The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (20 page)

THE MEXICAN WAR
was, perhaps, the first conflict reported in newspapers as it unfolded. In the United States, the public quickly found heroes, many of whom were from the new state of Texas. One of the most popular was Sam Walker, who always seemed to be in the thick of the fighting. He captured the American imagination, especially after it was learned he had been one of the Mier prisoners. This brought letters from relatives of missing prisoners, asking if he knew anything of the fate of their loved ones. “You would confer a lasting favor upon me and also on his Mother by making necessary inquiries,” a despondent father wrote from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. From Baltimore came a letter expressing the “anxious feelings of a sister and widowed mother.”
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There is no indication that Walker was able to fulfill these requests, because the federal government had other things for him to do. No longer a colonel of the Ranger-based First Texas Mounted Rifles, he had been taken into the regular army with the permanent rank of captain of the United States Regiment of Mounted Rifles, and on October 1, 1846, he was ordered to Washington. From there he was sent to Maryland to use his popularity to recruit troops. He had another piece of business to handle—the introduction of Samuel Colt’s six-shot revolver.
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Despite the success of the original revolver in Texas, the United States government showed no interest in the weapon. Federal contracts were critical to the Colt company’s survival, and the failure to procure a government contract, together with the lingering effects of the financial panic of 1837, had forced it into receivership in 1842. The same year, however, the government did grant Colt $50,000 for development of harbor defense systems, which at least kept him involved in the arms business. Nevertheless, his own priority was the revolving pistol, and the Mexican War revived hopes that the government might take interest.

It is not known exactly when Walker and Colt first discussed a new revolver. Colt was unaware that Walker planned to actually purchase arms during his trip east, and his initial effort was directed at getting an endorsement of what appears to have been the prototype.
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On December 1, Colt wrote an associate in Washington, “Permit me to make your acquaintance with Captain Walker ‘U.S. Rifles’ & to request you to lend him the repeating Pistol you have of my construction for purposes of experiment & oblige. . . .”
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Walker, whose enthusiasm for the revolver was based on hard-won experience, was happy to oblige and endorsed the concept of an improved model. This enabled Colt to obtain an army contract almost immediately, and within two weeks he was urging Walker to meet him in New York “to determine on the exact model of the Pistols. It is important that this is done with as little delay as possible or I will not be able to complete them by the time they are wanted.”
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Together, Walker and Colt worked out specifications, and tooling for the new pistol began in January 1847. It was a .44-caliber, six-shot weapon that, at four pounds nine ounces, was the heaviest production Colt’s revolver ever made. Issued to the Rangers, it was formally designated the Walker Model, and to emphasize the point the cylinder was decorated with Ormsby’s engraving of Walker’s Indian fight sketch. The pistol’s introduction during the Mexican War assured Colt’s future success.
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Even the word “revolver” gave a psychological edge, for the Mexicans associated it with a nearly identical word in their own language but one that has substantially different meaning. The Spanish verb
revolver
is the root of the word
revuelta,
which describes any number of spinning or turning motions. In this instance, the Mexicans believed the Americans had devised a new technology that, in the words of one U.S. officer, allowed the bullet itself to “run around trees and turn corners, go into houses and climb stairs, and hunt up folks generally.” Convinced there was no shelter from such a weapon, they already had defeat on their minds when they went into battle.
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GENERAL TAYLOR, MEANWHILE,
was preparing his troops to meet a large Mexican army rumored to be heading north under the command of General Santa Anna, who had recently returned to power. Despite Taylor’s ill feeling toward Rangers in general, he liked some of their leaders and apparently was pleased when McCulloch rejoined him in late January 1847. The needs of battle took priority over Taylor’s personal opinions, and with the possibility of new hostilities, the recently discharged Mounted Volunteer companies of Rangers were recalled to active duty together with recently formed units from San Antonio. These new arrivals brought a particularly dangerous element, for among them was Mabry “Mustang” Gray, the “cow-boy” who had so blithely helped massacre the Mexican trading expedition near Victoria five years before.
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Mustang Gray was twenty-one years old when he arrived in Texas from South Carolina in January 1835. He listed his occupation as farmer, and it is known that he fought at San Jacinto. Beyond that and general knowledge of his depredations along the Nueces Strip, his life is largely a mystery. Nevertheless, he was now in Mexico at the head of a company of Rangers who took pride in being called the Mustangers or the Mustang Grays.
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Gray found good company in John Glanton, a member of Walter P. Lane’s new company of Rangers from San Antonio. Glanton was a cultured, affable man, but a vicious sociopath who later became a notorious scalp hunter, killing Indians of all ages and sexes for the bounty on their scalps paid by local jurisdictions in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.
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Despite the valiant service of the Rangers in Taylor’s victory over Santa Anna in the bloody two-day battle of Buena Vista in February 1847, the American regulars expressed only contempt for the likes of Gray and Glanton. Dr. S. Compton Smith, who served as acting surgeon for Taylor’s division and considered Walker, McCulloch, and Hays to be “the genuine, brave, and hardy pioneers [of Texas],” nevertheless wrote:

