Hey folks, hope all is well, I've been away from the History board a lot. For you young-ins, I'm the squeeky wheel that got Staph to start this history forum back in 05 or so. Well, me and a few other old-timers.
So, back in 09 I started my masters' degree in US History at Tx. State. Around 2012, I was busy with work and had a kid and had to stop taking classes, but I finally started up again last year to finish up before I timed out. I'm now down to my master's thesis.
My topic is the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition of 1812. This is, I think, a hugely important part of Texas history that most Texans are unaware of. As much of a nerd as I am, I didn't learn about it until I was in my 30s. It was Texas' FIRST Revolution, the Revolution of 1836 being the second.
Here's the HoT article if you want the full summary: Handbood of Texas.
But here are a few summary points I think are important:
Spain was in chaos at the time after Napoleon had captured it and installed his brother as the Spanish Monarch. Originally, the locals in the various provinces of New Spain started caretaker regimes, but these often evolved into revolutionary movements. Venezuela led the way, but most followed soon after.
In Mexico, we know of the Grito, when Father Hidalgo called for revolution. Hidalgo was soon defeated and decided to reach out to the United States for help and arms. Hidalgo, in the northern part of Mexico, was quite literally going to move his army through Texas to the U.S. border and join up with a flood of volunteers from the U.S.
Before that could happen, of course, Hidalgo was betrayed and executed. His army fragmented, but a young adherent named Bernardo Gutierrez took on the mission to the U.S. He made his way through Texas despite royalist patrols and arrived in the U.S. He traveled to Washington, met president James Madison and Sec. of State James Monroe. They were encouraging, but stopped short of promising aid unless Gutierrez would promise them Texas (which they believed was part of the Louisiana Purchase). He of course, could not do that, but they agreed that an independent Mexico that wouldn't threaten New Orleans was the next best thing and they gave him moral support to his plan. At the time, Madison mostly feared that England, which was Spain's ally, would seize Texas as a protectorate and never leave.
Gutierrez traveled to Louisiana where he found hundreds of Americans waiting to go for an invasion. He convinced Augustus Magee, a LT in the US Army, to resign his commission and become the military leader of the expedition. After waiting for the expected Declaration of War between the US and England (many of the participants saw this as part of that same war), the expedition, with about 400 Americans and maybe 200 Tejanos/Spanish deserters, invaded. They took Nacogdoches without a shot when the bulk of the Spanish garrison defected to their side. They then fought their way to La Bahia, took that, and then were besieged by the Royalists for 4 months. The Royalists, however, didn't have enough food to continue the siege and their troops were constantly deserting, so they pulled back. In the meantime, the Comanches had raided San Antonio so bad in their absence that the populace was hostile to them when they returned and were ready to join the rebels.
There were several battles on the way and in early 1813, the rebels took San Antonio and captured the governor. By now, the army was about 1/3 Anglo, 1/3 Tejano and 1/3 Indian (mostly the Caddos and Alabama Coushattas). Things began to go bad, however, after the Spanish governor, who had been promised protection by the Americans, was taken into the boonies and beheaded by the Tejanos (one of the guys responsible had watched his own family executed on this guy's orders, so you can't really blame him). Anyway, many of the Anglos, especially the leaders, said "enough of this, and my country's now in a real war with England, so I'm going back!" and left.
A few hundred, maybe 300-400, however, stayed. The Royalists returned and in a one-sided fight called the Battle of Medina (South of San Antonio), crushed the rebels on August 18, 1813. They wiped out all but maybe 100 of the enemy (executing prisoners too) and proceeded into San Antonio, where they subsequently killed anyone with any known tie to the revolution. It's estimated that they may have killed as many as 1/4 or 1/3 of the adult men in Texas. One of the young officers in this blood-soaked royalist army was a young guy named Santa Ana, who I think did something or other later in history, probably inspired by this.
This is why I think this is important:
There were multiple battles larger than most of the Texas Revolution of 1836 battles. More people died in this revolution. The siege of La Bahia lasted 4 months - 8 times longer than the siege of the Alamo. (And it showed that had Fannin tried to fight in 1836, he could have held out pretty well in that fort).
But mostly why this is important is the demographics. The population of Texas before the revolution was maybe 3,000, and after it was about 2,000. There were 10,000 Indians in Texas. The Tejano men who formed militias to fight the Indians were devastated, and the Spaniards, who had always been heavily dependent on a presidial force to defend their province, became even more dependent - at the same time as revolution continued throughout Mexico.
I think the case can be argued that the catastrophe stacked the deck in favor of Moses/Stephen F. Austins' proposal to bring in new settlers, and thus eventually sealed the fate of Texas.
