General Cós’s Warning to Texans, July 1835

In his decree dated July 5, 1835, Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cós warned Texans that disruptive activities against the government will result in war.

Martin Perfecto de Cos's declaration of July 5, 1835.

Cós issued his announcement shortly after a confrontation in Anuahuac over the collection of custom duties; if he was aware of these events, the document may have been a direct answer to the Texans’ actions there, specifically when he refers to “some bad citizens” who had “attempt[ed] to disturb the public order and peace.”

In a larger context, however, Cós’s words were a response to tensions that had been rising in Texas and elsewhere across Mexico for several years as a result of the country’s tumultuous political circumstances. Texans sought the repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830, and other measures enacted to regulate the importation of slaves, strengthen the presence of the Mexican military in Texas, and establish customs houses that would collect taxes and stop illegal trade with the United States. Texans also wanted their state to be detached from Coahuila; with the two states joined together as Coahuila y Tejas, the capital was located in Saltillo, 400 miles south of San Antonio.

Cos's broadside was printed in Spanish on one side and English on the other.

More broadly, Mexicans across the country were angered when Antonio López de Santa Anna, elected president of Mexico as a liberal in 1833, later stated that Mexico was not ready for democracy and emerged as an autocratic Centralist. He discarded the Federalist Constitution of 1824 and was granted extra powers while a new centralist constitution was being written. The new document transformed states into departments whose governors were appointed from Mexico City and reduced the size of each state’s militia in order to curtail resistance to the redistribution of power. Rebellion against Santa Anna’s centralism broke out in the states of Zacatecas and Yucatan; Texans eventually revolted, as well, ultimately demanding full independence from Mexico.

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Newspaper Accounts of the Battle of the Alamo

Last Friday, March 6, marked the 173rd anniversary of the final assault on the Alamo garrison. In 1836, those living in Texas and beyond learned about this event (and the general course of the Texas Revolution) through published newspaper accounts. The information contained in these articles was gathered from named and unnamed sources such as Almaron Dickinson’s wife, Susanna; William Barret Travis’s slave, Joe; Ben, the servant to the Mexican officer Colonel Almonte; and Andres Barsena and Anselmo Bergara, Tejanos who based their statements on testimony given by Antonio Pérez, who was in San Antonio on March 6.

The second page of the Telegraph and Texas Register from March 24, 1836. The article about the Alamo begins on the right-hand column under the heading "More Particulars Respecting the Fall of the Alamo."

The DRT Library’s newspaper collection includes papers published in the spring of 1836 containing “news from Texas.” While the majority of these materials were published in American cities, also included is a photocopy of the Telegraph and Texas Register published in San Felipe, Texas, on March 24, 1836. According to Todd Hansen, editor of The Alamo Reader, this document “is probably the most influential single account of the fall of the Alamo by virtue of being the first in print, its access to authoritative sources, and its near universal dissemination” (551). Indeed, argues Hansen, this account “would be the picture of the fall for Texans (and the United States) and the starting point for all later secondhand accounts” (565).

According to Todd Hansen, the casualty list included in the Telegraph and Texas Register account is "particularly valuable" because it was "based on the most authoritative sources known in Washington-on-the-Brazos" at the time (565).

Another important newspaper account of the fall of the Alamo in the library’s collections can be found in the Diario del Gobierno de la Republica Mexicana published on March 21, 1836. The draft of a 1968 press release announcing the library’s acquisition of the document states that it is “a rare copy of a Mexican newspaper containing the earliest known official announcement of the fall of the Alamo.”

Front page of the Diario del Gobierno de la Republica Mexicana from March 21, 1836.

As the official newspaper of the Mexican government, the Diario celebrated the bravery and success of Mexican officers and soldiers in achieving what is described as a complete and brilliant victory. “Long Live the Mexican Republic!” proclaimed the headline of this article, “Long live General Santa Anna and the brave army, victors of the Fort of the Alamo in Texas!”

The report on the fall of the Alamo appears on the fourth page of the March 24th Diario.

A supplement to this edition of the newspaper contained additional details about the Alamo, specifically General Santa Anna’s report about the battle, his March 5th General Order outlining the plan for the assault, and a March 3rd letter from General Urrea to Santa Anna describing the former’s victory over James Grant’s men at San Patricio. The article also includes a Spanish translation of Robert McAlpin Williamson’s March 1st letter to Travis. Taken from Travis’s body or his quarters, the letter concludes with Williamson’s impassioned statement, “For God’s sake hold out until we can assist you.” The Diario supplement may be the first printing of the text of the letter; since the original manuscript of this letter has never been found, the publication is significant for revealing its existence.

