The Battle of San Jacinto and the San Jacinto Campaign

THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO
by L. W. Kemp and Ed Kilman
COPYRIGHT, 1947 by L. W. KEMP and ED KILMAN Second Printing
Printed in the United States of America The Webb Printing Co., Inc., Houston
San Jacinto, birthplace of Texas liberty!... San Jacinto, one of the world’s decisive battles!... San Jacinto, where, with cries of “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” Sam Houston and his ragged band of 910 pioneers routed Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President and Dictator of Mexico and self-styled “Napoleon of the West,” with his proud army, and changed the map of North America!
Here is a story that has thrilled Texans for more than a century ... a story of desperate valor and high adventure; of grim hardship, tragedy and romance ... the story of the epochal battle that established the independent Lone Star Republic, on April 21, 1836, and indelibly inscribed the names of Texas patriots on history’s scroll of American immortals.
The actual battle of San Jacinto lasted less than twenty minutes, but it was in the making for six years. It had its prelude in the oppressive Mexican edict of April 6, 1830, prohibiting further emigration of Anglo-Americans from the United States to Texas; in the disturbance at Anahuac and in the battle of Velasco, in 1832; in the imprisonment of Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas,” in Mexico in 1834.
Immediate preliminaries were the skirmish over a cannon at Gonzales, the capture of Goliad, the “Grass Fight,” and the siege and capture of San Antonio ... all in 1835. The Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, officially signalized the revolution.
Four days after the Declaration of Independence, news came to the convention on the Brazos of the desperate plight of Colonel William Barret Travis, under siege at the Alamo in San Antonio. Sam Houston, commander-in-chief of the Texas Army, left Washington post-haste for Gonzales, to take command of the troops there and go to the aid of Travis. He arrived there on the 11th, and at about dark learned from two Mexicans who had just arrived from San Antonio that the Alamo had fallen and its 183 brave defenders massacred. This was confirmed two days later by Mrs. Almeron Dickinson who had been released by the Mexicans after seeing her lieutenant husband killed in the old mission. She was trudging toward Gonzales with her babe in her arms when the Texas army scouts found her.