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Federalist Wars: Second Phase

Samuel W. Jordan, late a captain in the Texas service in charge of a company for the protection of the frontier near San Antonio, and more recently from the Cherokee campaign in which he had been severely wounded,[51]  Captain John T. Price, Ewen Cameron[52]  of Price's Company, and Samuel A. Plummer, an intimate friend and business associate of President Lamar.[53]  At the meeting with the leaders of the Mexican Federalists, it was determined the expedition would march under the Texas flag. The Texan force was to operate as a separate unit under its own officers, but with Canales in command of all the Federalist forces; Colonel Carbajal was to serve as his chief of staff; Lieutenant Colonel Jordan was to be corps staff officer; and Dr. Shields Booker, corps surgeon. The terms under which the Texans served in the Federal army were signed in Houston by Anaya and Neill a week after the Texans began their march from the Nueces toward the Río Grande. Canales offered the Anglo-Texans who would join him twenty-two dollars a month for their services and an equal portion of all spoils taken.[54]

The wily Canales was not a military man by profession, but a lawyer with considerable education and culture. He had been a member of the legislature of Tamaulipas in 1832, where he had served as presi-



51. A. S. Johnston, Secretary of War, to M. B. Lamar, Dec. 23, 1838, in Lamar Papers, II, 371-372; S. W. Jordan, Captain Commanding Post Béxar, to William G. Cooke, Acting Quartermaster General, Post Béxar, April 22, 1839, in W. P. Webb Collection, Texas Rangers, ms.; E. Morehead, Adjutant-General and Colonel Commanding to Captain [S. W.] Jourdan, Head Quarters of the Army, Camp Chambers, Oct. 7, 1837 (General Order No. 11), Army Papers (Texas), ms.; John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, p. 68. Jordan resigned from the 1st Regiment of Infantry on September 2, 1839. Texas Sentinel (Austin), May 16, 1840.

52. Ewen Cameron, whose education was limited to elementary reading and writing, was one of the first of the cowboys to fight with the Federalists. In April 1839, in the second battle of Saltillo, Cameron and the twenty-five Americans under him aided Pedro Lemus in defeating the Centralists under Ugartechea and Arredondo. Dr. John Long, a resident of Santa Rosa, Coahuila, declared that Cameron did "more execution in the fight at Saltillo than any other man." And Brown says that "he was a prudent and sagacious man of few words, careful of the lives of his men, who idolized him, and never hesitated to follow where he led." Lamar Papers, VI, 157, 313; Brown, History of Texas, II, 216.

53. Huson, "Refugio," chap. XXIII, 11.

54. John F. O. Henderson and Thomas Jamison to [Editor of the Colorado Gazette and Advertiser], Jan. 8, 1840, in Colorado Gazette and Advertiser, Jan 18, 1840.

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