Mexico was indignant at seeing Texas, which she still claimed as one of
her provinces, about to enter the Union. As soon as the Annexation Bill
was passed by the United States Congress, Don Juan Almonte, formerly
aide-de-camp to General Santa Anna, now the Mexican minister at
Washington, D.C., was recalled, and preparations for war were begun on a
grand scale in Mexico.
In the meantime, the United States government had sent General Zachary
Taylor to Corpus Christi on the Texas coast, with four thousand troops.
He was ordered to march westward and take up a position on the Rio
Grande River, the boundary line between Texas and Mexico. He was further
ordered to confine himself to Texas soil unless the Mexicans should
attempt to cross the river.
In the spring of 1846 General Taylor began his march across the country,
“which appeared like one vast garden wavy with flowers of the most
gorgeous dyes.”[33] Then came a desert-like waste in which there was
neither water nor any growing thing. “The sand was like hot ashes, and
when you stepped upon it, you sank up to the ankles.”[33]
But the region beyond the desert was fertile and inviting. At the Sal
Colorado, a stream thirty miles east of the Rio Grande, some Mexican
soldiers appeared. They insisted that all the country west of the
Colorado belonged to Mexico, and declared that if the Americans
attempted to cross that stream they would fire upon them. General Taylor
paid no attention whatever to their threats. He led his troops over the
Sal Colorado without further trouble and continued his march toward the
Rio Grande.
There the war began in real earnest. The first battle was fought at Fort
Brown (now Brownsville), opposite Matamoras. The Americans were
victorious. Two other successful engagements, Palo Alto and Resaca de la
Palma, took place on Texas territory. Then General Taylor, having
received large reinforcements, entered Mexico and marched upon Monterey,
the great interior city of northern Mexico.
About this time Santa Anna, who had been in exile and disgrace, returned
to Mexico, and was immediately made commander-in-chief of the Mexican
army.
Texas furnished her share of men for the war upon her hereditary foe.
Governor Henderson himself entered the campaign as a major-general of
volunteers; ex-President Lamar and Edward Burleson served upon his
staff. Albert Sidney Johnston commanded a regiment. “Jack” Hays and
George T. Wood, afterward governor of Texas, were also in command of
regiments. Ben McCulloch carried into the war a company of rangers.
The Texans were in the van in every battle. At the storming of Monterey
they especially distinguished themselves by their daring and high
courage. A participator in the siege of the city says: “In order to
dislodge the skirmishers from the housetops, the Texans rushed from door
to door, breaking through buildings and inside walls; and, mounting to a
level with the enemy, picked them off with their rifles. Meanwhile those
in the streets charged from square to square amid sweeping showers of
grape, cheered on by Lamar, Henderson, and Jefferson Davis of the
Mississippi regiment.” The next day “the artillery on both sides raked
the streets, the balls striking the houses with a terrible crash, while
amid the roar of cannon was heard the battering instruments of the
Texans. Doors were forced open, walls were battered down, entrances were
made through stone and brick, and the enemy were driven from point to
point, followed by the sharp crack of the Texan rifles.”
General Ampudia, who had so basely betrayed the trust of the Texans
after their surrender at Mier in 1843, was in command of the Mexican
forces. After three days of desperate fighting he surrendered the city
of Monterey to General Taylor.
The officers commissioned by Taylor to draw up the articles of
capitulation on the American side were Generals Worth and Henderson
(governor of Texas) and Colonel Jefferson Davis.
Texas furnished above eight thousand soldiers for this war, and the
“murderous ring of the Texan rifle” was heard on almost every field.
In New Mexico, where there was considerable fighting, the cannon taken
from General McLeod in the fatal Sante Fé expedition in 1841 was
discovered by the American soldiers, where it had been hidden in the
mountains. “It is,” says the record, “a six-pounder, bearing the ‘Lone
Star’ of Texas and the name of her ex-President, Mirabeau B. Lamar.” The
Americans adopted it as a favorite, and used it in firing their morning
and evening signals. The Lone Star, they declared, brought them good
luck.
