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Federalist Wars: Final Phase

After a few days rest at Laredo, during which time a Federalist controlled government was installed, Jordan and López returned to the Nueces with their prisoners. They found Canales at Lipantitlán, three miles above San Patricio. While these events were in progress, the Comanches in great number, infuriated at the treatment they had received at San Antonio the previous spring, slipped through the frontier late in July all the way to the coast, causing severe destruction and loss of life. They attacked Victoria and burned Linnville on August 8. During the absence of Jordan and López, the Anglo-Texan contingent of the Federalist force had been increased. Captain John T. Price, as we have already noted in the Laredo campaign, and Captain Thomas Newcomb joined again, but Roman, Felder, and others, while still sympathetic, declined having any further active part under the Federalist leadership. Joe Wells, sometime cowboy, accepted a majority.[29]  In the vicinity of Lipantitlán were assembled approximately two hundred Texans under Colonels Juan N. Seguin[30]  (100) and S. W. Jordan[31]  (110), the latter having their headquarters at Kinney's ranch. Whether Lamar ever gave written permission for Seguin to raise troops in Texas for the Federalist cause, is not known; but Seguin may have believed from his conversations with Lamar that he did have such permission, as he later claimed in his memoirs.[32]  Certainly there is no indication that Lamar ever disapproved of Seguin's or any other private citizen's conduct in the Federalist wars. J. M. Menchaca of San Fernando de Rosas, then only nineteen years old and a relative of the Menchacas in Béxar, assisted Captain Antonio Pérez in raising a volunteer company, it was said, of fifty Mexicans and thirty Americans in Austin and San Antonio. Leandro Arriola of Béxar likewise raised a



29. Hobart Huson, "Refugio: A Comprehensive History of Refugio County from Aboriginal Times to the End of World War II," vol. II, chap. 23, p. 15.

30. Juan N. Seguin resigned his seat as senator in the adjourned Fourth Congress prior to his march to Laredo. John S. Simpson, Chief Justice of Béxar County, to Secretary of State, San Antonio, Monday morning 8 o'clock, Oct. 26, 1840, in Domestic Correspondence (Texas), 1836-1846, ms. In Seguin's company was Benjamin F. Highsmith. A. J. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, p. 13.

31. The number of men under Jordan's command has been variously stated. Anson G. Neal says it was 90 (Lamar Papers, VI, 106); John Henry Brown, History of Texas, from 1685 to 1892, II, 173, gives it as 112; and Yoakum, History of Texas, II, 290, says 110.

32. Juan N. Seguin, Personal Memoirs of Juan N. Seguin, from the year 1834 to the Retreat of General Woll from the City of San Antonio in 1842.

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