The Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836

[Sanguine]

Your weekly dose of Texas history and culture

    In this week's issue:
•   The Battle of San Jacinto
•   Texas Quote
•   The San Jacinto Battleground   
    
The Battle of San Jacinto

4:00 PM, April 21, 1836 - General Houston, atop a dappled gray, gives the order, “Trail arms! Forward!”

Some 900 men, unwashed, underfed, caked with mud and dressed in rags, begin a long walk through knee-high grass. They have been pushed to the edge, run from their homes, their crops and houses burned.

They don’t know whether their families have found safety. They've lost kin and good friends at the Alamo and at Goliad. They want a fight and are about to get it.

At the far left of this parade line is the Second Regiment of Volunteers, 330 men under Colonel Sherman. To their right, at the center of the Texian force, is Colonel Burleson’s First Volunteers, 386 men strong.

Next are the 32 men of Colonel Hockley’s Artillery Corps. They man two iron cannons, six-pounders called the Twin Sisters, gifts from the people of Cincinnati. To the right of the artillery are 92 men of the Regular Army under Lt. Colonel Millard.

At the extreme right is the Cavalry, 62 mounted men commanded by Colonel Mirabeau Lamar, just yesterday a private.

All advance in perfect silence.

4:30 PM - The Second Volunteers under Sherman, having traveled swiftly through the oaks on the Texian left, fire on the surprised men of General Cos’ command. The Battle of San Jacinto has begun. The Mexican forces return fire, but they are soon on the run. Sherman, leading the pursuit, is the first to shout, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”

The main body of the Texian forces crest a slight rise. They are 200 yards from the Mexican breastworks, a four foot barricade of cut brush, saddles and baggage. Houston, riding thirty yards in front of the First Regiment, orders, “To the charge! To the charge!”

Musicians strike up a bawdy march on fife, drum and fiddle. General Castrillón directs his cannon fire on Lamar’s advancing cavalry. The Twin Sisters, loaded with cut-up horse shoes, hail hot metal at the alarmed Mexican troops. A small force advances on the Texian artillery, but is repulsed.

4:35 PM - Havoc reigns on the enemy left as the Texian Cavalry attack their stunned counterparts with slashing sabers. Burleson’s First Volunteers are upon the breastworks engaging Matamoros Battalion. To their right Texian regulars assault Aldama Battalion with equal ferocity.

Stampeding behind the lines, riderless Mexican horses bring terror to the breastworks defenders, who now believe they are being attacked from the rear. The Second Volunteers drive Cos’ panicked men rearward into Colonel Almonte’s Guerrero Regiment, pushing them all nearly two hundred yards.

4:40 PM - Almonte attempts to rally any men who can still be commanded, but it is too late. Matamoros and Aldama Battalions turn from defense of the breastworks in wild retreat. The First Volunteers and Texian Regulars are over the breastworks, pursuing with savage intent. The resistance at the Mexican cannon position is overcome and the gun seized. Any Mexican cavalry able to mount up flee toward Harrisburg, Santa Anna among them.

4:45 PM - Sherman’s Second Volunteers chase Cos and Almonte’s men into a small bayou to the Texian left. The First Volunteers force Matamoros Battalion into the marsh at the rear of the Mexican position and into Peggy’s Lake. Some try to surrender, pleading for their lives, crying, “Me no Alamo! Me no la Bahia!” There is no mercy.

Many Texians fire only once and don’t waste time to reload. They turn their rifles around and swing them as war clubs, breaking many off at the breach in the act of shattering a skull. The air is filled with the acrid smell of gun powder and the stench of feces as dying men void their bowels.

4:48 PM - The Battle of San Jacinto is over, but not the killing. Behind the Texians are the enemy dead. To their front, in marsh, lake and bayou, those Santanistas still living try in vain to escape or plead for their lives. The Texians calmly, but briskly reload, time and again. Each shot means the end for another of Soldado.

Sundown - A guard is set on the Mexican camp to keep the men from looting. The spoils are to be divided among them as war booty. Mexican soldiers who escaped the slaughter are being rounded up and marched to the oak stand on Buffalo Bayou from which the Texians set out barely two and a half hours ago. They will be held in a pen made of split logs, rope and anything else that lends itself to the job.

