The Texas Revolution
- westmohney
- Nov 22, 2025
- 11 min read
If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own horn and that of his country - Victory or Death. ~ William Travis at the Alamo
The revolution for Texan independence from Mexico has begun in earnest with the Mexicans holed up at Béxar (now San Antonio) and the Texans camped outside hoping to take the town.
the Alamo
As he siege at Béxar continued for a month, discouragment set in. Our cousin Stephen Austin (5C8X) left for his new appointment as Commissioner to the United States and a sizable contingent of men at the siege went home to care for their farms and families. One man, however, wasn't ready to give up. On December 5th, "Old" Ben Milam was able to gather a group of over 300 volunteers and the Battle of Béxar began. Though Milam was killed on the third day of fighting, the Texans were ultimately successful in taking the town which included the Alamo fort.
Newly selected commander in chief Sam Houston didn't see the old fort as an asset. In January, he sent Jim Bowie to Béxar with a message for Lt. Colonel James C. Neill who was in charge at the Alamo. Houston wanted him to blow up the fort and leave the town. Neill and Bowie, however, had other ideas. After the hard fought battle to gain such a strategic position, they weren't ready to give up. They decided, instead, to stay and defend the town in case of attack.
At the end of January, Mexican general José de Urrea arrived with a sizable army at Matmoros, on the present day border between Mexico and Texas.
Sam Houston's provisional goverment "tore itself apart arguing over whether they should invade Matamoros." The "foolhardy venture" was finally agreed upon and men were taken from strategic locations including the Alamo, leaving the fort ill-prepared for defense.
With Urrea firmly ensconced in Matamoros, Santa Anna began his march from Mexico with a "specific destination" in mind: Béxar. Alerted to the danger, provisional Texas governor Henry Smith ordered William B. Travis to gather additional troops to aid the men at the Alamo. Smith had received a letter from Bowie and Neill that they would rather "die in these ditches than give up this post to the enemy."
With the planned invasion of Matamoros, however, reinforcements were hard to come by. Travis was only able to round up about thirty men. On the 8th of February, a welcome face arrived at the Alamo. David Crockett, having just lost his seat in the U.S. Congress was looking for new adventures and he felt that "Texas was meant to be a new beginning for him." Three days after Crockett's arrival, Neill left the fort to take care of a sick relative, promising to return within 20 days with fresh supplies and reinforcements.
Santa Anna reached Béxar on the 23rd of February and the fatal siege of the Alamo began. The very next day William Travis wrote his famous "Victory or Death" letter calling for reinforcements:
If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own horn and that of his country - Victory or Death."
On day four of the siege, James Fannin began marching from Fort Defiance in Goliad to the aid of the men trapped in the Alamo. The journey, 90 miles northwest to Béxar, involved crossing the San Antonio River. When Fannin and his men encountered difficulties with the crossing, they gave up their plans and marched back to Defiance. The men at the Alamo waited in vain for reinforcements that never came.
On the day that Fannin returned to Defiance, Governor Smith had Travis' letter turned into a handbill to be sent to the far corners of America with a call to come to the Alamo's aid. Only 32 men from the town of Gonzales answered the call. Many of these men had participated in the Battle of Gonzales five months earlier. On March 1, 1836 the 32 men from Gonzales entered the Alamo and the stage was set for the events that became world famous.
the Convention
The same day that reinforcements arrived at the Alamo, the Convention of 1836 began. Forty four men gathered in an unfinished building in the town of Washington on Brazos.
Below is a replica of the building in Washington on Brazos where the Convention was held. The building came to be known as Independence Hall:
Other men arrived over the next two weeks making fifty nine delegates in all. All of these men had been elected a month before to represent the various districts in Texas. Our cousin Asa Brigham was one of four men elected to represent Brazoria.
The first order of business was to draft a Declaration of Independence from Mexico which was signed on March 3. Cousin Asa was the sixth man to sign. The portion of the declaration shown below has Asa's signiture at the bottom right.
After the Declaration was signed, the men got busy writing a constitution and electing an "ad interim" government. The new Texas constitution dealt with the issue of slavery in the territory which hoped to one day join the United States. From Wikipedia:
Free blacks were forbidden permanent residence in Texas without consent of Congress, and citizenship could not be granted to Africans, their descendants, or Native American. Furthermore, the Constitution forbade the future Texas Congress from emancipating slaves. . .Citizenship was granted only to white men.
Texas' stance on slavery would have far-reaching consequences when the territory made a bid to become the 28th state. More on that in a future post.
