The Mier Expedition
Shooting the Decimated Texians. On March 25, 1843, seventeen prisoners
were executed at Hacienda del Salado as punishment for the Texans' escape from
the hacienda six weeks earlier.
Historians have
traditionally portrayed the Mier Expedition as a glorious, but disastrous
episode during the days of the
What follows
below are two interpretations of the Mier Expedition. The first one (in this blue font) represents
a summary of traditional accounts.
The basic source was the journal Thomas Jefferson Green, a member of the
expedition. The second version (in this green font),
stripped of its cultural bias, draws from recorded statements and reports filed
with the Texas and Mexican governments as well as from letters and other
primary sources.
For further study.
Following the second account (in this violet font) are
excerpts from Sam W. Haynes’ introduction to a recent reissue of
Green’s journal. Haynes is
professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, and author of Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somervell and
Mier Expeditions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
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MEXICAN INVASIONS OF 1842. Because of … Meanwhile On September 11, 1842, Gen. Adrián Woll,
with a force of 1,200 Mexicans, captured Jack W.
Gunn Handbook of Texas Online, "MEXICAN INVASIONS OF 1842," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/qem2.html
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DAWSON MASSACRE. After the capture of San Antonio on September 11,
1842, by Brig. Gen. Adrián Woll in the second of the Mexican invasions
of 1842, Texan forces gathered on Salado Creek under Col. Mathew Caldwell to
repel the raiders. While Texas arms were succeeding at the battle of Salado
Creek on September 18, 1842, a calamity was occurring only a mile and a half
away. In response to Caldwell's call for volunteers, Capt. Nicholas M. Dawson
had raised a fifty-three-man company, mostly from Fayette County, and marched
down from La Grange. Believing Caldwell's forces to be in grave danger,
Dawson's men chose not to wait for Capt. Jesse Billingsley's company, which
was following them, but to disregard the threat posed by numerous heavy
Mexican cavalry patrols and to fight their way to the Salado. Near Caldwell's
embattled line, between 3 and 4 P.M. on the eighteenth, the company was
intercepted by a column of 500 irregular Mexican cavalry commanded by
colonels Cayetano Montero, José María Carrasco, and Pedro
Rangel and supported by a battery of two field pieces. According to the
accounts of several survivors, the Mexican column was commanded by Juan
Seguín, but they were no doubt in error. Dawson dismounted his men in
a mesquite thicket where Fort Sam Houston now stands and threatened to
"shoot the first man who runs." The Texans were quickly surrounded
but repulsed a spirited cavalry charge and inflicted a number of casualties
on the enemy. The Mexicans then fell back out of rifle range and opened fire
on the Texans with their artillery. Billingsley's company, which arrived
while the fight was in progress, was too weak to go to Dawson's aid, and
Caldwell's men on Salado Creek were heavily engaged throughout the afternoon.
Montero once more ordered his cavalry, then dismounted, to charge. After a
vigorous but futile resistance, the severely wounded Dawson sought to
surrender. The Mexicans continued to fire, however, striking Dawson several more
times. Seeing surrender to be impossible, he gasped out his dying words,
"Let victory be purchased with blood." Alsey S. Miller took up the
white mackinaw that Dawson had waved in token of surrender and rode with it
toward the Mexican lines, only to be fired upon in his turn. Miller then
galloped through the enemy toward the town of Seguin. Henry Gonzalvo Woods,
after witnessing the death of his father and the mortal wounding of his
brother Norman, also escaped. Some of the Texans continued to resist while
others laid down their arms. Heroic in the fight was Griffin, a slave of Sam
Maverick, who, his rifle shattered, fought on with the limb of a mesquite
tree until he was killed. By 5 P.M. the fight was over. Thirty-six Texans
died on the field, fifteen were taken prisoner, and two escaped. The
prisoners were marched away to Perote Prison in Mexico. Of these men, only
nine survived to return to Texas. Thirty Mexicans were estimated to have been
killed and between sixty and seventy wounded. Two days later the Mexican army
retreated toward the Rio Grande, and the Dawson men were buried in shallow
graves in the mesquite thicket where they fell. Thomas
W. Cutrer Handbook of Texas Online, "DAWSON MASSACRE," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/DD/qfd1.html
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The
<http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/republic/mier/mier-01.html>
In the
1840s, the tensions between the
Somervell
recruited about 700 volunteers, most of whom had no regular military training.
