A Battle in Nacogdoches, A Consultation, and Santa Anna Takes Control (May 19, 2024)

by Scott Sosebee

This week we continue with the series on the causes and coming of the Texas Revolution. This entry examines the rise of Santa Anna in Mexico and the Battle of Nacogdoches.

Mexico had rarely seen a calm day, much less a year, since it had gained its independence in 1821, but the period between the spring of 1832 and January 1833 was an especially chaotic one. The nation and its leaders—at the same time—had to deal with another violent coup attempt to change the leadership at the national level while also dealing with numerous squabbles within the federation’s states and provinces, not the least of which took place in Texas. Eventually, a new leader, José Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, would take power and seem to restore some stability. What could not be foreseen was that Santa Anna did not have the Mexican nation’s best interests at heart and instead was only concerned with increasing his power, corruption, and visibility.

Santa Anna was born in Veracruz in 1794 into a prominent merchant family who wielded considerable political power within their province. The young Santa Anna embarked on a military career, a path that many provincial young men took to enter the ruling class in New Spain. He was a young officer when the fighting between the royal and rebel factions broke out in New Spain in 1810, where he served in the royalist army, first under General Arrendondo in Northern Mexico and Texas, and eventually fighting against the guerilla campaign of the insurgents in Veracruz. When Iturbide changed loyalties and declared Mexican independence, Santa Anna also switched sides and eventually became the commander of the garrison at Veracruz. However, Iturbide and Santa Anna fell out, and the young army officer joined in the campaign to oust the self-declared Agustin I. Santa Anna then spent almost a decade becoming involved in various plots to control the national government, all of them on the side of the liberal, or Federalist, faction.

Santa Anna once again settled into the role of a commander of an important garrison in Tampico, but in 1829, his national fortunes would rise. That year, Mexico had ordered the expulsion of all Spaniards from its borders, and that led Spanish general Isidoro Barradas to organize a force of nearly 3,000 to invade at Tampico and begin a campaign for Spain to retake Mexico. Santa Anna, vastly outnumbered, rallied his troops and defeated the Barradas Expedition, an action that made him a national hero. Styling himself as the “Napoleon of the West,” Santa Anna became a Federalist hero, and in 1832, he became the leader of a liberal coup against Centralist President Anastasio Bustamante. His liberal forces eventually overthrew Bustamante in late 1832 and executed the elected president; then, in January 1833, the Mexican states named Santa Anna the new Mexican president.

While Santa Anna was waging his war against the Centralist regime in central Mexico, Texas was boiling over in the fight over the customs house in Anahuac, the fight that had led José de las Piedras to first relieve Juan Bradburn at Anahuac and then issue his order for the Anglos in Nacogdoches to surrender their arms to his soldiers. When the order came, the ayuntamiento (which is akin to the current American “city council” form) asked for aid from the surrounding settlements on the Ayish Bayou and the Sabine and Neches Rivers to organize a militia and march to Nacogdoches, where they could join with a group of Anglos in the villa to resist Piedras’ order. The group gathered at Pine Hill and elected James Bullock as their commander. Bullock, on August 2, 1832, sent word to the Mexican garrison that Piedras not only rescind his order but also declare for Santa Anna and his Federalist coup, which clearly demonstrated that they were not willing to declare a rebellion against Mexico but instead were just part of the larger national fight in Mexico that raged almost interminably. Whether or not the Anglos gathered in Nacogdoches really believed that they were a part of the larger coup is open to debate, but the Anglo-Texans had certainly found a cloak of legitimacy to shroud their opposition to Mexican national policies.

Piedras refused to withdraw his request for the Anglos to surrender their arms, and to prepare for the fight, he placed troops in the Stone House and the Red House on the plaza and within the villa Church, which stood just west of the plaza principal. Bullock’s militia entered the villa from the east, engaged with some soldiers posted on the outskirts, but pulled back when a Mexican cavalry chased them back across La Nana Creek. They regrouped and then drove the Mexican troops back and fought them house-to-house until the remaining Mexican soldiers took refuge in the Stone House. The militia then attacked the Stone House, captured it, and the remaining Mexican forces retreated to the fortifications around the Red House.

In the meantime, another group of Anglo militiamen, mostly residents of San Augustine and the surrounding Ayish Bayou region, had utilized directions from Adolphus Sterne (Sterne supported the Anglos in the fight, but since he was under the penalty of death if he took up arms against Mexico he visibly refrained from fighting) and circled south of the villa center and made their way up La Nana, at the rear of the Mexican forces. While Bullock’s men advanced at the Mexican headquarters at the Red House from the front, the Redlanders from the Ayish attacked from the rear. Piedras realized that he would soon be trapped so he ordered his men to abandon the Red House and retreat to the Angelina River. The Anglo soldiers then engaged the Mexicans in a running fight to the west, until the Mexican forces reached a crossing near present-day Douglas. Surrounded and facing no true options for escape, Piedras surrendered, and he and his men were marched back to Nacogdoches and eventually to San Felipe and then on to San Antonio, where they were paroled and ordered back across the Rio Grande. Piedras reported 87 casualties, of which 47 were killed.

There are some who make the claim that the Battle of Nacogdoches was one of the opening shots of the Texas Revolution, an assertion that is somewhat dubious. The Battle of Nacogdoches—by declaration of the Anglo militia involved—was more a resistance of Centralist rule, not Mexican dominion. However, it did have one significant result: the garrison at Nacogdoches was abandoned, and thus, no Mexican troops remained in East Texas, which gave the region free rein to resist Mexican law and policy all the way through 1836.

Next week: The Texians hold a consultation and decide that Mexican statehood is the best course of action.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.