The war ended in the storming and capture of the city of Mexico by
General Winfield Scott, commander-in-chief of the United States army.
Santa Anna, once more defeated and humbled, hid himself with the remains
of his army in the mountain passes of Mexico.
[Illustration: Benjamin M^cCulloch.]
In one of the last battles of the war Colonel Samuel H. Walker was
killed. This dashing young Texan, had been again and again selected by
General Taylor for dangerous service, and his gallantry was a by-word in
the army. He had been one of the unfortunate Mier prisoners, and was
among those who overpowered the guard at Salado and escaped, only to be
recaptured. In the death-lottery he had drawn a white bean, and had
afterward endured the miseries of the Castle of Perote. In the
neighborhood of that prison he fell mortally wounded, but flushed with
victory, and soon afterward expired. “Few men were more lamented. When
the cry ‘Walker is dead’ rang through the company, the hardy soldiers
burst into tears.”[34]
Mexico signed at Guadalupe, Hidalgo, a treaty with the United States
(February 2, 1848), and abandoned forever all claim to Texas.
The governors who succeeded Henderson in Texas from 1847 to 1859 were
Governors George T. Wood, Hansborough P. Bell, Elisha M. Pease, and
Hardin R. Runnels.
Early in Governor Wood’s administration a disagreement arose between
Texas and the United States over Sante Fé and the surrounding country.
This had been a part of Texas, but was ceded in 1848 by Mexico to the
United States with New Mexico. When the United States took possession of
it Texas protested, and much ill-feeling followed. For a time it seemed
as if the state which had just got into the Union would march out again.
But the question was settled during Governor Bell’s term of office. The
disputed territory was bought by the United States from Texas for the
sum of ten million dollars.
During these years Texas grew in prosperity; all boundary questions were
settled, and the public debt was paid. Settlements sprung up to the very
border. This, however, caused fresh trouble among the Indians, who from
time to time fell upon isolated settlements, burning the houses and
killing the settlers or carrying them into captivity. As late as 1847
two hundred Lipans on the war-path swept the western frontier. In 1848
the Indians in Texas killed one hundred and seventy persons, carried
twenty-five into captivity, and stole six thousand horses.
The Texan rangers were ordered out by Governor Wood to protect the
frontier. The Comanches, the fiercest of the western tribes, were
finally defeated by the rangers under Colonel John S. Ford. Their chief,
Iron Jacket, was killed in a desperate hand-to-hand combat with Captain
S. P. Ross. The chief’s tall form was found, after death, to be encased
in a fine coat of scale armor, supposed to have belonged to some
Spaniard in the days of the conquest of Mexico. Hence his name, Iron
Jacket, and the belief that he could not be killed by the bullet of the
white man. Iron Jacket’s little son Noh-po was carried to Waco, where he
was raised by the Ross family. During the administration of Governor
Pease, the legislature gave the Indians twelve leagues of land and built
for them several new trading-posts along the frontier. Later they were
all removed to the Indian Territory.
Two million dollars were set aside by the state for a permanent school
fund; and a quantity of land was voted for the support of the deaf and
dumb, the blind, the orphan, and the insane.
A new state capitol, a Land Office, and other public buildings were
erected at Austin.
In 1857 there was an uprising of Texan wagoners against the Mexican
cartmen, who were engaged in hauling goods from the coast towns to San
Antonio. Mexican labor was much cheaper than any other, and a large
number of these teamsters, who were honest and reliable, were employed
by merchants and planters. The Texan wagoners, failing to drive out
Mexican cartmen by threats, raided them on the roads, drove off their
oxen, broke up their carts, and in some instances killed the drivers.
Governor Pease, by ordering out a company of rangers to protect the
Mexican teamsters, finally put a stop to the “Cart War,” as it was
called.
No other trouble marred this bright period. “Our inhabitants,” said
Governor Pease, in his message to the legislature in 1855, “are
prosperous and happy to a degree unexampled in our former history.”