IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN The Alamo, I recommend it. I know the movie is vulnerable to criticism on historical grounds, but that doesn’t bother me much. Being a native Texan, I like just about anything that stimulates thinking about Texas history, and The Alamo, directed by John Lee Hancock, did that for me.
I realize I’ve just disclosed my interest in Texas history. Texans, in case you haven’t noticed, tend to have that interest. It’s one of the things that make us insufferable, I’m told. But there’s a reason for it. The state requires–or at least it did back when I was in school–lots and lots and lots of Texas history. If we learn nothing else, we learn that.
In my case, I get all the more interested in Texas history since I have some forebears who were part of it. Watching The Alamo brought to mind one of them, a fellow named William Mosby Eastland.
Eastland was born in Kentucky in 1806 and lived in Tennessee before moving his family to south Texas. A volunteer in the Texas army, he wasn’t at the Alamo, which fell on March 6, 1836. But six weeks later he was at San Jacinto, the battle that avenged the Alamo and gave Texas its freedom.
San Jacinto, which Hancock was smart to include in his movie, is a great story. After taking the Alamo, president of Mexico and commander in chief Antonio López de Santa Anna moved his troops east, towards Galveston Bay. General Sam Houston and his Texas army were in the area, and he chose a prairie near Buffalo Bayou to engage the Mexicans.
In a surprise attack taking but 18 minutes, the Texans routed the enemy, killing 630 Mexican soldiers and capturing 730 while suffering only 8 casualties. One prisoner was Santa Anna, who, as Hancock shows, had disguised himself as a common soldier. The Texans figured out who he was when one of his men messed up by calling him “el presidente.” El presidente agreed to give up Texas in exchange for his life.
I sometimes think that Eastland, deeply upset by what had happened at the Alamo, had some words with the captured Santa Anna. As history would have it, Eastland later found himself a prisoner of the Mexican army, and an order by none other than Santa Anna led to his death.
Right after San Jacinto, Eastland joined the Texas Rangers. He fought the Comanches, saw his wife die, found a new one, acquired much acreage, and was elected to local office. In those years, Texas was a republic, and Mexico its biggest national security threat. After Mexico invaded Texas for a second time in 1842, Houston, now president of Texas, ordered a militia to pursue a retreating Mexican army and–restraining his often dov-ish instincts–to invade Mexico if there was “a prospect of success.”
Eastland was a captain in this pursuing army of 800 men, which reached Laredo without encountering the enemy. The commanding officer ordered a retreat, but about 300 men, including Eastland, refused to obey. You could say they were hawks, ready to wage offensive war, and they picked a new leader, who made the fateful decision to cross the Rio Grande. A force of 261 men reached the town of Mier, where they met an enemy larger than they’d figured. Outnumbered ten to one, the Texans suffered only 30 casualties while killing 600 Mexicans and wounding 200 more.
But they were hungry and low on powder, and a wily Mexican general tricked them into surrendering. Force-marched towards Mexico City, the Texans managed to escape at Saledo after killing their guards. Most of them–176 in all, including Eastland–were soon recaptured.
Old el presidente was now dictator of Mexico. He didn’t like the news about Saledo, and he ordered a mass execution. But the local authorities refused to carry out the decree, and it was modified so that only every tenth man would be executed. The Mexicans filled an earthen jar with 176 beans, 17 of which were black, symbolizing death. Officers drew first, and Eastland was the only officer to draw a black bean. Along with the 16 others who drew black beans, he was shot at dusk on March 25, 1843.
I know little more about William Mosby Eastland, except that he had things in commendable perspective as he faced death. He told one of the survivors: “For my country I have offered all my earthly aspiration and for it I now lay down my life. I never have feared death nor do I now. For my unjustifiable execution I wish no revenge, but die in full confidence of the Christian faith.”
Decades later the state of Texas named a county after Eastland. It is 118 miles northwest of Crawford, where George W. Bush has his Texas home. Surely he has passed through it a time or two. I wonder whether he knows about the county’s namesake, and the story of those fatal black beans.
–Terry Eastland
