the development of new and more powerful naval guns required Stevens to reinforce the ship's defensive skin. One such cannon was designed by Commodore Robert F. Stockton, who was at this time supervising the construction of a new battleship for the navy, the U.S. Princeton. In 1844, in a special demonstration for President Tyler and his cabinet, one of the ship's guns exploded, killing the secretary of state, the secretary of the navy, the president's father-in-law, and several crew members and wounding many others. A court of inquiry exonerated Stockton, who was later instrumental in bringing California under U.S. control during the Mexican War. Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography 5:674-675, 694-695.

     2. In mid-June, one of the Woll prisoners wrote home: "This is the most disagreabel [sic] climate on the Globe. It rains nearly every day...in fact it is colder here at this time than it is in Texas in December." R.A. Barclay to My frends [sic], June 18, 1843, L.U. Spellman, ed., "Letters of the 'Dawson Men'," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 38:254-255.

     3. The ease with which the Texans managed to bore out of Perote would seem to discredit Green's estimate of the volcanic rock's durability. During the course of their confinement the Texans dug three tunnels, although the last one was finished just prior to the release of the Mier prisoners and was never used. McCutchan, Mier Expedition Diary, 140; Bell, A Narrative, 74.

     4. Although the Texans commonly referred to Perote as a prison, the castle of San Carlos de Perote was a military installation, guarding the route from Veracruz to the capital. In no way could conditions at the fortress be compared with those of the Accordada in Mexico City. A small number of felons incarcerated at Perote performed menial duties around the fort, and a few political prisoners also lived there under rather more comfortable conditions. Santa Anna maintained a residence at Perote, spending the night when en route to his Veracruz estates. When Santa Anna was deposed in 1845, he was held at the fort for four months before being exiled to Cuba. During World War II, the fortress housed German and Japanese prisoners. It is still in use as a prison today. For more on Perote, see Sanchez Lamego, El Castillo de San Carlos de Perote, and J. J. McGrath and Walace Hawkins, "Perote Fort - Where Texans Were Imprisoned," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 48:340-345.

     5. Captain José Diaz Guzman was the daytime officer of the guard and fortress quartermaster.

     6. King Lear, Act II, Scene IV.

     7. Green could have heard this anecdote from George Van Ness, a Bexar prisoner at Perote who had also participated in the Santa Fé Expedition, but it is more probably lifted from George Wilkins Kendall's narrative of the expedition, published in 1844. Green's account of the exchange between Santa Anna and the prison blacksmith is virtually identical to Kendall's version, although he neglects to mention that Kendall believed the story to be "a fabrication." Kendall, Narrative of the Texan Santa Fé Expedition..., 286-287.

     8. Ludovic Colquhoun represented Bexar County in the Texas Senate at the time of the Woll invasion. Green, ed., Samuel Maverick, Texan, 230.

     9. John Bradley, Samuel Maverick's uncle, was one of the survivors of the Dawson Fight. The Mexican government would later release him as a result of the special interposition of Andrew Jackson. Ibid., 136; Nance, Attack and Counter-Attack, 623.

     10. The treatment of Mexican prisoners captured at San Jacinto provides an interesting comparison to the practices Green found so deplorable at Perote. In 1836 the government of Texas put some 360 prisoners, regulars and officers, to work fortifying Galveston Island. Many Mexican soldiers were also leased to individuals, for whom they performed a variety of duties, providing a cheaper alternative to Negro slave labor. Unlike the Texans at Perote they were not shackled, but the lack of adequate provisions on the island led to problems of disease and malnutrition. Henson, "Politics and the Treatment of the Mexican Prisoners," 212-219.

     11. According to a Bexar prisoner, neither the inmates of Perote nor the garrison that defended it held José María Durán in high regard. When the commandant resigned his post in September