the plan was that New Mexico, though 
 nearer to the centre of Texas than to the centre of Mexico, was phys- 
 ically more severed from the former country than from the latter. 
 Hence it was more within the reach of Mexico than of Texas, and could 
 be defended by the stronger power with less effort that it cost the 
 weaker to assail it. The expedition was commanded by General Hugh 
 McLeod, and was accompanied by two civil commissioners, entrusted 
 with all the organizing powers which the President had authority to 
 depute. Don Jose Antonio Navarro and Colonel Wm. G. Cooke were 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 21 
 
 appointed to that commission. The former accepted the appointment 
 with misgiving, and only at the earnest soHcitation of the President, 
 who, as the expedition was destined to a province having a Mexican 
 population, deemed it essential that the commission should have the aid 
 of a Mexican citizen of Texas, who was a man of talent and character, 
 as well as of Spanish legal education. Navarro was the only one who 
 could be found completely filling those requisites, and he finally accepted 
 the mission. He felt that in case of success he might prove a useful 
 protector to a Mexican population brought suddenly under the military 
 control of another race. 
 
 The expedition, which marched by a route little known, and beset 
 with unappreciated difficulties, had to fight with famine and toils and 
 accidents of the way before it saw an)^ other enemy than the Comanches ; 
 and it finally entered New Mexico, so destitute and exhausted, that the 
 only thing it could do to save life, was to surrender to a superior 
 Mexican force. 
 
 The prisoners were soon put on a march from Santa Fe to the city 
 of Mexico. Their terms of capitulation entitled them to be treated as 
 prisoners of war; a march of that immense length, much of it 
 through a region almost of deserts, would necessarily involve no little 
 hardship even under a merciful escort ; but the treatment of the pris- 
 oners depended mainly on the character of the officer who, for the time 
 being, had charge of them ; and they were at times subjected to great 
 brutality. One well-remembered case of this kind was that of a man 
 named McAllister, a cripple, who was cut down by the officer of the 
 guard because he lagged behind the march. Navarro, who was as much 
 a cripple, at times had to travel on foot, but was generally allowed 
 means of transportation. 
 
 During the early part of the march, and I think before it had got out 
 of the bounds of New Mexico, an incident occurred, for which 
 Navarro was then unjustly censured by his companions. The prisoners, 
 or a portion of them, formed a conspiracy to rise on the guard and 
 liberate themselves. They could perhaps have overcome the escort 
 after some loss of life, as the Mier prisoners did two years later, but the 
 result would have been the same, or worse. The Mier prisoners, after 
 great sufferings, in seeking to make their way through a mountainous 
 desert, were recaptured, and decimated by way of punishment. The 
 Santa Fe prisoners, when the attempt was contemplated, were much 
 farther from the frontier of Texas, and in a country more difficult to 
 traverse. After a portion had perished, the rest would have been 
 