The expedition raided the border towns of
Mier Expedition Descending the
On
December 23, 1842, Fisher and most of the men crossed the
Texian Charge Upon the Guards… "It was the work of an instant,"
Green wrote, to take "possession of the outer court, where the arms and
cartridge boxes were guarded by one hundred and fifty infantry."
As far
as the Mexicans were concerned, the Texans were privateers on an unauthorized
raid and entitled to no consideration as military prisoners of war. They were
initially sentenced to death, then ordered on a forced march to
Texians Killing Their Horses in the Mountains for Sustenance. Most of the escaped Texans would be recaptured
after days of wandering aimlessly in search of food and water.
When he
heard about the breakout, President Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered
that the recaptured prisoners, some 176 men, be put to death immediately. The governor
of the state of Coahuila, Francisco Mexía, refused to carry out the
order and pleaded with foreign ministers in
What
happened next became known as the "Black Bean Episode," one of the
most notorious atrocities of Santa Anna's career. He promised the foreign
ministers that he would show mercy, and then modified his decree to order the
decimation of the Mier prisoners; in other words, the execution of every tenth
man. On March 25, 1843, the prisoners were forced to draw from a jar containing
159 white beans and 17 black beans. At dusk that day, those unlucky enough to
draw a black bean were shot to death, as was Cameron as the leader of the
escapees.
Texians Drawing the Black Beans at
The
remaining prisoners were put to work on a road gang. Then, most were thrown
into the notorious Perote Prison in Vera Cruz, though a few were separated from
the group and scattered into other prisons around
Separation After Escape. Eight of the prisoners who escaped from
Perote on July 2nd were soon recaptured. Green and seven others succeeded in
making their way back to
In 1848
the bodies of the men executed in the Black Bean Episode were returned from
A Revisionist Summary of the Mier Expedition,
excerpted from The Conquest of Texas:
Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1995) 197-8.
~ by Gary Anderson
General Santa Anna, back in power, ordered
a brief nuisance raid on San Antonio; seven hundred mostly mounted Mexican
troops under General Rafael Vasquez seized the town for several days in early
March, 1842.
…
The “War Hawks” in the Texas
Congress forced [President Sam]
…
[Relations between
The voluntary force that turned south on
November 25 put even some ranger units to shame for its ugly element. A few of the men were legitimate farmers
or ranchers, but most were not….A few of the officers, such as Captain
William S. Fisher (prominent in destroying the Cherokees), had led troops in
several early battles. Anyone who
agreed to serve with Fisher would, he said, be rewarded by the richness of the
land and the fatness thereof.”
Then there was Ewen Cameron, known as the “Attila of Texas,”
a huge man who ran a large gang of horse thieves out of Goliad. What made Cameron unusual was that among
the three hundred to four hundred criminals in his party, he stuck out. The gangs saw the Somervell expedition
as a chance to expand their stealing operations.
The placid Somervell had little chance of
controlling this mob. But with his
men swept up in the war hysteria, he had to either lead the army south or watch
it leave on its own…The Texas volunteers pushed south to Laredo….Somervell
placed the Texas flag in the town square and ordered his army to camp in a
nearby ravine.
Early that evening…small groups of
Texans left camp…and returned to
Some troops, disgusted with this activity,
left for home. Others helped
Somervell confiscate at least part of the loot; most of it was clothing,
stacked to the height of a good-sized house.
