10/12/2026
Milam, Texas history
Here's the 5th and final part of our series on Texas Revolutionary, Ben Milam!
We left him in jail...yet again...while the Texas Revolution begins far to the north...
..But, as had happened before, Ben’s skill at making friends came to his rescue. The guards at the jail became quite lax regarding him and even let him bathe every day in a nearby creek, as a special privilege to someone with his winning ways. He managed to get this important information to a Mexican friend on the outside. His amigo arranged to have a horse and supplies tied to a tree on the opposite side of the stream where he took his daily scrub down. So, one day in early October, Ben wandered out to take his daily bath. He said hello to the sentinel, looked both ways, espied the horse awaiting him, leaped aboard and lit out north for Texas. He rode like the devil to freedom, over four hundred miles of desert and scrub brush country with little to no inhabitants other than bandits and beasts of prey. On and on he rode, losing his way, finding it again and slowly working his way towards San Antonio.
Though he seemed as rudderless as he'd been on the death ship to Maracaibo, some great providence must have guided his wandering like a cosmic chess player. Around midnight, October 9, 1835, he ran smack dab into a force of Texians on their way to capture the fortress of La Bahia at Goliad. An eyewitness described the meeting and ensuing storming of the fortress in a letter to the New Orleans Bulletin:
“Their route lead through a muskeet thicket… While the parties were treading their way through the thicket, the horse of some of them started in affright at an object beneath a bush. The rider checked his horse and said, “Who’s there.” A voice answered in Spanish. One of the party supposed that he recognized in the voice an old acquaintance of La Bahia – and asked if it was not such a one, mentioning the name. “No,” was the reply, “my name is Milam…
…He had never heard that Texas was making an effort to save herself. No whisper of the kind had been allowed to pass to his prison. When he learnt the object of the party, his heart was full. He could not speak – for joy.
When the company arrived at the lower ford they divided themselves into four parties of twelve men each. One party remained as a guard with the horses. The other three each with a guide, marched by different routes to the assault.
Their axes hewed down the door where the colonel commanding the place slept – and he was taken prisoner from his bed. A sentinel hailed – and fired. A r***e ball laid him dead upon the spot. The discharge of fire arms and the noise of human voices now became comingled. The Mexican soldiers fired from their quarters and the blaze of their guns served as targets for the colonist r***emen.
The garrison were called to surrender, and the call was translated by a gentleman present who spoke the language. They asked for terms…
And thus was the fort of Goliad taken – a fort, which with a garrison of three hundred fifty patriots in the war of 1812-13 withstood a siege of an army of more than two thousand Spanish troops and force them to retire – discomfited.
Col. Milam assisted in the capture of the Fort, and then he spoke: “I assisted Mexico to gain her Independence. I have spent more than twenty years of my life, I have endured heat and cold, hunger and thirst, I have borne losses and suffered prosecutions. I have been a tenant of every prison between this and Mexico – but the events of this night have compensated me for all my losses and all my sufferings.” – Southern Patriot, November 21, 1835
Ben at last felt he was on the cusp of some mighty thing, something he felt in his bones would bear fruit. Ben Milam was a freedom fighter by inclination. Whether it was Americans versus Brits, Mexicans versus Spaniards or Mexicans versus Tejanos, he would be ever at the forefront to offer up all he had in the cause republican ideals.
Ben escorted the three Mexican officers taken prisoner to Gonzales. Here an army lay forming, ready to take on General Cos’s forces now ensconced within the Alamo. Cos had to be taken care of first, or the Texians had no real hope of winning the revolution with a Mexican Army of about 1,200 sitting right in the middle of them. Ben followed the Texian army to the outskirts of San Antonio.
Here he was picked to be a scout, to get as close as he could to Bexar and take any prisoners he could. As Ben scouted, other Texian forces under the command of Jim Bowie fought it out with some of Cos’s men near Mission Concepcion. But no full frontal assault of San Antonio itself came. Different leaders in the army fought over whether they should attempt a full scale assault against a town garrisoned with far superior numbers. Competing egos dueled and battles of words ripped the cold air but no attack came. Time passed. And passed. The days went by and the weather worsened. Many of the volunteers became frustrated with the lack of movement, gave up and went home. Now leaders struggled to decide whether they could even attack with the few men left them. To the chagrin of the volunteers, the leaders decided to pull back and make winter quarters, postponing the attack till spring.
Meanwhile Ben, Bowie and a young calvary officer by the name of William Barrett Travis were all off scouting far to the South east closer to the Rio Grande, watching for the rumored Army of Santa Anna heading their way. They assumed the leaders of the army would take care of business in regards to Cos. When the scouting party returned, Milam and Bowie were livid to see the siege continued and looked to continue for quite some time, as men left, fought among themselves, and veered off into alcoholic benders.
Milam demanded to know just what the hell had been going on. When he learned one of their scouts, a black freedman Henrick Arnold, just brought word that Cos’s men were starving with low morale, Ben became even more enraged that no one seemed interested in taking advantage of this information. The volunteer army was quickly dissolving and in his mind the were “the last hope of Texas.” If they didn’t do something now, the revolution died. With an army investing San Antonio and another army coming their way, the combined forces would make short work of the pathetic 500 hundred volunteers still on the outskirts of the city. Much finger pointing went back and forth, excuses flew hot and heavy.