22 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 recaptured, and probably have suffered a worse fate than decimation. 
 Had the rising been effected, I doubt if any of them would ever again 
 have seen Texas. As it was, most of them, after all their sufferings, 
 came back. When the plot was nearly ripe, one of the conspirators 
 made it known to Navarro, through his driver, for he was at the time 
 riding in a buggy drawn by two donkeys. He saw at a glance that it was 
 probable death to them and certain death to him. Should the rising suc- 
 ceed, the flight, owing to his condition, would have to leave him behind to 
 take the brunt of resentment for their escape, and for the blood they would 
 shed in effecting it ; and if he were not knocked in the head during the 
 melee, he would be sure to take that stroke of retaliation afterwards. He 
 at once gave such intimation to the officer of the guard as led to an in- 
 crease of vigilance, and the attempt at rising was prevented. About five 
 years later I heard this affair related by one of the conspirators, an Ti-ish- 
 man, then a steamboat hand on Galveston Bay. He spoke with much bit- 
 terness of Navarro's " blowing of the plot," as he called it, but it took 
 but few words to convince him that the mformer had saved all their 
 lives; and he finally admitted that, "after all, the old man acted right." 
 The Santa Fe prisoners at length reached the city of Mexico, where 
 Navarro was confined for same months, and then transferred to the 
 Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, at Vera Cruz. Santa Ana, after repeated 
 ups and downs, was again President of Mexico. He had never given 
 up the hope of recovering Texas, though not anxious to enter it 
 himself, and he now, for the first time, held in his power one of 
 the signers of the Texan declaration of Independence, and the 
 most odious then living, for he was the only survivor of the 
 few who were Mexicans by birth, tongue and race. A few years 
 before, this would have soon led to an execution for treason, and it was 
 currently rumored in Mexico that Navarro would ere long suffer the 
 death penalt}'' ; but Santa Ana probably did not feel free to proceed in 
 the same summary way as in the beginning. The independence of Texas 
 had been acknowledged by one or more of the leading foreign govern- 
 ments, and it was not advisable to shock the civilized world again with 
 atrocities like those of 1836. Santa Ana, moreover, had come round, 
 somewhat, to John Wilkes' opinion, that a man may be put to a better 
 use than hanging ; and if Navai-ro could not be made useful, his punish- 
 ment, by endless imprisonment, would be more gratifying to the 
 punisher than would his release by execution. After it was thought 
 that Navarro's fortitude had been sufificientl}' wrought on b}' rigorous 
 confinement, and hints of a postponed trial for treason, it was intimated 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 23 
 
 to him that not only full pardon and liberty, but also rich reward were 
 within his reach, if he would consent to earn them. He could have the 
 rank of Brigadier-General in the Mexican army, or if he preferred civil life, 
 the position of Collector of Customs at Vera Cruz, one of the most lucrative 
 offices under that Government. All he had to do to secure this boon 
 was to renounce his citizenship of Texas, recant the act he committed in 
 signing the declaration of Independence, consent to enter the Mexican 
 service, and do what he could to bring back Texas to her former 
 allegiance. Santa Ana, who could not have well comprehended the 
 nature of social and political elements in Texas, probably supposed that 
 there, as in Mexico, each leading man could carry with him the votes 
 and following of a considerable district, and that the chief who could 
 secure the suport of those magnates could control the country. Having 
 been from boyhood impressed with a belief of Navarro's superior talent, 
 and knowing the estimation in which he was held by the Mexican popu- 
 lation of Texas, he no doubt greatly over-estimated the political influence 
 which his captive could exert. Against the above offer stood, at best, 
 the apparent alternative of imprisonment for life, two thousand miles 
 away from family and friends. That offer, moreover, was an appeal to 
 the sympathy of race against principle, made to one who had suffered 
 by the struggle of principle against the collision of race. But Navarro 
 knew where the highest duty was enthroned. Bonds and death were 
 better than dishonor, and the offer was spurned. 
 
 The weary months lagged on, and one 3^ear after another of impris- 
 onment was completed. The Santa Fe prisoners, all save Navarro, 
 were at length released as an act of grace. The same favor was then 
 extended to those captured in 1842, during WoU's raid on San Antonio, 
 and then to those of the Mier expedition, after they had suffered decima- 
 tion. Each of those bodies of prisoners, as well as I can recollect, 
 endured a year more or less of captivity and were then dismissed, with 
 a kind of contemptuous clemency, as insignificant ; and Navarro was 
 the only Texan prisoner that remained. Liberty could any day have 
 been bought, but the price was not forthcoming. 
 
 At length he was informed that liberty would be granted without any 
 other pledge than that of remaining in Mexico, if he would but send for 
 his family ; and that he should be liberated on those terms immediately 
 on their arrival. He saw at once in this an insidious proposal, made 
 with a view of gaining a new grasp for controlling him. He had met 
 previous advances calmly but sternly ; but this awakened a fierce 
 outburst of passion. He denounced Santa Ana as the meanest of 
 
24 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 oppressors, and said to the messenger that he would sooner rot in 
 chains than listen to any offer the tyrant was capable of making. ** He 
 may destroy me," said Navarro, " but he cannot deprive me of the 
 * respect of the brave and constant people with whom my lot is cast, and 
 who will appreciate my loyalty and honor my memory." 
 
