USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 2 > Part 11
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The members were: From Bexar, William H. Patton, succeeding Thomas J. Green, and Joseph Baker.
From Brazoria, Dr. Anson Jones and Patrick C. Jack, succeeding John A. Wharton and Dr. Branch T. Archer.
From Colorado, William Menefee, succeeding John G. Robison, killed by Indians.
From Harrisburg, Dr. Thomas J. Gazley, succeeding Jesse H. Cartwright.
From Jackson, George Sutherland, succeeding Samuel Addison White.
From Jasper, Samuel S. Lewis, re-elected -died and was succeeded by Timothy Swift.
From Jefferson, Joseph Grigsby, succeeding Claiborne West.
From Liberty, Edward Tanner Branch, re-elected.
From Bastrop, Jesse Billingsley, re-elected, and Edward Burleson, succeeding John W. Bunton.
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From Matagorda, Thomas J. Hardeman, succeeding first, Ira Ingram (resigned ) and second D. D. D. Baker.
From Nacogdoches, Thomas J. Rusk and Kelsey H. Douglas, succeeding John K. Allen, Haden Edwards (resigned ) and Hayden Arnold, his successor.
From Refugio, James Power, succeeding Elkanah Brush.
From Milam, William Walker, succeeding Samuel T. Allen.
From Houston (a new county ), Stephen O. Lumpkin.
From Sabine, William Clarke, succeeding John Boyd; Clarke resigned and was succeeded by Boyd.
From San Augustine, Dr. Joseph Rowe, re-elected, and Charlton Thompson, succeeding W. W. Holman.
From Victoria, John J. Linn, succeeding Richard Roman.
From Shelby, John English and William Pierpont, suc- ceeding Richard Hooper and Sidney O. Pennington.
From Washington, Wm. W. Hill and W. W. Gant, both re-elected.
From Gonzales, Andrew Ponton, succeeding William S. Fisher.
From Austin, Oliver Jones, succeeding Moseley Baker, who removed to Harrisburg County.
From Red River, Edward H. Tarrant, resigned and was succeeded by Peyton S. Wyatt ; Collin Mckinney ( re-elected ), Dr. Daniel Rowlett, succeeding M. W. Matthews.
From Goliad, F. W. Thornton, succeeding John Cheno- weth.
From San Patricio, Thomas H. Brennan, succeeding John Geraghty.
Dr. Joseph Rowe of San Augustine was elected Speaker over Edward T. Branch at both the called sessions of Sep- tember 26 and the regular session beginning November 6, 1 837.
At the called session John M. Shreve was elected chief clerk over William Fairfax Gray ; and at the regular session Francis R. Lubbock was elected over the same gentleman.
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The new senators for a full term of three years were:
From Washington, Dr. George W. Barnett, succeeding Jesse Grimes.
From Nacogdoches, Isaac W. Burton, succeeding Dr. Robert A. Irion, appointed Secretary of State.
From Shelby and Sabine, Emory Raines, succeeding Wm. H. Landrum.
From Goliad, San Patricio and Refugio, John Dunn, suc- ceeding Edwin Morehouse.
From Red River, Richard Ellis, re-elected.
From Brazoria, William H. Wharton, elected to succeed James Collinsworth, who had become Chief Justice and who had succeeded Mr. Wharton when he became Minister to the United States.
From San Augustine, John A. Greer, succeeding Shelby Corzine, who resigned upon being appointed district judge.
After the interment of the remains of Fannin's men at Goliad, General Rusk, for a time, encamped the army at Spring Creek, three miles above Victoria ; then removed to the Lavaca. Prior to its disbandment in 1837, the army occu- pied about five different encampments on the Lavaca and Navidad, in Jackson County, but all in a square of ten miles. When General Rusk left the army to become (temporarily as it proved) Secretary of War, General Felix Huston became the commander. Later General Albert Sidney Johnston superseded Huston, at which the latter became offended and a duel between them resulted, in which Johnston was severely wounded in the thigh.
As the terms of enlistment of different companies expired, they were discharged and the men scattered over the country as each individual preferred. Among them were many who became prominent and useful citizens, and some who acquired distinction in public positions. Volunteer companies con- tinued to arrive from the United States till the spring of 1837, keeping up an aggregate force of from two thousand to
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twenty-five hundred men. False alarms of Mexican invasion were of frequent occurrence and served in some degree to overcome the inertia incident to camp life. But volunteers idle in camp are prone to restlessness and subject to be influ- enced by such as have schemes for personal aggrandizement.
