Augustus William Magee (also McGee); (1789 – February 6, 1813) was a U.S. Army lieutenant and later a military filibuster who led the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition into Spanish Texas in 1812.
His father, a native of County Down, Ireland, settled in New York before moving to Boston and was a privateer captain in the American Revolution and, following independence, a leading merchant in the China trade.
[2] Magee resigned his commission on June 22, 1812, and joined Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara's effort to support the Mexican War of Independence by invading Spanish Texas from American soil, even though this action violated the Neutrality Act of 1794.
Leaving Natchitoches with 130 men on August 2, 1812, the group crossed the Sabine six days later, officially restarting the revolution in Texas which had begun with a revolt in San Antonio a year before under Juan Bautista de las Casas.
The papers of Mirabeau Lamar preserve a rumor that Magee was poisoned by his own men, many of whom were among those he had previously mistreated during his former command, but the length of his illness makes this unlikely.