But Ben made a deal with them: he would storm the town with any volunteers choosing to join and the remainder would stay behind to cover their retreat if the assault failed. In the words of early Texas historian John Henry Brown, “The soul of Ben Milam rose equal to the occasion; he realized its transcendent importance to the Republic of Texas; he regarded failure, under all the existing surroundings, as an irretrievable disaster.” And that’s when a middle aged man traded his cane for a r***e, walked out of the tent in which he’d been roasting the “leaders” of the Texian army, and threw down the gauntlet to all the young men watching. The group of three hundred readied themselves for the assault while Ben devised a plan of war. A failed capitalist and prison escapee who blundered into an army now found himself leading the whole revolution, carrying the fate of Texas on his arthritic knees. Such are strange twists of fate on which history turns. Ben Milam would have it no other way.
The Siege of Bexar became the Battle of Bexar on December 5th as Milam charged with his band of dare devils into the streets of Bexar, Texian cannon blazing at the Alamo. Though Mexican morale was low, they still gave a good accounting of themselves. The battle dragged over days, the Texians slowly but surely moving from house to house, clawing their way toward Cos’s headquarters. Digging portholes through the adobe walls, the Texians turned homes into mini-fortresses, taking the town inch by inch. Miraculously only ten or twelve lay dead but am******on now ran low. They needed backup. Milam and his men took up position in the home of a former Texas governor, Juan Veramendi, Jim Bowie’s dead father-in-law. Bullets riddled the once happy home as Ben tried to plan his next move. It was December 7, 1835. The battle had raged for two days.
Ben needed to get from the Veramendi House to meet up with another group of Texians under the command of his friend, Frank W. Johnson. He stepped out into the courtyard of the Veramendi Palace to view the enemy defenses with his field glass. Some of the men around him strongly recommended he take cover. He either didn't hear them or just ignored them. It was the last mistake he ever made and the whine of a bullet was the last thing he ever heard before it crashed into his skull. He was dead before he hit the ground. In the blink of an eye, the great wandering adventurous life of Ben Milam lay snuffed out, laying on the ground of an abandoned home. For the last time in his life, a grand adventure full of hope, did not end the way he planned.
A withering return of fire from the unerring r***es of the Texians made short work of Ben’s assassin and other snipers hiding in the trees nearby. After clearing the branches, Ben’s men now felt safe enough to bury him. As the battle continued to rage with a vengeance around them, Benjamin Rush Milam was laid to rest in the plaza of the Veramendi Palace with military honors, his bloody head wrapped in a black silk handkerchief. A strange place to end up for a man without a home, without roots, without a family, buried in the heart of the largest home in San Antonio.
Though certainly not the first Texian killed in the revolution, he was held in such esteem by the brave boys who followed him into San Antonio that he became the first public martyr of the revolution. The bold three hundred fought like demons to avenge their leader’s death for two more days. A Texian victory was proclaimed December 9th, 1835. General Cos delivered the Alamo over to the Texians and the Texians, far more generous than Santa Anna would later prove, allowed the Mexican soldiers to keep their weapons and their lives as long as they promised to march back into Mexico and never return to Texas. Cos gave his word. Santa Anna later forced him to break that promise. The Texian army set up shop in the Alamo and would be there in February of 1836 when Santa Anna at last swooped down on Bexar. A new siege began that became far more famous than the siege of Bexar: the 13 day siege of the Alamo.
But the only reason the Texians held control of the Alamo was because of Ben. The siege that birthed the single most famed event in Texas history never would have happened without the bravery and sheer bravura of one Benjamin Rush Milam, single handedly igniting the Battle of Bexar, creating a ripple effect leading to the battles of the Alamo, Coleto Creek, and San Jacinto, then independence, nationhood and statehood. Not too shabby for a man who failed at most everything else in life he’d set his shoulder to. And true to form, he didn’t get to see this last project come to fruition either. Good ol’ Ben Milam: he never gave up. He just kept plugging away…until he got plugged.
Milam's body was moved in the 1840's from the remains of the Veramendi House to where it now lies in Milam Park, San Antonio. In 1897 the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a monument at Milam's grave site. The marker moved in 1976, and the location of the grave was forgotten until 1993, when a burial was unearthed that archaeologists think is probably Milam's. A&M even did a study of the bones before having him reinterred in his original resting spot there in Milam Park, which is where his remains continue to rest. Schools, streets, a town, and even a county were named after this early martyr for the Texian liberty.
Old Ben Milam: bachelor to the end, the one great love of his life was Texas. Yet in the end, she proved a harsh mistress indeed.
"Mourn that a master's spirit, a high, heroic soul,
Its earthly light extinguished, is blotted from the roll,
Where stands the bold of Texas, who nobly dared the fight,
That liberty is waging with the haughty hand of might,
Not a loftier heart ere perished, more generous, just and brave
With prouder scorn for coward acts, that make a man a slave.
To the true, the bold, the gallant were his sympathies allied;
As a heart to heart of brother, by bond of blood is tied,
True were his patriot virtues, from the sordid love of self,
From all that makes ambition crime, or stoops to earth for hell
He knew alone his country in the hour of her need;
To free and to exalt her, he sought no other creed.
From earliest of our martyrs to fall in freedom's cause,
To spend the treasure of his blood for liberty and laws.
As bright as thy example, so bright shall be thy fame,
And generations yet unborn shall honor Milam's name."
- Poem written by Deaf Smith after Milam's death and sent to his nephew.
