Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
The Mexicans who dropped their weapons and tried to surrender as individuals were clubbed and stabbed, some on their knees. Deaf Smith, plunging over the barricade on his horse, urged the Texans to "take prisoners like the Meskins do!" The terrible, high-pitched shout was everywhere: "Remember the Alamo!" It drowned out the cries of Santa Anna's broken and fleeing ranks.
The great part of the Mexican army was never able to form or fight at all. Retreating in a panic, hundreds of soldiers found their retreat blocked by a deep ravine, or bayou. A few fled to the open prairie, where they were chopped down by Lamar's horsemen. But a great mass of struggling, screaming men pressed up against the banks of the bayou. Some rushed into the water and were drowned. The slaughter at this point became methodical: the Texan riflemen knelt and poured a steady fire into the packed, jostling ranks. Here, not on the barricade but several hundred yards behind the Mexican camp, the greatest carnage took place.
Rank had no privileges in this screaming death trap. General of Brigade Castrillón, four colonels, two lieutenant colonels, five captains, and twelve lieutenants were killed in the press; five colonels, three lieutenant colonels, two majors, seven captains and a cadet were down, wounded. The Mexican army disintegrated. Only the gallant Juan Almonte was able to gather some hundreds and withdraw them in a semblance of order, too late to save the battle, but in an attempt to save Mexican lives. Colonel Almonte realized he could never get these broken men back in battle order, and toward sundown, when the Texans' bloodlust had been sated, he surrendered them. Almonte used his own judgment; the President and his brother-in-law Cós had disappeared.
At nightfall, Houston sat under a tree with his boot full of blood, hearing the reports. Six hundred thirty Mexican corpses were scattered in clumps across the field. Almonte surrendered about the same number more, 200 of whom were wounded. These men sat on the ground, under guard, like dispirited cattle, still dazed by the horror that had overtaken them.
The Texans lost two killed in action. There were about thirty wounded, of whom seven more would die. The figures cannot be precise; Houston's official report of two killed, twenty-four wounded, six mortally, was made after a hasty survey. Likewise, his report of more than 700 Mexican prisoners of war, when added to the 630 Mexican dead, exceeds the total figures on the Mexican army rolls. These were errors only in slight degree, however; what was clear was the army that was demoralized and routed suffered immense casualties, while the victors emerged almost unscathed.
To this toll at San Jacinto must be added the 800 American dead who fell at the Alamo and Goliad. In the twilight at San Jacinto, however, this cost was small. Although no one quite knew it when the red sun went down on April 21, 1836, the balance of power in Texas had turned.
The American West was won.
Chapter 14
AFTERMATH
Army of Operations,
The Camp at San Jacinto, April 22, 1836.
His Excellency, Don Vicente Filisola, General of Division:
Excellent Sir—Having yesterday evening, with the small division under my immediate command, had an encounter with the enemy which, notwithstanding I had previously observed all possible precautions, proved unfortunate, I am, in consequence, a prisoner of the enemy. Under these circumstances your Excellency will order General Guano, with his division, to countermarch to Béxar and wait for orders. Your Excellency will also, with the division under your command, march to the same place. The division under the command of General Urrea will retire to Guadalupe Victoria. I have agreed with General Houston for an armistice, until matters can be so regulated that the war will cease forever. . . .
EXTRACT OF THE LETTER FROM ANTONIO LÓPEZ DE SANTA ANNA TO THE MEXICAN FORCES IN TEXAS
Towards sunset, a woman on the outskirts of the camp began to clap her hands and shout "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" Those about her thought her mad, but following her wild gestures, they saw one of the Hardings, of Liberty, riding for life towards the camp, his horse covered with foam, and he was waving his hat and shouting, "San Jacinto! San Jacinto! The Mexicans are whipped and Santa Anna a prisoner!" The scene that followed beggars description. People embraced, laughed and wept and prayed, all in one breath. As the moon rose over the vast, flower-decked prairie, the soft southern wind carried peace to tired hearts and grateful slumber.
FROM THE ACCOUNT OF MRS. TERRELL, ONE OF THE RUNAWAYS TRAPPED UP AGAINST BUFFALO BAYOU NEAR HARRISBURG ON APRIL 21, 1836
IN the days and weeks before the battle at San Jacinto, Stephen F. Austin, William H. Wharton, Branch T. Archer, and a number of other Texas agents were working night and day in the United States. Most Texans, after the fall of the Alamo, believed that only American intervention could save Anglo-Texas. Austin and Wharton traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio Valley to New York, where they tried to negotiate a loan. They found the New York bankers cautious and cool. Interest in Texas receded in direct proportion to the distance eastward from the middle border.
Austin, Archer, and Wharton secured $100,000 in institutional loans and some $25,000 in private donations in the United States. One group in New Orleans gave $7,000, and two wealthy families each donated $5,000. There were many pledges of land, slaves, and personal property, but these were virtually worthless, as they could not be translated into ready cash. Thomas McKinney and William Bryan, who were Texas agents and Texas merchants in New Orleans, got local merchants to supply powder, lead, flour, rifles, and clothing on faith for the most part, and for the rest used their own funds. The suppliers of the Texas Revolution, like those of 1776, expended their own fortunes out of patriotism. Small as these stores were, without them Houston could not have remained in the field at all.
The Texas agents had better luck recruiting men than finding money.
Travis's letter of February 24th, 1836, was read to audiences all through the southwestern states. It produced violent emotional reactions in the border country. All through the Mississippi Valley friends of Texas held mass meetings to send volunteers or "armed emigrants," as Austin called them, to the war. The largest recruiting centers were New Orleans, Louisville, and Cincinnati. Many small companies were raised and outfitted, among them the New Orleans Grays, the Mobile Grays, the Alabama Red Rovers, and the Kentucky Mustangs. Most of these men died with Fannin at Goliad.
