The Alamo and Other Texas Battles

Rebellion stirred when Mexican authorities began to regulate Texan activities more closely. A brief revolt in 1826 known as the Fredonian Rebellion was an attempt by two Anglo-American brothers to establish an independent republic. The revolt, which was not supported by most Anglo-Americans, was unsuccessful, but was one factor that led Mexico to prohibit the immigration of Anglo-Americans in the Decree of April 6, 1830. The decree also banned the importation of slaves into Texas; slavery was already prohibited in other parts of Mexico. Immigration from the United States halted for almost four years. Mexico also imposed new taxes on commerce in Texas and threatened to abolish slavery outright. Unrest intensified when Stephen Austin, the most prominent Anglo-American leader in Texas, was imprisoned, apparently because of suspicion that he had encouraged insurrection. Mexican authorities had obtained a letter he had written advising Texans to organize a separate state. When Mexican President Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna set aside the nation�s democratic 1824 constitution and assumed dictatorial powers in 1834, Texans resisted his authority. A battle resulted in which the Texans defeated Mexican soldiers near Gonzales, Texas, on October 2, 1835.

The Revolution Begins

Texans won all the major battles in the fall of 1835, at Gonzales, Goliad, and San Antonio), and declared they were fighting to restore democratic government in Mexico. Soon after these initial battles, a convention of Anglo-American settlers set up a provisional state government, elected a governor and a council, and declared that Texans were fighting for the rights due them under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. Stephen Austin and two others were sent to the United States to secure loans. The Texans quickly gathered an army and marched to attack the Mexican garrison at San Antonio. In December a volunteer force led by Ben Milam defeated the Mexicans and forced them to surrender and later to retreat to the south, across the R�o Grande.

After taking San Antonio, many Anglo-Americans returned to their homes, leaving about 150 men in the town, many of whom were volunteers from the United States. Despite rumors that Santa Anna was amassing troops at the R�o Grande, most Texans believed that he would wait until late spring before invading Texas. On February 23, 1836, however, Santa Anna�s forces entered San Antonio and the Anglo-Americans withdrew to the Alamo, a former mission in San Antonio. William B. Travis, the commander of Texan forces at San Antonio, sent pleas for reinforcements, but only 32 men from Gonzales answered the call. For 13 days the small force defended the Alamo against more than 2000 Mexican troops. On March 6, the Alamo fell and its defenders were killed, including Tennessee-born frontier hero, pioneer, and politician, Davy Crockett, and Georgia-born pioneer, James Bowie.

Small groups of Texans were overwhelmed by Mexican forces in other battles at San Patricio, Agua Dulce, and Refugio. In a retreat from Goliad, Colonel James W. Fannin and approximately 280 men surrendered at nearby Coleto Creek on March 20, 1836, and were marched back to Goliad. A week later, as an example to Anglo Texans, most of the prisoners were executed by order of Santa Anna in what came to be known as the Goliad Massacre.

On March 2,1836, during the siege of the Alamo, a convention of Anglo-American Texans had met at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declared independence from Mexico. The delegates chose David G. Burnet as provisional president, named Sam Houston commander-in-chief of all Texan forces, and adopted a constitution that protected the institution of slavery. It was otherwise similar to the Constitution of the United States, but not in all respects.

Houston, who had been negotiating with the Cherokee to prevent them from aiding Mexico, returned to take command of the revolutionary army just in time to learn that most of his forces had been killed at Goliad. He decided to retreat toward the east and to entice Santa Anna and his forces away from their supply lines, which were near San Antonio. Houston destroyed crops and supplies as he retreated to deny food to the Mexican troops. Streams of Anglo-American families fled eastward as the Mexican armies advanced and the Texan forces retreated. Convinced that surrender meant death after the executions at Goliad, Anglo-American Texans became determined to resist.