The Texians wander back to camp, singly and in small groups. Some talk about deeds of the day, others sing songs, laugh and trade cheers across the prairie. Still others just walk, their thoughts their own until the end of their days.

If the Alamo is called Texas’ Thermopylae, then San Jacinto is her Agincourt. Of the Texian forces there are but seven killed. Twenty-nine are wounded, including General Houston, his ankle shattered by a copper ball from an escopeta. Of those wounded four will die.

The Mexican dead number 630. The prisoners tally 730, of which 208 are wounded. The events of this day will mean perpetual freedom for Texas, as a republic for now, and in ten years as one of the United States. History will show that the soldiers of San Jacinto have set the keystone in the arch of Manifest Destiny.
 
    Texas Quote

"Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father's name."

- General Sam Houston
April 21, 1836
   
    The San Jacinto Battleground

This is the first recorded map of the San Jacinto Battleground. It was drawn by Henderson Yoakum, based in a tour of the site with Sam Houston.

But there's more to the story than that.

Click Here to Read About It
https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/collections/all-maps/products/san-jacinto-battleground-map

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This is a great resource and the newletter is free.

[corbe]

   Thanks for the Link @Sanguine, Love that place.  Bookmarked to buy this Map later, should have my forefathers property on it, which the US Gov stole (Did they have Eminent Domain back then?) to build the Post office across the street from the Alamo.





https://copanobaypress-gallery.com/collections/all-maps/products/alamo-plaza-1885

[Sanguine]

You're so welcome, @corbe!

One of the Alamo defenders has the same, slightly unusual, last name as my great grandfather.  Not proven, but believed to have been an ancestor.  That side of the family was here very early on.

[corbe]

   We got here in 1729, part of the Canary Island Group (13 families, 52 individuals), King Phillip V sent over by way of Cuba, Vera Cruz and north by Ox Cart to San Antonio.
    By the Time of San Jacinto we had already been kicked out of Texas (We sent Santa Anna home the first time) and were Refugees in Louisiana, even changed our Name.  We were marching his Loyal Lt.'s south back to Mexico, got about 30 miles south of SA and said screw it and killed them all there, I don't think we even buried them, Santa Anna never forgave us for that, He took it out on the Alamo.  He did catch half my Family (the slow ones, Darwin and all) at the Sabine river and returned the favor.

[Sanguine]

   We got here in 1729, part of the Canary Island Group (13 families, 52 individuals), King Phillip V sent over by way of Cuba, Vera Cruz and north by Ox Cart to San Antonio.
    By the Time of San Jacinto we had already been kicked out of Texas (We sent Santa Anna home the first time) and were Refugees in Louisiana, even changed our Name.  We were marching his Loyal Lt.'s south back to Mexico, got about 30 miles south of SA and said screw it and killed them all there, I don't think we even buried them, Santa Anna never forgave us for that, He took it out on the Alamo.  He did catch half my Family (the slow ones, Darwin and all) at the Sabine river and returned the favor.

You're so lucky to know that much family history.  I think most of us aren't.  I'll have to read up on the Canary Island group.

[corbe]

You're so lucky to know that much family history.  I think most of us aren't.  I'll have to read up on the Canary Island group.

    I am indeed fortunate in that and most regards.  The Canary Islanders (Islenos) is an interesting Story, to me anyway, we were the 2nd Family, you'll recognize the name, though their have been 23 different spelling of it since we arrived, in Louisiana we changed it to Courville, either because we couldn't spell, 1 theory I doubt, or we were scared of Mexican assassins or maybe just wanted to blend it with all the other rice farmers, which is the most likely scenario.

[the_doc]

Thanks, @Sanguine! 

[corbe]

What Happened to the Twin Sisters?

Myra H. Mcilvain

In November 1835, three months before Texas declared its independence from Mexico, war clouds had grown into a full rebellion and the citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio, eager to lend support, began raising money to purchase two cannons for the looming battle. Since the United States remained neutral throughout the war, the two iron six-pounders were secretly shipped down the Mississippi River labeled “hollow ware.” Stories abound about how they actually reached Sam Houston’s volunteer army camped about seventy-five miles up the Brazos River from its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico.