The new Constitution also "specifically stated that governmental authority derived from the people, who thus had the right to revolt to change their government."
Even as the men at the Convention hammered out the details of their constitution and organized an "ad interim" government, events at the Alamo were heating up.
the fall of the Alamo
On the morning of March 6, a letter was delivered to the men at the Convention from William Travis, commander of the Alamo begging for supplies and reinforcements. Sam Houston left Washington on Brazos immediately to round up volunteers for a rescue effort. The letter, however, arrived at the Convention the very day that the fort fell to the Mexicans.
From the Wikipedia account of the battle:
At 10 p.m. on March 5, the Mexican artillery ceased their bombardment. As Santa Anna had anticipated, the exhausted Texians soon fell into the first uninterrupted sleep many of them had since the siege began. Just after midnight, more than 2,000 Mexican soldiers began preparing for the final assault.
At 5:30 a.m. troops silently advanced. . .The three Texian sentinels stationed outside the walls were killed in their sleep, allowing Mexican soldiers to approach undetected within musket range of the walls. . .At this point, the silence was broken by shouts of "¡Viva Santa Anna!"
Texians filled their cannon with any metal they could find, including door hinges, nails, and chopped-up horseshoes, essentially turning the cannon into giant shotguns. . .As the troops massed against the walls, Texians were forced to lean over the walls to shoot, leaving them exposed to Mexican fire. Travis became one of the first occupiers to die, shot while firing his shotgun into the soldiers below him. . .
Mexican soldiers withdrew and regrouped, but their second attack was repulsed. Fifteen minutes into the battle, they attacked a third time. . .The Mexican soldiers closest to the north wall realized that the makeshift wall contained many gaps and toeholds. One of the first to scale the 12-foot (3.7 m) wall was General Juan Amador; at his challenge, his men began swarming up the wall. . .allowing Mexican soldiers to pour into the complex.
Most of the Texians retreated to the chapel and some headed for the San Antonio River. All was to no avail. All of the escaping Texians were killed.
The last Texian group to remain in the open were Crockett and his men, defending the low wall in front of the church. Unable to reload, they used their rifles as clubs and fought with knives. . .For the next hour, the Mexican army worked to secure complete control of the Alamo.
. . .Too sick to participate in the battle, Bowie likely died in bed. . .The last of the Texians to die were the 11 men manning the two 12-pounder cannons in the chapel. . . By 6:30 a.m. the battle for the Alamo was over.
Shortly after Sam Houston arrived in Gonzales to rally supportors, the wife of slain Alamo defender Almaron Dickinson and William Travis' slave Joe, arrived with news of the tragedy. Houston advised "all civilians in the area to evacuate and ordered the army to retreat."
soldiering on
Even though the events at the Alamo "sparked a mass exodus of Texans from the Anglo settlements," the Convention, still in session, vowed to continue the fight and issued a conscription law for all able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 50. Anyone who refused to fight would lose their citizenship.
On March 11, Houston gathered his army in the town of Gonzales and began a calculated retreat toward the coast that would become known as the Runaway Scrape. On March 16th, with Santa Anna's army approaching Washington on Brazos, the convention delegates fled east to Harrisburg.
On March 20, disaster hit a contingent of the Texan Army with the Battle of Coleto. After the defeat at the Alamo, Colonel James Fannin, stationed at Goliad, had been ordered by Houstion to retreat. Not realizing the proximity of General José de Urrea's army, Fannin's "leisurely" retreat ended in the surrender of his entire army. Three hundred Texans were marched to back Goliad where they were executed. Only a handful of men escaped to tell the tale.
After the Goliad Massacre, there were a few minor scrapes as Houston continued his retreat with Santa Anna's army in pursuit. Santa Anna, however, had made a grave tactical error when he split his army into three factions. Only the main body of his army arrived at San Jacinto for the final battle of the revolution.
On April 18, with the Mexican Army camped nearby on the banks of the San Jacinto River, Houston gave a "rousing speech to his men, exhorting them to 'Remember the Alamo' and 'Remember Goliad'".
After two brief skirmishes on April 20, the battle began in earnest on the 21st. Houston ordered a surprise attack at 4:30 while the Mexicans were at rest. Though outnumbered, the Texans, remembering Houston's rallying cry, were victorious in what turned out to be a rout. 650 Mexican soldiers were killed, 208 wounded and 300 captured to 11 Texans killed and 30, including Houston, wounded.
