Six Years After the Alamo, Mexico Invaded Texas Again and Captured San Antonio Twice

Six years after the Alamo and the victory at San Jacinto, Mexican troops invaded Texas and captured San Antonio not once, but twice. During the second invasion in 1842, the attack came so suddenly that district court was still in session, leaving a judge, lawyers, jurors, government officials and other Texans to be captured and marched toward a Mexican prison. What followed included the Battle of Salado Creek, the Dawson Massacre and a disastrous retaliatory expedition into Mexico that ended with 176 Texas prisoners drawing beans from an earthen jar to determine which of them would be executed.

Editor’s note: This article is part of Katy Christian Magazine’s ongoing series exploring the forgotten people, places and events that shaped Katy, Greater Houston and Texas.

Six years after the Alamo, San Antonio residents woke up under Mexican control again.

Most Texans would squint at this news, likely brought up hearing the story as a clean, linear plot from the tragic-but-galvanizing defeat at the Alamo to the triumphant victory at San Jacinto. This would make the events of 1842 feel strangely out of place. “Santa Anna had surrendered,” they’d say. “The Republic of Texas was becoming established! It already had a president, a Congress, a capital and diplomatic relations with foreign governments.” However, Mexico had never recognized Texas independence, and the border remained unsettled.

In 1842, Mexican troops entered San Antonio twice.

The first occupation lasted only two days. The second caught the city so completely by surprise that a district court was sitting when the invasion began. Judges, lawyers, jurors and government officials who had arrived for an ordinary week of court business were suddenly captured as prisoners. Within days, volunteers from across Texas were riding toward San Antonio. One group of prospective volunteers from Fayette County was nearly destroyed before it reached the main fighting, and public outrage over the invasion was pushing the Republic toward an expedition that would end with 176 prisoners drawing beans from an earthen jar to learn who would be shot.

San Antonio had already spent decades at the center of Texas’ political and military upheaval. Katy Christian Magazine previously explored the Battle of Medina, the bloodiest battle fought on Texas soil, which took place south of the city more than 20 years before the Alamo. By 1842, Texas had changed governments and declared itself an independent country, but the fight over who controlled it was far from over.

The immediate problem began in Mexico. Antonio López de Santa Anna returned to power in 1841 and renewed pressure on Texas. Mexico lacked the resources for a full reconquest, so its government pursued a less expensive strategy. According to the Texas State Historical Association’s account of the Mexican invasions of 1842, Mexican authorities hoped repeated incursions would keep the Texas frontier unstable, discourage immigration and hurt foreign investment in the struggling Republic.

San Antonio was an obvious target.

On March 5, 1842, Mexican Gen. Rafael Vásquez approached San Antonio with about 700 men. Rumors that a Mexican army was advancing had reached the city, but the warning came late. Residents hurried to prepare either to defend San Antonio or evacuate, and Texas scouts were still operating outside the city as Vásquez closed in.

A letter written the following day reported that two Texas spies had been captured by the Mexican forces, delaying word of their approach. About 135 men were in San Antonio when the army arrived. A Mexican officer entered the city and warned them that an attack would begin that afternoon if they remained. After consulting, the Texans destroyed ammunition they could not carry and withdrew with their only cannon.

Vásquez entered San Antonio without a battle, then raised the Mexican flag and declared Mexican law in force.

The occupation was brief because Vásquez had not brought a force large enough to hold San Antonio for long. His roughly 700 men had succeeded in entering the city and reasserting Mexican authority, but Texas volunteers were already beginning to gather in the surrounding settlements. Historian Joseph Milton Nance found that Vásquez’s withdrawal on March 7 was orderly rather than a panicked retreat, but that remaining several more days would likely have forced him into a fight against a growing Texas force.

Vásquez had also accomplished much of what the raid was meant to do. His troops had shown that a Mexican army could still cross the frontier and take one of the Republic’s major cities six years after San Jacinto. On March 7, two days after entering San Antonio, he began the march back toward the Rio Grande.

The reaction across Texas was large. According to TSHA, people in exposed settlements fled east, some crossing the Brazos in search of greater security. President Sam Houston declared a national emergency and called Congress into a special session in Houston.

He also tried to remove the Republic’s archives from Austin because he feared the capital might become Mexico’s next target.

However, Austin residents were suspicious that the then-president had a hidden motive. Houston had long disliked the capital’s vulnerable frontier location, and many suspected he was using the invasion to justify moving the seat of government back east. When his administration later tried to remove the government records, armed Austinites intervened in the episode now remembered as the Archive War.

