Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/66

 Houston had appointed J. W. Fannin, Jr., Inspector-General on his staff; and he had commanded at the battle of the Mission of Conception. When this soldier came to the Council of San Felipe, Houston caused him to be appointed Colonel of the regiment of artillery, a position next in rank to himself. The Council seems to have had strange ideas of military affairs. While they were holding their sessions at San Felipe de Austin, they established the headquarters of the army, with General Houston as its chief, fifty miles distant from their own position. Obedient to orders, Houston repaired to Washington, the headquarters, and engaged earnestly in his arduous duties. Recruiting stations were established; and officers assigned to them were ordered to make such reports as would at any time put him in possession of the number and condition of the regular force. The principal recruiting rendezvous was at Brazoria, to which place Colonel Fannin was ordered. General Houston's dispatches to Fannin were disregarded and his authority set at naught; and letters were written and circulated generally, aimed to arouse the suspicion that, under the sanction of the General Council, by raising five thousand volunteers he aimed to establish a military government. Gov. Smith detected the secret intrigues of the Council with Grant, Fannin and others, while General Houston was at the headquarters of the army at Washington; and, about the ist of January, 1836, he ordered General Houston to repair to San Felipe de Austin. General Houston had with his usual sagacity, issued orders for all troops arriving in the country to report to Governor Smith as nominal commander-in-chief and to himself on their arrival as commander of the army. Volunteers from Alabama and Col. Ward's command from Georgia arrived about this time at the mouth of the Brazos. Being in the neighborhood of the United States volunteers when they landed, Col. Fannin, paying no attention to General Houston's orders, abandoned his pos'tionas an officer in the regular army, and became a candidate for the colonelcy of the regiment proposed to be formed by the union of the Alabama and Georgia troops. By the influence of the Council he was elected Colonel, and Col. Ward, Lieutenant-Colonel. The regiment then sailed, according to orders, from Velasco to Copano; marched thence to Refugio Mission, a place twenty miles distant from the first landing; where the command of Grant was to unite with them on the way to Matamoras.

A crisis had now arrived in the affairs of Texas, and disaster befell all involved in precipitating this crisis upon Texas. The ill-starred plan to seize on Matamoras, the fall of the Alamo, and the massacre at Goliad, all contributed in a way, not designed by the martyrs nor approved by the hero of San Jacinto, to the consummation of Texan independence. Truth in history requires that events shall be stated