A History of the American People

Galveston Island was a pirate base. Then an independent Mexican government, having thrown
out the Spanish by force, took over and gradually asserted its authority.
Some Americans in search of land cooperated with the new independent Mexican authorities.
Moses Austin (1761-1821), born it Connecticut, moved to Missouri and then, having become a
citizen of Spanish Louisiana, was allowed by the new Mexican government to found the Austin
Colony, a huge block in the Colorado and Brazos basins, which he passed on to his son Stephen
Fuller Austin (1793-1836). This colony consisted of prairies, woodlands, and river bottom lands
of just the kind American settlers liked. The land was allocated in ranches of square leagues,
according to the Spanish custom, that is 4,428-acre blocks-much bigger units than you could gel
in the United States, and for lower prices. By 1830 Austin had settled more than 5,000
Americans on his lands. Importing slaves to work the land was technically unlawful because
Mexico had abolished slavery it 1824, but in practice it was allowed.
Then in 1830 the Mexican government suddenly halted immigration, imposed customs duties,
reorganized Texas into three departments and set up military forts and garrisons. By this time
three-quarters of the 30,000 people in Texas (including slaves) were Americans, and the western
margin of America to the north was beyond the Colorado and 250 miles west of the Sabine. So
Texas, as part of Mexico, looked increasingly anomalous. Austin behaved like a loyal Mexican
citizen, as long as this was feasible. If Mexico had been stable things might have been different
and its power survived. If the United States had been unstable, it might have been less
acquisitive. But the historical fact is that Mexico was unstable and America was stable Various
transient Mexican governments made superficially brutal but intrinsically feeble attempts to
impose their will and these merely had the effect of irritating the growing body of American
settlers and driving them into rebellion. The big blow-up came in 1835, the American insurgents
proclaiming the Republic of Texas on December 20 and naming Sam Houston, previously
governor of Tennessee, to run their army.
The Mexican dictator, General Santa Ana, who had made his reputation with a military victory
over the Spaniards in 1829, led a force of 5,000 regulars across the frontier of the self-
proclaimed independent state on February 26, 1836. The same day Colonel William B. Travis
(1790-1836) of South Carolina and James Bowie (1799-1836) of Burke County, Georgia-
reputedly the inventor of the Bowie knife-retreated into the Alamo, a heavy-walled Spanish
mission converted into a fort. With them were 1187 Texan desperados of the kind beloved by
any healthy schoolboy, including Davy Crockett (1786-1836), a Tennessee congressman, who
had served under Jackson in the Creek War and had arrived in Texas only a few days before.
General Houston ordered Travis and Bowie to abandon their hopeless position but they declined.
And when Santa Ana asked for their surrender, they answered with a cannon shot. The Mexicans
then ran up the red flag, a traditional sign that no quarter would be given, and the attack
commenced. It is said that over a thousand casualties were inflicted on the Mexicans, but within
an hour the fort was in Santa Ana's hands and all the Americans were dead-Bowie bayoneted to
death in his cot, where he was suffering from pneumonia, Travis riddled with musket balls next
to a cannon, Crockett mutilated amid a pile of bodies of fellow-Tennesseans. The bodies of the
dead combatants were thrown together on a pyre and burned.
Susannah Dickinson, wife of a blacksmith, was among a few civilians who survived to tell the
tale. Santa Ana told her to inform the Texans that `fighting is hopeless.' However, on April 21
General Houston mounted a surprise attack on Santa Ana's force on the banks of the San Jacinto
River, near Galveston Bay. The Mexicans were scattered, Santa Ana was captured-in the arms of
his mistress, jenny-and he was forced to sign documents surrendering his entire army and