Henry Adams Bullard: Revolutionary Leader of Texas (1788–1851)

Soldier and revolutionary secretary of state of the first Texas Republic (1813), Henry Adams Bullard was a close associate of Cuban revolutionary José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois and helped organize Toledo’s seizure of the leadership of revolutionary Texas from José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara. Bullard was born on September 9, 1788, in Pepperell, Massachusetts. He was the son of John Bullard, a minister, and Elizabeth (Adams) Bullard. He attended Lawrence Academy, a preparatory school in nearby Groton, Massachusetts, in 1801.

After graduating from Harvard University in 1807, Bullard moved to Philadelphia and studied the law. Having learned Spanish, he developed a profound interest in the revolutions surging through Spanish America. Bullard was chosen by unknown individuals to write an anonymous book defending the 1806 Miranda filibuster against Venezuela. Francisco de Miranda had recruited a force of 200 Americans to assist in a takeover of his homeland, but the invasion failed and several Americans were executed. Bullard likely wrote (possibly under the pseudonym James Biggs as credited in later editions) The History of Don Francisco de Miranda’s Attempt to Effect a Revolution in South America, In a Series of Letters (1808), which argued the case for the filibuster in sympathetic terms. He himself, however, did not participate.

In touch with a vibrant Spanish exile community in Philadelphia, Bullard sometime in early 1812 came to the attention of Toledo, who was at the time working with Gutiérrez de Lara to lead a filibuster into Spanish Texas. Gutiérrez, having failed to gain official support for his invasion, returned to Louisiana in April of that year to raise a private filibuster force, which would ultimately enter Texas as the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition on August 7. Toledo’s initial role was to support the cause in America, but he soon began plotting to seize control from his erstwhile ally. He selected a parallel staff for the filibuster, including Adams as his aide and military secretary, and headed down the Mississippi River in late 1812.

The filibuster force in the meantime had survived a siege at La Bahía and in March 1813 captured San Antonio. There, Gutiérrez, the new “president protector” of Texas was implicated in the murder of Spanish royal officials under his control, which caused a falling out with the mostly Anglo-American officers and men of his rebel army. Toledo, arriving in Natchitoches, Louisianna, learned of this and prepared to enter Texas. Tipped off by a former Toledo acolyte, Gutiérrez banned Toledo from entering Texas but did not extend this to the men who traveled with him. Bullard and one other member of the group left Natchitoches and traveled on to Nacogdoches, Texas, where he then led a company of about forty men to San Antonio.

As fate would have it, Gutiérrez had just lost his secretary of state, a Frenchman named Louis Massicott. He needed a replacement fluent in French, English, and Spanish. When Bullard arrived in San Antonio with those qualifications, Gutiérrez gave him the job straightaway, unaware of his close ties to Toledo. “I came over, immediately resolved to accept the appointment with a view of being more effectually useful to Gen. Toledo by having a better opportunity of removing…prejudices from the mind of Bernardo,” Bullard wrote. However, he soon discovered what he perceived as vanity and incompetence in the president protector, and on June 28, 1813, Bullard engineered a debate in the Béxar junta with profound consequences for Texas. It effectively became a no-confidence vote on Gutiérrez’s leadership. Bullard ultimately won over Tejano supporters of Gutiérrez by pointing out that the Americans were prepared to abandon the cause if he was not replaced by Toledo. The junta agreed, Gutiérrez was sent to Louisiana in exile, and Toledo was recruited.

Shortly after the latter arrived in early August, word came that a Spanish army under Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo was approaching San Antonio. Toledo led the army south and planned to ambush the Spanish at a site near the Medina River chosen by Bullard and the American commander Samuel Kemper. The battle of Medina began with a brief engagement there with the Spanish vanguard. Believing they had the Spanish on the run, the army left its prepared positions and chased the royal forces several miles before themselves running into a Spanish ambush. In the brutal combat that followed, the Tejano corps under the command of Miguel Menchaca broke upon the mortal wounding of that officer. Bullard rode forward to rally a group of these Tejano cavalrymen and attempted to flank the Spanish army. They were beaten back with heavy loss. About the same time, the Anglo-American wing also lost its commander with the wounding of Josiah Taylor, causing the collapse of the entire front. The defeat then became a rout. Bullard, on horseback, effected his escape and made his way to Louisiana.

Bullard was penniless at the end of the expedition but, finding himself in Louisiana with a law degree and fluency in all three languages spoken in the new state, soon found success as a lawyer. In 1816 in Natchitoches he married Sarah Marie Keiser. They had four children. Bullard was appointed a district judge in 1822. He was elected to U.S. Congress and served from March 4, 1831, to January 4, 1834. He was appointed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and served from 1834 to 1846, except for a stint as Louisiana secretary of state in 1839. He also served as the first president of the Louisiana Historical Society (1836). In the late 1840s Bullard practiced law in New Orleans, and in 1847 he also taught at the Law School of Louisiana (which later became the Tulane University School of Law). He again served in the U.S. Congress, as a member of the Whig party, from late 1850 to 1851. Henry Adams Bullard died in New Orleans on April 17, 1851. He was buried in the Girod Street Cemetery but was later reinterred in Hope Mausoleum in the 1950s.