Texana Thursday: Come and Take It, Second of 2 Parts

The cannon displayed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum (Larry D. Moore photo, Creative Commons license)

As I wrote previously, the Battle of Gonzales was a small but key skirmish fought in 1835. It marked the beginning of the Texas Revolution, in which Texas won its independence from Mexico and became a republic.

Yet for the battle’s significance, the fate of the Gonzales cannon is in dispute.

Visitors to the Gonzales Memorial Museum will find a cannon, which might well be the actual cannon. (See the picture accompanying this article.) But it’s not certain.

Noah Smithwick, who was a blacksmith in Gonzales at the time of the Revolution, wrote a book in which he claimed that the cannon was abandoned near Sandies Creek, which is about a 24-mile drive west of town. Apparently, an expedition left Gonzales, with the cannon, for San Antonio. The expedition had problems moving it, and there was concern that the Mexicans might take the cannon back when the expedition reached San Antonio. (The Mexicans had originally loaned it to the Texans, and wanted it back. But the Texans refused, inspiring the “Come and Take It” slogan we know today.)

Interestingly, Smithwick wrote that the cannon was practically useless because a spike had been driven into it, and later removed, leaving a thumb-size hole. The cannon’s practical use, Smithwick wrote, was for defense, and for the noise it made.

(Smithwick’s book, The Evolution of a State, or the Recollections of Old Texas Days, is considered among the best in describing the Texas of that day. Smithwick’s family published the book in 1900, a year after his death. The book is in the public domain today.)

Smithwick claimed that the cannon was made of iron. According to a Handbook of Texas Online article by Thomas Ricks Lindley, primary documents suggest that the cannon possibly belonged to George Huff, a blacksmith and gunsmith from San Felipe.

In July 1936, following a flood, a cannon was discovered near Sandies Creek, and some believe this was the Gonzales cannon, given the location. However, Lindley writes that it did not fit the description given in other, primary sources.

“The Smithwick account incorrectly identifies the Gonzales cannon, but the Sandies salute gun does not even conform to Smithwick’s description of the cannon he believed to be the Gonzales gun,” Lindley wrote.

Lindley wrote that another scenario has Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican president, ordering the meltdown of a number of bronze guns and cannons following the Battle of the Alamo in March 1836. Perhaps the Gonzales cannon was among those.

Regardless of what ultimately happened, when people see the cannon displayed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum, they are reminded of a turning point in Texas history.