Almost every Southern and border state sent men or weapons. Cincinnati sent the Twin Sisters down the Mississippi; Alabama stripped its state arsenal of muskets for Texas. Thomas Chambers, who was authorized by the Texas Council to raise an "Army of the Reserve" in the United States, successfully propagandized Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He raised and equipped almost 2,000 volunteers and sent them on their way.
The three official commissioners, however, were most interested in getting the United States government to move. On April 15, 1836, Austin sent a letter to the President of the United States, his Cabinet, and most of the Congress. He made the letter public at the same time, having it printed by friendly newspapers. The letter was propagandistic, but it summed up the attitudes that were being privately expressed by many prominent Americans of the time:
Pardon me for this intrusion upon your valued time. I address you as individuals, as men, as Americans, as my countrymen. I obey an honest though excited impulse. We have recent dates from Mexico by packet. It appears that Santa Anna has succeeded in uniting the whole Mexican nation against Texas by making it a national war against heretics; that an additional army of eight thousand men is organizing in Mexico under Gen. Cotazar to march to Texas and exterminate the heretic Americans. Santa Anna is now in Texas, as we all know, with about seven thousand men fighting under the bloody flag of a pirate—he is exciting the Comanches and other Indians, who know nothing of lines or political divisions of territory, and massacres have been committed on Red River within the United States. This is a war of barbarism against civilization, of despotism against liberty, of Mexicans against Americans. O my countrymen! the warm-hearted, chivalrous, impulsive West and South are up and moving in favor of Texas. The calculating and more prudent, though not less noble-minded, North are aroused. The sympathies of the whole American people en masse are with the Texans. . . . Will you, can you, turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of their and your countrymen and friends who are massacred, butchered, outraged, in Texas at your very doors? Are not we, the Texans, obeying the dictates of an education received here, from you, the American people, from our fathers, from the patriots of '76—the Republicans of 1836? . . .
Well, you reply, what can we do? In answer, I say, let the President and the Cabinet and Congress come out openly and at once and proclaim to the public their opinions—let Texas have some of the thirty-seven million dollars now in the national treasury—let the war in Texas become a national war, above board. . . . Who can deny that it is a national war in reality—a war in which every American who is not a fanatic, abolitionist, or cold-hearted recreant to the interests and honor and principles of his country . . . is deeply, warmly, and ardently interested. In short, it is now a national war sub rosa. Let the Administration . . . take this position at once . . . and the Government of the United States will then occupy that open and elevated stand which is due to the American people and worthy of Andrew Jackson—for it will occupy above board the position which this nation as a people now occupy in heart.
Austin's words also pointed up certain ominous flags flying in the wind for the nation as a whole, whether Texas survived or sank. The eastern seaboard did tend to be cool and cautious toward a war with Mexico, and many Northerners already strongly opposed any liaison with Texas because it was slave territory. The South and West was much more impulsive and belligerent and ready to accept what came naturally to American hearts. The West and South regarded the Eastern doubts as legalistic nonsense at best, cowardice at worst.
The evidence is plain that the American nation as a whole was strongly in favor of Texas, though only the South and Southwest were in favor of becoming involved. The Administration, however, was truly caught up in doubts and legal difficulties, which was already the normal situation for the United States government to occupy. Austin's letter irritated Andrew Jackson. He scribbled on the margin of his copy:
The writer does not reflect that we have a treaty with Mexico, and our national faith is pledged to support it. The Texans before they took the step to declare themselves independent, which has aroused and united all Mexico against them, ought to have pondered well—it was a rash and premature act; our neutrality must be faithfully maintained.
Here an interesting dichotomy between the government and the American public was raised. From the beginning of the trouble in Texas, in 1835, the U.S. State Department had advised prominent Texans not to declare independence, since such a move would play into the hands of those foreign observers who claimed the whole Revolution was part of an American plot to acquire Texas. But one reason the Texans did declare independence in March 1836 was that by then it was clear that the U.S. public was totally uninterested in supplying arms or aid for an internal Mexican revolution. Americans had never heard of, and cared nothing for, the Constitution of 1824. The Southwesterners who marched to Texas, or sent guns, did so in the full hope and belief that Texas would become American soil. What the State Department, its eyes on legality and the world scene, was advising the Texas leaders to do was to cut their own throats. A renewed pledge of loyalty to Mexico in 1836 would have halted tons of supplies and armaments on the docks, while the United States, for all its advice and irritation at the "premature move," promised nothing in the way of immediate aid.
The private feelings of Andrew Jackson are clear enough. Jackson had already made a remark that Texas was the key to the nation reaching the Pacific. Jackson wanted Texas; he was a Westerner and a man of long vision, he was already looking beyond the Rio Grande. But Jackson was trapped by the treaty that renounced Texas "forever." This was more important to him, obviously, than antiwar and anti-Texas sentiment in the Northeast; he was prepared to move, if he could find any legal excuse to intervene in Texas. Jackson was the most powerful President up to this time, but the powers of the Presidency were not construed in the 1830s so as to allow him to engage the nation in war by executive action.
The evidence indicates that he might very well have been moving in this direction. The War Department issued orders to General Edmund Gaines, the U.S. military commander in the Southwest, to march to the Sabine to prevent violation of U.S. territory by either belligerent, and if necessary, "to cross the Sabine to insure the neutrality of the Indians." The treaty with Mexico required that both parties prevent Indian depredations from originating on its side of the border. Texas agents had already spread the word that the Mexicans were in alliance with the Indians, planning a war of extermination against the whites that would not end at the river border.