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A
spring thunderstorm boomed in the distance like the 1812 Overture,
the lightning crashes growing increasingly loud.
Oblivious
to nature's artillery, on the night of May 5, 1837, two officers of
the Republic of Texas' army lay asleep in their tent at Camp Bowie
on the east side of the Navidad River in Jackson County. Only one
of them would wake up.
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Camp
Bowie
Postcard courtesy www.rootsweb.com/
%7Etxpstcrd/ |
William
G. Cooke had served as acting Secretary of War before being commissioned
by President Sam Houston that February as the Army's inspector general.
The Virginian had come to Texas in 1835, actively participating in
the revolution against Mexico, including the Battle of San Jacinto.
On the cot across from Cooke lay Major Henry Teal, a regimental commander.
An adventurer tough enough to survive time in a Mexican prison, Teal,
too, had helped Texas win its independence. But Teal had another side.
In his 1938 book "Cavalcade of Jackson County," author Ira T. Taylor
called the major "a half-instructed martinet" lacking in the "tact
and discrimination so essential for the command of soldiers."
Sometime during the night, as the squall line blew toward the camp,
someone approached the tent shared by the two officers. Waiting until
he saw a flash of light foretelling of another rolling concussion
from the heavens, the man pressed the barrel of his gun against the
tent canvas. In a scene that would have done Shakespeare credit, he
pulled the trigger and faded into the darkness.
If anyone heard the shot, no one stirred, not even one of the men
in the tent.
Sometime the following morning, Cooke awakened from a solid night's
sleep. Swinging his legs off his cot, he saw his fellow officer lying
in a pool of coagulated blood. Cooke yelled for the guard and the
surgeon, but the doctor could do nothing other than declare that Teal
had died of a contact gunshot wound.
Soon soldiers and other officers, including camp commander Col. Joseph
H.D. Rogers, crowded around the tent to take one last look at Teal.
The killer likely stood among them, but if anyone knew who had assassinated
the major, no one talked and no charges preferred.
Texas'
army, under the command of Gen. Felix Huston, had been camped in Jackson
County since December 1836. By that time, most of the men who had
fought and won the revolution had left the army. The majority of the
remaining 1,200 soldiers were recent arrivals from the United States,
more interested in the prospect of free land than keeping Texas free
from Mexico. Most of them liked to drink and were not particularly
impressed with military discipline. Even Huston and Gen. Albert Sidney
Johnston had fought a duel.
Boys will be boys, but the situation was getting out of hand. At one
of the nearby camps, someone not impressed with Capt. Adam Clendennin's
leadership style placed an artillery shell under his cot. When the
shell did not explode, soldiers trained a loaded cannon on his quarters,
opening up with rifle fire.
Clendennin managed to restore order, succeeding in getting the mutineers
under arrest. In the court-martial that followed, a military panel
found the men guilty. But for trying to kill an officer, their only
punishment was dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and loss
of their military service land bounty.
The
next mutinous action, Teal's cold-blooded murder, indicated the Texas
Army was virtually out of control. The slaying of an officer, no matter
how unpopular, convinced Houston that the Texas Army had become more
dangerous to Texas than Mexico. On May 19, he signed an order furloughing
two-thirds of the men.
That cut the Army of the new republic to less than 600 men, who Secretary
of War William S. Fisher sent to garrison San Antonio and Galveston.
The furloughed scattered across the republic.
Nearly
eight years later, three men rode from Gonzales for Galveston, where
two of them intended to take a boat to New Orleans. James Matthew
Jett, a former Texas Ranger, and Simeon Bateman, one of Texas' earliest
colonists, intended to buy slaves. John G. Schultz, a German who had
served in the republic's army, went along to return their horses to
Gonzales after the other two men boarded the steamer.
But while they were asleep at Virginia Point, not far from their Texas
destination, Schultz shot them and stole their money. Schultz thought
he had killed both men, and he had, but Bateman survived long enough
to make a dying declaration identifying Schultz.
Ten years went by before Schultz' arrest. Once he was in custody,
however, the criminal justice system moved rapidly. A Galveston County
jury convicted him of murder and assessed his penalty as death. The
case went to the Texas Supreme Court, which upheld the conviction.
The killer went to the gallows on Galveston Island on June 29, 1855.
Before the noose broke his neck, Schultz said he wanted to get something
off his chest. He was the one who killed Teal that stormy night in
Jackson County, 17 years earlier.
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
>
April
3 , 2004
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