Chadwick Sketch of Ft. Defiance

[mustanggray]

List,

Since there was a bit of discussion regarding this a while back I will try and post some images related to Ft. Defiance.

The first is the map as drawn by Joe Chadwick;


...the second is an enlargement of the key to said map;


I'm not sure if this will work or not, if it doesn't maybe Jim can help out?

What this map shows is the earth and timber reinforcements added within the walls of the fort. The key describes them as a "ditch" with "pickets 6 feet from wall... the space filled with earth from ditch" and these are on the South and East walls. The later New York lithograph of the fort does not show these but since Chadwick was there I'd tend to go with his version.

The thing that strikes me is if you have a garrison of men that you are able to coerce into digging ditches and throwing up picket walls then you've got to have some decent sort of discipline going on. That coupled with the fact that these men held a square in the open while recieving cavalry charges, sniping Indians and cannon fire tells me this was a pretty well trained army. It's a pet peeve of mine that the Texians are always portrayed as backwoods bumpkins, especially at Ft. Defiance...

[mustanggray]

Okay... the images aren't showing up for me, are they showing up for anyone else? Jim, what can we do to get these pics posted?

SMc

[Allen Wiener]

The only way I know to post pictures on forums like this one is to first save them to an online photo Website, such as Webshots.com (you have to open an account there, but it's free). Once the photos are saved there, you will see several choices to "Link to this picture," including "Post on Forum." First, bump the picture up to 425 pixels, so it won't be too small, and then block and copy the URL I.D. that you see under "Post on Forum" and paste it directly into your post here on the forum where you want the picture to appear. Thus:



AW

[mustanggray]

Thanks AW!

[stuart]

Came up for me Scott. Text isn't too clear but I can pretty well see what's going on in the sketch; interesting because I've only ever seen the published version.

I tend to agree up to a point on the true level of training and discipline within some elements of the Texian army. While rejecting Gary Brown's singling out of the New Orleans Greys as some kind of military elite, my own impression in tracking individuals and units is that while hardly up to European (or even Mexican standards), they were not the glorious rabble portrayed in John Wayne's epic and by some historians who really ought to know better.

[Allen Wiener]

This is always something of a puzzle to me. I have most of the standard stuff written on the war and, for this kind of assessment, I've relied pretty heavily on Hardin. I think Paul Lack's book has some stuff on the demographics of the Texian army and seems to emphasize the predominence of recent arrivals from the U.S. doing most of the fighting in the early going, AFTER the successful siege of Bexar and Cos's surrender. So we often get the impression that an awful lot of the still-very-small army were individual volunteers, like Crockett, recently arrived from the States, while a large majority of the long-term Texian colonists (those who had actually settled and lived in Texas for some time) were lukewarm to the war. The tended to favor reconciliation and more autonomy for Texas within the Mexican republic, but opposed the move for independence. Only after the Alamo and Goliad did they become both alarmed and angered by the Mexican slaughters to both take off in the Runaway Scrape and also join up with Houston. In fact, as I read it, it was the genuine anger of the Texians after the two defeats that forced Houston's hand at San Jacinto. They really wanted to fight and were sick of running, while Houston wanted to get to the U.S. border and bring in the U.S. troops waiting there.

AW

[Jim Boylston]

Sorry to be slow to respond guys, I'm working long hours on a show in Dallas. I've PMed Scott my email information and I'll try to repost the images if need be.
Jim

[Herb]

Scott, thanks for posting - I've only seen the NY version before.

I also agree with your comments on discipline and training with a very important side comment. At the company level it was and still is very dependent on the leadership abilities of the leaders (and I chose leaders instead of commander deliberatly).

For a company to truly be good it requires both a good commander and good NCO leadership. A great commander with bad NCOs or vice versa will always keep a company from reaching its potential. The fact is even in professional armies the quality of companies are dependent on the quality of their leadership. Almost every battalion will have an excellent (elite) company, a dirt poor one, and the rest average to good. The quality of the men is the same, it all comes down to the ability of the commander to instill pride, conduct demanding and realistic training, install discipline and to genuinely care for the troops.

There is an old saw in the military that there are only two priorities 1. The Mission and 2. The Men. The best commanders realize that except for actual combat operations, the two are pretty much the same. The best way to prepare for combat is to take care of your men, the best way to care for your men is to train them for combat.

One of my favorite quotes from Napoleon is roughly "There are no bad battalions there are only bad battalion commanders".

The wide disparity in the skill and discipline of the the various Texian units is a reflection of the quality of their leadership. That said at the company level most were competent enough. The Texian problems were at the higher levels - the government never did really adopt a strategy for the conduct of operations, and at the higher levels of military command (where you maneuver units instead of men) there was an obvious lack of experience.

[sloanrodgers]

allenw said:

AFTER the successful siege of Bexar and Cos's surrender. So we often get the impression that an awful lot of the still-very-small army were individual volunteers, like Crockett, recently arrived from the States, while a large majority of the long-term Texian colonists (those who had actually settled and lived in Texas for some time) were lukewarm to the war. The tended to favor reconciliation and more autonomy for Texas within the Mexican republic, but opposed the move for independence. Only after the Alamo and Goliad did they become both alarmed and angered by the Mexican slaughters to both take off in the Runaway Scrape and also join up with Houston. In fact, as I read it, it was the genuine anger of the Texians after the two defeats that forced Houston's hand at San Jacinto.

