San Jacinto Day in Texas

Texans celebrates the Battle of San Jacinto because it harkens back to more heroic times. Our current leaders do not inspire such heroism.

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And now, your moment of Zen … Venus sets in the western sky outside Marathon, Friday, April 17, 2026.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2026

The Battle of San Jacinto and the Making of the Modern United States

(Today is the 190th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, the second-most heroic and definitive event in the story of Texas’s liberation and joining the United States. I am reprinting part of an essay I wrote on this day three years ago, then offering some concluding thoughts about Texas politics today.)

On this day 187 years ago, the Texian Army under General Sam Houston surprised and defeated the much-larger Mexican Army commanded by General (and Mexican President) Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at the juncture of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River east of present-day Houston. The Battle of San Jacinto won Texas’s independence from Mexico and birthed the Republic of Texas. In due course, the Republic was annexed by the United States and became the Texas we all know and love. We may yet live to regret it.

The Battle of San Jacinto has never gripped the imagination like the battle of the Alamo, even among Texans, and for that reason is less well known to Texas and the world. For those wishing to brush up on their Texas mythology, a précis:

While the Mexican army was besieging the Alamo, Texian leaders met and adopted a Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. They also made Sam Houston Commander-in-Chief of the Texian armies, such as they were. Not wishing to engage Santa Anna’s much larger and better-trained army, Houston retreated across Central Texas, eventually arriving near modern-day Pasadena. There, Houston curated just the right combination of forces, terrain, strategy and luck to surprise and decisively defeat the larger Mexican force. In the aftermath, the Texians captured Santa Anna and forced him to negotiate the beginnings of Texas independence.

Santa Anna and Houston eventually signed two treaties. The public Treaty of Velasco promised that Mexico would cease hostilities in Texas, withdraw south beyond the Rio Grande and never again take up arms against Texas. In the second, secret treaty, Santa Anna pledged to use his influence to secure Mexican recognition of Texas independence. He would also arrange for a favorable reception by the Mexican government of a Texas mission and a treaty of commerce. The second treaty also affirmed that the Rio Grande would be the border between the two countries.

This latter provision became very important later. The Republic of Texas was immense, stretching all the way into modern-day Wyoming. Mexico later claimed Santa Anna had signed the treaties under duress and said breakaway Texas was much smaller — the yellow area in the map below.

Texas claimed everything in yellow and green. Mexico claimed all the green. (By Ch1902 - Own work using: Cambridge Modern History Atlas (1912) map 71., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3768151)

Once Texas had joined the Union as its 28^th state, it became necessary to resolve the simmering boundary dispute. Hence, the Mexican-American War. But Mexico lost that war bigly, as one might say, and as a result ceded most of what is now the southwestern United States, almost halving the size of its territory.

Mexico ceded everything in white at the end of the Mexican-American War. (By United States federal government [en:User:Black and White converted it from JPEG to PNG and retouched it) - U.S._Territorial_Acquisitions.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7180183])

The San Jacinto Monument

In 1936, Texas celebrated the centennial of its independence by building a monument to the Battle of San Jacinto on the battleground where the decisive victory had taken place. They constructed an obelisk that is 567 feet tall – 12 feet taller than the Washington Monument (of course!). There is a museum at the base of the monument that captures the history of Texas (“NEXT STOP – FREEDOM!”)

(The San Jacinto Monument)

An inscription at the base of the San Jacinto Monument proclaims, in typical Texas understatement:

I confess that I love the San Jacinto story, Texas jingoism and all. I have visited the Monument several times, and always am moved by the history there. I’ve been up on the observation deck and taken a self-guided tour of the battlefield.

I encourage all Texans and freedom-loving peoples everywhere to visit the San Jacinto battlefield. You will immerse yourself in the brilliance, bravado and bullshit that make Texas unique and, well, consequential.

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The bullshit is still here, but the light of brilliance and bravado is dimming in Texas. As recently as the 1990s, Texas had two governors who, by their presence, vision and achievements, made their tenures — and Texas — “bigger” and more consequential nationally.

Ann Richards took on the “good ol’ boy” system by appointing unprecedented numbers of women and minorities to state boards and commissions. Back when crime rates were rising, she expanded the prison system, including substance abuse programs for prisoners, and also passed the state’s toughest ethics laws. By implementing “Robin Hood,” she stabilized the school finance system after two decade of court battles.

Her successor, George W. Bush, strengthened school accountability, broadened health care for kids with the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and authorized the state’s first investments in renewable energy.

Say what you will about the current Governor, Greg Abbott — and I do — but no one accuses him of being charismatic. Or visionary. His main accomplishments have been two-fold: being “anti” (anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-public schools, anti-environment, anti-local control, etc.) and turning over state government decision-making to the oligarchs and wealthy corporations who so generously fill his coffers.

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And so, we begin the 191st year of Texas’s independence with Greg Abbott running for his fourth four-year term as Governor, which, halfway through, will make him the longest serving Governor in Texas history. He will have his hands full this fall with his Democratic challenger, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who is smarter, harder-working and more charismatic than Abbott.

If he wins, he may well reach the four-term mark, assuming his health holds up. Rumors persist that he will throw himself into the mix for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, but I hope Abbott resigns himself to what everyone already knows: he will never be president. Instead, he can focus on addressing the state’s chronic problems: education, health care, rural economic development, water shortages and strengthening the electric grid. Maybe he can make the Governor’s Office consequential again.