President Tyler Mentions a ‘Massacre’ to Congress: The Beheading of Francisco de Sentmanat in Tabasco and Pre-War US-Mexican Relations, 1841–44

The origins of the informal two-year alliance between Texas and Yucatan (1840–42), which served the purpose of frustrating an invasion of the former by Mexican authorities, originated in their initial cooperation and support of an insurrection in Tabasco. Although revolts were not uncommon in early nineteenth-century Mexico, the rebellion that erupted in late 1839 in the small but productive state abutting Yucatan on the southern end of the Gulf tested the authority of a national government still recovering from the humiliating three-month French blockade of Veracruz – an episode known as the Pastry War (1838-39). Like Texas and Yucatan, the Tabascan insurrection was sparked by the ongoing national political civil war between Mexican “federalists” who advocated states’ rights and “centralists” who believed a stronger and more consolidated government ruled from Mexico City was needed to cure the country of the ills plaguing it since independence.[1]

RIGHT: Francisco de Sentmanat (1802-1844). Source: Wikimedia. In the Public Domain.

The key figure in the Tabasco Federalist Revolution was Francisco de Sentmanat. The son of a Spanish officer, Sentmanat was born in Cuba in 1802 eight years before Napoleon invaded Spain and seeded the notion of independence among Latin Americans. After promoting similar heresies in Cuba, Sentmanat ended up emigrating to Tabasco and making the state his cause célèbre. When fighting broke out to oust the appointed centralist governor José Ignacio Gutiérrez, he was joined by like-minded federalists such as Juan Pablo de Anaya. Although Anaya was a Mexican patriot who played no small role in the independence movement from Spain, he had been exiled in New Orleans and saw the revolt as an opportunity to reclaim his federalist bona fides after being misled into thinking the Texas Revolution was merely a political disagreement with centralists. Moreover, federalist-leaning Yucatan, on the verge of declaring its independence from Mexico City, supported Sentmanat’s mission for the same reason. By the summer of 1841, one year before Mexico’s invasion of the Republic of Yucatan, Sentmanat had ousted or killed most of his enemies, and was for the most part in control of that state.[2]

Ampudia’s Detour to Tabasco

By the spring of 1843 centralist forces under the command of Santa Anna loyalist General Pedro Ampudia were forced to sue for peace with Yucatan. Having failed in their military invasion of the peninsula, Ampudia reluctantly sought terms and saved face by renewing the original negotiations for Yucatecan reincorporation into Mexico. Yucatecan authorities agreed to send commissioners to Mexico City if centralist forces were completely withdrawn. Ampudia agreed to the terms, but instead of sending his soldiers back to Veracruz, he used the opportunity to deal Sentmanat a blow by sending his forces directly to Tabasco. That summer, Ampudia entered the Tabascan capital San Juan Bautista with nearly 3,000 men hungry for victory, and after two hours of fighting, the Cuban caudillo was forced to flee. The Picayune of New Orleans reported Sentmanat was “betrayed by some of his officers” and hastened to Merida to “organize a new force.” When he found few there interested in renewing hostilities, he went to Havana and from there to New Orleans – the favorite sanctuary for exiles ousted from Mexico. Although Sentmanat fell out of favor with Santa Anna and the centralists in Mexico City, the Yucatecans were content with their hard-won victory – a victory shared with the Texas Navy off the coast of Campeche.[3]

‘Hair-brained adventures’ and ‘laborious cruelty’: Sentmanat’s Return

While the question of war and peace with Mexico was being decided during the 1844 U.S. presidential election, Sentmanat was in New Orleans organizing an expedition consisting of a few dozen men to reclaim the kingdom of Tabasco stolen from him by General Ampudia. According to the historian Terry Rugeley, Sentmanat recruited his young and inexperienced mercenaries in the wharf area of the port city by claiming he was working for the Mexican government to create a “Texas style” colony of white settlers. At the moment of their departure, the Picayune reported the ship’s decks “were crowded with men of all nations, but principally Spaniards, and they were busy cleaning their muskets and other arms.” The article noted there were “a few Americans among his men” and they were obviously not emigrants headed to Honduras – which was their cover story. The Picayune closed, “We shall soon learn the success of this bold enterprise.” Although the Picayune was sympathetic with Sentmanat’s mission – as he had numerous friends in New Orleans – their informant and reporting was so diligent the information was in Santa Anna’s hands before the expedition landed in Tabasco.[4]

LEFT: Pedro de Ampudia, Governor of Tabasco. Source: Wikimedia. In the Public Domain.