The Texian camp was not an exception to the rule. Pent up enthusiasm or ambition found vent, from time to time, in suggestions more or less chimerical, among which was a renewal of the plan for a descent on Matamoros, understood to have its parentage in General Felix Huston, in the latter period of his commandancy. The judgment of more dispas- sionate men, who realized the utter want of resources to sus- tain such an expedition, was entirely averse to the enterprise. President Houston was of that class, and regarded such an undertaking (impoverished and illy supplied as the country was) as doomed to disaster.
The many changes in the army, covering this period of in- activity, by resignations, elections and promotions; the dis- charge of those whose terms expired and the arrival of new companies, were such that it is almost impossible to convey an intelligible idea of its official composition. As the terms expired of those who were previously citizens of the country and had homes, or abiding places, they returned to them to provide for those dependent upon them, or to seek employ- ment as a means of subsistence. Colonel Burleson and most of the men at San Jacinto were comprehended in the latter class. A portion of the discharged volunteers returned, some only for a season, others permanently to the United States.
Thus matters stood when, with about twenty-four hundred men in idleness and the government severely taxed for their subsistence, with no prospects of the renewal of serious hos- tilities by distracted Mexico, President Houston wisely assumed the responsibility of furloughing by companies all but about six hundred men, subject to be re-assembled by proclamation should an emergency arise. As no such contin-
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gency arose, they were never called into service, but largely dispersed over the country to become valuable auxiliaries in building it up. Some went into the towns as mechanics, printers, lawyers, clerks, merchants, and an infinitesimal per cent as idlers, and many became invaluable settlers on and defenders of the frontier. General Albert Sidney Johnston remained in command of the reduced force.
Besides those whose names appear in the list of soldiers at San Jacinto, there figured in the army, more or less, during the time under consideration, Colonel Thomas J. Green ( who afterwards went to San Antonio and was elected to the first Congress in September, 1836) ; Colonel Rodgers, Colonel Edwin Morehouse, Colonel Thomas Wm. Ward ( who lost a leg as one of the New Orleans Grays in storming San Antonio), and Henry Teal, Louis P. Cooke, - Tinsley, Lysander Wells, Wm. D. Redd, George W. Fulton, John Holliday (escaped from the Goliad massacre ), Alonzo B. Sweitzer, Reuben Ross, J. P. C. Kenneymore, Clendenin, William G. Cook, Hugh McLeod, Peter H. Bell, G. H. Burroughs, Clark L. Owen ( killed at Shiloh, April, 1862), John M. Clifton, Jacob Snively, John Hart (from Red River), John M. Bradley, John A. Quitman, James A. Sylvester, George W. Poe, Mathew Cald- well, Pinkney Caldwell, George T. Howard, Martin K. Snell, Nicholas Brown (from Rodney, Miss. ), Dr. J. P. B. January, William Scurlock, Wm. Becknell ( from Red River ), Andrew Neill, Jerome B. Robertson, and - Love, who held commis- sions as officers of various ranks.
During a terrific thunder-storm at night, in camp on the Navidad, Colonel Henry Teal was assassinated while asleep in his tent. The crime could be traced to no one; but in 1855, on the eve of his execution for a double murder in Galveston County, a wretch named John H. Schultz confessed to having fired the fatal shot.1
1 The officer of the guard on that tempestuous night was Captain George W. Fulton, a native of Philadelphia, but then captain of a splendid company
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The labors of the second Congress, though failing to accom- plish what the country hoped for, were advantageous in many respects. The President vetoed a bill for establishing a land
recently arrived from Vincennes, Indiana, with a company from Washington, Indiana, commanded by Barton Peck, who soon afterwards married Fanny, one of the three daughters of Thomas Menefee of the Navidad, and many years afterward died in Goliad County.
From his home on Aransas Bay, February 12, 1889, Colonel Fulton amoug much else wrote :
" On the night of the murder of Colonel Henry Teal, in company with several other officers, I passed an hour or two with Colonels Teal and William G. Cooke, in their tent. Colonel Teal recounted his experiences at San Jacinto and remarked : " I tell you, boys, when you can see straight down a gun barrel it looks mighty long." When, two hours later, I saw him dead, this remark was indelibly fixed on my memory.
