A week after Gonzales, Texians took the fort that guarded the road to San Antonio. On the night of October 9, 1835, a company of volunteers under Capt. George M. Collinsworth reached Presidio La Bahía at Goliad at about 11 p.m., took its garrison by surprise and captured the presidio after about 30 minutes of fighting.
La Bahía sat on the route from the Gulf port of Copano to San Antonio de Béxar. Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos had landed at Copano about September 20 under orders from Santa Anna, entered Goliad on October 2 and marched for Béxar on October 5. He left behind a detachment of 27 men under Lt. Col. Francisco Sandoval and Capt. Manuel Sabriego, and he left his supplies too, because there was no transportation to carry them.
Collinsworth’s company, about 40 men mostly from the Matagorda area, reached Guadalupe Victoria on October 9. There about 30 more volunteers joined, among them Silvestre De León, Philip Dimmitt, José M. J. Carbajal and Plácido Benavides, the alcalde who had already refused to hand over Victoria’s cannon. Forty-nine men signed the Compact of Volunteers that day, a pledge to “give the population of that town protection against military domination” and to stand by the constitution of 1824.
The company crossed the prairie and after dark reached Manahuilla Creek, where it rested and sent Ira Ingram ahead to scout the town. There Ben Milam appeared. He had just escaped from prison in Monterrey and was traveling, in his words, “to reach my countrymen in Texas.” Collinsworth’s men took him in and marched on to the presidio.
The fight was short and one-sided. The Texians suffered several wounded and no dead. Sandoval lost three killed, seven wounded and 21 taken prisoner, while almost 20 of his soldiers got away to warn the garrisons at Copano and Refugio. The capture cut the link between the Mexican force at San Antonio and the Gulf, and it gave the Texians the arms and supplies Cos had left behind. Through the siege of Béxar that fall, Stephen F. Austin’s army drew on the Goliad stores.
The men who took La Bahía had marched in the name of Mexico’s constitution of 1824. Ten weeks later, on December 20, 1835, citizens gathered at the same presidio and adopted the Goliad Declaration of Independence, which declared Texas “a free, sovereign, and independent State.” It carried 91 signatures, including those of Carbajal and José Miguel Aldrete.
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