The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957 Page: 365
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Major Whitfield Chalk, Hero of the Republic of Texas 365
all of the next day for the supplies to be brought to them. Nothing
appeared, however, for General Pedro Ampudia had arrived at
Mier in the meantime with Mexican reinforcements and refused
to permit the delivery of the requisition. The Texans thereupon
decided to return to Mier and take their rations.
All but forty-two men under Oliver Buckman, who were posted
to guard the camp on the Rio Grande, moved against Mier on
the afternoon of December 25, 1842. Pitched fighting continued
until the next afternoon, by which time the Mexicans had suf-
fered some eight hundred casualties, six hundred of whom had
been killed, as against thirty Texans killed and wounded. The
Texans were exhausted, however, their powder almost gone and
their discipline cracking under hunger and thirst. In this condi-
tion they fell victim to the surrender ruse engineered by General
Ampudia. Of the bewildered Texan troops, after an hour's de-
liberation, there were perhaps fewer than twenty who did not
bitterly oppose capitulation. Among those who stubbornly re-
sisted surrender was Whitfield Chalk.
Promptly and emphatically William St. Clair and Whitfield
Chalk expressed their unwillingness to trust their fate to the
doubtful "peace treaty." Chalk later explained that after they
had decided to attempt escape they hid themselves behind some
sheaves of cane that were stacked in a corner of the adobe shack
in which the prisoners were being held for the moment. Under
the cover of darkness the two men managed to escape and cross
the Rio Alcantra, and until daylight they wandered along the
zigzag route through the dense chaparral and cactus to the boat
landing on the Rio Grande.
George B. Erath, who had remained with the camp guard
while the battle of Mier took place,0 related the arrival of the
two men who had escaped from the contested Mexican town and
succeeded in wandering back to Texas:
At nine o'clock the men became anxious to go on. I went back
to hunt Pierce, knowing that the men would not go far without me.
I had not gone over three hundred yards before I heard talking in
the brush. I turned thither and found about a dozen of the men we
had left in camp the night before, and with them two of my mess-
"Lucy A. Erath (ed.), "Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath," Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, XXVII, 45.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957, periodical, 1957; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101163/m1/394/: accessed May 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.