Houston v1

WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1836

370

formed almost half of the band of twenty-five that William Barret Travis carried to the Alamo with him on February 2, 1836. Seven of those nine Mexicans died with Travis on the morning of March 6; Seguin and two of his company having been sent out with messages escaped the massacre (see Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXVII, 243). Immediately he recruited his company, and it became the rear guard of Houston's army on its slow retreat from Gonzales to the field of San Jacinto; Seguin's business on ·this retreat was to keep the main army supplied with meat &nd grain and do other scout duty. At San Jacinto his Mexican company was assigned the task of assisting Mosley Baker's company in preventing Santa Anna's army from crossing the Brazos. After San Jacinto, Seguin and his company remained with the Texas Army and became the ninth company of the Second Regiment of Volunteers. Seguin himself was raised to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was placed in charge of the second regiment of cavalry stationed at San Antonio. One of the first tasks he v.ras ordered to perform in this new position was to collect the ashes and charred remains of the victims of the Alamo massacre and give them Christian burial. This duty was performed with considerable ceremony; Seguin delivered an address in Spanish, which was followed by another in English by Majo1· Thomas G. Western. After the interment, three volleys of musketry were fired by the whole battalion over the grave into which the ashes had been gathered. (See the Telegraph and Texas Register, March 28, 1837; also the Texas Hist01·ical Quarterly, V, 69; and The South- western Historical Quarterly, XXXVII, 173-175.) Colonel Seguin repre- sented the Bexar district in the Texas Senate for the Third and Fourth Congresses--Septmber 25, 1837-February 5, 1840-and an interpreter was employed for his benefit, since he did not understand the English language well. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1841. Claiming that he had been cheated, mistreated, and his life threatened by a group of Anglo-Texans at San Antonio in 1842, Seguin left Texas and took up his residence in Mexico. It was soon rumored that he had deserted Texas and had gone over to Arista (see Telegraph and Texas Register, Junl:l 15, 1842), and later it was said that he was in Monterrey trying to raise an army to 1,lunder San Antonio. It is true that when General Adrian Woll seized San Antonio, September 11, 1842, Seguin ranking as a major, commanded the · Mexican cavalry, and it was reported that with his own hand he killed Dr. Launcelot Smithers, McDonald, and McRea. (See Mrs. Mary Maverick's Memofrs.) It is evidently true that Seguin had been badly treated by some Americans at San Antonio, but that fact hardly justifies his subsequent conduct. He remained with the Mexican Army and fought against the Americans and Texans at the Battle of Buena Vista; but shortly after this battle he resigned his commission as colonel in the Mexican Army, and with the assistance of some of his American friends, made his way back to Texas. But he was never again happy or contented. In 1858, he pub- lished a thin volume of his Memoirs, it being, however, merely an effort to explain his past conduct. The last years of his life were spent in t?e home of his son in Santiago, Mexico. He died in 1889. See the Texas H1s- to,-ical Qua1·terly, XXI, 382, XXVIII, 92, XXXIII, 318. Wooten (ed)., Com- prehensive History of Texa.s, I, 205, 316, 394. Lamar Papers, II, 14, ~4, IV, Part 2, p. 70. Thrall, Pictorial Histo1·y of Texas, _616. Juan N. Seguin, Memofrs (1858). Dixon and Kemp, Heroes of San Jacinto, 437-438.