Most accounts say the cannons traveled from New Orleans aboard the schooner Pennsylvania to Galveston where Dr. Charles Rice’s nine-year-old twin daughters Elizabeth and Eleanor were invited to be part of the official handing over of the cannons to Texas. Since the ceremony consisted of twins presenting the two cannons, the six-pounders became known as the “Twin Sisters.” The Pennsylvania continued to the mouth of the Brazos River and traveled inland about eighteen miles to Brazoria. Houston’s camp lay an additional sixty miles upriver. According to an account taken from General Houston’s correspondence and orders, worry over the terrible condition of the roads and concern that Santa Anna’s army might intercept the Twin Sisters resulted in the decision to ship the cannons back to Galveston. Over the next eleven days, the cannons moved through Galveston Bay and up Buffalo Bayou to Harrisburg (near present Houston). Then, horse-drawn ox-carts slogged through the rain, mud, and fiercely cold weather to General Houston’s campsite on the Brazos River.

As soon as the Twin Sisters arrived, nine men drew assignment to each cannon and the drilling and firing practice began as the Texan Army moved east along the same route the Twin Sisters had just covered.

Sam Houston’s army of about 900 men set up camp on April 20 in a thick growth of timber where Buffalo Bayou flowed into the San Jacinto River. The Twin Sisters spent the afternoon in their first combat dueling with Santa Anna’s Mexican cannons.

The following afternoon the Twin Sisters led the charge across the rise in the prairie toward Mexicans who, convinced the Texans would not dare attack, were enjoying their usual siesta. At 200 yards the two little cannons opened fire with the Texans’ only ammunition––musket balls, broken glass, and horseshoes. The battle cry of the Texans’ split the air with “Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad.” In eighteen minutes the startled forces of Mexico’s superior army had been defeated. The carnage did not stop, however, as the Texans continued to use rifle butts and bayonets to kill the enemy in a furious retaliation for the brutal deaths of up to 275 Texans at the Alamo on March 6 and the massacre of nearly 350 at Goliad on March 27.

Although the Twin Sisters secured their place in history, their travels did not end at San Jacinto. After being moved to Austin, probably to help protect the frontier capital from Indian attack, the two cannons appeared again on April 21, 1841, when they were fired to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. Later that year, as Sam Houston kissed the Bible at the conclusion of his inauguration for his second term as president of the Republic of Texas, the cannons roared to life in a salute to the new president and hero of the Battle of San Jacinto.

The Twin Sisters made no further public appearances and became part of the military property moved in 1845 to the federal arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana when Texas joined the Union. However, when secession talk reached full tilt with the election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin McCulloch who as a young man had served on the crew manning the Twin Sisters and was destined to become a general in the Confederate Army, sent a letter to then Governor Sam Houston asking him to bring the Twin Sisters back to their home in Texas.

In the years after the cannons reached Louisiana, the Twin Sisters had been sold as scrap iron to a foundry. An investigation found that one cannon remained at the foundry in poor condition and the other had been sold to a private individual. The Louisiana legislature purchased and repaired both cannons at a cost of $700 and returned them to Texas on April 20, 1861, the twenty-fifth anniversary of their first skirmish with the Mexicans at San Jacinto.

The Twin Sisters performed again on January 1, 1863, Battle of Galveston in which Confederate forces beat the Union Navy to regain control of Galveston Island. During that fight, Lt. Sidney A. Sherman, whose father had been one of the heroes at the Battle of San Jacinto, was killed while commanding one of the Twin Sisters.

Stories abound about what happened to the Twin Sisters after the Battle of Galveston. One account says they were sent to Colonel John “Rip” Ford in San Antonio as he began the march south to recapture the Rio Grande from federal troops, but no record exists of the cannons reaching San Antonio. Some veterans claim to have seen the Twin Sisters at various locations around the Harrisburg area of Houston. Another account credits several Confederate veterans, concerned the Twin Sisters would fall into the hands of the federal troops during Reconstruction, with burying the cannons in an area hugging Buffalo Bayou. For years, history buffs and the curious have searched without success for the burial site.

In 1985, two graduates of the University of Houston’s College of Technology supervised the construction of replicas of the Twin Sisters. They stand today on the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site waiting for a discovery that will return the original Twin Sisters to the location where they made Texas and world history.

https://myrahmcilvain.com/page/4/

[Sanguine]

Great story, Corbe!

