In the early 1840s, a broke Republic of Texas could barely afford an army, so President Sam Houston tried something else: he deputized private citizens to raid Mexican trade on the Santa Fe Trail and split the spoils with the government. What followed was one of the strangest near-wars in Texas history, one that pulled in a Mexican governor’s militia, a buffalo herd used for artillery practice, a battalion calling itself the “Home Boys,” and finally the United States Army, whose commander disarmed the Texans but refused to accept one of their leader’s surrender because he was carrying a commission signed by the president of a foreign republic. Ken Wise unpacks the Warfield and Snively expeditions of 1843 in Episode 153 — and how a fight over a trade route very nearly became a three-nation conflict.
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