Post by Stan Bacon on May 7, 2018 11:39:42 GMT -5
Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston was charged with organizing and conducting the defense of the Capital at Austin during its construction through the summer of 1839, during which time he lived in a log cabin located at the current site of the Paramount Theater on Congress Ave.
To execute that defense Johnston had two groups of forces. The first comprised the 200± construction workers hired by Edwin Waller. They carried personal side arms and were well suited to provide close in security in the vicinity of the construction site itself. The second force was made up of four volunteer mounted ranging companies. Their mobility allowed them to operate at greater distances from the construction site in order to provide early contact with an attacking force and successfully interdict it.
By far the greatest threat came from the Comanche who had the ability to strike rapidly from great distances and fight mounted, getting off six well aimed arrows in the time it took to load and fire one musket round. Their likely avenues of approach are shown on Richard Denney’s map, "Tracing Native Trails Across Austin" at <http://txcompost.blogspot.com/search/label/Tracing%20native%20trails%20across%20Austin>.
Essential to Johnston’s defensive plan was the identification of the key terrain features covering those likely avenues of approach and naming them as control measures for deploying and maneuvering his available forces. It was through this process that some historians contend that Johnston named Mount Bonnell, one of those key terrain features, for his fellow West Point graduate and a key player in the Texas War for Independence, Captain Joseph Bonnell.
Any evidence to support this claim may well have gone up in smoke either when the Adjutant General’s Office was torched in 1855 or when the State Library burned down in 1881.
To execute that defense Johnston had two groups of forces. The first comprised the 200± construction workers hired by Edwin Waller. They carried personal side arms and were well suited to provide close in security in the vicinity of the construction site itself. The second force was made up of four volunteer mounted ranging companies. Their mobility allowed them to operate at greater distances from the construction site in order to provide early contact with an attacking force and successfully interdict it.
By far the greatest threat came from the Comanche who had the ability to strike rapidly from great distances and fight mounted, getting off six well aimed arrows in the time it took to load and fire one musket round. Their likely avenues of approach are shown on Richard Denney’s map, "Tracing Native Trails Across Austin" at <http://txcompost.blogspot.com/search/label/Tracing%20native%20trails%20across%20Austin>.
Essential to Johnston’s defensive plan was the identification of the key terrain features covering those likely avenues of approach and naming them as control measures for deploying and maneuvering his available forces. It was through this process that some historians contend that Johnston named Mount Bonnell, one of those key terrain features, for his fellow West Point graduate and a key player in the Texas War for Independence, Captain Joseph Bonnell.
Any evidence to support this claim may well have gone up in smoke either when the Adjutant General’s Office was torched in 1855 or when the State Library burned down in 1881.