Posted on 04/21/2004 8:11:39 AM PDT by Guvmint_Cheese
The Battle of San Jacinto
The Battle of San Jacinto lasted less than twenty minutes, but it sealed the fate of three republics. Mexico would never regain the lost territory, in spite of sporadic incursions during the 1840s. The United States would go on to acquire not only the Republic of Texas in 1845 but Mexican lands to the west after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War in 1848.
By early April, Santa Anna had divided his forces in a three-pronged attack: a northern army, under General Antonio Gaona , the central army under Santa Anna and General Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma, and a coastal army under command of General Jose Francisco Urrea.
The Texan army, meanwhile, had been in retreat since March 13, when it left Gonzales after learning of the Fall of the Alamo. On March 25, news of the massacre at Goliad led several men to leave the army to assist their families to flee before the advancing Mexican army. The resulting "Runaway Scrape" involved most of Eastern Texas, and panicked the government. Sam Houston spent the next few weeks attempting to train the recruits into something resembling a disciplined army, then continued his march toward the Sabine.
On April 16, learning that Santa Anna had isolated his army, Houston pursued him to Buffalo Bayou, arriving there at midnight on April 19, and continuing their march toward Lynch's Ferry on the 20th. That afternoon, General Sidney Sherman engaged the Mexicans in a skirmish that almost resulted in a full scale battle. Mirabeau B. Lamar's heroic actions in that conflict earned him a battlefield commission as Colonel.
The next day, Houston learned that General Martin Perfecto de Cos had crossed over Vince's Bridge with reinforcements. Houston ordered Erastus "Deaf" Smith to destroy the bridge-a move that prevented further swelling of Mexican ranks, and likewise prevented retreat by both the Mexican and Texan armies.
About 3:30 in the afternoon, during the Mexican siesta period, Houston distributed his troops in battle array, bracketing the line with the "Twin Sisters" cannon. Shielded by trees and a rise in the terrain, the Texans were able to advance with some security. Then with the cries "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember La Bahia" or "Remember Goliad" ringing along their lines, the Texans swooped down on the dismayed Mexican army, pursuing and butchering them long after the battle itself had ended.
630 Mexicans were killed and 730 taken prisoner. Texans lost only 9 killed or mortally wounded; thirty were less seriously wounded. Among the latter was General Houston, whose ankle was shattered.
On the day following the battle, a small party discovered Santa Anna and brought him into camp, unaware at first of the importance of their prisoner. As part of his surrender agreement, the president/general ordered the Mexican troops remaining in Texas immediately to retreat south of the Rio Grande.
On May 14, 1836, the public and private treaties of Velasco, were signed by Presidents David G. Burnet and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. They confirmed the Mexican retreat and declared an end to the war. Neither the Texas nor Mexican governments accepted the treaties, however, and a state of war existed throughout most of the Republic of Texas' existence.
"don't be caught napping on the job!"
The article doesn't quite do justice to the aftermath at San Jacinto. Years ago, I read an account which was much more brutal in the telling. The battle was quick, but after the battle was over the killing went on. Officers tried to restore order but the troops would have none of it. Many of the Mexican troops were screaming that they weren't at the Alamo, but it didn't matter.
Don't get caught napping, don't mess with Texas, and don't get America's blood lust up. Y'all hear that Islamofascists?
LOL
However, it was a true shame Houston let Santana go, being brother Masons, for it would have been justice to string him up, draw and quarter him or something.
Click
General Manuel Fernández Castrillón, a brave Mexican, tried to rally the swarthy Latins, but he was killed and his men became crazed with fright. Many threw down their guns and ran; many wailed, "Me no Alamo!" "Me no Goliad!" But their pleas won no mercy. The enraged revolutionists reloaded and chased after the stampeding enemy, shooting them, stabbing them, clubbing them to death. From the moment of the first collision the battle was a slaughter, frightful to behold. The fugitives ran in wild terror over the prairie and into the boggy marshes, but the avengers of the Alamo and Goliad followed and slew them, or drove them into the waters to drown. Men and horses, dead and dying, in the morass in the rear and right of the Mexican camp, formed a bridge for the pursuing Texans. Blood reddened the water. General Houston tried to check the execution but the fury of his men was beyond restraint.Some of the Mexican cavalry tried to escape over Vince's bridge, only to find that the bridge was gone. In desperation, some of the flying horsemen spurred their mounts down the steep bank; some dismounted and plunged into the swollen stream. The Texans came up and poured a deadly fire into the welter of Mexicans struggling with the flood. Escape was virtually impossible. General Houston rode slowly from the field of victory, his ankle shattered by a rifle ball. At the foot of the oak where he bad slept the previous night be fainted and slid from his horse into the arms of Major Hockley, his chief of staff.
The Aftermath
I have often heard the story of how a Mrs. McCormick, on whose estate the principal portion of the slain Mexicans lay, called at General Houston's headquarters and requested him to "have them stinking Mexicans removed from her land." The general, with mock seriousness, replied, "Madam, your land will be famed in history as the classic spot upon which the glorious victory of San Jacinto was won. Here that last scourge of mankind, the arrogant, self-styled Napoleon of the West, met his fate." "To the devil with your glorious history!" the madam replied, "Take off your stinking Mexicans." No buzzards or wolves came about them, and the odor exuding from the corpses which lay rotting south of our camp, became terrible, causing the army to move up to Harrisburg. After the flesh rotted off, the cattle pawed over and chewed the bones to the extent that their milk and meat was unfit for use. The citizens of the vicinity then gathered up and buried the bones, all except the skulls, which could not be chewed. The skulls lay on the ground and some of them could be seen many years later. Some of them were carried away as souvenirs; but I never had any desire for such relics.
