This Day in History: The Battle of San Jacinto
Growing up in San Antonio, I always loved Fiesta Week. I even learned what all the fuss was about.
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Friday, April 21, 2023
As you read this – assuming you dropped whatever you were doing to read Life Its Ownself as soon as it was published, and I do assume that – the good people of San Antonio are kicking off their annual Fiesta Week with the Battle of Flowers Parade through downtown.
When I was a young lad growing up in San Antonio, I always looked forward to Fiesta Week, with the visits from King Antonio during the week and the Battle of Flowers parade through downtown San Antonio on Friday.
The visits from King Antonio were pretty cool. We would all be assembled on the school playground, and at the appointed hour King Antonio would arrive in a three-car motorcade accompanied by wailing police motorcycles. The cars were always convertibles from Red McCombs Ford or Tom Benson Chevrolet, because those men were civic boosters of the first order and, occasionally, themselves King Antonios. The motorcycles were the coolest part, of course.
King Antonio would say a few words – they are lost to history, unfortunately – and then he and his entourage would hand out King Antonio medallions, which were cheap aluminum coins painted to look like either silver or gold. Then the motorcade, sirens blasting, would head off to the next grade school or nursing home or cement factory for the king to greet his subjects. King Antonio’s schedule was very busy during Fiesta Week. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
The Battle of Flowers parade was also pretty cool. Once my sisters and I were old enough to ride the bus, we took it downtown where we’d meet my dad and watch the parade from bleachers on Broadway Avenue. Floats, all bedecked in flowers as befit the theme, marching bands, drill teams and dance teams all filled the parade route and the sunny air with their joyful noise.
In the midst of all the Fiesta Week song and dance – which has become a massive economic driver for San Antonio’s tourist economy – I learned about the Battle of San Jacinto, which Fiesta Week celebrates.
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 in Texas, and for that reason is less well known to Texas and the World. (See what I did there, Jim Moore?) 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 claimed Santa Anna had signed the treaties under duress and said breakaway Texas was much smaller.
(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 28th state, it became necessary to resolve the simmering boundary dispute. Hence, the Mexican-American War. But Mexico lost the 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 country.
(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])
Texas decided to celebrate the centennial of its independence by building a monument to the Battle of San Jacinto, there on the battleground where the decisive battle 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!” I am not making this up.)
(The San Jacinto Monument)
An inscription at the base of the San Jacinto Monument proclaims, in typical Texas understatement:
I confess that I love San Jacinto, 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.
There are two problems with the San Jacinto Monument that may explain why many Texans have not visited it or, indeed, are not aware of it. First, it is in San Jacinto, which is now at the intersection of several highways literally choked with petrochemical plants, far from downtown Houston. The second is that the observation deck, with its commanding view of the battlefield and the San Jacinto River Houston Ship Channel, is frequently inaccessible because of elevator maintenance and safety issues.
(This is the opposite problem from the Alamo’s. Molly Ivins loved to tell the story of a cabbie, obviously from back east, who was driving Molly in San Antonio one day when they happened by the Alamo. It’s a shame, said the cabbie; the Alamo would be even more impressive if they hadn’t built it in the middle of downtown.)
New grist for Cecilia’s diary … You read the excerpts from Cecilia Abbott’s diary last week. I’m sure she’s even more distressed by the Texas Observer’s scoop that her hubby’s new bestie Daniel Perry was allegedly chatting up underage girls.
Meteor shower in the next few days … The Houston Chronicle has this helpful guide to seeing and even photographing the Lyrids meteor shower this weekend. Time and Date also has an explanation of the shower and some tips on when best to view it.
#TXlege Budget Bill – Everything you need to know about the different leadership styles of Speaker Dade Phelan and Lite Guv Dan Patrick can be summarized here. When it came time to name conferees for the budget bill – the most important bill the Lege must pass – Phelan named two Democrats to the five-person panel and Patrick named … zero. This is spite of the House and Senate have approximately equal ratios of Democrats and Republicans in their chambers.
Your moment of Zen … Elon Musk’s SpaceX tested its Starship rocket — the most powerful rocket ever built — the other day. Everything went perfectly — for the first four minutes. Then the rocket blew up.
The SpaceX spinmeisters added a new phrase to the lexicon: “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Comparisons to Twitter not welcomed.