First page of the "Suplemento al Diario del Gobierno de la Republica Mexicana" for March 24, 1836.

Like other primary sources describing the siege and battle of the Alamo, newspaper accounts contain some confusing, problematic, and contradictory statements that researchers are still exploring, analyzing, and debating. For example, the report published in the Diario del Gobierno de la Republica Mexicana claimed that more than 600 Texans were killed, an estimation three times the actual number. Additionally, while only seventy deaths are attributed to the Mexican force, actual losses are estimated to be up to 600 soldiers.

An inventory for the entire newspaper collection can be accessed by visiting the DRT library; we are in the process of editing the guide so that it can be accessed and searched via the library’s online catalog.

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Recap of the Texas History Forum, “Rangers and Rogues”

From left to right, Leslie Stapleton, DRT Library director; Dr. Paul Spellman, speaker; Connie Impelman, DRT Library Committee Chairman; Dr. Stephen L. Hardin, speaker; Mike Cox, speaker.

This past Saturday, the DRT Library held its twenty-second Texas History Forum. Entitled “Rangers and Rogues,” the program featured three speakers who explored Texans who enforced the law and those who broke it.

Mike Cox speaking about the history of the Texas Rangers.

Mike Cox, an author and former spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, got things underway by presenting ten arguments about the history of the Texas Rangers, taken in part from his most recent book, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900 (2008). For example, Mr. Cox noted that “in something of an irony, since Rangers sometimes were pitted against Mexicans, part of their tradition traces to Spanish Colonial law enforcement in Texas” (14). He also asserted that, even though “men riding in the name of frontier protection or law and order” killed some innocent people, some historians’ portrayal of Rangers as “racist practitioners of genocide, gun-toting tools of a greedy, land-grabbing Anglo establishment…is not accurate and certainly not fair” (15). Forum attendees also enjoyed Mr. Cox’s stories about his grandfather, a Fort Worth newspaper man who encountered interesting characters throughout his career. Among these were some famous old-time Texas Rangers:  John R. Hughes, for example, enjoyed many a Sunday supper at the home of Mr. Cox’s grandparents.

Dr. Paul Spellman reading an oral history from his book, Spindletop Boom Days.

Dr. Paul Spellman, a professor of history at Wharton County Junior College, focused on his work Spindletop Boom Days (2001), which contains reminiscences of east Texas oil pioneers. Collected in the 1950s to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1901 discovery of the Spindletop oilfield, these oral histories document the development of the state’s oil industry from the turn of the century to 1950. (The written manuscripts now form the Texas Pioneers of Oil Collection, the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin.) Dr. Spellman read some of the accounts included in the book, specifically stories of mayhem and lawlessness as well as stories of rangers trying to impose law and order. For example, Dr. Spellman quoted Plummer Barfield, who recalled that he would “go out in the event of an accident and haul the wounded, the crippled or the dead to the livery stable – it became an undertaker’s parlor in those days.” One wintry night, a group of men stopped Barfield as he was bringing a body to the livery and ordered him to pick up the bodies of a woman, her baby, and two men. Eventually, Barfield “found out what happened”:

The woman and the baby had been sick and were in the tent, and some rattlebrained drunks had seen the lamp in the tent and had shot at it. They killed the woman and her baby, shot right through the baby’s head and the woman’s breast. Then the roughnecks and the rigrunners nearby caught the two drunks and hung ’em from a sweet gum tree!…Five bodies. One night.

Dr. Stephen L. Hardin regaling the audience with the less than pleasant elements of life in early Houston.

Finally, Dr. Stephen L. Hardin, a professor of history at The Victoria College in Victoria, Texas, gave the final presentation of the day, focusing on his recent work Texian Macabre: The Melancholy Tale of a Hanging in Early Houston (2007). The book tells the story of David James Jones, a hero of the Texas Revolution who, along with John Christopher Columbus Quick, was hung for killing a man. They were among a group of young American men who had volunteered for the Texian army and had been indefinitely furloughed by President Sam Houston. While some of these former soldiers returned to the United States, many went to Houston, at that time the capital of Texas, where they were unemployed, bored, and broke. Respectable Houston residents called these troublesome men “rowdy loafers.” Dr. Hardin urged attendees to remember these men, who, like their more well-known compatriots at the Alamo or Goliad, made sacrifices for Texas. Throughout his talk, Dr. Hardin entertained the audience with quotes from eyewitness accounts of Houston that – with their vivid descriptions of mud, mosquitoes, and rats – confirmed its reputation in the 1830s as “an unpleasant place” and “the most miserable place in the world.”