One version of The Yellow Rose of Texas
WEST, EMILY D. (?-?). Emily D. West, erroneously called Emily Morgan by those who presumed her a slave of James Morganqv and the "Yellow Rose of Texas" by twentieth-century myth-makers, was born a free black in New Haven, Connecticut. She signed a contract with agent James Morgan in New York City on October 25, 1835, to work a year as housekeeper at the New Washington Association'sqv hotel, Morgan's Point, Texas. Morgan was to pay her $100 a year and provide her transportation to Galveston Bay on board the company's schooner, scheduled to leave with thirteen artisans and laborers in November. She arrived in Texas in December on board the same vessel as Emily de Zavalaqv and her children. On April 16, 1836, while James Morgan was absent in Galveston in command of Fort Travis, Mexican cavalrymen under command of Col. Juan N. Almonteqv arrived at New Washington to seize President David G. Burnet,qv who was embarking on a schooner for Galveston Island. As the president and his family sailed away, the troops seized Emily and other black servants at Morgan's warehouse, along with a number of white residents and workmen. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Annaqv arrived at New Washington the following day, and after three days of resting and looting the warehouses, he ordered the buildings set afire and departed to challenge Sam Houston'sqv army, which was encamped about ten miles away on Buffalo Bayou. Emily was forced to accompany the Mexican army, doubtless already a rape victim. With regard to the Yellow Rose legend, she may have been in Santa Anna's tent when the Texans charged the Mexican camp on April 21, but it was not by choice. She could not have known Houston's plans, nor could she have intentionally delayed Santa Anna. Moreover, in their official reports after returning to Mexico, none of his disaffected officers mentioned the presence of a woman or even that el presidente was in a state of undress. After the battle Emily found refuge with Isaac N. Moreland,qv an artillery officer, who later made his home in Houston and served as county judge. Strangers assumed Emily was James Morgan's slave because she was black.
A story was told around campfires and in barrooms that Emily had helped defeat the Mexican army by a dalliance with Santa Anna. The only discovered documentation for this in the nineteenth century was a chance conversation in 1842 between a visiting Englishman and a veteran on board a steamer from Galveston to Houston. William Bollaertqv recorded in his journal, "The battle of San Jacinto was probably lost to the Mexicans, owing to the influence of a Mulatta Girl (Emily) belonging to Col. Morgan who was closeted in the tent with G'l Santana." Bollaert does not identify the veteran or say Emily was Morgan's slave. The edited diary, published in 1956, included that notation as a footnote with Bollaert's name attached, a fact that led readers to believe the note was a footnote in the original manuscript. The editor's 1956 footnote launched prurient interest on the part of two amateur historians who concocted the modern fiction. Francis X. Tolbert,qv a prolific journalist, says in his The Day of San Jacinto (1959) that Emily was a "decorative long-haired mulatto girl...Latin looking woman of about twenty." No footnote documents this description or the author's statement that she was in Santa Anna's tent. Tolbert also presumptively identified Morgan as the informant. Henderson Shuffler,qv also a journalist, became a publicist for Texas A&M University in the 1950s, wrote historical articles for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,qv and made speeches while working at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centerqv at the University of Texas in the 1960s. On one occasion he said Emily was "the M'latta Houri" of the Texas Revolution,qv a "winsome, light-skinned...slave of James Morgan." He added that she was a fitting candidate for the identity of the girl in the then-popular Mitch Miller version of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Shuffler credited Tolbert for bringing Emily's story out into the open and then manufactured more fantasies, including the whim that "her deliberately provocative amble down the street [in New Washington was] the most exciting event in town." He added that her story was "widely known and often retold...in the 1840s." In closing, he suggested that a stone might be placed at the San Jacinto battleground "In Honor of Emily Who Gave Her All for Texas Piece by Piece." In 1976 a professor of English at Sam Houston State University, Martha Anne Turner, published a small book, The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song, an outgrowth of a paper she delivered in 1969 at the American Studies Association of Texas. She credits Shuffler's speech and adds even more undocumented details before tracing the roots of the song. Thus the story was full-blown for the journalistic frenzy of the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986.
The real Emily D. West remained in Texas until early 1837, when she asked for and received a passport allowing her to return home. Isaac Moreland wrote a note to the secretary of state saying that he had met Emily in April 1836, that she was a thirty-six-year-old free woman who had lost her "free" papers at the battleground. She stated that she came from New York in September 1835 with Colonel Morgan and was anxious to return home. Although there is no date on the application housed in the Texas State Archives, Mrs. Lorenzo de Zavala, by then a widow, was planning to return to New York on board Morgan's schooner in March, and it seems possible that Morgan arranged passage aboard for Emily.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James M. Day, comp., Texas Almanac, 1857-1873: A Compendium of Texas History (Waco: Texian Press, 1967). W. Eugene Hollon and Ruth L. Butler, eds., William Bollaert's Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956). Antonio López de Santa Anna et al., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, trans. Carlos E. Castañeda (Dallas: Turner, 1928; 2d ed., Austin: Graphic Ideas, 1970). Frank X. Tolbert, The Day of San Jacinto (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; 2d ed., Austin: Pemberton Press, 1969). Martha Anne Turner, The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song (Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1976).
Margaret Swett Henson
And it would have been merciful for the Mexican people as well. However if that had been done, the Mexican war might have either never happened, or turned out somewhat differenly. The southern parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and California might still be part of Mexico.
Driven through those parts lately?
San Jacinto Day Festival, Battle Re-Enactment Will Be this Saturday, April 24th!
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