" Resuming my duty as officer of the guard, in a severe thunder-storm, at the instant of a most vivid flash of lightning, the report of a musket came almost simultaneously with the succeeding thunder-clap. In a few minutes the colored servant of Colonels Cooke and Teal came to my tent, which was within thirty yards of theirs, exclaiming : " Colonel Teal has been shot!" Being dressed I accompanied the negro man and was therefore the first, excepting the inmates of their tent, upon the spot. The cot of Colonel Teal had a leather bottom, depressed in a trough shape, and on feeling we found it almost filled with what in the dark we supposed to be rain water, but it was his blood. We secured a light and found him dead. He had been shot from the outside by an assassin, who, by the lightning, was enabled to miss Cooke about two inches and shoot Teal in the heart."
Eighteen years passed before any light was thrown on this murder, when, through the instrumentality of Judge Edmund Bellinger of Gonzales County, who, on a visit to his old home in South Carolina, through a nephew not over twelve years of age, discovered and had arrested John Hamilton Shultz, as the murderer of Simeon Bateman and - Jett on Galveston Bay, in 1845. Shultz was brought to Galveston, tried for this double murder and sen- tenced to be hanged in July, 1855.
I visited this doomed man in his cell in the Galveston jail several times. He promised me the day before his execution to make a full confession to me or any one I would select. Lewis M. H. Washington, a printer who came with Fannin's men from Georgia, was selected. Washington stayed in Shultz' lighted cell all night and wrote down his confession. Next morn- ing he confidentially showed it to me, but enjoined secrecy as he expected or rather hoped to realize handsomely by its publication in pamphlet form. Before the publication Mr. Washington was killed in a battle on the San
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office, very clearly setting forth his objections; but it was passed into law over his veto. He then evinced his desire to
Juan River in Nicaragua, under the Walker invasion of that country. His papers were all lost. The confession was to this effect:
That he was born and reared on the Wabash river, Indiana. That his whole family were thieves and some of them murderers. That his first great offense was in murdering for plunder a fellow passenger down the Wabash and Ohio, in a canoe, whereby he got considerable money. That on another occasion he murdered in the canebrakes of the Mississippi bottom, in west Tennessee, a land-seeker and got $7,000; that he was discovered, closely pursued and narrowly escaped in a canoe across the Mississippi into Arkan- sas, and in its swamps joined the Murrell gang of robbers and cut-throats; that in north Alabama he married a woman and then, to get her money, poisoned her; that in 1843, sixteen miles east of Gonzales, Texas, he had murdered one Green, his cousin and traveling companion, in order to secure his money, horse and equipments. With these he sought and obtained a home on the farm of Simeon Bateman, a planter, four or five miles west of Gonzales.
In the winter of 1845 Mr. Bateman with one of the Jett brothers, locally distinguished as Texas rangers, wanted to take a steamer at Galveston and visit New Orleans. Between them they had about $4,000 dollars. They took Shultz with them to convey their horses back to their homes in Gonzales County. About three miles west of Virginia Point on Galveston Bay, they encamped for the night. During the night Shultz murdered them, took their money, crossed the bay to Galveston and escaped on the steamer of that day to New Orleans before the dead bodies were discovered.
Though promptly tracked to New Orleans and Mobile, no further trace of him was found till ten years later when, by the mere prattling of a little boy he was discovered at Columbia, South Carolina, by Judge Bellinger, arrested, returned to Galveston, and by one of the most remarkable chains of evi- dence ever developed in the criminal jurisprudence of the United States, was tried, convicted and sentenced by Judge S. S. Munger to be hanged.
He confessed to Washington all that has been said in this note, which was the first intimation ever known as to who killed Colonel Teal, or Green on the head of the Lavaca, whose decaying body was first found by my elder brother, Rufus E. Brown, and John P. Tilley, while hunting cattle. Shultz fully explained how he killed Colonel Teal. He gave as his reason for the deed, that on a then recent expedition against the Indians, Colonel Teal had insulted him and he resolved on revenge. He confessed farther that he had robbed the patent office in Washington City and in escaping when discovered jumped from the roof of a house and his leg was broken. As a result of that accident he was captured, tried and put in the penitentiary of the Dis- trict of Columbia for (I think) five years.
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have the law wisely and faithfully executed by appointing John P. Borden 1 the first commissioner.
President Houston, on repeated occasions, with great firm- ness, but always in respectful terms, exercised the veto power to prevent what he considered hasty, unwise or dangerous legislation. In most cases, but not in every one, time vindi- cated his judgment. This was especially true in regard to the land law, which lacked the safeguards necessary to pre- vent frauds by unscrupulous men. The confusion and fraud- ulent practices it rendered possible, resulted in the enactment of the law of 1839-40, which created two traveling boards of commissioners, composed of three persons each, whose duty it was to visit and examine the records of all the county boards, showing the action of those bodies in issuing head- right certificates to claimants for land. He also wisely vetoed a bill providing for an excessive issue of treasury notes, against which policy also Governor Henry Smith, Secretary of the Treasury, was firmly opposed.
