"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?
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.