civil and military commissions; and yet, for this double act of perfidy, his friend, President Houston, pronounces him as pure a patriot as any in the land. I have the evidence of Captain Fitzgerald, and Messrs. Van Ness and Hancock, the three Santa Fé prisoners who were detained at San Fernando until January, that Don Erasmo Seguin, his father, then at San Antonio, was in daily correspondence with the enemy while our army was marching upon the Rio Grande.9

The Texians, under Caldwell, returned from the Rio Hondo greatly exasperated at not being allowed to engage General Woll. In a few miles they met their old favourite leader, General Burleson, coming up with re-enforcements, and they believed that, with him as a commander, they would have engaged and captured their enemy; but now it was too late. General Burleson may not be considered a tactician [37] in the strict sense of the term, but he never failed to observe one rule in winning battles more important than all the minutiae of the drill: that rule is, to fight; and his uniform success in many a hard-fought battle proves that in this art he is abundantly proficient.
 

Chapter Five

 
President Houston issues another War Proclamation. Texians again in the Field. General Somerville arrives in Camp and Disbands the Troops. Volunteers Organized. Burleson's Arrival at Camp. Houston's Refusal to issue him Orders. Volunteers press forward to San Antonio. Somerville's Arrival. Montgomery Troops Return. Operations in Camp around Bexar.

This second invasion of our country in the same year, and the atrocities with which it was accompanied, were well calculated to arouse anew the war feeling which President Houston's procrastinating ingenuity had in a great measure allayed. The people of Texas then viewed with dismay and indignation the wanton neglect of the navy, his refusal to prosecute war after Congress and the nation had decreed it, and his disbandment and abuse of the several hundred brave volunteers from the United States. General Woll entered Bexar on the 11th September, and, as before stated, captured judge, jury, bar, and citizens, under their own roofs, and while in discharge of their peaceable avocations. This news reached the president at Houston on the 16th of the same month, on which day he issued another flaming war-proclamation.*1

Here the President meets this universal public indignation which his ruinous

* Volunteer corps were raised with great despatch in different portions of the country, and from the one organized in the city of Houston, which elected General Mosley Baker to its command, he (the President) required a pledge that "they would cross the Rio Grande" before he agreed that they should have any ammunition from the public stores.