‘Remember Goliad!’

The Alamo wasn’t the only massacre during the Texas Revolution.

Presidio la Bahía today. In 1836,
the Texians who died there called it Fort Defiance.

On March 19 and 20, 1836, two weeks after the Alamo fell, Col. James Fannin and a garrison of about 300 Texians engaged a Mexican force more than three times as large on the banks of Coleto Creek outside Goliad, Texas. Without food or water and running low on ammunition, unwilling to run and leave the roughly one-third of his men who were wounded or dead, Fannin surrendered.

Led to believe they were prisoners of war and would be allowed to return to their homes within a couple of weeks, the Texians were marched to Goliad, where they were imprisoned in their former fortress, Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto de la Bahía, which they had christened Fort Defiance. Unbeknownst to the Texians, on December 30 of the previous year the Mexican congress had decreed all armed insurgents were to be executed as pirates.

Diagram of Fort Defiance by Joseph M. Chadwick,
March 1836. Tents mark the location where various
companies camped. Chadwick was among those
executed. The U.S. federal government reprinted
the map in 1856 with the locations of Fannin’s
and Chadwick’s executions marked.

On Palm Sunday, March 27, acting on orders from Mexican President Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla separated into three columns the 303 Texians who were well enough to walk. Sandwiched between two rows of Mexican soldiers, the men were marched out of Fort Defiance along three roads. There, they were shot point-blank. Any who survived the fusillade were clubbed or stabbed to death.

Inside the fort, thirty-eight who were wounded too badly to march, were executed by firing squad.

Fannin, 32, was the last to die, after watching the executions of the men who served under him. As the commandant of the garrison, he was allowed a last request. He asked three things: that his possessions be given to his family; that he be shot in the heart, not the head; and that he be given a Christian burial.

The soldiers took his possessions, shot him in the face, and burned his body along with the bodies of the other 341 executed prisoners.

The Goliad massacre galvanized the Texians. Three weeks later, on April 21 — shouting the battle cry “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” — the ragtag Texian army, under the command of Gen. Sam Houston, captured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. Disorganized, demoralized, and leaderless, the Mexican army retreated.

Urged to execute Santa Anna as revenge for the depredations at the Alamo and Goliad, Houston decided to let el presidente live. On May 14, Santa Anna ceded Texas to the Texians in the Treaties of Velasco.

Though Goliad was one of the seminal events of the Texas Revolution, more than 100 years would pass before the State of Texas erected a monument to the men who died. In 1936, as part of the Texas Centennial celebration, the state earmarked funds for a memorial. The monument was built over the mass grave of Fannin and his men, and dedicated in 1938. The pink granite marker, bearing the sculpted image of the Goddess of Liberty lifting a fallen soldier in chains, bears the names of the executed Texians and their comrades who died at the Battle of Coleto.

This Monument marks the common grave where the charred remains
of the 342 Texians massacred at Goliad are buried.

Though “Remember the Alamo!” is famous around the world, those with the blood of Texas in their veins still recite, with reverence, the whole battle cry: “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”

A Texan to the bone, Kathleen Rice Adams spends her days chasing news stories and her nights and weekends shooting it out with Wild West desperadoes. Leave the upstanding, law-abiding heroes to other folks. In Kathleen’s stories, even the good guys wear black hats.

Her short story “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” won the Peacemaker Award for Best Western Short Fiction. Her novel Prodigal Gun won the EPIC Award for Historical Romance and is the only western historical romance ever to final for a Peacemaker in a book-length category.

Visit her hideout on the web at KathleenRiceAdams.com.

What Happened to General Santa Anna?

By Celia Yeary

"Captured in Silk Underdrawers" might have been a newspaper headline on April 22, 1836, when Santa Anna and his army had been defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto the day before.

A few weeks earlier, General Santa Anna had taken command of the Mexican army that invaded Texas in 1836. His forces defeated all rebels at the Alamo, and then he had personally ordered the execution of 400 Texan prisoners after the Battle of Goliad.

These two victories planted the seeds for Santa Anna's defeat.

"Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!" became the call for the Texan army to re-group and march to San Jacinto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gen. Santa Anna brought before Sam Houston

After the San Jacinto defeat, Sam Houston, the leader of the Texas army, had been injured with a musket ball to the ankle. He was reclining under a tree, when two soldiers hauled a Mexican to him and reported that his own men addressed him as "El Presidente, Excelencio Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de LeBron, Presidente de laRepublica y Comandante del Ejercitio de Mejico."

It is said that Santa Anna had been hiding in the bulrushes in his silk underdrawers.

Now Sam Houston had a problem. What should he do with the Mexican general?
Hang him? The army of Texans and the citizens wanted him to swing from the nearest tree. Sam Houston might have been the only man to recognize just how stupid that act would be.

Houston is reported to have said, "Santa Anna alive is the President of Mexico, and we've got him. Santa Anna dead is just another dead Mexican."

The small General Santa Anna found himself alone amidst the very people he'd been bullying, and they were very angry. If the Texans hung the general, Sam Houston knew Mexico would regard the execution as a mortal insult.

Texas won San Jacinto by a fluke, and nobody knew that better than Sam Houston himself. If the Mexican army had been ready for battle instead of being taken by surprise, Houston's small undisciplined "Texas army" would have been decimated.

The execution of Santa Anna also would probably unite all of Mexico, even though Santa Anna was generally disliked. If that happened, Mexico might have waged a vengeful national war against the exhausted, disorganized, undisciplined, and underarmed Texans.

In the end, Santa Anna signed the Treaty of Velasco that gave Texas freedom from Mexico.

Santa Anna was released in Texas and returned to Mexico a powerless man.

However, during the next twenty years, Santa Anna schemed with groups in Mexico to gain, lose, and regain dictatorial power a total of eleven times.

