Mexican Threats of a New Campaign
Against Texas

ALTHOUGH THROUGHOUT THE DAYS of the Lone Star Republic Mexico threatened to invade Texas almost as often as the seasons changed, and rumors of an impending attack were frequent in Texas causing great excitement and sometimes untold hardship, the Texans, as a whole, soon came to pay little attention to such rumors. "Terrible news!!!" screamed the Telegraph on August 19, 1837, "Another silly rumor is afloat in New Orleans, that Bustamante and Bravo are concentrating the Mexican forces on the Río Grande above Matamoros."

Yet the repeated declarations by Mexico of her intention to renew the campaign against Texas and the very inadequate state of Texan defenses were often sufficient to alarm all but the most sanguine. On August 26 the Brutus and Invincible, after a three months' cruise along the Mexican coast, arrived before Galveston, having captured six prizes since leaving that port early in June.[1]  The next day two Mexican brigs-of-war, the Libertador and the Iturbide, attacked the Invincible outside the harbor, forcing her to flee across the bar where she unshipped her rudder, piled upon a shoal and two days later was pounded to pieces by a severe storm. The Brutus, already tied up at the Navy Yard when the Mexican warships appeared, sought to go to the aid of the Invincible but ran aground and a few weeks later was pounded to pieces by a second storm. Without a single war vessel to protect their coast, the Texans became frantic.

Because of this naval weakness -- and probably also because of the seizure and imprisonment of Colonel John A. Wharton at Matamoros upon his landing there with a detachment of Mexican prisoners to exchange for his brother William H. Wharton, Captain George W. Wheelwright, and other officers and crew of the Independence cap-