Here's what I'm doing:
The general story of the battle has been told, but not told well, before. There were a couple of books in the 40s, one in the 80s and one actually last year. These are basically repetitive, built on only a handful of sources and read like a circular argument, because they all cite each other.
I've always had a fascination with the topic and when I brought it up to my thesis advisor, he suggested I look into the people, specifically the Americans (the Tejanos, he said, correctly, would be best examined by someone perfectly fluent (I'm decent, but not great) in Spanish.
I was reading the articles on this and came across a reference in a book about Madison's foreign policy that basically said these "unnamed frontiersmen" were just pawns in Madison's game. That kind of ticked me off, because I knew the history enough to know that these people were really an organic, bottom-up army that may have gotten a nod and a wink from Madison, but didn't take his orders any more than Sam Houston's army took his. In other words, they were a republican rabble.
So I started looking into these guys' histories. We only had the names of about 30-40 of them, (mostly officers mentioned in dispatches or newspaper articles, because they were mostly killed and their roster fell into the Spanish hands and was lost forever), and in my research I was able to add about 10 more.
I was able to find some really cool stuff out that no historian has ever found out before. Simply by virtue of the fact that no one has seriously looked at these guys since the invention of the Internet.
The leader of the expedition, Magee, has a very basic bio that only notes his place of birth and the fact that he went to West Point. However, I was able to absolutely prove that he was in fact the son of one of the richest men in Massachusetts and had attended one of the most elite private schools in the country. I identified several participants who had led filibusters in West Florida, some of whom were known, but some who were obscure. I was able to verify the suspicion of some historians that a man named Johnston was a relative of Albert Sidney Johnston. Some thought he might be a brother, others said no he can't be because we know ASJ's brothers. I was able to prove that he is in fact a half-brother from ASJ's father's first marriage, and more importantly, he had ANOTHER brother with him in the expedition, meaning Texas' revolutionary and Civil War leader had two older brothers who fought at the Battle of Medina.
This led me to another observation: The number of survivors who later came to Texas as immigrants (including a handfull of Old 300 folks and one signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence) is rather large, encompassing maybe 1/3 of the known survivors. This has implications for the "motives" of the Austin settlers. I think I can show that most people in the Gutierrez-Magee expedition were not explicitly trying to expand U.S. borders (and several have letters saying that they were happy to become Mexican citizens), and this is relevant to their motives 15 years later when they started coming to Texas.
I'm still working on a few more sources, but expect to start writing soon. This will be fun!
So, back in 09 I started my masters' degree in US History at Tx. State. Around 2012, I was busy with work and had a kid and had to stop taking classes, but I finally started up again last year to finish up before I timed out. I'm now down to my master's thesis.
My topic is the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition of 1812. This is, I think, a hugely important part of Texas history that most Texans are unaware of. As much of a nerd as I am, I didn't learn about it until I was in my 30s. It was Texas' FIRST Revolution, the Revolution of 1836 being the second.
Here's the HoT article if you want the full summary: Handbood of Texas.
But here are a few summary points I think are important:
Spain was in chaos at the time after Napoleon had captured it and installed his brother as the Spanish Monarch. Originally, the locals in the various provinces of New Spain started caretaker regimes, but these often evolved into revolutionary movements. Venezuela led the way, but most followed soon after.
In Mexico, we know of the Grito, when Father Hidalgo called for revolution. Hidalgo was soon defeated and decided to reach out to the United States for help and arms. Hidalgo, in the northern part of Mexico, was quite literally going to move his army through Texas to the U.S. border and join up with a flood of volunteers from the U.S.
Before that could happen, of course, Hidalgo was betrayed and executed. His army fragmented, but a young adherent named Bernardo Gutierrez took on the mission to the U.S. He made his way through Texas despite royalist patrols and arrived in the U.S. He traveled to Washington, met president James Madison and Sec. of State James Monroe. They were encouraging, but stopped short of promising aid unless Gutierrez would promise them Texas (which they believed was part of the Louisiana Purchase). He of course, could not do that, but they agreed that an independent Mexico that wouldn't threaten New Orleans was the next best thing and they gave him moral support to his plan. At the time, Madison mostly feared that England, which was Spain's ally, would seize Texas as a protectorate and never leave.
Gutierrez traveled to Louisiana where he found hundreds of Americans waiting to go for an invasion. He convinced Augustus Magee, a LT in the US Army, to resign his commission and become the military leader of the expedition. After waiting for the expected Declaration of War between the US and England (many of the participants saw this as part of that same war), the expedition, with about 400 Americans and maybe 200 Tejanos/Spanish deserters, invaded. They took Nacogdoches without a shot when the bulk of the Spanish garrison defected to their side. They then fought their way to La Bahia, took that, and then were besieged by the Royalists for 4 months. The Royalists, however, didn't have enough food to continue the siege and their troops were constantly deserting, so they pulled back. In the meantime, the Comanches had raided San Antonio so bad in their absence that the populace was hostile to them when they returned and were ready to join the rebels.
