I’ve got a couple of Texas History books, some better than others, and I found myself snuggled up with a different one, just trying to get an alternative view about the battle of San Jacinto.
What amused me was one treatment of the historical story that suggested the Battle of San Jacinto was the turning point. If that single fight had been lost, there would be no American Southwest. No New Mexico, no Arizona. No California, Oregon, Washington State, maybe even no Idaho. Or no Colorado, even. No ski season.
The reasoning is pretty sound, but I wonder how much of it is revisionist. See, if Santa Anna had succeeded in claiming Texas right up to the Sabine, then Mexico, Texas, and the rest of the Southwest would have fallen under the Mexican dictatorship (or monarchy), and the Anglo-American (“Appalachian Celts,” I think was the term used) settlers would have stopped at what is now called the Midwest.
The description of the battle itself, one account suggests that it lasted no more than 18 minutes, consisted of hearty bunch of angry, cornered, essentially Anglo frontier types who were not to terribly disciplined when it came to infantry, small arms, and standard drill procedures. Turning them loose on a Mexican camp while the camp was having a siesta was a mean trick. And it worked.
Buried in the tale is the myth, although the authors I’ve read take great pains to support the myth, about the “Yellow Rose of Texas” – she dallied the afternoon away with Santa Anna, keeping him preoccupied while his troops napped.
The source of that name, “Yellow Rose” would make a good trivia question one day. Another bit of Texas ethnicity, although, probably not regarded as politically correct these days.
The other point I gathered from reading both accounts was that the siege of the Alamo, the ten day halt in Santa Anna’s sweep through Texas, that bought the rest of the Texas Army (such as it was), a chance to amass certain strengths. It bought much-needed time. Plus, it did inflict some heavy casualties on the Mexican forces, and mostly it wreaked havoc on the morale.
Years ago, in one trivia question, I asked about the battle cry. Everyone knows the first part, “Remember the Alamo,” but most people forget the second half, “Remember Goliad!” That’s a different branch in this tale. What was alarming was the number of people who missed the answer.
So Sam Houston burned his bridges, the Texas Army slaughtered an army in the middle of an afternoon siesta, arriving completely undetected, and America was saved.
To think, the United States, with the larger portion of her natural resources west of the Mississippi, was saved by a single battle on the high ground just outside of what is now Houston.
If it wasn’t for us, most of ya’ll wouldn’t be here.
“And you point would be?”
Nothing. Just piddling around with a history book or two one weekend.