Five years ago, John Henry McAllen had come to Texas, like so many other adventurous Americans eager to strike a blow for liberty. He came from Mississippi, a lawyer by trade and a militia officer who had seen action in the Second Seminole War with Zach "Old Rough and Ready" Taylor. With McAllen came twenty-eight stalwart men, all of whom had served with McAllen in the Florida campaigns. The women of Warren County had presented them with black roundabouts adorned with red piping and brass buttons, and thanks to these distinctive shell jackets McAllen and his men rode boldly into Texas legend as the Black Jacks.
They were not the only such group to risk all for Texas independence. There were John Shackleford's Red Rovers from down Alabama way, and the New Orleans Grays, too. But as far as Sam Houston was concerned, Captain McAllen and his Black Jacks were the best and bravest of the lot. He had seen them in action—their gallant assault on Santa Anna's left flank at San Jacinto was a scene Houston would never forget. The Black Jacks had met and vanquished a much larger force of veteran lancers. And then, while the rest of Houston's little army became a wild mob embarked on a killing frenzy as the Mexican troops broke and ran, McAllen and his boys had kept good order and protected their suddenly vulnerable commander, who lay wounded in his camp on Buffalo Bayou.
That he had lost control of his army at San Jacinto, and that they had shot, clubbed, and stabbed hundreds of Mexican soldiers who had thrown down their weapons and tried to surrender, shamed Sam Houston to this day, even while he understood that the massacre of brave Texans at Goliad and the Alamo had spawned this irresistible thirst for vengeance. At least the actions of the Black Jacks gave him leave to claim that he had not lost complete control of affairs on that fateful spring day in 1836.
After San Jacinto, a grateful Republic of Texas had awarded John Henry McAllen with six leagues of land—about twenty-five thousand acres. It was prime land along the Brazos River, a few miles south of San Felipe de Austin. As president, Sam Houston had been delighted to put his name to the grant. Texas needed to keep men like McAllen, and all she had to entice them with was land.
McAllen had made the most of the gift. Of the numerous plantations along the Brazos, his Grand Cane was one of the finest. He was among a handful of planters—along with John Sweeney on the San Bernard, Captain John Duncan on Caney Creek, and Colonel James Morgan on Galveston Bay—who had successfully and profitably cultivated sugarcane. Most of the Black Jacks, eternally devoted to their captain and bound by a friendship with one another forged in the crucible of battle, had also settled in the vicinity, creating a settlement bearing the same name as McAllen's plantation.
He had built his home on a bluff overlooking the placid green waters of the lower Brazos. With the help of some of his Black Jacks and the four slaves he bought at the Galveston auction, he had constructed a large, rambling, two-story structure of his own design. It was build of cottonwood logs, hewn and counter-hewn. The roof sported post oak shingles, made with a drawing knife. The floor was of ash, hand sawed and planed.
Downstairs, two large rooms were placed on either side of a twelve-foot-wide hall, with two smaller ones—a pantry and McAllen's study—behind them. Six polished walnut columns marked the front gallery, which ran the full width of the house. The back gallery connected the house with a stone kitchen that had a huge fireplace for cooking. Upstairs in the main house were four more rooms. Doors, window frames, and interior woodwork was all solid walnut. Interior walls were plastered. Each room had its own old-fashioned sandstone fireplace.
At the base of the bluff he had built a landing. The Brazos was navigable here, and as early as 1830 the steamboat Ariel, owned and commanded by Stephen F. Austin's cousin, Henry, had ventured a considerable distance upriver. Later, the Ocean and the Yellowstone made the trip, although the former soon sank, breaking deep on the bar that made passage at the river's mouth a treacherous proposition. The Yellowstone had quit the Brazos for the Galveston-Houston trade shortly thereafter, but the small stern-wheeler Laura plied the river now during periods of high water.
It was by steamboat that McAllen shipped his sugar downriver and brought material comforts up from the thriving gulf port of Quintana. As a wedding gift for Leah he had promised to furnish Grand Cane in high style. He had been able to make such a promise, and keep it, because the steamboats could transport marble, furniture, carriages, and all manner of creature comforts, some of which would not have made it overland by wagon freight.
For Leah, then, McAllen had provided every fireplace in the house with a black marble mantel. In the dining room and parlor downstairs, brass chandeliers with crystal prisms depended from decorated ceilings. A square rosewood piano stood in the corner of the parlor. Damask drapes adorned the windows. Large gold-framed mirrors, eight feet tall, graced the dining room. Heavy mahogany, walnut, and rosewood furniture filled every room. Leah had ordered three hundred dollars' worth of silverware, including cream pot, teapot, coffee urn, sugar bowl, salt spoons, and dozens of other utensils. These, she had told McAllen, were essential accessories for the set of English china her parents had given them as a wedding present. How could she be expected to entertain properly with anything less?
There lay the problem, mused McAllen, as he rode up the tree-lined lane toward the main house: Leah was accustomed to living in a certain grand manner. Her father, Israel Pierce, was one of Galveston's chief merchants. His house—where McAllen had first met Leah at a ball given in honor of the "heroes" of the revolution—was a true showplace. Leah had never in her life wanted for anything, and she wasn't about to start now, even if she did live on a somewhat remote frontier plantation. As a consequence, McAllen had spent nearly every penny of profit from three years of good crops to keep her happy. That cut against the grain of the frugality inherent in him; waste and excess offended the Scot in him. And by now he was painfully aware that it was impossible to ever satisfy Leah. She could not have too many material possessions—any more than she could not have too much male attention.
Behind the main house and adjacent kitchen stood the barn, stock pen, carriage house, and blacksmith shop. Next to the kitchen stood a stout cedar-post dairy. Beyond a windbreak of pecan trees, on the slope of the bluff south of the main house, was a row of a half dozen log cabins, the slave quarters. At the base of the slope was the sugar mill, one of the few in Texas. In the bottomland to the south, along the river, grew the sugarcane.
The cane had just been planted. Plowboys opened deep furrows, and "droppers" inserted three rows of stalks, with one stalk overlapping the other two. Then the "cutters" used cane knives to cut each stalk into three sections. The plowboys came back through to cover the joints with six inches of soil to prevent freezing.
In a fortnight, hoe gangs would scrape three inches of the dirt off the joints, and as the spring sun warmed the earth, shoots would begin to sprout from the eyes of the cane joints. Throughout the spring the hoe gangs would work to keep the weeds and grass from smothering the delicate sprouts.
In autumn, the cane would be harvested before the first frost. The stalks would be stripped of leaves and placed into a cane-grinding hopper. Oxen harnessed to spokes would walk in circles to move rollers which pressed the juice from the stalks. The juice would be boiled in cast-iron kettles until it thickened and formed sugar crystals. The crystals would be skimmed and refined in the mill, while the syrup thickened into molasses. During harvest time, McAllen and his help normally put in eighteen-hour days.