Camp Victoria

The letter hidden in a whip handle had four authors, not two. Henry Teal and Henry Karnes wrote from Matamoros, joined by William Parsons Miller, captured at Copano, and William Howell, a Pennsylvania wool buyer living there. The courier was meant to reach Rusk, but a Texas patrol caught him near the Nueces, and the letters went to the War Department instead. Secretary of War Alexander Somervell used them as the basis for a circular calling out the militia. The warning mattered to an army camped at Victoria and drawing volunteers.

What the plaque says

Camp Victoria Although the town of Victoria had been established in 1824, it was all but abandoned during the Texas Revolution in 1836, as settlers fled east during the Runaway Scrape. After the Revolution's successful close at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the Texas Army followed the retreating Mexican troops, stopping in nearby Goliad to bury the hundreds of Texans who had been killed there. Led by Gen. Thomas J. Rusk, the 300 remaining Texas troops set up camp here in early June 1836, along Spring Creek at a site called Camp Victoria. While encamped here, Rusk received a message from Henry Teal and Henry W. Karnes, both imprisoned in Matamoros. The message, hidden in the handle of a whip, became known as the "Whiphandle Dispatch." It warned of a potential attack by a reassembling Mexican army. Rusk requested help from Gen. E.P. Gaines of the U.S. Army, who sent troops from Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky to Rusk at Camp Victoria. By August, the Texan Army had swelled to more than 2,500 men, the largest gathering of Texan troops during the Revolution. Faced with a much larger army and new military objectives, Rusk complained to provisional Texas President David G. Burnet, who sent Mirabeau B. Lamar to take over command. The troops refused to recognize Lamar, and he returned to Texas government headquarters at Brazoria. Rusk resumed command over an increasingly restless army, with some troops talking of arresting Burnet and his cabinet. Brig. Gen. Felix Huston replaced Rusk and began preparations for an expedition against Matamoros. Troops and supplies were moved to El Cópano (50 mi. SE). The preparations proved unnecessary; neither the expedition nor the Mexican invasion took place. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 2.6 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• De León Plaza — 3.0 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 24 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.

More markers nearby

• Camp Henry E. McCullouch — 1.0 mi
• Tonkawa Bank — 1.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Victoria — 1.9 mi
• William Robert Smith — 2.0 mi