The March invasion also deepened divisions inside San Antonio. Tejano leader Juan Seguín, who had fought for Texas during the Revolution and was then serving as mayor, faced accusations that local Tejanos had cooperated with Mexico. TSHA records that Seguín left San Antonio for Mexico and later commanded a Mexican militia company, though he maintained that Mexican officials had coerced him into service by threatening punishment for his earlier role in the Texas Revolution.

By summer, the immediate crisis appeared to be easing. Texas volunteers who wanted to invade Mexico were sent home, and Houston continued resisting calls for a war he believed the Republic lacked the money and manpower to sustain.

But then, Mexico returned.

San Antonio Wakes Up to an Army

The second force was commanded by Brig. Gen. Adrián Woll, a French-born officer who had built his military career in Mexico.

Woll’s expedition was much larger than the force Vásquez had brought into San Antonio in March. The Texas Historical Commission places his force at roughly 1,400 men, including infantry, cavalry and artillery.

Woll also had a critical element that Vásquez had lacked: surprise.

His approach had been planned for secrecy. A Texas Historical Commission marker documenting Woll’s route says Col. José María Carrasco was ordered to construct a road that avoided established roads and trails. Hundreds of infantrymen, artillery, dozens of wagons and carts and the livestock needed to sustain the column moved north without giving San Antonio the kind of advance warning it had received in March.

Before dawn on Sept. 11, the Mexican army reached the city.

According to the Texas Historical Commission’s Woll Invasion marker, cannon fire awakened San Antonio. Fifty-six Texans attempted to resist and fortified themselves at the stone home of Samuel Augustus Maverick near Main Plaza as Mexican troops entered the city with flags flying and a military band playing.

Facing an army of well over 1,000 men, their tiny attempt at defense could not last.

The timing of the invasion made the capture unusually consequential. District court was in session.

Samuel Maverick had returned to San Antonio specifically for the fall term. If his name rings familiar, that’s because the family’s unbranded cattle eventually gave the English language the word “maverick,” but in 1842, Maverick was a lawyer, landowner, veteran of the Texas Revolution and political figure. His TSHA biography recounts his capture during Woll’s invasion.

He was not the only court official taken.

The Texas Historical Commission records 52 Texans captured after San Antonio surrendered, including District Judge Anderson Hutchinson, court clerk James L. Trueheart, attorneys, jurors, litigants and two members of the Congress of the Republic of Texas.

The invasion had even interrupted an actual lawsuit. Ludovic Colquhoun had been in court that morning in a property dispute with Maverick. According to Colquhoun’s TSHA biography, Mexican troops entered San Antonio while the case was being tried. Men who had begun the day opposing one another in a courtroom ended it as prisoners of the same army.

The captives faced an extraordinary journey. The Woll Invasion marker says the San Antonio prisoners were marched roughly 1,100 miles into Mexico toward Perote Prison.

Perote was a massive stone fortress originally built by Spain in the 1770s along the road between Veracruz and Mexico City. It later became a prison for captured Texans. Men from the Santa Fe expedition had previously been sent there. Prisoners from the Dawson fight and, later, survivors of the Mier Expedition would eventually join them.

Many captured and imprisoned Texans never made it back home.

Physician Shields Booker, one of the Texans captured during Woll’s invasion, was later shot and killed at Perote by a drunken Mexican soldier. Other prisoners remained confined into 1844. Maverick obtained an earlier release through the intervention of U.S. minister Waddy Thompson and returned to Texas in 1843.

While the prisoners began their march south, word of the invasion spread through settlements surrounding San Antonio. Again, eager volunteers started riding from across Texas toward the city.

Mathew Caldwell was among the men who answered the call. Caldwell had fought in the Texas Revolution and was known as “Old Paint,” a nickname traditionally attributed to the weathered or blotchy appearance of his face. Volunteers from Gonzales, Seguin and settlements along the lower Colorado gathered under his command. John Coffee “Jack” Hays and his Rangers joined the resistance.

Instead of charging directly into occupied San Antonio, Caldwell chose ground along Salado Creek about seven miles northeast of town. According to the TSHA history of the Battle of Salado Creek, roughly 200 Texans eventually assembled there against a Mexican army several times their size.

The Texans tried to conceal just how small their force was. TSHA records that Caldwell’s men deliberately moved around their position so Mexican observers might think more Texans were arriving.

Woll eventually moved against them.

Mexican artillery and infantry attacked while the Texans used the creek bank and surrounding cover. The terrain reduced the effectiveness of the Mexican cannon, while the Texans’ rifles inflicted heavy casualties on soldiers advancing across exposed ground.

Some Mexican troops came within yards of the Texas position before being driven back.

