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Fort Defiance: 1836 Joseph Chadwick Map of Col. James Fannin's Defenses at the Historic Site of the Battle of Goliad....
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Fort Defiance: 1836 Joseph Chadwick Map of Col. James Fannin's Defenses at the Historic Site of the Battle of Goliad. 13.75" x 18" lithograph titled "A Correct View of Fort Defiance Goliad. (Drawn By Adjt. Joseph M. Chadwick of N. Hampshire." Published in 1836 by A. E. Baker, 8 Wall Street, New York. Condition: Overall time toning of the paper. Creases from being folded into eight sections, possibly for insertion in an envelope. Ink correction in the explanation key, letter O: "Where Prisoners [were] Shot". There are also several small ink blots above the title. Professionally conserved. A summary of the report is posted in the extended description.The story of the Texas Revolution became the stuff of legends, and the tragic massacre of Col. Fannin and some 400 of his men at Goliad was, along with the fall of the Alamo, one of the seminal events which rallied furious Texians and inspired them in their rout of General Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto. The map drawn by his adjutant Joseph Chadwick, sent to his mother shortly before he perished with Fannin, remained in the hands of the Chadwick family for generations and was largely unknown to scholars. It's sole public appearance came in 1966, when the family allowed the original hand-drawn map and the published version offered here to be pictured in an American Heritage Magazine article discussing the relationship with his friend and mentor, Western artist George Catlin. The printed map left the family's possession at some later date, but the whereabouts of the original hand-drawn map are at present unknown.
No other example of the printed map is known to Texas history scholars. It is not listed in Streeter's Bibliography of Texas or any other reference work. The extensive archives at the University of Texas include only an image taken from the American Heritage article (a copy of which is included with the map). Ron Tyler speculates that it's rarity suggests that the map was printed in very limited numbers for the Chadwick family. The appearance of this apparently unique example presents an extraordinary opportunity for institutions and advanced Texana collectors to acquire one of the earliest and most important contemporary printed records of the Texas Revolution.
A full recitation of the history and importance of this remarkable artifact of the Texas Revolution is presented in the essay below by distinguished Texas historian Ron Tyler.
"Placing the Chadwick Goliad Map in its Historical Perspective"
With a fresh commission as a captain in the Texas army, twenty-three-year-old Joseph M. Chadwick arrived at the mouth of the Brazos River in December 1835 with William Ward's Georgia Battalion, intent on helping Texas win its independence from Mexico. Chadwick was an aimless lad who had dropped out of West Point and met the artist George Catlin in 1834 while clerking at his uncle's store in St. Louis. But, too adventurous to remain inactive, he wrote his family that, "I find myself precisely as I was when I first set foot in St. Louis. I was a clerk then and am still without the present prospect of being anything more than a clerk." Little did he realize that he would soon create one of the few surviving eye-witness images relating to the Texas Revolution.
There had been rumblings of resistance in Texas ever since the
visit of Manuel de Mier y Terán in 1828-1829, which resulted in the
Law of April 6, 1830, prohibiting immigration from adjacent
countries (i.e., the United States). Minor disturbances had erupted
at Anahuac, Velasco, and Nacogdoches, but many Texians, as they
called themselves, turned toward rebellion after troops under
Mexican General Martín Perfecto de Cos occupied both Goliad and San
Antonio in the fall of 1835.
Citizens of Gonzales fired the opening salvo of the revolution in
October, when a Mexican army captain arrived and demanded that the
colonists return a cannon that had been provided to them to defend
against hostile Indians. Others quickly banished Cos's forces from
the two old missions now being used as forts, the Alamo and
Presidio La Bahía, and rushed to occupy them. Two months later, an
enthusiastic Chadwick, with Ward's Georgia volunteers, joined
Colonel James W. Fannin as he planned an expedition against
Matamoros.
When Fannin learned of Mexican General José de Urrea's advance
along the Atascosito Road, part of General Antonio López de Santa
Anna's plan to put down the Texas rebellion by attacking both the
Alamo and Goliad simultaneously, he ordered the reinforcement of
Presidio La Bahía, or Fort Defiance, as he renamed it. Because of
Chadwick's popularity and his training as a topographical engineer,
Fannin appointed him acting adjutant general and charged him with
mapping the fort and bolstering its defenses. Chadwick sent the
resulting small, approximately six by six inches, drawing titled
Fort Defiance Goliad and dated March 2 to his mother in what
turned out to be his last letter.
Santa Anna, meanwhile, had arrived at San Antonio on February 23,
more quickly than anyone had anticipated, and laid siege to the
Alamo. Mexican troops stormed the fortress on March 6, killing
every fighting man. Two weeks later, General Urrea, reinforced by
many veterans of the Alamo battle, trapped a retreating Fannin and
his men on an open plain near Coleto Creek. Fannin surrendered, but
the rebels were executed at Santa Anna's command in what the
Texians quickly called the Goliad Massacre. Chadwick was among
those who died because, according to one of his companions who
escaped during the chaos, he refused to desert a friend who had
been wounded. Lewis M. H. Washington, also on Fannin's staff,
recalled Chadwick as "one of the most thorough and effective
military men, as well as one of the most polished and pleasant
gentlemen, that ever battled under the bright banner of the Lone
Star." The Texians ultimately won their independence when an
overconfident Santa Anna blundered into what became a trap at San
Jacinto on April 21, suffered a complete rout, and was captured the
following day.
Chadwick's family, meanwhile, had sent his small drawing of Fort
Defiance to New York lithographer Alfred E. Baker, whose
reproduction of it may be a unique survival. Baker produced a
bird's-eye view of the fort that shows the church within the walls
and the position of the various companies. Since Chadwick's plan
lacked a number of details, Baker added verisimilitude to the
walls, the buildings, the tents, including several figures and
clarifications, some erroneous, based on the latest information
available: P and O indicate where Fannin and some of the prisoners
were shot, and R shows Chadwick's position at the head of troops on
the parade ground. He incorporated Chadwick's detailed
explanations, where the cannons were to be placed, the platform
from the southeast bastion to Madam Garcia's "new & very strongly
built" house, and the main gate on the south side, defended,
immediately to the north (g), by John S. Brooks' primitive battery
of sixty-eight mounted musket barrels, all of which could be fired
with a single match. Perhaps because Chadwick represented the
church only by an outline drawing, Baker erred in showing it with a
pitched roof and facing east rather than west. He also added a
flagpole and banner, copied from Chadwick's sketchy drawing in the
right margin of his plan, showing a single star on a solid field
occupying the left one-third of the banner and with alternating
horizontal stripes on the remainder. This may be the first
published representation of any flag representing the Texas
revolution. Restoration architect Raiford Stripling, who used
Baker's lithograph in restoring La Bahía, compared it with his
excavations and considered it "remarkably accurate as to
orientation, line, dimensions, and relations of the various
components of the plan." Baker probably printed only a few copies
for family members; this is the only known copy.
Ron Tyler served as director of the Texas State Historical
Association and the Center for Studies in Texas History and
professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. He is
the retired director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in
Fort Worth and has published a number of works on Texas and
American history and art history.
More Information: Report from conservator: Museum object. Must preserve the annotation at bottom. Surface clean to remove superficial and ground-in dirt. Wash to reduce acidity and some discoloration. Remove brown paper tape from all folds on verso. Size with gelatin to restore crispness and resilience to sheet. Reinforce tears and other weak areas with mulberry paper and wheat starch paste. Fill losses where folds cross and in the ink blot area where a small circle dropped out. Flatten overall planar distortions and creases by humidifying and pressing between blotters.
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