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A
spring thunderstorm boomed in the distance like the 1812 Overture, the lightning
crashes growing increasingly loud.
Oblivious
to nature's artillery, on the night of May 5, 1837, two officers of the Republic
of Texas' army lay asleep in their tent at Camp Bowie on the east side of the
Navidad River in Jackson County. Only one of them would wake up.
William
G. Cooke had served as acting Secretary of War before being commissioned by President
Sam Houston that February as the Army's inspector general. The Virginian had come
to Texas in 1835, actively participating in the revolution
against Mexico, including the Battle
of San Jacinto.
On the cot across from Cooke lay Major Henry Teal,
a regimental commander. An adventurer tough enough to survive time in a Mexican
prison, Teal, too, had helped Texas win its independence.
But Teal had another side. In his 1938 book "Cavalcade of Jackson County," author
Ira T. Taylor called the major "a half-instructed martinet" lacking in the "tact
and discrimination so essential for the command of soldiers."
Sometime
during the night, as the squall line blew toward the camp, someone approached
the tent shared by the two officers. Waiting until he saw a flash of light foretelling
of another rolling concussion from the heavens, the man pressed the barrel of
his gun against the tent canvas. In a scene that would have done Shakespeare credit,
he pulled the trigger and faded into the darkness.
If anyone heard the
shot, no one stirred, not even one of the men in the tent.
Sometime the
following morning, Cooke awakened from a solid night's sleep. Swinging his legs
off his cot, he saw his fellow officer lying in a pool of coagulated blood. Cooke
yelled for the guard and the surgeon, but the doctor could do nothing other than
declare that Teal had died of a contact gunshot wound.
Soon soldiers
and other officers, including camp commander Col. Joseph H.D. Rogers, crowded
around the tent to take one last look at Teal. The killer likely stood among them,
but if anyone knew who had assassinated the major, no one talked and no charges
preferred.
Texas'
army, under the command of Gen. Felix Huston, had been camped in Jackson County
since December 1836. By that time, most of the men who had fought and won the
revolution had left the army. The majority of the remaining 1,200 soldiers were
recent arrivals from the United States, more interested in the prospect of free
land than keeping Texas free from Mexico. Most of them liked to drink and were
not particularly impressed with military discipline. Even Huston and Gen. Albert
Sidney Johnston had fought a duel.
Boys will be boys, but the situation
was getting out of hand. At one of the nearby camps, someone not impressed with
Capt. Adam Clendennin's leadership style placed an artillery shell under his cot.
When the shell did not explode, soldiers trained a loaded cannon on his quarters,
opening up with rifle fire.
Clendennin managed to restore order, succeeding
in getting the mutineers under arrest. In the court-martial that followed, a military
panel found the men guilty. But for trying to kill an officer, their only punishment
was dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and loss of their military service
land bounty.
The
next mutinous action, Teal's cold-blooded murder, indicated the Texas Army was
virtually out of control. The slaying of an officer, no matter how unpopular,
convinced Houston that the Texas Army had become more dangerous to Texas
than Mexico. On May 19,
he signed an order furloughing two-thirds of the men.
That cut the Army
of the new republic to less than 600 men, who Secretary of War William S. Fisher
sent to garrison San Antonio and
Galveston.
The furloughed scattered across the republic.
Nearly
eight years later, three men rode from Gonzales
for Galveston,
where two of them intended to take a boat to New Orleans. James Matthew Jett,
a former Texas Ranger, and Simeon Bateman, one of Texas' earliest colonists, intended
to buy slaves. John G. Schultz, a German who had served in the republic's army,
went along to return their horses to Gonzales
after the other two men boarded the steamer.
But while they were asleep
at Virginia Point, not far from their Texas destination,
Schultz shot them and stole their money. Schultz thought he had killed both men,
and he had, but Bateman survived long enough to make a dying declaration identifying
Schultz.
Ten years went by before Schultz' arrest. Once he was in custody,
however, the criminal justice system moved rapidly. A Galveston County jury convicted
him of murder and assessed his penalty as death. The case went to the Texas Supreme
Court, which upheld the conviction.
The killer went to the gallows on
Galveston Island on June 29, 1855. Before the noose broke his neck, Schultz said
he wanted to get something off his chest. He was the one who killed Teal that
stormy night in Jackson County, 17 years earlier.
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" >
April
3 , 2004 column |
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