After a few days at sea the filibusterers were forced to make a hasty landing near the coastal town of Chiltepec after being fired on by a Mexican brig patrolling the coast. The New York Herald reported the men “jumped overboard on the beach” while their ship, the William A. Turner of New Orleans, was racked with grapeshot until it sank. As a result, Sentmanat and his mostly Spanish fighters “brought away nothing but what they stood in.” A few days later, General Ampudia, who had remained there as governor after the failed invasion of Yucatan, met and crushed the small force at Jalpa on June 10. A handful of the expedition’s men were captured but Sentmanat escaped into the forest eluding Ampudia for two days before being caught. On June 12 he was lined up with the remainder of his men and shot. The U.S. Consul in Campeche, John F. McGregor, was one of the first to be notified of the expedition’s failure and forwarded to Washington a flyer he received excoriating the treatment of Sentmanat. The authors did not lament Sentmanat’s death, who they asserted had no “prestige among us” and whose audaciousness led to the demise of a man who “did not profess any principles” – they protested the fact that Sentmanat’s body was strapped to a horse, taken to San Juan Bautista, “exposed to public scrutiny for three days, his head cut off by the hand of a criminal and fried in oil” and then displayed atop a pole in the Plaza de Armas. Such “savage” treatment was a violation of norms. The anonymous authors conceded Sentmanat would have been executed, but the mutilation of his body stained their image as Mexicans: "That the barbarians of the Middle Ages: that the Hottentots and Caribs had proceeded in this way… but some Mexicans offer us in the year 1844 such a frightful scene… Who are the filthy executioners who have thus dishonored the Mexican name? Wretched! Undoubtedly they were not born in Mexico nor have they been nourished with the substance that a magnanimous and generous nation produces… do not confuse patriotism with ferocity, nor men with beasts."[5]

Santa Anna likely would have condoned Ampudia’s decision to have Sentmanat shot but what was done to his corpse caused a stir. Predictably there were denials until the Picayune confirmed that indeed “his head was severed from his body and boiled in oil.” The Spanish and French consuls in Tabasco filed protests and Ampudia – who apparently expressed “surprise at the remonstrances” – was summoned back to Veracruz. “Boiling men’s heads in oil would be a poor passport to favor at any other court than Santa’s Anna’s,” the Picayune morbidly jested, but noted Santa Anna “utterly disavows the act” and had Sentmanat’s remains sent back to New Orleans for a proper burial. The Louisville Morning Courier took a more neutral stance against the “impudent, foolhardy, wild, and unwarranted expedition” and Sentmanat’s fate: “Whilst we protest against the laborious cruelty practiced by the Mexicans, we are of necessity compelled to look at the circumstances… Thus ends one of the wildest, most hair-brained adventures of modern times.”[6]

Pre-War Sabre Rattling: 'Retrograde to a period of barbarism'

While Sentmanat’s execution did not affect the outcome of the presidential election it did nothing to improve the image Americans had of Mexicans going into the remaining months of the presidential contest. According to the Evening Post, Mexican sailors were being treated so poorly in the port of New York the Mexican consul general there, Juan de la Granja, filed a complaint. “We fear from his statement,” the Post read, “that the behavior of some of our countrymen towards them has been grossly and shamefully violent.” This behavior was partly inspired by numerous articles appearing in New York newspapers in June prior to the arrival of the Mexican war steamers Guadalupe and Montezuma, both of which took part in the battle with the Texas Navy at Campeche and were built by the British for the Yucatan campaign. Below one report on their arrival appeared a short article: “Rats. – If they are troublesome sprinkle unslacked lime in their holes and about where they congregate, and they will depart without fail.” The Buffalo Daily Gazette was less subtle about the visit: “So, Mexico, with whom we are on the verge of war, is sending her vessels to New York, to be repaired and armed and equipped, so as to be more efficient against us!” The pro-Polk newspaper argued the visit “overthrows all the blustering of the opponents of annexation about plunging the nation into a war,” and claimed repairing them was treasonous.[7]

RIGHT: John Tyler, President of the United States, 1841. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a09916.

