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Post by timniesen on Jan 12, 2012 17:18:27 GMT -5
Allen, I did not have time last night to find the Document. Also, tell Jim B. to look at his private messages. Interesting new Robert Crockett find. Tim
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 12, 2012 18:51:13 GMT -5
I did dig out the Smith article; very interesting. Do we have other, corroborating info placing Ben at the Alamo? I had read that he was a cook in the Mexican camp who was told to escort Mrs. D. to Gonzalez.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 12, 2012 18:52:34 GMT -5
Bob, where can I find the AJ index? Thanks!
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Post by timniesen on Jan 13, 2012 12:30:06 GMT -5
Well, Ben Harris/Harrison's presence outside the Alamo and in the Gillespie mission is confirmed by both Dr. Smith and E. G. Squier. His editor, Frederick Douglass stated that the Dr. Smith, the first Afro-American M.D., was most intelligent Afro-American in America. And E. G. Squier was among the American intellectual and political elite. His publication of dozens of books and pamphlets in both English and Spanish in addition to his fifty plus articles indicates his importance in American intellectual history. However, I am not sure if he was as smart as his wife, the notorious Mrs. Frank Lesile, who translated his works into French. He was the President of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, the American Anthropology Society, and the American Ethnological Society. Squier and Dr. Smith knew each other well, and Dr. Smith's two part book review of Nicaragua can seen as a retort to the the racialism of Squier. In fact, Dr. Smith was the only Afro-American member of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, which was founded by Squier. Tim
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Post by Hollowhorn on Jan 13, 2012 14:03:33 GMT -5
Bob, where can I find the AJ index? Thanks! Bill Chemerka has it for sale at $3.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 13, 2012 14:27:55 GMT -5
Thanks, Bob! Tim - very interesting stuff on Ben, Smith & Squier. Very interesting peek into the anti-bellum world.
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Post by Hollowhorn on Jan 13, 2012 18:00:42 GMT -5
Wow! What am I missing here? Ben was a 'stone cold killer, a masterful cook and a bodyguard'? I was under the impression that he was just Santa Anna's cook!
I don't have the above mentioned issues of the Alamo Journal, would someone please explain, in plain English, the significance of 'Ben' in the Alamo story?
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Post by timniesen on Jan 14, 2012 11:49:53 GMT -5
Hollowhorn, I should have called Ben an interpreter instead of a translator. Stuart should have corrected my English usage. Ben was a spy in the Mexican-American War. Capt. Gillespie and Ben's mission to find and deliver the secret message to Col. Fremont in the northern California wilderness was the most important American spy mission of the Nineteenth Century. Ben was an agent in Central American where he was the bodyguard and cook for the American Minister and Plenipotentiary E. G. Squier. The Squier mission happened in the the period before the signing of the compromise Anglo-American canal agreement known as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. Squier's own treaty with Nicaragua was never sent by the Fillmore Administration to the Senate. Squier launched a vehement and quite effective propaganda campaign against the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. Who knows what he did in the Texas Revolution? However, Ben was one of the few men in the Texas Revolution who had the ability to go back and forth between the enemy lines. Tim
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Post by timniesen on Jan 14, 2012 12:48:27 GMT -5
Folks, I should have added that the standard account of him going back to Gen. Santa Anna's headquarters to make coffee for him in the wake of the Alamo's fall is complemented by Squier's travel narrative, which has various descriptions of Ben preparing coffee mixed with milk for his employer. Lattes were apparently popular in 1849! Tim
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 14, 2012 13:37:52 GMT -5
Sounds like Ben saw a lot of history before he was through! I'm assuming he was a non-combatant and thus able to move between lines without anyone getting upset. This sounds like the accounts of Ben's Alamo activities that we've read for years are essentially correct.
I'm also guessing that Ben was a free man (apologies if you mentioned this earlier and I missed it), since Mexico had abolished slavery by 1836 and he was working for the Mexicans. However, this raises the quesiton of what his status would have been in Texas, both as an escort to Mrs. Dickinson and later during Texas independence, when the republic's constitutions protected slavery and prohibitied it ever being abolished.
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Post by timniesen on Jan 14, 2012 13:56:57 GMT -5
Note that Ben's last name is spelled Harrison by all the Mexican-American War accounts and Harris by Dr. James McCune Smith. Some people in the past considered that difference in spelling to be significant. I and another Alamo researcher do not find that difference significant. I have read Frederick Douglass's Newspaper and its precursor, The North Star, twice in its entirety, and there are numerous typos there. For those of you without access to that issue of the Alamo Journal, simply go to an academic library which has the digitized newspaper collection named Acessible Archives and type in the word Alamo. That will be the only reference.
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Post by timniesen on Jan 20, 2012 14:13:41 GMT -5
Allen, I think that the two sources on Ben in the Alamo Reader are trustworthy concerning his origins in a Slave state. He would have been a freeman by the time of his participation in the Texas Revolution. The critical passage in Squier's classic but little read Nicaragua is in vol. one, page 98 where he states, "Ben, too, who had been with Fremont across the continent, had traveled all over Mexico, and was a philosopher after his way..." There was no one in any of the Fremont expeditions with this name, but there was a Benjamin Harrison in the Gillespie Mission, which carried the secret message from Secretary of State James Buchanan to Col. Fremont. Tim
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jan 20, 2012 23:17:11 GMT -5
Thanks, Tim. I'll check this out!
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Post by timniesen on Jan 24, 2012 12:37:26 GMT -5
I should have stated that Ben Harris/Harrison was a freedman instead of freeman. I am sure glad that this Alamo site has a spell check, but in this case it was ineffective. Ben was well armed in Central America with two Colt Revolvers and other firearms. Tim
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Post by Hollowhorn on Feb 4, 2012 14:33:13 GMT -5
I was under the impression that he was just Santa Anna's cook! In the interests of accuracy, I should of course have said: 'Almonte's servant'
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