A matter of great interest in the west was the abandonment of stock ranchos between the Nueces and Rio Grande, by their Mexican owners and herdsmen, caused by the inroads of wild Indians in 1834-5-6, and rendered universal by the retreat of the Mexican army in June, 1836. Immense herds of semi- wild cattle were left in that region. Filisola's army on its retreat had taken out of Texas all the cattle found on its line of retreat. The country to the east of that region was barren of cattle. The soldiers of Texas were suffering for meat. In this emergency, General Rusk adopted the plan of sending
1 Fifty-six years later, were it practicable to take the sense of the survivors of that period, it is believed there would be no division of opinion in asserting that a more judicious selection could not have been made. The last survivor of a father and four sons, all valuable immigrants in 1829, ever true, intelligent and patriotic. John P. Borden receives at least this hom- age from one who served and suffered with him in the Rio Grande expedition in 1842. He died in 1891.
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alternate detachments of mounted men into the abandoned country to drive in cattle for the use of the army. This plan was successful and no farther scarcity was experienced. . After the disbandment of the army, this mode of reprisal was resorted to by many discharged soldiers and large numbers of western citizens whose herds had disappeared during the invasion. Parties of ten to fifteen began a system of such reprisals on private account and met with no difficulty in gathering herds of from two to five or six hundred head. To reduce these herds to control (always selecting periods of moonlight nights) they would keep them in a virtual run for twenty-four hours, then graduate into a slower gait till, at the end of two or three days, they could be managed some- what like domesticated cattle. Goliad, deserted as it was for a time, was the first place where pens existed in which they could be corraled.
This business flourished through 1838-9, but fell into disrepute and ceased about 1840. Western and central Texas, by the sale of these cattle, became possessed of a supply for breeding purposes which otherwise could not have been secured in many years and without which the frontier country could not have been populated and the people sus- tained as they were. This was the true origin of the term Cowboys in Texas. They were largely young men of the country, who had served in the army, and whose fathers had lost all their personal property in the war. A feeling arising in 1838, steadily grew in the country in favor of friendly trade with northern Mexico. It was responsive to overtures from that country and the belief that such com- mercial intercourse would be a safeguard against predatory warfare. President Houston issued a proclamation to en- courage this intercourse, and this was seconded by an act of Congress passed in the session of 1838-9.
CHAPTER XIII.
Death of Chief Justice Collinsworth - Meeting of third Congress - Con- tinued Indian depredations - Cordova's rebellion - Rusk's victory - The Famed Surveyor's fight - The Morgan massacre - French capture of San Juan de Ulloa - Santa Anna loses a Leg - Anson Jones Minister to the United States - Organization of a Regular Army - Retirement of Houston and inauguration of Lamar as President - The New Cabinet - Rusk made Chief Justice.
During the year 1838, Chief Justice James Collinsworth of the Supreme Court, was drowned in Galveston Bay. Some writers have repeated the mistaken story that he committed suicide. His death was a loss to the country. He was a man of superior legal ability and high mental endowments. President Houston, until the meeting of Congress, appointed John Birdsall to fill the vacancy.
The general election came off on the first Monday in September, 1838, for a full house of representatives, one- third of the senators, and for president and vice-president. Mirabeau B. Lamar was elected president with only 252 votes against him. David G. Burnet was elected vice-president, by a majority of 776 over the combined vote of Albert C. Horton and Dr. Joseph Rowe.
The third Congress assembled in Houston, on the 15th of November, 1838.
The newly elected senators were Harvey Kendrick, of Matagorda, succeeding Albert C. Horton ; Edward Burleson, of Bastrop, succeeding James S. Lester ; Oliver Jones, of Austin County, succeeding Alexander Somervell ; William H. Wharton, re-elected; and Benoni Stroud, of Robertson county, succeeding Sterling C. Robertson.
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HISTORY OF TEXAS.
THE THIRD HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1838.
Austin, John W. Bunton, previously from Bastrop.
Bastrop, Greenleaf Fisk and John Caldwell.
Bexar, Jose Antonio Navarro and Cornelius Van Ness (formerly American Secretary of Legation in Spain, under his father, Governor Wm. P. Van Ness, of Vermont).
Brazoria, John A. Wharton (died December 17th) and Louis P. Cooke.
Colorado, William Menefee, re-elected.