[corbe]

   This one also seems Relevant:

Sam Houston’s Problems With the Ladies

Myra H. Mcilvain   


Before he became the hero of the Battle of San Jacinto and the first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston was the darling of all the
ladies, except for one, Anna Raguet. The well-educated Miss Raguet was fourteen in 1833 when she moved with her father from Cincinnati to Nacogdoches, which was still part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Marquis James, Houston’s biographer says in The Raven that Anna’s father Henry Raguet was a merchant and landowner, and provided the best house in Nacogdoches for his family where they entertained extensively. Anna, the apple of her father’s eye, played the French harp in the parlor and translated Spanish, especially for the young men in the area who wanted to improve their correspondence with the Texas Mexican government. And, like the forty-year-old Sam Houston, enjoyed the company of the charming young Anna.

When Houston met Anna Raguet he was a Texas newcomer with plenty of baggage—under circumstances that were never made public, his bride Eliza Allen had left him in 1829, and he had resigned as governor of Tennessee. On top of that mystery, he had returned to his former life with the Cherokees and married a Cherokee woman who had refused to come with him to Texas. In addition to his lady problems, Houston was known, even among his beloved Cherokees, as “the Big Drunk.”

To clear the way for a serious courtship, Houston hired a divorce lawyer who failed to get the decree because divorce was against the law in Mexico. Even as Houston began his law practice, hobnobbed with Nacogdoches society, and became deeply involved with the political faction seeking Texas independence from Mexico, he pursued his courtship of Anna through letters and his gentlemanly manners.

Although she did not always encourage his entreaties, she tied his sword sash, and snipped a lock of his hair before he left Nacogdoches for the Texas War for Independence. He continued a one-sided correspondence with Anna during the war. After the Battle of San Jacinto, as his surgeon probed his badly injured ankle for fragments of bone and mangled flesh, Houston propped himself against a tree, weaving a garland of leaves. He addressed a card “To Miss Anna Raguet, Nacogdoches, Texas: These are laurels I send you from the battle field of San Jacinto. Thine. Houston.”

Houston was the hero of the day after San Jacinto and easily won election as the first president of the Republic of Texas. In the midst of the challenges of organizing a new government, he did not return to Nacogdoches for several months. Instead, he worked out of a shack on the banks of the Brazos River in the temporary capital of Columbia and tried to continue his courtship of Anna Raguet by mail. She had ignored the laurel of leaves and card sent from the battlefield of San Jacinto. To avoid gossip that would surely reach her in Nacogdoches, Houston refrained from socials engagements as much as possible and stayed away from alcohol.

Houston’s biographer claims that Dr. Robert Irion, a gentlemanly young physician who had practiced medicine in Nacogdoches and had been elected to the First Congress of the Republic, accepted Houston’s appointment as his Secretary of State. Dr. Irion worked closely with President Houston and had even listened to Houston’s worries about the scarcity of mail from Miss Anna. When Irion went home to Nacogdoches on a short leave, he carried Houston’s letters to Anna.

In early 1837 Houston wrote Irion: “Salute all my friends and don’t forget the Fairest of the Fair!!!” Again Houston wrote: “Write . . .and tell me how matters move on and how the Peerless Miss Anna is and does! I have written her so often that I fear she has found me troublesome, and . . .I pray you to make my apology and . . .salute her with my . . .very sincere respects.” While Houston waited for letters that did not come, he received regular reports of Miss Anna nearing the steps of the altar, although no one seemed to know who the fortunate fellow might be.

Ignoring the laws under the Republic of Texas that required an Act of Congress to secure a divorce, President Houston empowered a judge to quietly hear the case in his chambers and issue the decree. The version of the divorce story that Anna Raguet received was apparently all it took to settle any doubts she may have harbored. The one-sided romance came to an end.

Dr. Robert Irion, upon hearing the news, promptly persuaded Miss Anna Raguet to marry him. The nuptials took place in March or April of 1840. The couple had five children, and they named their first son Sam Houston Irion.

Houston’s Cherokee wife died in 1838 and two years later Sam Houston married his third wife, twenty-one-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea. They had eight children, the youngest born just two years before Houston’s death in 1863.

https://myrahmcilvain.com/page/16/

   This Lady sure can Write.

[Sanguine]

Houston was a fascinating man.  Easily one of the top two or three historical figures that I'd choose to have lunch with.