Some of the so-called Texas Rangers, who came into the country at a later period, were mostly made up of adventurers and vagabonds, whose whole object was plunder. . . .

The gang of miscreants under the leadership of
“Mustang
Grey”
[
sic
] were of this description. This party, in cold blood, murdered almost the entire male population of the rancho of Guadalupe,—where not a single weapon, offensive or defensive, could be found. . . .

Others came after them, but were not mustered into service;—the General declaring that the American army should no longer be disgraced by such wretches.
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Taylor reacted to the Rancho de Guadalupe massacre and other atrocities apparently by packing Gray and his men back to Camargo, where they were mustered out on the expiration of their enlistments.
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Nevertheless, the damage was done.

These incidents help bring a whole new aspect to the conflict—a bloody counterguerrilla struggle in which neither side showed mercy. The vicious fighting between the irregulars of two nations became a war within a war, especially after April 4, 1847, when Antonio Canales, himself far from squeamish about committing outrages, sent an order to Mexican commandants under his control.

With the greatest indignation I have learned that the Americans have committed horrible murders on the Guadalupe Ranch, hanging twenty-five peaceful men in their own homes and by the side of their families, and shooting them almost immediately. Reprisal is the only recourse left to us to repel this warfare, which is not war, but atrocity in its greatest fury. . . . You will immediately proclaim martial law, with the stipulation that eight days after the publication of said law all individuals who are capable of bearing arms and do not do so will be considered traitors and will be shot immediately. . . .

You are authorized to give no quarter to any Americans whom you may find, or who may present themselves to you, even though they be unarmed. You will make this known to all the towns in the State, informing them of the severe penalties which will be incurred in case of the least omission.
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Walter P. Lane’s company had the loathsome job of hunting down the
rancheros,
matching Canales murder for murder. All too often, Lane’s Rangers went about it with relish. Capturing the
ranchero
chief Juan Flores, Lane took him to Cerralvo, conducted a drumhead court-martial, and had him shot. A few days later, the company was scouting the interior beyond Monterrey and came to the city of Magdalena one night. In the moonlit street they spotted an armed Mexican, who shouted an obscenity and spurred his horse away. John Glanton gave chase and (according to Lane’s version) ordered the man to halt. When the Mexican refused, Glanton shot him.

Taylor had already heard of the shooting by the time Lane reported back to him and, in Lane’s words, “commenced abusing my command as a set of robbers and cut-throats.” After a heated exchange between the Ranger and the general, Lane returned to his headquarters, where he sent for Glanton.

