In an emotional letter to a friend on July 2, 1832, the most respected Mexican of his generation, and the only one Texas colonists felt they could trust, hinted strongly at taking a life — his own.
Read the story of Gen. Don Manuel de Mier y Teran in the Wednesday, July 2 through Tuesday, July 8 installment of “This Week in Texas History.” And if your local paper does not carry the longest running column of its kind, buy an email subscription on the website.
The 150 colonists led by John Austin (no kin to Stephen F.) and Henry Smith were not looking for a fight with the government garrison at Velaso on June 25, 1832, but the Mexican commander took issue with the cannon the Texans were taking by boat to Anahuac.
The result was the first bloodshed of the Lone Star Revolution. The price of victory for the colonists was 10 dead, including three who later died of their wounds, compared to five fatalities for the other side. Nevertheless, it was the Mexicans that surrendered after running out of ammunition.
That’s what called an understatement. It’s also the title of the Wednesday, June 18 through Tuesday, June 24 “This Week in Texas History” column.
Houstonians were as pleased as Punch to host the 1928 Democratic National Convention, the first by either major party held in the South since the Civil War. But on the eve of the grand affair a group of teenagers kidnapped a suspected cop killer and left him hanging from a downtown bridge for all the out-of-town visitors to see.
June 20, 1865 was a dark day in Houston as Union troops arrived to begin the post- Civil War occupation.
Approximately 50,000 Yankee soldiers spread out across Texas to drive home a painfully clear message: The South had lost the war and those that had fought on the wrong side had no rights the victors were bound to respect. The long nightmare known as Reconstruction would last for nine years until the popular election of Richard Coke as governor in 1874.
Monroe Edwards, a fugitive from Texas justice who made a fortune smuggling slaves before the Revolution, was convicted of a swindle in a New York City trial on June 12, 1842.
Edwards jumped bond following a forgery conviction two years earlier in Texas and fled to England, where he masqueraded as a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto and an abolitionist. Threatened with exposure by a Lone Star diplomat, he came back to the United States only to end up in Sing Sing. Five years into his sentence, he died from a severe flogging administered as punishment for an escape attempt.
The sky appeared to be the limit for Ralph Guldahl, when the Dallas golf professional won his second consecutive U.S. Open on June 11, 1938.
Just three years earlier, Guldahl had given up the game to sell cars. But he got his head straight and his swing back to win two Opens in a row in 1937 and 1938 and the Masters in 1939. By the time the war ended, however, so had the erratic golfer’s career. Guldahl spent the last 27 years of his life as a country club pro in California before his death at 75 in 1987.
Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder commanded the Second Ranger Battalion in the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944. Under his fearless leadership, the Rangers scaled 100-foot cliffs to knock out German gun emplacements.
Eleven years later, civilian Rudder took over as state land commissioner and cleaned up the mess left by the Veterans Land Program scandal. In 1959 he became president of Texas A&M and over the objections of old alums pushed through the changes and reforms that transformed the antiquated military institution into a world-class university.
James Pinckney Henderson, first governor of the Lone Star State and third U.S. Senator, passed away in the prime of life on June 4, 1858.
The North Carolina native took a leave of absence shortly after being sworn in as the new state’s chief executive in order to lead Texas troops in the war with Mexico. He refused to seek reelection and stepped down after a single term. After Thomas Rusk committed suicide in the summer of 1857, the legislature picked Henderson to fill the empty seat in the U.S. Senate, but he served only seven months before dying of natural causes at the age of 50.
After getting the Lone Star Republic’s Supreme Court up and going, Thomas Rusk resigned as Chief Justice on June 1, 1840.
Since March 1836, he had: 1) chaired the committee to revise the constitution at the independence convention; 2) served as secretary of war in the interim government; 3) fought at the Battle of San Jacinto; 4) commander-in-chief of the Republic Army from May until October 1836; 5) briefly secretary of war in President Houston’s first cabinet; 6) elected Supreme Court Chief Justice by the legislature in December 1838; 7) president of the annexation convention in 1845 and 8) elected one of Texas’ first two U.S. Senators in February 1846.
With the Confederacy in ruins and Yankee occupation just over the horizon, on May 27, . Pendleton Murrah called the legislature into special session in a futile attempt to adapt to the “new conditions of affairs.”
The last elected Confederate governor hoped to limit the price Texans would pay for fighting with the South, but the lawmakers were a no-show. Leaving Lt. Gov. Fletcher Stockdale in charge, Murrah joined the mass exodus to Mexico but his tuberculosis caught up with him in Monterrey on August 4, 1865.