…
The army was slowly breaking up as a result
of the disorder and looting. The 500
who remained followed Somvervell south to Guerrero, where more pillaging
occurred. Here a mutiny erupted in
which 189 men followed Fisher, Cameron, and Green into the Mexican town of
For
further study…
Introduction to Journal of the Texian
Expedition against Mier, by Gen. T. J. Green, 1845, ed. by Sam
Haynes, published by the William
P. Clements
Center
~ by Sam W. Haynes
Thomas Jefferson Green is not generally
regarded as one of the principal figures in the history of
…
[I]t was the failure of the Texas
Railroad, Navigation and Banking Company, of which Green was a major
stockholder, that seems to have been the principal source of the animosity
between Green and Sam Houston, sparking a bitter feud that would span the next
twenty-five years. In December, Congress authorized the company to build an
internal improvements network of canals and railroads linking the Sabine River
and the
President Houston signed the bill into law,
but the following year, in the wake of the Panic of 1837, which brought about
the virtual collapse of the banking industry in the
With the power to issue bank notes as
currency, manipulate land prices, and set transportation rates, the company
would have exercised virtual control over the financial and economic affairs of
the young republic. Faced with rising opposition to the scheme, Houston and
other
…
With the elevation of Sam Houston to the
presidency in December 1841, Green returned to the public spotlight as a member
of the opposition. He was particularly strident on the subject of renewing war
with
In 1842, Green was one of the most zealous
of the "war hawks" who championed the cause of an offensive campaign
against
When a second Mexican invasion, under
General Adrian Woll, captured San Antonio again six months later, the Houston administration
bowed, albeit reluctantly, to the war hawks' demand for reprisal. It was only
natural that Green, who had yet to do battle with either Mexicans or Indians -
a prerequisite for any politically ambitious Anglo-Texan - would be eager to
participate in a foray into northern
Despite his enthusiasm for an invasion of
the
He was
possessed with that degree of vanity that prompted him rather to rashness than
cool, determined valour. He might be termed, by some, a man of tallent[sic],
which he did to some degree possess, but they were of an order that I would
believe quite ordinary. Vain, bombastic, fond of praise, and withall, ambitious
of military glory, he could well be called darring[sic], even fearless; but he
was unfit to command an army....
For his part,
From the very outset the campaign proved to
be a combination of high camp and tragedy. For several weeks General Alexander
Somervell kept his soldiers bivouacked outside
The newly reorganized expedition did not get
far. On Christmas Day, one week after abandoning Somervell on the banks of the
The Santa Anna regime decreed that one out
of every ten men should be executed as punishment for the escape. At the ranch
where they had made their bid for freedom, 176 prisoners drew from a pot containing
white and black beans in what would become known in
The book that grew out of Green's
experiences on the Somervell and Mier expeditions is not without its
shortcomings. Although Green made every effort to provide a complete account,
it is important to remember that his travails in Mexico were by no means
representative of those of the men who laid down their arms at the Battle of
Mier. While the conditions of his captivity left much to be desired, they were
substantially better than those endured by the men under his command. As
officers, Green and Fisher generally fared better than the rank and file, and
during the course of their long march into Mexico, they were usually housed in posadas,
rather than the muddy cowpens to which the others quickly became
accustomed. Moreover, their circumstances were ameliorated by their access to
financial resources unavailable to most prisoners. The U.S. consul in Matamoros
advanced Green a total of $700, while his counterpart in Veracruz also loaned
him money for his passage back to Texas. He received additional funds from
friends in the United States, which he used to purchase food and liquor and to
effect his release from Perote. By contrast, those prisoners unable to rely
upon the largesse of friends and family at home subsisted largely on the meager
rations provided by the Mexican army, unable to pay for the various amenities
that made prison life more comfortable. Wrote one Perote prisoner: "I have
not got a single shirt to my back nor scarcely anything in the shape of
pantaloons. Nor have I any prospect of getting things. Those who received money
from friends in the States can get along verry[sic] well but those that have
none suffer."
In addition to receiving better treatment,
Green was fortunate to have been spared some of the more grueling experiences
of the main body of prisoners during the course of its march into Mexico.
Separated from the rank and file at Matamoros, Green saw his men again only
once, at the Hacienda del Salado on the eve of the Texans' bid for freedom. By
the time they arrived at Perote in the fall of 1843, Green had already made his
escape from the fortress and returned to Texas. Thus, his account of the most
celebrated events of the expedition - the battle at the Hacienda del Salado,
the Texans' escape into the mountains, and the "black bean episode" -
was culled from other sources. For this part of his narrative, Green was
fortunate to meet in Texas in 1843 another Mier prisoner who had managed to
escape from a Mexican prison, Samuel H. Walker. Although Walker, a man of few
words, lacked Green's talents as an author and raconteur, he had kept a diary
of his experiences in Mexico, describing in a straightforward manner the
hardships of the main body of prisoners. Walker gave the diary to Green,
providing him with much of the material he needed to chronicle the
all-important events that followed his departure from the Hacienda del Salado.
Characteristically, Green failed to mention
Walker's contribution to the book, underscoring another problem of his Journal:
his overbearing ego and his tendency to ignore or denigrate the role of others.