On December 3, with the election of Polk confirmed, President John Tyler sent a message to Congress outlining affairs between Texas and Mexico and grievances causing “injury to the United States.” Tyler accused Mexico of attempting to “renew the war” and asserted that such a conflict would involve the United States. “The war would thus be endless,” he wrote, adding that the “great popular election which has just terminated afforded the best opportunity of ascertaining the will of the states and people upon it.” A week later a joint resolution for annexation was introduced to Congress, and on December 18 Tyler submitted another message warning Mexico not to interfere in U.S. affairs by provoking war and “retrograde to a period of barbarism… of which the late inhuman massacre at Tabasco was but a precursor.” Tyler also cited the 1836 execution of James Walker Fannin and four hundred other Texans at Goliad after his surrender to Mexicans and further absolved the U.S. of the consequences of annexation. If Mexico “shall aggravate the injustice of her conduct by a declaration of war against them,” he wrote, “upon her head will rest all the responsibility.”[8]

Notes 

[1] Amended excerpt from: Benjamin J. Swenson, Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US Mexican War, and Limits of Empire (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2024), xvi –xvii, xxxix, 6–9.
[2] See: Terry Rugeley, “The Outsider” in The River People in Flood Time: The Civil Wars in Tabasco, Spoiler of Empires (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2014): 109-148.
[3] “From Campeachy” Picayune, Aug. 16, 1843; “From Vera Cruz” New York Herald, Aug. 10, 1833 (via New Orleans Tropic and New Orleans Bulletin).
[4] Rugeley, “The Outsider,” 133-9; “Sentmanat and his Expedition” Picayune, June 5, 1844.
[5] “Tobasco, Mexico” New York Herald, July 21, 1844 (Report from Frontera June 10); U.S. Consul John F. McGregor (Campeche) to U.S. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun July 3, 1844. Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Campeche, Mexico, 1820-1880, National Archives and Records at College Park, MD, M286 (no. 494-7). Voz de la Naturaleza (authored by “Los hombres sensibles”) dated July 3, 1844; “Mexico” Star of Freedom, Leeds, Aug. 3, 1844 (via Picayune). Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Relation, Manuel Crecencio Rejon, accused the U.S. of being involved in the Sentmanat expedition, which was denied. See: Mexican Affairs and War, 1825-1848, vol. 1, 28th Congress, 2nd Session, House Executive Document 19: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the correspondence between Mr. Shannon, American Minister to Mexico, and Señor Rejon. Dec. 19, 1844. (Washington DC, 1844), 32. E. Porter (Tabasco) to Benjamin E. Green, Secretary of the U.S. Legation (Mexico City) Sept. 6, 1844.
[6] “Later From Mexico” Picayune, Aug. 18, 1844; “The Tabasco Expedition” Morning Courier, Louisville, July 12, 1844. (via New Orleans Tropic, July 4).
[7] “The Mexican Frigates” The Evening Post, New York City, Sept. 6, 1844; “The Mexican War Steamers” New York Herald, June 25, 1844; “Mexican War Steamers” Buffalo Daily Gazette, June 13, 1844.
[8] Congressional Globe, 28th Congress, 2nd Session, 4, 16, 50.

"Wars of the Mexican Gulf: The Breakaway Republics of Texas and Yucatan, US Mexican War, and Limits of Empire 1835-1850" by Benjamin J. Swenson (Author) Casemate Imprint: Pen & Sword Military, November 2024. Hardcover, 272 pages. 

Highly recommended: ☆☆☆☆☆

From the publisher, "One nation in turmoil, another seeking aggrandizement, smaller states jostling for security, mercenary expeditions, and political and racial armed struggles breaking out. In 1835 the northern Mexican state of Texas declared its independence and won it after defeating General Santa Anna’s forces at the Battle of San Jacinto. A few years later, as a larger and looming war with the United States approached, the gulf state of Yucatan did the same by claiming itself a separate republic. For Mexican authorities, the existence of breakaway republics on its periphery represented an existential crisis and an opportunity for U.S. and European interests. For many on both sides, the US-Mexican war officially beginning in 1846 after the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States was merely a continuation of a conflict that began ten years earlier. Adding to the turmoil, the uprising in Yucatan by indigenous Maya against a criollo minority in 1847 and the contemplated military intervention and annexation of that republic by American leadership towards the end of the war sheds light on a conflict with ethnic, national, and international dimensions. In his second transnational history of the Mexican-American War, historian Benjamin J. Swenson examines the breakaway republics of Texas and Yucatan and demonstrates how the war was not only a manifestation of American expansionism and internal Mexican disunion, but a geostrategic contest involving European states seeking to curtail a nascent imperial power’s dominance in North America."    ☞ Buy on Amazon