Fort Defiance: 1836 Joseph Chadwick Map of Col. James Fannin's Defenses at the Historic Site of the Battle of Goliad....

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.