As an eyewitness account of a military campaign, the book ranks in terms of its
excessive use of the first person alongside Theodore Roosevelt's chronicle of
the Spanish-American War (which, one humorist quipped, should have been titled
"Alone in Cuba"). Green failed to do justice to the much maligned
William S. Fisher, who led the filibuster expedition and whom many Texans blamed
for their defeat at Mier. A1though Green did not accuse Fisher of outright
cowardice, as some did, he consigned him to an undeservedly minor part in the
battle, arguing that a hand wound had left him dazed, nauseated, and unfit to
command in the crucial stages of the fighting. Exaggerating the extent of
Fisher's injury allowed the author to emphasize his own leadership role. Fisher
did not receive much better consideration in the narrative that follows.
Although the two men shared the privations of captivity in Mexico for six
months, Green referred to his commanding officer only briefly, and Fisher
remains, regrettably, something of an enigmatic figure in the literature of the
expedition.
Finally, Green's all-consuming hatred of Sam
Houston intrudes upon the narrative at every turn, so much so, that at times he
seems less interested in recounting the story of the Mier Expedition than in
discrediting Sam Houston for his role in the affair. It would, of course, be
unreasonable to expect dispassionate objectivity from one so intimately
involved with these events. Nonetheless, Green went to extreme and even absurd
lengths to indict Houston, blaming him for all the misfortunes that befell the
Mier prisoners, and indeed for all the many crises that the Republic suffered
during this period.
Despite these flaws, the book has endured;
it remains one of the most compelling and illuminating eyewitness accounts of
the Republic period. It is also one of the most readable. Although Green is not
at his best when waxing splenetic on such topics as Sam Houston and his Mexican
captors, on the whole the book is written in a fast-paced and engaging style.
No doubt intending to capitalize on public interest in the expedition, Green
provided an account that is rich in drama and demonstrates both a keen eye for
anecdotal detail and an appreciation for some of the lighter moments of his
imprisonment in Mexico. The illustrations, drawn by Charles McLaughlin, himself
a Mier prisoner, are a particularly valuable addition to the text.
But Green's Journal is more than a
chronicle of one of the more remarkable chapters in Texas history. The author's
cultural and racial biases, however unpalatable they may be to present-day
sensibilities, tell us much about the way mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-Americans
saw themselves and their southern neighbors. In this regard, the final chapter,
in which Green offers a lengthy discourse on the inevitability of U.S.
expansionism, is of particular significance. Although at first glance a
somewhat tedious digression from the narrative, the last chapter constitutes a
fitting postscript: a logical denouement of the author's contempt for Mexican
sovereignty, his deep-seated conviction that Anglo-American arms would prevail
over a degraded and benighted culture. Beyond its merits as a history of an
ill-fated military campaign, Green's Journal stands as an important work
in the literature of the Manifest Destiny. At the time of its release, the book
was considered such a valuable source of information on Texas and Mexico that
some of the first copies were delivered to President James K. Polk and members
of his cabinet.
…
Thomas Jefferson Green is best known in
Texas as an agitator and firebrand, as a man who seemed to embody the
independent, nonconformist attitude that at times made the Republic a nation
bordering on anarchic dissolution. The contempt many Texans displayed toward
their institutions of governance during these turbulent years has often been
attributed to a spirit of frontier individualism. This may be true, but Thomas
Jefferson Green, whose basic instincts were more commercial than primordial,
furnishes no evidence of it. Although he spent much of his adult life on the
fringes of western settlement, it was profit, not adventure, that lured him to
the frontier. Moreover, his brash, impetuous, and often insubordinate behavior
cannot be attributed to a backwoods cultural ethos, but stemmed rather from his
intense desire to establish himself as a member of a new society's political
and entrepreneurial elite. Green's reputation as a trouble maker was well
deserved, but he was not disrespectful of authority per se. In fact, he was an
ardent supporter of strong government, so long as it could be employed in the
pursuit of his own aggrandizement. His obsessive hatred of Sam Houston, who
often stood in the way of his career goals, can only be understood in this
context. The collapse of Green's business ventures, the setbacks he suffered in
his quest for political office and patronage, even his lengthy incarceration
after defeat on the battlefield - all these misfortunes, Green believed, could
be traced to Sam Houston. Green pursued many avenues in his quest for fame and
fortune, but his feelings toward Houston remained constant, serving as the
measure of his thwarted ambition….Beneath his overweening bravado,
however, was an unflappable self-confidence, an inexhaustible reservoir of
enthusiasm for every endeavor. Whatever else may be said of him, Green was
flamboyant in failure.