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Growth of War Spirit in the West

would not be so foolish as to launch a campaign in the spring or summer by troops brought from the interior of Mexico, for such troops would be so susceptible to disease when brought down from the tablelands that they would be wholly unfit to endure a campaign during those seasons of the year.[75]

While preparations were in progress in Mexico for a campaign against Texas, news reached Galveston that the two vessels of war, reported building at New York for the Mexican navy, had been completed and were lying at the wharf in New York ready for sea. Each was described as having been fitted out with a forty-two-pound Paixhan gun amidship, six eighteen-pound carronades, and an American crew under Mexican officers.[76]  At the same time it was reported that a steam frigate had been purchased for $40,000 in England for the "new" Mexican navy. Formerly the City of Dublin (under Captain Cobb), the steamer was a first rate one of 388 tons with two superior engines of sixty horsepower each. The vessel was schooner-rigged and mounted six eighteen-pound cannons and one long eighteen-inch pivot gun.[77]

A few days later it was reported that the two vessels fitted out in the United States had cleared the New York customhouse as merchantmen under bond of $170,000 to guarantee their nonemployment for belligerent purposes against Texas before being delivered to the authorities of Mexico in the ports of that country.[78]  The two schooners set sail for Mexican waters late in January or early February. One was wrecked and lost in the Gulf and the other succeeded in reaching Vera Cruz, where Commodore Moore saw it the first week in February tied up under the guns of the fortress of San Juan de Úlloa. The new addition to the Mexican navy had been in the harbor since about the first of the month. About the same time, P. Edmunds, Texan consul at New



haciendas. M. Galindo en Matamoros, Un decreto del Presidente Sobre la formación de compañias para protección contra los malhecheros, Feb. 20, 1842, in ibid., XL.

75. Telegraph and Texas Register, Feb. 23, 1842.

76. Samuel Swartwout to Sam Houston, New York, Dec. 26, 1841, in Domestic Correspondence (Texas), 1836-1846, ms.

77. Telegraph and Texas Register, March 2, 1842.

78. Ibid., Jan. 26, 1842, quoting the Morning Star, Jan. 26, 1842; Jim Dan Hill, The Texas Navy: in Forgotten Battles and Shirtsleeve Diplomacy, pp. 152-153; Telegraph and Texas Register, Feb. 23, 1842. The February 23, 1842, issue of the Telegraph reported from New Orleans newspapers of as late as February 14, 1842.

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