Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/600

 be upon him. He knew that one battle must be decisive of the fate of Texas. If he fought a battle, and many of his men were wounded, he could not transport them, and he would be compelled to sacrifice the army to the wounded. He determined to fall back, and did so, and on falling back received an accession of three companies that had been ordered from the mouth of the Brazos. He heard no word of the artillery, for none had reached there, nor did it ever start for the army, and it was years before he knew that his orders had been countermanded, and his aide-de-camp withdrawn from him. He wishes to cast no reflection upon the dead. I shall not enter into that, but the general's orders were not executed; they were countermanded; and the opportunity of obtaining artillery was cut off from him. He marched, and took position on the Brazos, with as much expedition as was consistent with his situation; but at San Felipe he found a spirit of dissatisfaction in the troops. The Government had removed east. It had left Washington and gone to Harrisburg, and the apprehension of the settlers had been awakened and increased rather than decreased. The spirits of the men were bowed down. Hope seemed to have departed, and with the little band alone remained anything like a consciousness of strength.

At San Felipe objection was made to marching up the Brazos. It was said that settlements were down below, and persons interested were there. Oxen could not be found for the march, in the morning, of a certain company. The general directed that they should follow as soon as oxen were collected. He marched up the Brazos, and, crossing Mill Creek, encamped there. An express was sent to him, asking his permission for that company to go down the Brazos to Fort Bend, and to remain there. Knowing that it arose from a spirit of sedition, he granted that permission, and they marched down. On the Brazos, the efficient force under his command amounted to five hundred and twenty. He remained there from the last of March until the 13th of April. On his arrival at the Brazos he found that the rains had been excessive. He had no opportunity of operating against the enemy. They marched to San Felipe, within eighteen miles of him, and would have been liable to surprise at any time, had it not been for the High waters of the Brazos, which prevented him from marching upon them by surprise. Thus, he was pent up. The portion of the Brazos in which he was became an island. The water had not been for years so high.

On arriving at the Brazos, he found that the Yellow Stone, a very respectable steamboat, had gone up the river for the purpose of transporting cotton. She was seized by order of the general, to enable him, if necessary, to pass the Brazos at any moment, and was detained with a guard on board. She remained there for a number of days. The general had taken every precaution possible to prevent the enemy from passing the Brazos below. He had ordered every craft to be destroyed on the river. He knew that the enemy could not have constructed raits and crossed; but, by a ruse, they obtained the only boat that was in that part of the country where a command was stationed. They came and spoke English. The boat was sent over, and the Mexicans surprised the boatmen and took possession of it. There on the east side of the river retreated, and thus Santa Anna obtained an opportunity of transporting his artillery and army across the Brazos. The general anticipated that something of the kind must have taken place, because his intelligence from San Felipe was, that all was quiet there. The enemy had kept up a cannonade on the position across