Houston�s army increased daily as volunteers from the United States came to Texas to aid the revolution. He had slightly more than 900 men under his command when he camped at San Jacinto opposite Santa Anna�s force of about 1300 soldiers. Santa Anna failed to post guards, and shouting the battle cry, �Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!,� the Texans attacked on the afternoon of April 21, 1836. Completely surprising the Mexican Army, they killed, wounded, or captured most of Santa Anna�s troops in the brief battle. The Texans suffered 9 dead and 30 wounded, one of whom was Houston, shot in the ankle. Santa Anna was captured the next day, an event which essentially marked the end of the revolution. On May 14 he signed the Treaty of Velasco in which he agreed to order Mexican troops still in Texas to retreat south of the R�o Grande and to persuade the Mexican government to accept the independence of Texas. Mexico refused to acknowledge Texan independence but made no serious effort to regain control. Meanwhile, Texans elected Sam Houston as the first president of the Republic of Texas and secured recognition from the United States and eventually from several major European countries.

Most Texans, however, wished to be part of the United States. Annexation was delayed for ten years because people in the United States who were opposed to slavery did not want to add any more slave states to the country. Other people were concerned about a possible Mexican reaction to annexation. Negotiations resumed after John Tyler became president of the United States and Sam Houston was elected president of Texas for the second time in 1841. An act making Texas the 28th state of the American union was signed on December 29, 1845.

Alamo, former Franciscan mission in San Antonio, Texas, erected about 1722, later used as a fort, and now preserved as a state monument. The Alamo was the site of the most heroic episode of the Texan war of independence against Mexico. On February 23, 1836, a Mexican force of more than 2000 men commanded by Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna, general and dictator of Mexico, reached the outskirts of San Antonio, which had been captured by Texan insurgents the previous December. The San Antonio garrison, only 155 men under the command of Colonel William Barrett Travis, withdrew to the Alamo. With the men, inside the Alamo, were about 15 civilians, including the wife of one of the defenders, a black slave, and a few Mexican families who lived there. Santa Anna deployed his troops around the structure and, when his artillery arrived, launched an intensive assault. The Texans, who were reinforced by 32 men on March 1, withstood the Mexicans until March 6, when the enemy succeeded in breaching the mission walls. Travis, his chief aides, including the American frontiersmen Davy Crockett and James Bowie, and the remainder of the garrison perished in the savage hand-to-hand struggle that followed. The 187 Texan defenders were all killed and only the civilians survived. However, the Texans had fought hard, and the Mexicans lost 600 men. At the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto, in which Santa Anna was defeated, the battle cry of the Texans was �Remember the Alamo!� In 1995 excavators began digging on the grounds of the Alamo searching for gold, which James Bowie supposedly dropped down one of the Alamo wells before the deadly siege.

San Jacinto, Battle of, the last battle of the Texan war of independence from Mexico fought April 21, 1836 near the site of present-day Houston, Texas. After the massacre of the garrison of the Alamo by the forces of Mexican general Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna, the Texan commander in chief General Sam Houston, with a small force of about 800 men, made a surprise attack on the Mexican army near the mouth of the San Jacinto River. Shouting �Remember the Alamo!�, Houston's outnumbered army defeated the Mexican force of about 1300 men in less than 20 minutes. Nearly all of Santa Anna's men were either killed or captured. Santa Anna, who was among those taken prisoner, signed a treaty that granted Texans their independence and ended the war. Within that same year, Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas.