He was a brilliant man with a lust for power, but ultimately Santa Anna was loyal only to himself.

How Santa Anna really looked.

Trivia about Santa Anna:

~*~Upon his return to Mexico, he engaged the French in Veracruz. During the Mexican retreat after a failed assault, Santa Anna was hit in the hand and leg by cannon fire. Much of his leg required amputation. He ordered that his leg be buried with full military honors.

~*~Some say Santa Anna was in his tent on the morning of the San Jacinto battle with a "high yellow" Negress named Emily West aka. Emily Morgan, and that in seducing him, helped facilitate the Texan victory.

~*~Santa Anna lived in exile in Cuba, Staten Island NY, Colombia, and St. Thomas.

~*~He had two nicknames: The Napoleon of the West, and The Eagle.

~*~ He was married twice.

~*~He had four legitimate children, and at least seven illegitimate children.

~*~He died in poverty at age 82 in Mexico City

Thank you for reading.
Celia Yeary

Sources:
Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia
Handbook of Texas History On-line.
Texas Tales Your Teacher Never Told You, by C. F. Eckhardt
Disclaimer:
Some statements about Santa Anna may or may not be true. Historians have written some events differently.

1835 Journal Entry--Who is Elmina Ingram?

Journal Entry: Fall, 1835, Brazoria, Texas
Today is my 16^th birthday. Mama and I have prepared for this most wondrous occasion for two months. She wanted a beautiful, grown-up dress for me to wear to my party, so she sought the services of Miss Emilie Milam to create a very special gown. No longer shall I wear calico, nor style my hair in braids, nor run and play with my brothers. Ladies do not act in such a manner in our household, for each member is born to a role, and best we carry out our duties or most likely face the wrath of Papa.

Secretly, I shall miss the days of riding my pony bareback across the coastal plains, through our plantation, chasing my brothers, for all four of them can out-race me every time. Ah, well, such is the lot of the female persuasion. Now, my brothers believe they have become my protectors, especially when young gentlemen look my way. Brazoria County fairly bursts with bachelors, young men, some wealthy, some poor, but each one seeking a bride to ensconce in his home.

One young man, Mr. Randolph Long, nears my person at every opportunity, at church services, all-day dinners, and when Mama and I shop in town. Papa forbids me to speak with him alone; as a result, our conversations become awkward, as each of us stumbles on words we know perfectly well. After my party—of which he will attend!—I plan to speak with him as any grown woman may do with any gentleman she wishes.

Worrisome events have surfaced over this part of Texas. Papa hears tales in town, at the saloon, the community hall, and the warehouse, and he brings the stories home to share with Mama and my brothers. Of course, they all believe they have protected my delicate ears, but I listen and they do not know. It seems a crisis of some sort has arisen in Anahuac, a small place not far from our home. I am uncertain of its exact location, but the news is that General Santa Anna sent a small detachment of soldiers to Anahuac to enforce the collection of customs there and in Galveston. The merchants and the wealthy landowners—such as my papa—object to this unfair treatment, and when Papa speaks of the Santa Anna’s army and their ways, he becomes red in the face and begins to pound on the table!

Now, just before my party, he tells of a gathering of Mexican troops, more as the days go by. But the most frightening news comes from Gonzales, where Papa said a Colonel Domingo de Ugartecha, commander of troops in San Antonio, sent five cavalrymen to Gonzales to retrieve the six-pound canon that had been provided four years earlier for defense against the Indians. The Texan officer in charge hid the canon, telling the military he had no authority to give it up. He sent out dispatches calling for military aid.

Four hundred Texans, who worked in a loosely formed military troop, heard the call, turned from their original destination, Goliad, and marched to Gonzales. One hundred Mexican soldiers were already there to seize the canon. But a Colonel Moore and one-hundred and sixty Texans loaded the canon with chains and scrap iron, and strung a banner across it inscribed “Come and Take It.” Then the Colonel and his men attacked the Mexican troops, forcing them to retreat to San Antonio. I wanted to cheer! However, I did not wish to reveal my hiding place from which I listened avidly of the exciting battles.

Dread fills my heart, now that I understand what is to come. Papa says we must prepare, put away our frivolous desires for the present, and do our part to secure Texas for ourselves. I can only pray the war does not last too long.

My party will go on, however, and I must end this writing to don my beautiful dark blue silk gown, adorned with a lovely inset of lace, and an ivory brooch at my throat. Handsome coils of braid divide the lace from the silk. Underneath, my pantalets are of the finest linen, and my petticoat is of a fine silk. Mama will arrange my hair atop my head in a manner befitting a grown young woman. I do hope I look beautiful, or at least pretty, for a photographer will capture me in my new gown.

Would it not be magical if someone two hundred years hence finds my photograph and wonders about me?

Signed--Elmina Ingram

!!Special Note from author Celia Yeary: The sixteen-year-old young woman in the photo is one of my real Texas ancestors, but I did not use her real name. I have no idea where she grew up or lived in Texas. I took the date from the photo, 1835, and used historical events of the beginning of the Texas Revolution. The story about my ancestor is fiction, however, a figment of my imagination.

***In TEXAS TRUE, I opened the book with a young lady dressed for a grown-up ball, and she meets an older man, Sam Deleon who steals her heart away very quickly. The young lady is True Lee Cameron, the younger daughter of Buck and Marilee Cameron. Raised in a protected atmosphere and educated in a girl's school in the East, True's world comes crashing down when she learns more about her new husband. But she is a "Cameron" and refuses to allow Sam and his mother to ruin her life. She takes control. Sam? The man has a real awakening when he learns exactly of what that this sweet pretty thing he married is truly made. ~*~*~

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