Didn't the Texan army always have trouble enlisting, maintaining and
re-enlisting soldiers during the revolution? Lukewarm seems accurate.

They really wanted to fight and were sick of running, while Houston wanted to get to the U.S. border and bring in the U.S. troops waiting there.

Gen. Houston wasn't the only person holding this ace up his buckskin
sleeve. I believe Rusk, Carson, Burnet and others supported this plan
at one time or another. I'm sure everyone was glad that the retreat
wasn't dragged that far across the Texas map though. Adios.

[stuart]

IMHO some historians in the past, (including Hardin although he may since have modified his views) have taken an altogether too simplistic and “romantic” view of the Texian armies. The question of organisation is important enough to merit a thread of its own, but when it comes to training I think far too much weight is placed on accounts like one from a member of the Mustangs who wrote that drills “were my detestation and from which I invariably absented myself”.

The point being of course that he, as an individual, was bunking off from the training which everybody else was actually taking part in. John Sowers Brooks for example, who was also at Goliad under Chadwick wrote that “It is nothing but drill every day until I have become completely sick of it.”

[mustanggray]

To add a slightly new turn to this thread...

I was recently doing some reading and came across a letter in a Texas Historical Association Quarterly, written in January of 1837 that reads... "He(referring to John Sowers Brooks)built, or at least he drafted the plan of laying a half-moon battery, which gave great satisfaction, and was a masterpiece which did him credit. It was called Brooks's Battery, and the soldiers performed the work. Also several other things, which if Fannin had remained, would have played havoc amongst the Mexicans. Amongst them all was a frame of wood containing 100 muskets, which they called in France an Infernal Machine."

I have always heard historians speak of Brooks' Battery as the contraption he built with the spare musket barrels. The impression has always been given that this was setup in a semicircular or "half-moon" shape due in part(I assume) to the reference to the half-moon battery mentioned in the above letter. However if we look at Chadwick's sketch and the subsequent copy by the New York lithographers it's very plain to see the "Infernal Machine" laid out on a straight design rather than a curved version. Of course there is a discrepency with Chadwick and the McLeod letters as to the number of barrels invovled(Chadwick says 68, McLeod says 100!) they are both pretty much describing/drawing the same thing. What interests me is that McLeod actually describes the half-moon battery as something seperate and apart from the Infernal Machine. If this is the case, the half-moon battery being something seperate from the Infernal Machine, then where was this half-moon battery located? It doesn't show up on Chadwick's sketch or the lithographers version... could it have been added after the Chadwick sketch was done or could it have been built outside of the fort(which would make sense) as some sort of defensive position covering one of the main roads into LaBahia? Has anyone else here ever come across this? Does anyone have any insight or information that might shed some light on this half-moon battery? Inquiring minds want to know...

[mustanggray]

stuart said:

John Sowers Brooks for example, who was also at Goliad under Chadwick wrote that “It is nothing but drill every day until I have become completely sick of it.”

Stuart,

Brooks and if I'm not mistaken Chadwick, both describe drilling the men but this started pre Goliad when the Georgia battalion landed at Copano. Despite comments like that from the Kentucky Mustang, in order to accomplish all that was done at Goliad all of that command had to be well drilled and disciplined. I cannot recall the exact words but Fannin at one point described having to tighten down the screws on his men and get them organized of which he claimed he had done. Going through Davenport I came across more than a few soldiers under Fannin's command that had some previous time at the Point and these men were used as the drill masters. I would think if nothing else they were proficient in the manual of arms and basic evolutions... but that's just my opinion!

[TRK]

For comparison with Chadwick's plat of Fort Defiance (i.e., the old presidio), here's links to several of Louis Berlandier's 1829 plats of the presidio, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University:

beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/photoneg/oneITEM.asp?pid=39002037286144&iid=3728614&srchtype=

beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl/oneITEM.asp?pid=2028738&iid=1109460&srchtype=

Click on the image, and it will open the plat in a new pane where you can greatly enlarge the image.

Also, a link to a sketch of the presidio by Lino Sánchez y Tapia, after an original sketch by Berlandier:

beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/photoneg/oneITEM.asp?pid=39002037286003&iid=3728600&srchtype=

[Herb]

mustanggray said:

Going through Davenport I came across more than a few soldiers under Fannin's command that had some previous time at the Point and these men were used as the drill masters. I would think if nothing else they were proficient in the manual of arms and basic evolutions... but that's just my opinion!

Back then the first summer, before the Plebe or Freshman year, was dedicated totally to military training with emphasis on individual and squad drill. The incoming cadets were organized into a company with all the officer and noncommissioned officer positions filled by upperclass cadets, who conducted the training. Regular Army Officers would observe and evaluate the Cadet Leadership. If a cadet survived that first summer, even if he flunked out academically later that first year, he had received sufficient training to be a proficient company commander or a "drill master".

[mustanggray]

wolfpack said:

mustanggray said:

Back then the first summer, before the Plebe or Freshman year, was dedicated totally to military training with emphasis on individual and squad drill.

Wolfpack,

Having never studied this myself Itrust others knowledge on the subject BUT I had always been told the first year was devoted to subject other than military drill. This arguement has been used to play down Fannin's capabilities in the past. Is there any published work I could read on the early days of the West Point?