 These attempts to tamper with the loyalty of the captive were, I 
 think, all made after he was transferred to Vera Cruz. The last one cer- 
 tainly was. Within the castle of San Juan de Ulloa, along the foot of the 
 eastern rampart, is a circuit of cells for prisoners, which open upon a 
 paved walk. In one of those, which, as well as I recollect, was num- 
 bered 51, Navarro was confined. Some time after what has just been 
 related, how long I do not remember, an officer of the garrison called 
 on the prisoner and told him that President Santa Ana had arrived at 
 Vera Cruz, and would visit the Castle in the afternoon. " He will," 
 said the officer, " make an inspection of the works, and in the cool of 
 evening will pass along with his staff in front of these cells. The door 
 of yours will be left open. You will hear when he passes, and will have 
 an opportunity to go forth and make a personal appeal to him." He 
 spoke in the manner of one delivering a set form of words, and made no 
 suggestions. The evening came, and the door was left unlocked. 
 Among other changes which had come to Santa Ana since he was 
 released from Texas, was the loss of a leg, and the use of a wooden sub- 
 stitute. Navarro sat alone in his cell listening for the approach of the 
 military group, but with no thought of availing himself of the opportu- 
 nity. At length the measured step of a number of men was heard, 
 and among them, as Navarro expressed it, the stumping of that wooden 
 foot accursed. (Maldita pata de palo.) In front of his cell they paused. 
 He then heard Santa Ana say : " This is cell No. 51." He was replied 
 to in the affirmative. He still paused, as if to make some indifferent 
 inquiries about the works. The pause was evidently intentional ; but 
 finding that nothing came of it he stumped onward. Though Navarro 
 had harbored no intent to humble himself before the tyrant, that pause 
 of his great enemy before the cell door brought to him, as he said, an 
 indescribable rush of mcmor}^ and feeling, such as is said to come to a 
 drowning man. 
 
 " Though in existence almost nought, 
 It was eternity to thought." 
 
 He thought of his family, the friends of his youth, and the scenes in 
 which nearly his whole life had been passed. Santa Ana was human, 
 and had at times been generous. He had liberated others. Would 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 25 
 
 anything be lost by a personal appeal? Might not liberty be recovered 
 without loss of honor? But Spanish pride rose up against the tempter. 
 Navarro stirred not a muscle, but sat listening to the beating of his own 
 heart, till the less audible footsteps died away in the distance. 
 
 The next day the officer who had given Navarro the information just 
 related called on him again. " You did not avail yourself of the oppor- 
 tunity," he observed. " No," said Navarro. " Nothing was to be gained 
 of that man by humiliation ; and even if there had been, it was a price I 
 was unwilling to pay." " You have done right," said the officer, " and I 
 respect you for it more than I can express." 
 
 Santa Ana, I have no doubt, had devised the opportunity, and 
 caused it to be announced, as an occasion for humbling and spurning a 
 man who was in his power, and who had exasperated him by the indig- 
 nant manner in which he had repulsed his last advances ; for Navarro's 
 words on that occasion had probably been reported to the President. 
 Such was the belief of Navarro ; and the officer just mentioned, whose 
 name I regret that I do not remember, seems to have been of the same 
 opinion. 
 
 Navarro's confinement, which had been rigorous, in the city of 
 Mexico, and for some time after his removal to San Juan de UUoa, was, 
 in consequence of his failing health, somewhat relaxed during the later 
 portion of his imprisonment in the castle, when he was allowed, during 
 the day, the freedom of the ramparts. He probably then received from 
 subordinates more indulgence than their superior would have sanctioned. 
 Yet this partial freedom brought with its relief many gloomy reflections. 
 The view of the busy mart intensified his desire for larger liberty ; and 
 the sight of vessels sailing out of the port and disappearing in the hori- 
 zon reminded him too mournfully of that distant home which he hardly 
 hoped ever again to reach. Casual remarks often made it evident that 
 he was looked upon by those around him as one doomed to wear out 
 his last years within prison walls. An old employee of the post, who 
 had passed many years at the castle, was one day speaking of the cycli- 
 cal recurrence of sickly seasons, and said to Navarro ; " You will see that 
 once in every seven years the vomito will prevail at tJiis place with unusual 
 violence." The evidently unintentional character of what was implied 
 made it more pointed, and carried a pang to the heart of the listener. 
 He said that while wrapped in dreamy musings of this kind, the sight of 
 a Texas newspaper which reached him brought a consolation which was 
 indescribably sweet in its sadness. It contained a resolution of the 
 Congress of Texas, or of some representative assemblage, expressing 
 
