WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1836
31.1
3 See notes on Jose Antonio Mexia under James Prentiss to Houston, March 8, 1834. 4 In October, 1835, Colonel Jose Maria Gonzales, a Mexican of distinction and influence, who had been formerly in the Mexican army, applied for leave to enter the Texas service at the head of a number of his country- men (Yoakum, II, 38). Colonel Gonzales was also active in the revolution- ary movement in Mexico which was set on foot by the Federalists in 1839 (Ibid., 274). ~The dream of a great republic composed of the east Mexican States and Texas had taken strong hold of the minds of a large number of promi- nent men in Texas, especially about Nacogdoches and throughout East Texas. The tentative plan was for the Texans to cooperate with a group of .Mexican officers in the eastern Mexican States, who promised to raise money and troops sufficient to make the plan a success. After succeeding in their revolt, they were to form a single republican state separate from Mexico. They planned to base the government of this new republic on the Constitution of the Mexican Republic, that had been promulgated in 1824. It was this scheme that made the proposed Matamoras expedition seem so desirable to many Texans in December, 1835, and the early days of 1836. GSee Houston to Colonel James Powers, De::ember 28, 1835. •Captain Benjamin Fort Smith (1799-July 10, 1841) was a true fron- tiersman and pioneer. He was born in Kentucky but at an eal'ly age emigrated from his native State to Tennessee, and then to Mississippi, where, at the age of sixteen, he fought under Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. He represented Hines County in the first Legislature of Mississippi, after which service, Jackson appointed him Indian Agent to the Chickasaws. He moved on from Mississippi to Texas in 1833, and when the revolution broke out he returned to Mississippi and raised a company of volunteers, but the arrival of this company in Texas was a little too late to take part in the battle of Coleto, thereby being saved from the massacre at Goliad. In the Battle of San Jacinto Ben Fort Smith fought as a private in the cavalry company. He remained with the Texas Army until August, 1836, and during part of that time he served as a quartermaster, also as adjutant general during the absence of the men regularly appointed to those positions. On May 14, 1836, he and Captain Henry Teal carried the treaty signed by Santa Anna and members of the Texas .cabinet to General Filisola, whom they overtook near Goliad. From the latter months of 1836 to 1838, Smith lived in Houston, then, he moved to Montgomery County, which county he represented in the Fifth Cong1·ess of the Texas Republic (November 2, 1840-February 5, 18<11). He trnded extensively in land, in slaves, and in horses. On March 10, 1837, he sold a large tract of land and seventeen slaves to the notorious Monroe Edwa1·ds. He owned and operated one of the first, if not the first, hotels ever estab- lished in Houston; but tiring of the "hum-drum" life it enforced upon him, he sold this property to Elisha Floyd, June 8, 1837. Ben Fort Smith never married, but, by an Act of the Legislature, he adopted Josiah C. Smith as his son. He died at the home of his bra.ther, Shelly Smith, on July 10, 1841. See Thrall, A Pic.to1·ial History of Texas, 619-G20. Wooten, .4 Com- p1·chens-ive History of Texas, II, 182, 660. Yoakum, History ol T,·xu;i, I, S38, and II, 166. Henry S. Foote, Texas ancl the Texans, II, 109-111 (foot- notes). Dixon and Kemp, Heroes of San Jacinto, 317--319.
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