Sam Houston (1793-1863) A sometimes volatile and often contradictory man, Sam Houston played a crucial role in the founding of Texas. Houston was born into a military family in Virginia in 1793. His father, an army major who had served in the Revolutionary War, died when Sam was fourteen. His mother took their family to eastern Tennessee, where Houston spent much of his later childhood in the company of Cherokee Indians, coming to know their language and customs well. His involvement in the War of 1812 launched Houston's political career. He served under Andrew Jackson in the campaign against the Creek Indians, allies of the British. After the war, Jackson was instrumental in securing Houston a position as an Indian agent to the Cherokee. Houston also began to study law and was soon elected the district attorney in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1823, he was elected to Congress, and reelected in 1825. In 1827 he won the governorship. Two years later, in the midst of his re-election campaign, Houston and his new wife, Eliza Allen, separated. Rumors of infidelity and alcoholism swirled around him, and in April 1829 he moved to Indian lands in Arkansas. This portion of Houston's life is poorly documented, but it appears that for a time he had a Cherokee wife, Tiana Rogers, ran a trading post, and drank so heavily that he was widely known to the Cherokee as "big drunk." Nonetheless, he made yearly trips to Washington, D.C., for business relating to Indian affairs. By 1833 Houston was living in Texas for at least part of the year, and seems to have established a permanent residence in Nacogdoches, near the Louisiana border, by 1835. With the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, Houston was quickly elevated to the command of the ragtag Texas Army. Keenly aware that he was heavily outnumbered, he kept up a retreat from the Mexican army for over a month, despite the condemnation of his supposed comrades and allegations of drunkenness. Finally, when the Mexican general Santa Anna split his forces in April, Houston ordered the attack at San Jacinto that gained Texas its independence. The newly independent Lone Star Republic made Houston its first President in 1836, and he filled the office again in 1841, after an interim term by Mirabeau B. Lamar. As President, he secured United States rec ognition of Texas and stabilized the republic's finances. When Texas gained statehood in 1846, Houston continued his political career as a United States Senator, serving from from 1846 to 1860. In Washington, his apparent fondness for alcohol, women and brawling again provoked sharp controversy and added new chapters to his legend. In politics, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Mexican-American War, although disappointed that it did not end in the annexation of Mexico. A slaveholder himself and an outspoken opponent of abolition, he nonetheless voted consistently against the expansion of slavery into new territories and was a vehement opponent of secession. These views made Houston unpopular with the Texas legislature, but in 1859, as he was about to leave the Senate, he was once more elected governor and he used the office to continue his campaign against secession. In 1861, when Texas voted to separate from the Union, Houston still held out, arguing that Texas apart from the United States was an independent republic. As chief executive of the republic, he refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, and as a result he was removed from office. Houston died on his farm in Huntsville, Texas, in 1863.

Austin, Stephen Fuller (1793-1836), early American leader of Texas. Born in Wythe County, Virginia, Austin grew up in the Missouri Territory and was a member (1814-19) of the territorial legislature. In 1822 he founded a settlement of migrant Americans on a tract of land purchased by his father between the Brazos and Colorado rivers in Texas (then part of Mexico). In 1833 a convention of Texas colonists delegated Austin to persuade Mexican authorities to grant them self-government. Unable to obtain prompt action from the Mexicans, he wrote to the Texans from Mexico City, advising them to set up their own government without waiting for official approval. For this act he was imprisoned by the Mexicans until 1835, when he returned to Texas and assumed command of the settlers' army. In the same year, he headed a Texas delegation to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., where he succeeded in obtaining financial and military support for the republic of Texas. In 1836 he ran for the presidency of Texas but was defeated by Sam Houston. He thereafter served as secretary of state in Houston's cabinet until his death.

Travis, William Barrett (1809-36), American soldier, born in Red Banks, Edgefield County, South Carolina. After studying law, he began practice in Claiborne, Alabama, but moved to Texas in about 1832. In 1835, upon the outbreak of the Texas Revolution against Mexico, Travis became a colonel in the revolutionary army. He was captured by the Mexicans but subsequently released. In 1836 Travis was in command of a small garrison at the Alamo, a fort on the outskirts of San Antonio that was besieged by the Mexican army under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The fort was held from February 23 until March 6, when Mexican troops finally breached the walls. Travis and all his men were killed in the ensuing hand-to-h and fighting.

Bowie, James (1796?-1836), American pioneer, who was killed while d efending the Alamo. He was born in Logan County, Kentucky, or, according to some authorities, born in 1799 in Burke County, Georgia. Settling in the Mexican province of Texas in 1828, he became a naturalized Mexican citizen. From 1835 he took a prominent part in the revolt against Mexico and was commissioned a colonel in the Texas army. In 1836, although ill with typhoid and pneumonia, Bowie, with Colonel William Barrett Travis and Colonel David Crockett, took part in the heroic defense of the Alamo and was killed. Bowie County and the city of Bowie in Montague County, both in Texas, are named for James Bowie, as is (according to legend) the bowie knife.