There were several battles on the way and in early 1813, the rebels took San Antonio and captured the governor. By now, the army was about 1/3 Anglo, 1/3 Tejano and 1/3 Indian (mostly the Caddos and Alabama Coushattas). Things began to go bad, however, after the Spanish governor, who had been promised protection by the Americans, was taken into the boonies and beheaded by the Tejanos (one of the guys responsible had watched his own family executed on this guy's orders, so you can't really blame him). Anyway, many of the Anglos, especially the leaders, said "enough of this, and my country's now in a real war with England, so I'm going back!" and left.
A few hundred, maybe 300-400, however, stayed. The Royalists returned and in a one-sided fight called the Battle of Medina (South of San Antonio), crushed the rebels on August 18, 1813. They wiped out all but maybe 100 of the enemy (executing prisoners too) and proceeded into San Antonio, where they subsequently killed anyone with any known tie to the revolution. It's estimated that they may have killed as many as 1/4 or 1/3 of the adult men in Texas. One of the young officers in this blood-soaked royalist army was a young guy named Santa Ana, who I think did something or other later in history, probably inspired by this.
This is why I think this is important:
There were multiple battles larger than most of the Texas Revolution of 1836 battles. More people died in this revolution. The siege of La Bahia lasted 4 months - 8 times longer than the siege of the Alamo. (And it showed that had Fannin tried to fight in 1836, he could have held out pretty well in that fort).
But mostly why this is important is the demographics. The population of Texas before the revolution was maybe 3,000, and after it was about 2,000. There were 10,000 Indians in Texas. The Tejano men who formed militias to fight the Indians were devastated, and the Spaniards, who had always been heavily dependent on a presidial force to defend their province, became even more dependent - at the same time as revolution continued throughout Mexico.
I think the case can be argued that the catastrophe stacked the deck in favor of Moses/Stephen F. Austins' proposal to bring in new settlers, and thus eventually sealed the fate of Texas.
Here's what I'm doing:
The general story of the battle has been told, but not told well, before. There were a couple of books in the 40s, one in the 80s and one actually last year. These are basically repetitive, built on only a handful of sources and read like a circular argument, because they all cite each other.
I've always had a fascination with the topic and when I brought it up to my thesis advisor, he suggested I look into the people, specifically the Americans (the Tejanos, he said, correctly, would be best examined by someone perfectly fluent (I'm decent, but not great) in Spanish.
I was reading the articles on this and came across a reference in a book about Madison's foreign policy that basically said these "unnamed frontiersmen" were just pawns in Madison's game. That kind of ticked me off, because I knew the history enough to know that these people were really an organic, bottom-up army that may have gotten a nod and a wink from Madison, but didn't take his orders any more than Sam Houston's army took his. In other words, they were a republican rabble.
So I started looking into these guys' histories. We only had the names of about 30-40 of them, (mostly officers mentioned in dispatches or newspaper articles, because they were mostly killed and their roster fell into the Spanish hands and was lost forever), and in my research I was able to add about 10 more.
I was able to find some really cool stuff out that no historian has ever found out before. Simply by virtue of the fact that no one has seriously looked at these guys since the invention of the Internet.
The leader of the expedition, Magee, has a very basic bio that only notes his place of birth and the fact that he went to West Point. However, I was able to absolutely prove that he was in fact the son of one of the richest men in Massachusetts and had attended one of the most elite private schools in the country. I identified several participants who had led filibusters in West Florida, some of whom were known, but some who were obscure. I was able to verify the suspicion of some historians that a man named Johnston was a relative of Albert Sidney Johnston. Some thought he might be a brother, others said no he can't be because we know ASJ's brothers. I was able to prove that he is in fact a half-brother from ASJ's father's first marriage, and more importantly, he had ANOTHER brother with him in the expedition, meaning Texas' revolutionary and Civil War leader had two older brothers who fought at the Battle of Medina.
This led me to another observation: The number of survivors who later came to Texas as immigrants (including a handfull of Old 300 folks and one signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence) is rather large, encompassing maybe 1/3 of the known survivors. This has implications for the "motives" of the Austin settlers. I think I can show that most people in the Gutierrez-Magee expedition were not explicitly trying to expand U.S. borders (and several have letters saying that they were happy to become Mexican citizens), and this is relevant to their motives 15 years later when they started coming to Texas.
I'm still working on a few more sources, but expect to start writing soon. This will be fun!
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