Thank you to all of our speakers, who presented fascinating information about the history of “Rangers and Rogues” in Texas!

Telegraph and Texas Register, Early Texas Newspaper

The top of the first page of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 6, 1837. Much of the paper on that date was dedicated to reprinting an act "organizing the inferior Courts," the first part of which is seen here.

The DRT Library has an extensive collection of newspapers dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While this collection contains some papers published in cities around the United States and even Mexico, the majority were printed in Texas towns and cities. Included in this collection are some of the earliest newspapers available in the state.

According to Marilyn McAdams Sibley in her work Lone Stars and State Gazettes (1983), in the nearly fifty years between the first attempt to print a newspaper in Texas in 1813 and the Civil War, “more than four hundred newspapers appeared.” Notably, argues Sibley, while “in style and format those papers represented an extension of the Anglo-American frontier press,” they also “peculiarly reflected the course of history in Texas” (3).

Several short-lived newspapers were printing prior to 1830, but it was not until the eve of the Texas Revolution that Texans established sustainable enterprises for publishing. First was the Texas Gazette, which was published between 1829 and 1832; according to the Handbook of Texas, it was the “first enduring Texas newspaper” and the “earliest Texas newspaper of which more than one issue is now extant.” Second, the Telegraph and Texas Register, first printed in October 1835, was “the first newspaper in Texas to achieve a degree of permanence.”

Detail of page three of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 11, 1837.

The DRT Library has almost one hundred volumes of the Telegraph and Texas Register dating from October 1835 to April 1838. Initially, the newspaper was published by Gail Borden, Jr., Thomas H. Borden, and Joseph Baker; by the spring of 1837, ownership passed to Francis Moore, Jr., and Jacob W. Cruger. Originally printed approximately once each week and measuring 19.5 inches tall by 12.5 inches wide, each volume was four pages in length (two pages front and back) and each page contained three columns of text.

Primarily, the newspaper covered activities of the government of the Republic of Texas by printing acts and laws, proclamations, election information, government reports, and minutes from legislative sessions. For example, the March 12, 1836 edition reprinted William Barret Travis’s famous letter written nine days previously at the Alamo in which he described the dire situation at the old mission, requested reinforcements and other supplies, and ended with the defiant declaration “Victory or Death!!”. Likewise, the Telegraph printed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 12 and the Constitution on August 2. In addition to informing readers of governmental matters, the newspaper also included stories reprinted from American newspapers; descriptions of towns written to attract new residents; and letters, editorials, or other pieces submitted by readers. Finally, the Telegraph also contained notices or advertisements about a variety of subjects such as recent births, marriages, and deaths; goods and services available; land available for purchase or rent; lost items; and arrivals of steamboats.

Detail of page four of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 11, 1837.

According to Sibley, this relative lack of local news was characteristic of Texas newspapers at this time. Editors considered much local news to be “unprintable” for several reasons. First, “most of the papers appeared weekly in towns of a few hundred population.” In towns of that size, newspaper editors had little need to print “sensational local news and important news from afar” because this information had already “circulated by word of mouth before the newspaper appeared.” Moreover, “prudence dictated that [an editor] handle local items with care. By merely noticing certain events, he could antagonize advertisers and subscribers or possibly involve himself in personal vendettas not his own” (7). As a result of these circumstances, argues Sibley, the average newspaper editor “seldom went in search of [news], and instead waited in his office for acceptable news to come to him.” Editors received news for their publications from several sources, including letters that were “sometimes addressed to him and sometimes [written] to local citizens who shared their news with him. Travelers from distant points stopped at the press office to inform him of happenings at their point of departure or along their route.” Most importantly, however, “fellow editors in other towns sent him exchange papers, from which he clipped enough items to fill his pages” (7-8).

For further reading about the history of the Telegraph and Texas Register and other early Texas newspapers, please see:

Imagining Texas: Pre-Revolutionary Texas Newspapers, 1829-1836 by Carol Lea Clark

Lone Stars and State Gazettes: Texas Newspapers before the Civil War by Marilyn McAdams Sibley

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