26 THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 
 
 deep sympathy with his sufferings, and a full appreciation of his heroic 
 patriotism. He had often given way to a somewhat morbid apprehen- 
 sion that no merit of his could overcome prejudice of race; and this 
 manifestation of public sentiment, which relieved him from that dread, 
 brought tears to his eyes, and made him feel that he could endure, for a 
 people who could do him justice, the worst that fate still had in store 
 for him. 
 
 But all things have an end, and the time at length came when the 
 trials of the patriot were to terminate. In the spring of 1845, Santa 
 Ana was overtaken by one of those oft repeated falls from which he had 
 as often risen. He was deposed by a revolution headed by Paredes, and 
 had to fly the country. The otificer in command at Vera Cruz, who 
 took sides with the revolutionists, had compassion on Navarro, and to 
 avoid the delay and uncertainty which might attend the procurement of 
 a formal liberation, connived at his escape and concealment on board of 
 a British steamer about leaving the port. That vessel left the fugitive 
 at Hav^ana, whence he proceeded to Galveston b}' way of New Orleans. 
 His arrival spread joy through Texas ; and he was everywhere received 
 with the demonstrations of gratitude and admiration which his patriot- 
 ism so well merited. His captivity had lasted from about the close of 
 i84i,to the spring of 1845. He arrived in Texas when annexation to the 
 United States was pending, and in the summer of 1845 took his seat in 
 the Convention which framed the constitution of the State of Texas, 
 preparatory to its reception into the Union. He was that year elected 
 to the State Senate, and served in it two or three terms, when he 
 declined a reelection, and retired from public life. When the secession 
 of the State occurred, he had for several years ceased to take any part 
 in political affairs. He died, I think, in 1871 or 1872. 
 
 I have named four Mexicans of Texas who figured in her declaration 
 of Independence and what led to it. Two of them, Zavala and Ruiz, I 
 never saw. Padilla I knew slightly, but with Navarro I was intimate, 
 having acted as his interpreter during the first session of the State Sen- 
 ate. He was a man of clear and analytical mind, with the kind of 
 capacitv, and the depth of it that would have fitted him for the highest 
 positions; executive, legislative or judicial. In Texas he represented an 
 unenlightened fraction of the population, to whom the new element was 
 alien, and the tongue of the former only was his. This kept him down 
 from the prominence which would have claimed him, had the country 
 been peopled equally by the two races; for he had the capacity, not 
 only to represent one. but to unite the two. He was the most eloquent 
 
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION 2/ 
 
 Spanish orator whom I have heard ; but this gift was mainly thrown 
 away upon an assemblage whom he had to address through an inter- 
 preter. Had early education made the English language as available to 
 him as his sonorous native tongue, he would not only have been a star 
 in the Congress of Texas, but have passed from it to that of the United 
 States. Indeed, during the first year or two after annexation, he 
 was frequently spoken of as a fitting candidate, notwithstanding the 
 disadvantage that clogged him. His life and character exhibit one of 
 those obscure cases of heroic worth for which early oblivion yawns ; 
 and glad would I be to know that words of mine could rescue, even for 
 a little while, from such a fate, the memory of a friend so noble and 
 beloved. The dungeon stones of Ulloa, trod first by Zavala and then 
 by this Bonnivard of Texas, ought to be as sacred to the eye of Patriot- 
 ism as those of Chillon, 
 
 "For thej^ appeal from Tyranny to God." 
 
 R. M. POTTER 
 
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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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