On April 21, 1836, at the Battle of San Jacinto, a rag-tag band of 783 Texans achieved an improbable and almost unbelievable victory over a Mexican army of more than 1,500 troops. The victorious Texas army was led by General Sam Houston. The defeated Mexicans were under the command of General Santa Anna, the President of Mexico.
The Texanns' surprise attack caught the Mexican emcampment off guard. The Texans shouted "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember Goliad" as they charged the unsuspecting Mexicans. The battle lasted a mere 18 minutes. When it was over, the Texans had lost nine killed and 30 wounded. The Mexicans had lost 630 killed, 208 wounded and 730 soldiers taken prisoner. Texas had won its independence from Mexico.
Legend has it that around the time of the Texans' attack, Santa Anna was in the sack making whoopee with Emily West, the beautiful mulatto servant and mistress of James Morgan, a wealthy landowner. The story goes that Morgan intentionally sent Emily to the Mexican encampment in order to distract Santa Anna by seducing him. Emily came to be known as "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Santa Anna's conquest of Emily West eventually cost Mexico nearly a million square miles of its land.
Texas erected a 570-foot tall monument at the San Jacinto Battleground in LaPorte, a suburb close by Houston. Construction started in 1936 and was completed in 1939. The significance of the Battle of San Jacinto is spelled out on a panel at the side of the monument:
"Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the States of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty."
Mexico has never forgiven us for its humiliating defeat. Over time, it has sneaked an invading army of some 20 million Mexicans across the border in the guise of a cheap labor force, surreptitiously reoccupying the territory it lost to the United States. It is estimated that 2,000 illegal aliens cross our border every day. At the rate those illegals keep coming here, it will not be all that long before Mexico can reclaim all the land it lost after its humiliation at San Jacinto.
2 comments:
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Warfare is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
Your article is very well done, a good read.
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