Forgotten Texas Leader
By Spellman, Paul N. '71

Buy this Book at Amazon.com

Forgotten Texas Leader:
Hugh McLeod and the Texas Santa Fe Expedition

The name of Hugh McLeod rings no bell with most students of Texas history, to say nothing of the general populace of the state. And yet, the author contends, McLeod was one of the great voices of Texas, along with those of Mirabeau B. Lamar and Thomas Jefferson Rusk and his nemesis, Sam Houston. While McLeod "never had the stuff of which great leadership is made" (p. 6), his considerable contributions were erased by the assignment of blame to him for the failure of the 1841 Santa Fe expedition, which he had commanded. Justice calls for his elevation in the annals of history. Spellman's biography is a judicious and meritorious one, based on extensive and careful research into both primary and secondary sources.

The first four chapters of the book examine McLeod's early life, his problems at West Point, where he graduated last in a class of 56, and his almost immediate resignation from the U. S. Army in order to cast his lot with Texas, which was then in the throes of revolution. McLeod aided in the defense of Nacogdoches, fought various tribes of Indians (receiving an arrow in his thigh), studied law, became adjutant general of Texas, and wrote a detailed account of the Council House fight with the Comanches on San Antonio's Main Plaza.

The next six chapters describe in detail the misfortunes and mismanagement of the Santa Fe expedition, which projected the opening of direct trade between the Texas settlements and the reinforcement of Texas's claim to the upper Rio Grande. Most of the Pioneers, as the 320 men were called, ended up dead or prisoners of the Mexicans.

The final six chapters recount McLeod's release from Castle Perote; his marriage and family; his civic, cotton, railroad, and real estate enterprises in Galveston (where he had settled); and his quest for political office. He won election to the state legislature, but his two runs for the U. S. Congress were unsuccessful. McLeod raised funds for filibusters, like William Walker; he defended slavery; and he even advocated the reopening of the slave trade. When the South seceded he became a colonel in the Confederate Army, leading the First Texas Regiment. Within a few months, he was dead of pneumonia. His body was sent to Austin, where he was buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

Spellman writes that McLeod was a lieutenant colonel in 1861 in the U. S. Army (p. 4), but offers no proof of this. Occasionally, the reader wishes for more information, such as the nature of the improprieties alleged against John Forbes by Dr. Nicholas Labadie (p. 167). The six maps relating to the Santa Fe expedition are helpful, but one wishes for an additional one of the South Texas coast and the Gulf of Mexico. All in all, the biography succeeds in involving the reader in the life and times of Hugh McLeod.

Reviewer: Mary Lee Spence, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign