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Mexican Commander Requests Armistice

Expedition and was able to inform his government regarding its objective. Finding that the expedition had departed from its camp on Brushy Creek the day before his arrival in Austin, Uribe immediately departed the Texan capital for San Antonio and Mexico, and shortly after his return to Mexico, Governor Francisco G. Conde of the Department of Chihuahua published the news of the Texan expedition toward Nuevo México and warned his people against being led astray by the flattering talk of the Texans.[9]  Indeed, in Texas many believed that Arista's request for a cessation of hostilities to enable him to make a campaign against the Comanches was merely a ruse to get an agent to Austin for the purpose of gathering information about the troops being assembled in Texas for an expedition against some point on the Mexican frontier; and, possibly, to delay the march of those troops until the Mexican government could organize its forces to meet the threat to its far northern frontier.

While Uribe was in Texas, Seguin entered into an agreement with him to smuggle goods into Mexico. Seguin's object, in part, was to recoup his financial losses from having fitted out a company in the Federalist War.[10]  On the other hand, he and his associates, Messrs. Blow, Davis, Murphy, Ogden, and Chevallie, were interested in the promotion of illicit trade between San Antonio and the Río Grande settlements simply as a lucrative business proposition. For this object, Seguin obtained from Ogden and Howard a credit of three thousand dollars on part of his property.[11] 

Thus, accompanied by Van Ness, Morris, Seguin, Blow, Davis, Murphy, Ogden, and Chevallie, the two Mexican commissioners returned to the Río Grande. On the tenth day, after leaving San Antonio, they reached Guerrero, where the Texan commissioners determined to remain a few days to recruit their horses before pushing on to Arista's headquarters at Monterey.[12]  At Guerrero Uribe received a communication from Arista expressing surprise that Seguin was on the frontier in the character of a commissioner from Texas, an erroneous assumption on his part. Indeed, he seemed to be embarrassed by the arrival of emissaries from Texas, and "made a good deal of fuss to exculpate



9. Francisco G. Conde, El gobernador y comandante general del departamento, á sus habitantes, Chihuahua, Julio 28 de 1841, broadside.

10. Seguin, Memoirs, pp. 20-21.

11. Ibid.

12. John D. Morris to Samuel A. Roberts, San Antonio, Sept. 30, 1841, in Smither (ed.), Journals of the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas, III, 255.

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