by BARTLEE HAILE
While rebellious Texans tightened their circle around San Antonio on Nov. 4, 1835, a recent southern arrival enjoyed all the comforts of home as a “guest” of the besieged Mexicans.
Samuel Augustus Maverick spent a carefree childhood on a lush plantation in South Carolina. As a wealthy and influential figure in the Palmetto State, the senior Maverick gave the bright boy the best, including an Ivy League education.
Trained for the law at Yale University, Sam had hardly hung out his shingle when South Carolina became embroiled in a bitter debate with the national government over federal tariffs. The Mavericks were among the few cooler heads that cautioned against impulsively pulling out of the Union.
The reward for their unpopular stand was public scorn so fierce that Sam was forced to accept a challenge on behalf of his elderly father. He won the duel but forfeited a promising future in politics, a severe setback that compelled him to start anew in Alabama.
In the summer of 1835, business took Sam Maverick to New Orleans, where Texas was the talk of the town. His interest piqued by predictions of an uprising against Mexican rule, he decided Louisiana’s next-door neighbor might be worth a look-see.
Less than a month after his arrival in San Antonio, a minor skirmish at Gonzales ignited the anticipated revolt. Following the surrender of the Goliad garrison, government troops occupied Texas’ biggest settlement and rounded up all the Anglo-Americans.
Compared to the damp dungeons in which most suspects were detained, Maverick and his host, John Smith, enjoyed kid-glove treatment. Promising to stay put, the two were permitted to remain in Smith’s comfortable quarters under house arrest.
The token guard allowed visitors, who kept the prisoners posted on the progress of the rebel encirclement of San Antonio. For weeks, however, there was little to report as the colonists simply sat tight. Then in early December, Maverick and Smith learned the long-awaited attack was imminent.
Refusing to sit idly by while others risked their necks, the pair made a break for it on the night of Dec. 3. Reaching the Texan lines, their offer to serve as guides was gratefully accepted by the rebels, most of whom were unfamiliar with the confusing twists and turns of the San Antonio streets.
At dawn on the Fifth, Maverick and Smith showed the way for hundreds of ragtag volunteers. But the first full-scale battle of the insurrection was no cut-and-dried affair, and the combat raged from house to house, with Mexican soldiers defending every square foot of blood-soaked ground.
On the third day of the ferocious fighting, a sniper’s bullet dropped Ben Milam, the middle-aged adventurer whose stirring appeal had finally goaded his comrades into action. The fatally wounded firebrand fell into the arms of Sam Maverick, irrevocably committing the casual newcomer to the historic cause.
After the negotiated withdrawal of the Mexican forces, Maverick joined the ill-fated rear-guard at the Alamo, but sheer chance spared his life. Unaware Santa Anna was on the march, he left San Antonio for the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
In spite of the fact that he was not a permanent resident and had been in the province only six months, Maverick signed the Declaration of Independence. But with the revolution up for grabs after the fall of the Alamo, he returned to Alabama.
Maverick never explained the mysterious departure which caused him to miss the climax at San Jacinto. He simply came back to San Antonio in the winter of 1838 and picked right up where he had left off. The strangely timed absence clearly did him no harm, for within the year he was elected mayor, exactly a century before his grandson Maury held the same post.
Mexican raiders seized a courtroom full of prominent San Antonio citizens in September 1842 and deposited them in the notorious Perote prison outside Mexico City. Maverick was one of the unfortunates but not for long.
His powerful father prevailed upon friends in high places, who petitioned the American minister in Mexico for his release. Maverick was freed in March 1843, many months ahead of his fellow captives.
Under the circumstances, he might have been greeted with scorn and suspicion in San Antonio, but once more his reputation was not tainted. Voters had selected him in abstentia for a seat in the Republic Congress, and two terms in that short-lived body preceded a decade in the Lone Star State Legislature.
Prior to his passing in 1870, Sam Maverick lived across the street from the Alamo. He was often seen gazing out the window at the shrine, which by all rights should have been his tomb. But if Maverick suffered from survivor’s guilt, he took that painful secret to the grave.
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