The difference in casualties between the opposing armies was striking. Historical estimates vary, but TSHA reports about 60 Mexican soldiers killed and many more wounded. Only one Texan was reported killed, with roughly nine to 12 wounded.

The Texans at Salado had held their position. However, positioned only a mile or two away, another group would never reach them.

The Dawson Massacre

Nicholas Mosby Dawson was a Texas Revolution veteran living in Fayette County. When word came that San Antonio had fallen, he gathered volunteers around La Grange and headed west to reinforce Caldwell.

By the time Dawson approached San Antonio, his company had grown to 53 men, most from Fayette County. Another Texas company was following behind, but according to the TSHA account of the Dawson Massacre, Dawson believed Caldwell might need help immediately and continued toward the fighting rather than waiting.

Mexican cavalry found them first.

On the afternoon of Sept. 18, about 500 Mexican cavalrymen supported by two field pieces intercepted Dawson’s company.

Dawson’s men dismounted and took cover among the mesquite. At first, their rifles were helpful, but then artillery changed the fight.

Mexican cavalry could stay beyond effective rifle range while cannon fire struck the Texans’ small position. Dawson’s company had no artillery of its own, little hope of escape and no immediate way to reach Caldwell.

Casualties mounted quickly, and Dawson himself was wounded. Eventually, the Texans felt compelled to surrender.

However, their surrender became deadly. The National Register documentation for the Dawson and Mier monument records that Mexican soldiers continued firing after the Texans had begun giving up their weapons until Col. Carrasco ordered the shooting stopped.

Thirty-six members of Dawson’s company, including Dawson, were killed. Fifteen were taken prisoner.

One particularly striking account from the battle concerns Griffin, an enslaved man belonging to Samuel Maverick. According to TSHA’s history of the fight, Griffin continued fighting after his rifle was shattered, reportedly using the limb of a mesquite tree before he was killed.

The number of men who escaped is a subject of disagreement among historical records. The TSHA account identifies two men who escaped during the fighting, while later Texas historical documentation identifies three: Thomas D. James, Alsey S. Miller and Henry Gonzalvo Woods.

The 15 prisoners were marched into Mexico, and of them, only nine eventually returned to Texas alive.

The dead remained near the battlefield, initially buried in shallow graves in the mesquite country where they had fallen. Their story would eventually become inseparable from another group of Texas prisoners whose disaster had not yet occurred.

Back at Salado Creek, Caldwell’s main force had survived. Woll now faced a growing number of Texas volunteers converging on San Antonio and little reason to risk becoming trapped. He withdrew.

On Sept. 20, Mexican troops evacuated San Antonio with their prisoners and headed toward the Rio Grande. Texans pursued them west, and fighting broke out again near Hondo Creek, but the pursuit failed to destroy Woll’s force.

Woll made it back to Mexico. His government considered the campaign successful enough that he was promoted to major general and awarded the Cross of Honor.

Texas was able to reclaim San Antonio. However, the anger did not leave with Woll.

The Republic had watched Mexican soldiers enter the same city twice in six months. The September force had taken judges, congressmen and ordinary citizens into Mexico and left 36 members of Dawson’s company dead outside San Antonio.

The public demanded retaliation, and their calls became increasingly difficult for Sam Houston to contain.

Houston understood the nuances of the problem clearly. Texas was deeply in debt, sparsely populated and unable to sustain a large conventional war against Mexico. He had repeatedly favored defensive measures rather than an open-ended invasion.

After Woll’s raid, however, Houston authorized Gen. Alexander Somervell to organize the volunteers gathering around San Antonio. The resulting Somervell Expedition began Nov. 25, when roughly 700 men marched south.

They captured Laredo on Dec. 8. Some volunteers went home soon afterward. Somervell continued with a little more than 500 men and forced the surrender of Guerrero.

By Dec. 19, Somervell had seen enough of the conquest. Supplies were scarce, and continuing deeper into Mexico could strand the expedition. Further, while Mexico could easily replace forces, the Texas army, far from home, wouldn’t be able to replace its own.

Somervell ordered the men home. However, only 189 obeyed his orders.

The Road to Mier

The 308 men who refused elected William S. Fisher as their commander and continued down the Rio Grande.

Their motives for continuing the expedition were mixed. Some wanted revenge for the invasions. Others wanted adventure, livestock or plunder. Many were political opponents of Houston. TSHA calls the resulting Mier Expedition the most disastrous of the Republic of Texas’ raids into Mexico.

By the time Fisher’s men reached Mier, they urgently needed supplies. On Dec. 23, most of the Texans crossed the Rio Grande and entered the town without resistance, then demanded food and other provisions from local authorities.

