Chapter Eleven ~ Notes
1. Milvern Harrell.
2. Having received five saber wounds and had his hip shattered by a musket ball in the Dawson fight four months earlier, Norman Woods would never fully recover from his injuries. When Green arrived at Saltillo, he had been delirious with pneumonia for two weeks, but when the main body of prisoners arrived a week later, he was considered well enough to accompany them on the march south. He died of typhus in Perote prison in December 1843. Haynes, Soldiers of Misfortune, 102; James L. Truehart, The Perote Prisoners, 274.
3. Major Henry Clay Davis had participated in the Somervell Expedition, but was so outraged by the conduct of the Texans at Laredo that he resigned his commission, saying "he would not have anything to do with men who would rob in their own country." Although he was, according to one soldier, "a true friend of Texas," he remained in Mexico for several years after the expedition, where he married into a prominent Mexican family and founded Rio Grande City. Adams, "Diary" 48-49; Nance, Attack and Counter-Attack 470-471, 520-521; Haynes, Soldiers of Misfortune, 54.
4. Some of the Texans blamed Charles Keller Reese for preventing them from putting their escape into effect. One prisoner said Reese refused to take the position assigned to him; another believed he had actually informed Colonel Barragán of their plans. In any case, Reese was decidedly against any attempt to overpower the troops that guarded them, believing they had journeyed too far into Mexico to have any real hope of reaching Texas. Haynes, Soldiers of Misfortune, 103, 226-2n.
5. Many Texans continued to believe Reese was responsible for the renewed vigilance of the guards, while others suspected that Sawney, a runaway slave who had accompanied the escort since Matamoros, had overheard the prisoners' plans and notified Colonel Barragán. Stapp, Prisoners of Perote, 66.
6. Philip Dimitt, one of the earliest settlers of Texas, had co-authored the Goliad Declaration of Independence in 1835, the first public statement advocating secession from Mexico. After the Revolution he operated a mercantile establishment in Corpus Christi, and in 1841 he and three other men were captured by Mexican troops. Marched into Mexico, Dimitt and his companions joined another group of captured Texans at Matamoros. At Agua Nueva some of the prisoners managed to escape into the mountains, whereupon the captain of the escort guard announced that Dimitt, who had remained behind, would be shot if the Texans were not recaptured. Shortly afterward, Dimitt committed suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum. Nance, After San Jacinto, 445-469.
7. Situated in a barren valley along the road from Saltillo to San Luis Potosi, the Hacienda del Salado was a posada and ranch inhabited by two to three hundred people.
8. The firearm commonly used by Mexican cavalry at this time was a flint-ignition Baker carbine. Most Mexican firearms had been manufactured in England for the British army, which sold them to Mexico in the 1830s. William A.A. "Big Foot" Wallace described the weapon as "a short bell-mouth, bull-doggish looking musket, carrying a very heavy ball," which fired with little accuracy. [Angelina] Nieto, et al., El soldado mexicano, 1837-1847, 53-54; John C. Duval, The Adventures of Big Foot Wallace, 177.
9. Captain Germán Romano dispatched fifteen of his twenty-five-man escort back to the ranch to assist Colonel Barragán before hurrying the Texas officers along the road to San Luis Potosi. Haynes, Soldiers of Misfortune, 107.
10. Matehuala.
11. Dr. Richard Fox Brenham, one of the commissioners of the Santa Fé Expedition, had been
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