“Get away at once,” Lane told him, because he was certain that “Taylor was bound to have his scalp.” Nevertheless, Glanton eventually was exonerated for the Magdalena killing and the subsequent killing of a soldier of the Eighth Infantry. Soon after he transferred to Capt. J. M. Handley’s company of the First Texas Mounted Rifles under Jack Hays and served in General Scott’s army in central Mexico. He was mustered out in Veracruz, returned to San Antonio, and from there drifted west, where he began his career as a scalp hunter.
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TAYLOR, MEANWHILE, WAS
disgusted by the whole business of Ranger vs.
ranchero
. What ever their fighting abilities, he had had enough of the Texans. “There is scarcely a form of crime that has not been reported to me as committed by them,” he wrote Adjutant General Jones. “The mounted men of Texas have scarcely made an expedition without unwarrantably killing a Mexican.” Consequently, he requested that he be sent no more troops from Texas.
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Dr. Smith wholeheartedly agreed with his general’s decision. Nevertheless, Mustang Gray or Glanton notwithstanding, the surgeon could not withhold his admiration for the Rangers as a whole. Writing of the units from Mississippi and Texas, he said:

At Monterey [
sic
] and Buena Vista, these gallant troops were cruelly cut up. Hardly one-tenth of the members of those veteran regiments were returned to their homes,—and those with shattered constitutions.
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THE WAR IN
northern Mexico was essentially over, and the fighting shifted to the central part of the country, where Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott landed in Veracruz in March 1847. McCulloch’s men remained in the north, served out their latest six-month hitch, and returned home. Sam Walker now served as a regular soldier under General Scott. With his Ranger background, however, he and his men were assigned to keep the road open between Scott’s troops advancing on Mexico City and the port at Veracruz. He established headquarters at the fortress of Perote, which he had last seen as a prisoner following the Mierexp edition. One can only speculate on his feelings about returning as a conqueror to his former prison, for although there is a tightly spaced twelve-page letter to his brother Jonathan in Washington, “Castle of Perote” is mentioned only in the heading.
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Two days after Walker wrote the letter, on August 16, Mexico instituted a formal guerrilla warfare policy, its government-sanctioned packs of irregulars plundering American supply trains and cutting communications between the coast and Scott’s troops nearing Mexico City. In response, President Polk ordered Hays to take as many men as he could gather to Veracruz and commence counterguerrilla operations. Hays was already recruiting men in the San Antonio–Austin area and had assembled a new regiment, many of whom had already served under General Taylor. Upon receiving Polk’s orders, he took the regiment to the Rio Grande, and in September the Rangers boarded transports for Veracruz.
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Walker was pleased at developments. Scott had entered the Mexican capital on September 14, and now Hays was on his way, presumably with the new revolvers. On October 5, he wrote a last letter to Jonathan from Perote:

I write in haste to inform you that I leave here tomorrow under command of Gen [Joseph] Lane in command of three other companies of Cavalry with the expectation of fighting Gen Santa Anna at the pass of Pinal about fifty miles from this place[.] He is said to have a force of eight thousand men But I must confess that I have some doubts about his meeting us voluntarily our force being upwards of three thousand men, we will move light with as few waggons [
sic
] as possible. . . .

Jack Hays will soon be here with his Regt of Rangers and I have no doubt that Santa Anna will be in a tight place; if I had my Revolving Pistols I should feel strong hopes of capturing him or killing him. . . .

I have just recd a pair of Colts pistols which he sent to me as a present, there is not an officer who has seen them but what speaks in the highest terms of them and all of the Cavalry officers are determined to get them if possible.
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Four days later, General Lane learned that Santa Anna was in the town of Huamantla, just north of the main road to Mexico City. Hoping to catch him there, he sent Walker’s men ahead while he followed with infantry. At the edge of town, Walker’s advance guard surprised a Mexican outpost, chasing the soldiers to the square, where the Americans suddenly found themselves confronted by five hundred lancers supported by artillery. In the ensuing fight, Walker was killed, and his men were saved only by the arrival of Lane’s troops. Santa Anna escaped.
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