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Lamar's Efforts to Protect the Frontier

5,000 flint and steel lock muskets of the best quality with all necessary accessories
4,0000 lbs. of lead [Ed: "4,000 pounds of pig lead" in original document]
Sword belts, etc. for non-commissioned infantry officers[43]

By December 1840, the ordnance and advance stores purchased from N. P. Ames of Springfield, Massachusetts, had arrived safely at Galveston, and were resting in the storeroom of the customhouse pending transfer to the arsenal at Austin.[44] 

The full provisions of the law of December 21, 1838, were never carried into effect. In 1840 a military road was opened between Austin and San Antonio, and a company of infantry was stationed at the headwaters of the San Marcos, midway between the two places. It was expected that by the end of the year the national (military) road connecting Red River with Austin would be completed.[45]  By the time Colonel Burleson resigned command of the First Regiment of Infantry, the road north from Austin had been surveyed and marked as far as the Trinity. Burleson was succeeded in command on August 18, 1840, by Colonel William G. Cooke[46]  who was to locate and establish the various posts and lay out the military road to Red River. [Ed: see Cooke's map, facing p. 98] A portion of Cooke's regiment left Austin on August 22 for Little River.

After making certain preliminary arrangements, Colonel Cooke joined the troops on September 9 on Little River, just below the junction of the Lampasas and Leon rivers, where he waited five days for the delivery of a number of mules to supplement the fifty-seven horses and fifty mules belonging to the five companies comprising his command.[47]  The mules for which he waited did not arrive, and, in the



43. Memorandum to General James Hamilton, April 22, 1840, in ibid., pp. 173-174.

44. George W. Hockley, Colonel of Ordnance, to Branch T. Archer, Secretary of War, Ordnance Department, Dec. 16, 1840, in ibid., pp. 371-373.

45. Ibid.

46. E. W. Winkler, (ed.), Secret Journals of the Senate: Republic of Texas, 1836-1845, pp. 184, 189; Texas Sentinel (Austin), Aug. 22, 1840.

47. William G. Cooke to B. T. Archer, Secretary of War, [dated:] Camp on Bois d'Arc, Nov. 14, 1840, in Texas Congress, Journals of the House of Representatives, Fifth Congress, Appendix, pp. 325-327; Branch T. Archer, "Annual Report of the Secretary of War to [the President], War Department, City of Austin, Sept. 30th, 1840," in ibid., Fifth Congress, First Session, pp. 121-122; William L. Cazneau, Acting Quartermaster General, to Branch T. Archer, Secretary of War, [dated:] Quartermaster-General's Office, Austin, Dec. 19, 1840, in ibid., Seventh Congress, Appendix, pp. 378-379; Texas War Department, Report of the Secretary of War, November 1840. Printed by Order of the House of Representatives.

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AFTER SAN JACINTO: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836-1841
Joseph Milton Nance, 1963