One of the men killed in the battle was our cousin Asa Brigham's (6C10X) son Benjamin (7C9X) who was an orderly sergeant in a company of Brazoria Volunteers. Another of our relatives killed was Thomas Patten Fowle (4C7X), son of Mary Patten of our Cambridge Patten family. The eleven men killed were laid to rest on the battlefield.
The town of San Jacinto was founded shortly after the battle, and residents chose to bury their own dead near the Texian graves. By the 1870s, while the original headstones were mostly gone, the eight Texian soldiers’ final resting spot was surrounded by a small cemetery. In 1882, it was decided to place a monument in honor of the fallen Texans. The monument was placed at the gravesite of our cousin Benjamin Brigham. From the Texas Historical Commission site:
When it was placed at the battlefield on April 21, 1882, it was called the San Jacinto Monument, but is now known as Brigham Monument after Benjamin Rice Brigham, the only soldier whose gravestone was still standing.
after the revolution
Though Santa Anna had managed to escape after the battle, he was captured the next day. He somehow managed to convince Houston that he would be of more help alive than dead. He ordered the Mexican army to retreat and aided in the treaty negotiations before returning to Mexico where he would live to fight again in the Mexican-American War.
After the treaties were signed, the territory of Texas became the Republic of Texas until 1845 when it became the 28th state of the United States.
As a new government was formed for the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston named our cousin Asa Brigham as the republic's first treasurer. Below is a treasury warrant signed by Asa. It was a duplicate for one that had been lost in the Battle of San Jacinto
In 1839, Asa continued this appointment under Houston's successor Marabeau Lamar but resigned the next year after being accused of using state funds for private purposes. Evenutally exonerated of the charges, Asa resumed his post in 1841. In 1842, he became the fourth mayor of the city of Austin.
Asa died in Washington, Texas in July of 1844 at age 56. He was buried there and his remains were eventually moved to Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park. In 1936 a monument was dedicated to him:
Stephen Austin, working as a Commissioner to the United State, was in New Orleans when he received word of the Texan victory over Mexico. He returned to Texas where he announced he would be running for president of Texas. When Sam Houston threw his hat into the ring, there was no contest. Stephen won 587 votes to Houston's 5,119. Even contender Henry Smith garnered more votes than Stephen with 743.
Reconizing Stephen's contributions to the new republic, Houston appointed him Secretary of State. Sadly, Stephen held that post for only two months. In December of 1736, while in the new Texas capital of Columbia, he caught a cold which worsened into pneumonia. He died on December 27, 1836 at age 43. Houston ordered an official statement on his death which said, "The Father of Texas is no more, the first pioneer of the wilderness has departed." Houston also instructed that "all officers, civil and military are required to wear crepe on the right arm for the space of thirty days."
At an unknown date, a statue of Steven was installed at the San Felipe de Austin Historic Site. It was in what is now the town of San Felipe, Texas where Stephen established the headquarters for his colony.
Two identical statues of Stephen by Elizabeth Ney were created in the early 1890s. One was placed in the Texas State Capitol in 1803 and the other National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C. in 1805:
sister Emily
Since Stephen never married or had children, he left all his land, titles, and possessions to his twice married sister, Emily Austin Perry (5C8X). After the death of Stephen's eight year old nephew, son of his brother, Emily eventually inherited all of his "possessions, property and land" in her name only. Throughout her life, Emily "was meticulous to ensure the Austin estate proceeds, books, and operations were not commingled. . .with her husband (even though her husband, James F. Perry, was executor of Austin's estate)."
After receiving her bequest, Emily arrived at San Felipe in August of 1831. She lived in Texas for the rest of her life. Not too long after her arrival, she and her family moved to Chocolate Bayou near Houston where they had a plantation which produced sugar and cotton. Emily and her husband had brought nine slaves with them to work the land. By 1860, nine years after her death, the family owned 42 slaves.
After a time short time at Chocolate Bayou, the family moved 30 miles southwest to Jones Creek onto land that was originally owned by Stephen. There Emily founded Peach Point
Plantation where she, as one of the largest landholders and wealthiest woman in Texas, remained actively involved in the management of her entire estate.
Emily's interests over the years included urban planning and the development of railroads. She was the largest sharholder in the first railroad in Texas. She also loaned money to Gail Borden, founder of Borden Milk Products, to buy his first herd of cows.
Emily donated 1,500 acres of land for the founding of Austin College. The school, which still exists today, was the first school of higher learning in Texas. Originally located in Huntsville near Houston, the school moved north to a more suitable climate in the town of Sherman near Dallas in 1876.
Emily died at Peach Point Plantation in 1851 at age 56.
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