~The Texas~ Times
Austin Texas
Mexican Raids Across Texas
Last Year Former president Mirabeau B. Lamar sent out the Santa Fe expedition, a group of soldiers led by General Hugh McLeod in to Mexico near the Santa Fe trail.The expedition though didn't go as planned. The group was lost within weeks and began to run out of food and water,they were even further weakened after being attacked by indians. This made it easy from them to to be captured my Mexico when they finally reached New Mexico. The Texas were spared ,but forced to march to mexico city were they would be jailed.
The failed Santa Fe mission caused anger across mexico and it wasn't long before their leader has sent out a group of soldiers lead by General Rafael Vasquez. We have reports that the troops have raided Goliad, Victoria and San Antonio. A first hand report states, "The sound of the arriving troops was chaos- the thud of the soldiers boots striking the ground, the bang of the shots fly through the air and the panicked yells of our neighbors". News of the Mexican invaders spread like wildfire striking panic and fear into the nation. People soon started to fear Austin would be the next stop on the Mexicans raid. It wasn't long before President Sam Houston gave the order to have the archives moved to a safer location. However when officials were trying to load the documents onto the carts they were intercepted by a group settlers who believed the archives belonged in Austin.
Angelina Eberly
General Vasquez
Santa Fe Expedition
The Archives
Fighting Breaks out
The leader on this group was a woman named Angelina Eberly. We have an exert from an interview she had explaining the events form the Austinites point of view.
"Well, we of course have much respect for President Houston but, we truly thought that Austin was in great hands and that there was no need for drastic decisions to be made. Knowing that imagine our surprise when we heard about the order to have the archives removed from the city. We here in Austin take Great pride in living in the Capital But without the archives Austin was just another city, and we certainly didn't want that so we did the only thing we could think of. We decided to take arms against it and fight back. we gathered all of the people around town and formed a group willing to fight to keep our capital.One night a group of 20 or so men began loading the wagons full of the archives, we hadn't suspected it so we weren't at all prepared. I barley had enough time to load a cannon to fire at them but unfortunately they had made away with the documents.As soon as the town was alerted of this we decided to go out after them. We organized a group that was led by Mark Lewis.We had scraped together all the weapons we could muster but many of us still weren't armed. Luckily we arrived in the night and caught them by surprise, it wasn't long until they surrendered the archives to us."
Now that the archives are safe away in Austin, fighting the has come to a stop but, the rest of Texas is still in rage about the Mexican raid. The panic and fear has now turned to vengeful anger and across the nation Texans are ready to declare war on Mexico. Not much has happened yet but we will continue to right about out as the times progress.
Sam Houston
Many people think that since the start of his first term President Houston has been trying to move the capital from Austin back to Houston where he set it during his first term.The Mexican raids were the perfect reason to move the capital to protect them from attack, so he gave the order to remove the archives.He planned them to go to Houston and with the archives the capital would once again go to Houston.He ordered George Hockley to remove the archives with a few other but he knew there were vigilantes so they told them not to result to blood shed. This is why the soldiers ended up surrendering the archives to the Austinites.