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  • Mapping San Jacinto Battleground, 1836-1855
  • Jeffrey D. Dunn (bio)

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The earliest known map of the San Jacinto campaign roughly showing the routes of the Texan and Mexican armies from Gonzales to San Jacinto battleground (marked "Battle"). Texas army campsites are identified as shaded circles along the route. From Gonzales to San Felipe de Austin, Houston turned north and Santa Anna, arriving a few days later, turned south before both armies converged on Harrisburg and met at San Jacinto. Map source: C. Edwards Lester, Sam Houston and His Republic (New York: Burgess, Stringer & Co., 1846), 77.

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The steamship trip [from Galveston] to Houston is unique, and the like of it is not to be found elsewhere in the world. . . . Not far from Lynchburg, where the San Jacinto joins the bay, there is a plain where the famous battle of San Jacinto was fought by six hundred poorly clad and half-famished Texians against a very superior body of Mexicans under proud Santa Anna . . . . Among the passengers were several who had taken part in the battle for the freedom of Texas. As they now saw the sacred ground, their liberty-loving hearts beat faster, and they described their former fight with fiery vividness.

—Gustav Dresel, August 18381

After 175 years, the battle of San Jacinto continues to resonate as a pivotal episode in Texas history. Sam Houston's defeat of Santa Anna at the end of a two-day engagement on April 20 and 21, 1836, avenged Texan losses at the Alamo and Goliad, secured Texas independence from Mexico, and came to be widely recognized as one of the most decisive military engagements of the nineteenth century. This legacy is all the more remarkable given the relatively small number of participants on both sides and the lopsided results. Houston's official report of the battle stated that his aggregate force in the field numbered 783 with losses of 2 killed and 23 wounded, of whom 6 were mortally wounded. Houston reported that the Mexican army had "upwards of 1500 men" with losses of 630 killed, 208 wounded, and 730 prisoners, [End Page 389] including Santa Anna, who was captured the day after the battle. Only a few escaped.2

The battle became an international sensation. For Mexico, nothing less than the integrity of the nation's territory was at stake. José Justo Corro, interim Mexican president in Santa Anna's absence, issued a decree on May 19 "to the warriors of the Mexican Army" confirming the defeat and capture of Santa Anna while vowing revenge:

Our mourning has commenced; the fatal day of the 21st April, and since then, displays the vengeance that should prevail in all Mexican hearts. Soldiers, our grief is immense; but it will not be useless. For the liberty of the president and for the honor of the nation, the government will raise all possible resources: they will be boundless: and my desire is to employ them without restriction, without delay, without hesitation: for I know my duty and will fulfill it. Misfortune to the enemy of our country! The foreign will be vanquished and the domestic exemplarily punished, if any such shall dare assist in this sacred war of the country, the criminal desires of the Texian rebels.3

The following day Corro issued another decree ordering the Mexican flag to be flown half mast and a banner of black crepe attached to the flag until Santa Anna was released.4

Meanwhile, in the United States the reaction of most Americans was euphoric. On the front page of the New York Herald, June 13, the editor wrote:

[W]e cannot refrain from calling up from the recesses of history the great events of former times, which changed the destiny of nations and fixed the fate of empires. The battle of Marathon controlled the fate of Greece and Persia—the battle of Zama decided the career of Rome and Carthage—the battle of Tours saved Europe from Moorish dominion—the battle of Hastings controlled the destiny [End Page 390] of England—and the battle of San Jacinto will change the destiny and policy of nations on...

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