| THE TEXAS CONNECTION to the American Revolution |
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| "TCARA" |
| Story by Judge Robert Thonhoff People all over the world, thanks to Hollywood movies and television, know about the great Texas longhorn cattle drives out of South Texas to the railheads in Kansas and elsewhere during the years following the Civil War. Very few people, however, are aware of the fact that Texas longhorns were trailed by Spanish Texans nearly one hundred years be-fore the time usually ascribed to cattle drives. Although a few historians have known and written about the Texas cattle drives to Louisiana in 1779, only recently has their main purpose been discovered, which makes them doubly significant. The first formally authorized drives out of Texas went east, not north, and their purpose was to provide food for the Spanish forces of General Bernardo de Gálvez (after whom Galveston is named), who fought and finally defeated the British all along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida during the American Revolution After the Battle of Saratoga, France, Spain, and Hol-land joined the American colonists in their unequal fight against Great Britain. After Spain decided to declare war against Great Britain on May 8, 1779, King Carlos III commissioned Louisiana Governor Bernardo de Gálvez to raise and lead Spanish forces in a campaign against the British along the Gulf Coast. Accordingly, Gálvez proceeded to raise an army of fourteen hundred men, which by 1781 had swelled to more than seven thousand. Then as now, the military axiom that “an army travels on its stomach” held true. But Gálvez knew where the food supply was; better yet, he knew where there was a veritable “travelling commissary” for his troops—on the Spanish ranches in the San Antonio River Valley. In order to feed his troops, Gálvez sent an emissary, Francisco García, with a letter to the new Texas Governor Domingo Cabello, both request-ing and formally authorizing the first official cattle drive out of Texas. García arrived in San Antonio de Béxar on June 20, 1779 (the very day before Spain formally declared war against England), and by Au-gust, two thousand head of Texas cattle, gathered from the ranches of the missions and private individuals in the Béxar-La Bahía region, were on their way to Gálvez’s forces in Louisiana. During the remainder of the American Revolution (1779-1782), some ten to fifteen thousand head of Texas cattle were rounded up on the ranches between Béxar and La Bahía, taken to Presidio La Bahía, and assembled into trail herds. From there, Texas beef were trailed northeastward to Nacogdoches, Natchitoches, and thence to Opelousas for distribution to the Spanish forces under Gálvez. Spanish Texas rancheros and their vaqueros, some of whom were mission Indians, trailed these cattle. Soldiers from Presidio San Antonio de Béxar, El Fuerte del Cíbolo, and Presidio La Bahía escorted the herds. Several hundred head of horses were also sent along for cavalry and artillery purposes. Extant records even indicate that a few soldiers from Texas were recruited to fight with Gálvez’s army. The upshot of the story is this: Fueled in part by Texas beef—Texas longhorns, no less—Spanish troops took to the field and waterways in the late summer of 1779 and defeated the British in battles at Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. (This sounds like the Civil War, but it isn’t. It’s the Ameri-can Revolution!) Early the next year, after a month-long siege by land and sea, Gálvez, with more than two thousand men under his command, captured the British stronghold of Fort Charlotte at Mobile on March 14, 1780. The climax to the Gulf Coast campaign occurred the following year when Gálvez directed a two-pronged land and sea attack on Pensacola, the British capital of West Florida. More than seven thousand men, in-cluding a part of the French fleet, were involved in the two-month siege of Fort George before its capture on May 10, 1781. Thus, it becomes clear that the “Texas Connection with the American Revolution” was the beef that was trailed and delivered to the Spanish forces that defeated the British along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida. Without Texas beef, Gálvez would not have triumphed over the British so handily, and the War for American Independence could have ended quite differently. It is a story that every Texan can be very proud of. Indeed, our Texas, in a most interesting, unique, and fitting way, had a steak in the winning of the American Revolution. |