Fannin (new county ), Holland Coffee ( founder of Coffee's trading house ).
Fayette (new county ), Andrew Rabb, resigned and suc- ceeded by James S. Lester.
Fort Bend (new county ), Thomas Barnett.
Goliad, Isaac N. Tower.
Galveston (new county ), Moseley Baker.
Gonzales, Alonzo B. Sweitzer.
Houston, Isaac Parker, (the beginning of fourteen years. of continuous service ).
Harris (formerly Harrisburg), William Lawrence.
Jackson, James Kerr, who had served the territorial legis- lature of Missouri and in the Senate and House of the State Legislature of Missouri, in the Texas conventions of 1832. and 1833, in the provisional government of 1835, and was. elected to the convention of 1836.
Jefferson, Joseph Grigsby, re-elected.
Jasper, Timothy Swift, re-elected.
Liberty, Hugh B. Johnson.
Matagorda, Edward L. Holmes.
Milam, James Shaw.
Montgomery (new county ), Joseph L. Bennett.
Nacogdoches, K. H. Muse and David S. Kaufman.
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Refugio, Richard Roman, from Victoria in the first Congress.
Robertson, Dr. George W. Hill, the beginning of long service.
Red River, George W. Wright, Dr. Isaac N. Jones and - Fowler.
Sabine, - Payne.
San Augustine, Ezekiel W. Cullen and Isaac Campbell.
San Patricio, Benjamin Odlum.
Shelby, John M. Hansford and - Johnson.
Victoria, John J. Linn, re-elected.
Washington, James R. Jenkins and Anthony Butler (United States Minister to Mexico from 1830 to 1836).
It will be seen that the number of counties had increased from twenty-three, in 1836, to thirty in 1838; and the number of representatives from thirty to thirty-seven.
John M. Hansford, of Shelby, was elected Speaker without opposition; John W. Eldridge, Chief Clerk, and William Badgett, Assistant Clerk.
The President, by a joint committee of the two houses, was informed of their organization and readiness to receive any written communication he might wish to make. In a com- munication to both houses he said :
" Had no restriction been placed by the resolution on the right of the President to select the mode in which he would convey proper intelligence to Congress, and recommend such measures as he might deem necessary, he had important infor- mation to lay before the honorable body, and would have rendered it with pleasure, under the constitutional right secured to him, and in discharge of his duties. But for reasons which, to his mind, are satisfactory, he declines for the present, any further communication than to convey to Congress the reports of the several departments and the several bureaus attached to them. They suggest
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the necessary measures for the finance and defense of the country."
Prior to this the President had delivered his messages, whether written or oral, in person, to the two houses in joint session. The merits of the controversy depend upon the intent of Congress. If the mode was intentionally and not accidentally indicated ( which last would seem probable), it was a trivial act of discourtesy. The explanation that fol- lowed cannot be supplied; but, in the main, the President and Congress had respectful intercourse during the remaining five weeks of his term.
Through James Pinkney Henderson, President Houston had established a commercial understanding with Great Britain and France, under which trade could be carried on and Texas enjoy the rights of a belligerent in the ports of those countries ; all the rights usually accorded short of a recognition of independence.
During the year occurred the Mexican rebellion headed by Vicente Cordova, with Manuel Flores as his lieutenant, in the county of Nacogdoches. Over a hundred misguided Mexicans took up arms and occupied a position on the Angelina River, and were joined by a considerable number of Kickapoo and other Indians. Matters assumed an alarming aspect but the prompt measures adopted by General Rusk struck terror into the hearts of the malcontents, causing their dispersion in part, some to their homes and others up the country with Cordova, who remained in the wilderness a considerable time seeking to arouse the whole of the east Texas bands into hostility against the whites, in which to some extent, he succeeded. In November General Rusk fought, defeated and severely punished a band of Kickapoo and other Indians, and thus matters stood till the spring of 1839.
On the 10th of August, 1838, Captain Henry W. Karnes, with twenty-five men, on the Arroyo Seco, west of San Antonio, had been furiously assaulted by two hundred mounted Com-
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anches. With admirable skill he selected a defensive posi- tion and killed about twenty of the assailants before they gave up the contest and left the field.
On the Rio Frio, west of San Antonio, in 1838, a surveying party was attacked, the surveyor, Mr. Campbell, killed, and some of his companions wounded.
On the 19th of October, a surveying party seven miles west of San Antonio, was attacked and Jones and Lapham, the surveyors, killed. A party going to their relief was also assailed. Messrs. Cage, O'Boyle and Lee were killed and several wounded.
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