The town gathered the requested supplies that afternoon, but the Texans had no easy way to transport them back across the river. Mier’s alcalde agreed to have the provisions delivered to their camp the following day. Fisher’s men withdrew and took the alcalde with them as a hostage to make sure the agreement was honored.

The supplies never arrived. While the Texans waited on Dec. 24, Mexican Gen. Pedro de Ampudia reached Mier with a large military force and intercepted the delivery. When Fisher learned what had happened the next day, his men decided to cross the river again and take the provisions themselves.

However, this time, Mier was no longer undefended.

On Christmas Day, 261 Texans crossed back into Mexico and attacked. Fighting continued into Dec. 26. They were badly outnumbered, short on food and water and running low on powder.

Eventually they surrendered. Word of their captivity spread quickly. The prisoners were marched toward Mexico City. On Feb. 11, 1843, at Hacienda Salado, they overpowered their guards and escaped.

For about a week they tried to make their way back toward Texas through dry, difficult country. Men became separated, exhausted and lost. Mexican troops recaptured nearly all of them. According to TSHA’s account of the expedition, only three successfully returned to Texas.

Santa Anna was furious over the escape and ordered all 176 recaptured Texans executed. The order drew immediate resistance. Coahuila Gov. Francisco Mexía refused to carry it out, and foreign diplomats in Mexico City pressed Santa Anna to spare the prisoners.

The objections were both humanitarian and diplomatic. The Texans had surrendered and were already back in Mexican custody, and executing all 176 men would have amounted to another mass killing of prisoners. Mexico had faced international condemnation after the Goliad Massacre only seven years earlier, and American and British representatives were already working on behalf of Texan prisoners held in Mexico.

Santa Anna eventually reduced the punishment, but only partially. Instead of killing every prisoner, he ordered that one out of every 10 be executed.

The men would draw lots to determine who died. There were 176 prisoners, so an earthen jar held 176 beans. Seventeen beans were black.

The officers drew first. Then the enlisted men approached in the order of their names on the muster rolls. A white bean meant the prisoner lived. A black one meant he would be executed.

Texas Ranger William “Bigfoot” Wallace later recalled believing that the black beans felt slightly larger and using his fingers to select a smaller one. He drew white. His recollection is among the accounts preserved in the TSHA history of the Black Bean Episode.

Seventeen men drew black.

One unlucky drawer was William Mosby Eastland, a veteran of San Jacinto and captain in the Mier Expedition. Before his execution, Eastland reportedly told another prisoner that he faced death “in full confidence of the Christian faith”.

On March 25, 1843, the condemned men were separated from the others and shot by firing squad.

James L. Shepherd survived the initial volley by pretending to be dead and escaped after dark, but he was recaptured and killed several days later.

The surviving Mier prisoners continued toward Perote. There, they encountered another painful connection to the long series of events that had begun in San Antonio: some of the men captured by Woll months earlier were already imprisoned inside the same fortress.

Men escaped, died from disease and wounds or obtained release through diplomatic intervention. The last Mier prisoners were freed in September 1844.

For the families in Fayette County, however, the dead still needed to be recovered and properly buried.

Six years after the Dawson Massacre, Texans brought the remains of Dawson’s men and the victims of the Black Bean Episode to a bluff overlooking the Colorado River outside La Grange.

On Sept. 18, 1848, survivors and families gathered as the remains were placed together in a common tomb at what is now Monument Hill State Historic Site.

That grave is still there. Above the tomb is a 48-foot Texas Centennial monument which was erected in 1936. The site preserves the names of men who died in two separate episodes, but whose stories were intertwined into the same unfortunate chain of events.

The invasions of 1842 clash with the version of Texas history that is usually remembered. Since they followed the Revolution, they disappeared from the popular retelling that ended with a clear victory at San Jacinto. Additionally, since they occurred before the Mexican-American War, they rarely appear in accounts of that conflict either.

But in the span between the Battle of San Jacinto, which occurred in 1836, and the Mexican-American War, which began in 1846, was an entire decade where the Republic of Texas’ independence was contested.

Mexico had never accepted the loss of Texas. San Antonio was a critical target. Sam Houston governed a new country with little money and limited military power. Texas volunteers frequently had ambitions their government could barely control. The border was still a military frontier rather than the settled international boundary later generations would recognize. The actual history of that decade was not as clear cut as is often implied in retellings of Texas’ short time as an independent nation.

More Forgotten Texas History

This story is part of Katy Christian Magazine’s ongoing look at the battles, disasters, crimes and communities that often receive only a few lines — if any — in the Texas history most of us learned. If you enjoyed this story, read more from the series:

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