This Week by Dave Roberson

How Fast Can That Wagon Go?



“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell” General Sheridan, 1866

March 1836 was not the best of times for the fledging Texas Army; routed at the Alamo and panic spreading with every eastbound traveler.  On March 15, just eleven days after the fall of the Alamo, 33 Texans were captured at the Battle of Nuestra Senora del Refugio Mission.  14 were shot; the rest claimed to be either colonists or Mexicans, not revolutionaries, and were released.  On March 20, it got really bad.  After weeks of indecision as to whether to continue to fortify La Bahia Mission at Goliad or move his troops out of the area and defying an order from General Sam Houston to abandon La Bahia and move east to Victoria, Colonel James Fannin was engaged by the advancing Mexican Army at nearby Coleto Creek.  Although knowing the fate of the Texans at the Alamo, Fannin still decided to surrender when the fighting got tough.  A week later on Palm Sunday March 27, 370 Texans were marched out of Goliad to be shot.  342 were known to have been killed that day.  28 are believed to have escaped.  News of the Massacre of Goliad spread like wild fire.

With the spring of 1836 being a disaster for Texas Army, it was absolute chaos for the citizens.  In 1836, there were only two eastbound roads out of Texas.  The

San Antonio Road

ran northeast from San Antonio to Nacogdoches to San Augustine and on into northern Louisiana.  The Atascocita Trail ran west to east just north of where Houston is today and into southern Louisiana where it met up with the Old Spanish Trail at New Orleans.  These two routes of escape were packed with families moving east as fast as they could.  The third way out of Texas was to somehow get to Galveston and hope to hop a ship to New Orleans.  To make matters worse, the Mexican Army was never more than 50 miles away from the Texas Army and they both were moving east.  The retreating citizens were trying to keep General Houston’s ragtag army between them and Santa Ana’s rapidly advancing army.  The last place you wanted to be that spring was in the middle of the two.  The Runaway Scrape was in full swing.  When a family heard that Old Sam had retreated again, it was pack the wagon and move east as fast as you could.  Entire towns were abandoned in a day.  It started when General Houston arrived in Gonzales on March 11.  He ordered the town burned and everyone to cross to the east side of the Guadalupe River.  Then it was across the Colorado, then the Brazos.  Washington-on-the-Brazos was abandoned no March 17 and Richmond on April 1.  On April 13, Nacogdoches and San Augustine up in East Texas were deserted.  By the middle of April, there were only four rivers left for the retreating army to cross before there would be no Anglos left in Texas, the San Jacinto, the Trinity, the Neches and the Sabine.

Santa Anna saw what General Houston was doing and decided to trap him before he could reach the safety of Louisiana.  He divided his advancing army and sent the cavalry ahead to Harrisburg, the capital du jour for the Texas Government.  He barely missed President Burnet and his cabinet, but he did cut off Houston’s retreat.  Finally, he had the last remnant of the Texas army in his sights.  He needed to wait a few days for his infantry to catch up and rest.  He was certain that final victory was near.  So what should he do while he rested his army for a couple of days?  Check back on April 21 for the exciting conclusion of this adventure in Texas History.