My article from List A was from the August 23, 1968 edition of the Houston Post. Entitled “No Weapon: Dowling’s 5th Sword Missing,” it takes advantage of a recent theft of the statue’s sword to discuss the monument’s, and Dowling’s, history. It lists some of the people involved with the statue’s inception, including the Ancient Order of Hibernians and former City Councilman Tom Needham, and speaks of the statue’s history in front of City Hall, then in Sam Houston Park, and finally in Hermann Park. The author of the article, whose name was not listed, goes on to write of Dowling’s heritage: his immigration to the United States from Tuam, County Galway, Ireland to New Orleans, and then to Houston. The article’s brief description of the affair at Sabine Pass still highlights the overwhelming odds Dowling and the Davis Guards faced, and it even goes beyond the battle to point out that, not only was Dowling the proprietor of the Bank of Bacchus saloon, he was also “the first Houstonian to use gas lights and the first to drill for oil in Texas.”
I found two articles related to Dowling in my paper from List B, the September 16, 1863 edition of the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph. The first, an open letter on the front page from a Mr. Charles O. Otis, is a request for performers for a concert in honor of the Davis Guards. Otis refers to the Guards as “our gallant townsmen” and the “gallant company,” and certainly plays up their success even as he writes that “it is not necessary” for him to do so.
The second article from the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph was somewhat more informative, detailing the actual events at Sabine Pass for what seems like the first time, given the article itself claims that the information “need be no longer concealed.” The article actually details the strength of the Davis Guards as “six cannon and forty-two men,” and takes pride in the Davis Guards being Houstonians while praising their “greatest feat of the war.”
In the case of the article from the Houston Post, there definitely seemed to be a hint of snark in the author’s voice. The reference to leprechauns, and joking about the stolen swords in general, give the article a lighter tone. The article on the whole seems almost random, if not for the fact that the statue had been moved to Hermann Park “a few weeks ago,” and this was likely the first time the sword had been stolen from the monument’s new location. Not many of the events happening around the article seem to reflect on it; the paper and is filled with references to the Cold War and the arms race between the United States and the “reds.” Editions before and after discuss a recent election with a large turnout for liberals, which might mark a change in Houston’s leadership from those who might care most about a statue commemorating a Civil War hero, but probably didn’t affect the article too much. There is, however, a lack of the pride found in the older articles. It is also not as prominently featured in the newer paper, tucked away three sections into the paper in the local section, on the first page but surrounded by advertisements. The older papers seem to have been limited to two pages, yet they featured two articles on the Davis Guards.
One immediately obvious distinction between the 19th century articles and the 1958 one is that, in the more recent article, there is much more focus on Dowling himself, whereas the older ones do not even mention his name. In fact, the older articles play up the Irish heritage of all the Davis Guards much more as well, but it comes as much more of a surprise that the man who is commemorated by a monument in Houston was not even mentioned by the press so soon after the actual events at Sabine Pass. This just goes to show how, as time passes, we tend to glorify individual men, and attribute entire victories to their leadership, while forgetting the men under them who actually got the job done. Dowling’s statue may list the names of the Davis Guards, but the 20th century article barely even mentions them; there is even a discrepancy between their numbers, with the older articles counting forty-two men while the newer one references forty-seven. In all, it the articles evidence how much the perception of historical events can change over time.