Meanwhile the government of Mexico was beginning the quick-change act with which it has alternately amused and exasperated and angered the world to this day. The short-lived empire of Iturbide lasted but a year, the Emperor meeting his end with his back to a stone wall and his face to a firing-party. Victoria proclaimed Mexico a republic and himself its President. Pedraza succeeded him in 1828. Then Guerrero overthrew Pedraza, and Bustamente overthrew Guerrero, and Santa Anna overthrew Bustamente and made himself dictator, ruling the war-racked country with an iron hand. Now, a dictator, if he is to hold his job, much less enjoy any peace of mind, must rule a people who, either through fear or ignorance, are willing to forget about their constitutional rights and obligingly refrain from asking questions. But the American settlers in Texas, as each of the Mexican usurpers discovered in his turn and to his very great annoyance, were not built according to these specifications. They were not ignorant, and they were not in the least afraid, and when the privileges they had enjoyed were revoked or curtailed they resented it emphatically.
Alarmed by the rapid increase in the number of American settlers, disturbed by their independence and self-reliance, and realizing that they were daily becoming a greater menace to the dictatorial and dishonest methods of government which prevailed, the Mexican dictators determined to crush them before it was too late. In pursuance of this policy they inaugurated a systematic campaign of persecution. Sixty-odd years later the Boers adopted the same attitude toward the British settlers in the Transvaal that the Mexicans did toward the American settlers in Texas, and the same thing happened in both cases.
For three years after Mexico achieved its independence Texas was a separate State of the republic, with a government of its own. But in 1824, in pursuance of this anti-American policy, it was deprived of the privilege of self-government and added to the State of Coahuila. Shortly after this a law was passed forbidding the further settlement of Americans in Texas and prohibiting Americans from even trading in that region. And, to still further harass and humiliate the Texans, a number of penal settlements, composed of the most desperate criminals in the Mexican prisons, were established in Texas. Heretofore the Texans, in recognition of their services in transforming Texas from a savage wilderness into a civilized and prosperous province, had enjoyed immunity from taxes, but now custom-houses were established and the settlers were charged prohibitive duties even on the necessities of life. When they protested against so flagrant an injustice the Mexican Government answered them by blockading their ports. Heavy garrisons were now quartered in the principal towns, the civil authorities were defied, and the settlers were subjected to the tyranny of unrestrained military rule. Still the Texans did not offer armed resistance. Their tight-drawn patience snapped, however, when, in 1834, Santa Anna, determined to crush for good and all the sturdy independence which animated them, ordered his brother-in-law, General Cos, to enter Texas with a force of fifteen hundred men and disarm the Americans, leaving only one rifle to every five hundred inhabitants. That order was all that was needed to fan the smouldering embers of Texan resentment into the fierce flame of armed revolt. Were they to be deprived of those trusty rifles which they had brought with them on their long pilgrimage from the north, which were their only resource for game, their only defense against Indians, their only means of resistance to oppression? Those were the questions that the settlers asked themselves, and they answered them at Gonzales, on the banks of the Guadalupe.
At Gonzales was a small brass field-piece which had been given to the settlers as a protection from the Indians. A detachment of Mexican cavalry, some eightscore strong, was ordered to go to the town, capture the cannon, and disarm the inhabitants. News of their coming preceded them, however, and when the troopers reached the banks of the river opposite the town they found that all the boats had been taken to the other side, while the cannon which they had come to capture was drawn up in full view with a placard hanging from it. The placard bore the ominous invitation: “Come and take it.” The Mexican commander, spurring his horse to the edge of the river, insolently called upon the inhabitants to give up their arms. It was the same demand, made for the same purpose, which an officer in a scarlet coat had made of another group of Americans, threescore years before, on the village green at Lexington. It was the same demand! And the same answer was given: “Come and take our weapons—if you can!” Though the Mexican officer had a force which outnumbered the settlers almost ten to one, he prudently decided to wait, for even in those days the fame of the Texan riflemen had spread across the land.
Meanwhile horsemen had carried the news of the raid on Gonzales to the outlying ranches and soon the settlers came pouring in until by nightfall they very nearly equalled the soldiery in number. Knowing the moral effect of getting in the first blow, they slipped across the river in the dark and charged the Mexican camp with an impetuosity and fierceness which drove the troopers back in panic-stricken retreat. As the Texans were going into action a parson who accompanied them shouted: “Remember, men, that we’re fighting for our liberty! Our wives, our children, our homes, our country are at stake! The strong arm of Jehovah will lead us on to victory and to glory! Come on, men! Come on!”
The news of this victory, though insignificant in itself, was as kindling thrown on the fires of insurrection. The settlers in Texas rose as one. In October, 1835, in a pitched battle near the Mission of the Immaculate Conception, outside of San Antonio, ninety-four Texan farmers, fresh from the plough, whipped four times that number of Mexicans. In December, after a five days’ siege, the Alamo, in San Antonio, was carried by storm, General Cos and fourteen hundred Mexican regulars, with twenty-one pieces of artillery, surrendering to less than four hundred Texans. By Christmas of 1835 Texas was left without an armed enemy within her borders.
When word was brought to Santa Anna that the garrison of the Alamo had surrendered, he behaved like a madman. With clinched fists and uplifted arms he swore by all the saints in the calendar and all the devils in hell that he would never unbuckle his sword-belt until Texas was once again a wilderness and every gringo settler was a fugitive, a prisoner, or a corpse. As it was at San Antonio that the Mexicans had suffered their most humiliating defeat, so it was San Antonio that the dictator chose as the place where he would wash out that defeat in blood, and on the 22d of February, 1836, he appeared before the city at the head of six thousand troops—the flower of the Mexican army. After their capture of San Antonio the Texans, most of whom were farmers, had returned to their homes and their crops, Colonel W. Barrett Travis being left to hold the town with only one hundred and forty-five men. With him were Davy Crockett, the stories of whose exploits on the frontier were already familiar in every American household, Bonham, the celebrated scout and Indian fighter, and James Bowie, who, in a duel on the Natchez River bar, had made famous the terrible long-bladed knife which his brother Rezin had made from a blacksmith’s file. A few days later thirty-seven brave hearts from Goliad succeeded in breaking through the lines of the besiegers, bringing the total strength of the garrison up to one hundred and eighty-three. Surrounding them was an army of six thousand!
The story of the last stand in the Alamo has been told so often that I hesitate to repeat it here. Yet it is a tale of which Americans can never tire any more than they can tire of the story of Jones and the Bonhomme Richard, or of Perry at Lake Erie. The Texans, too few in numbers to dream of defending the town, withdrew into the Alamo, an enormously thick-walled building, half fortress and half church, which derived its name from being built in a clump of álamos or cottonwood trees. For eleven days the Mexicans pounded the building with artillery and raked it with rifle fire; for eleven days the Texans held them back in that historic resistance whose details are so generally and so uncertainly known. Day after day the defenders strained their eyes across the prairie in search of the help that never came. Day after day the blood-red flag that signified “No quarter” floated above the Mexican lines, while from the walls of the Alamo flaunted defiantly the flag with a single star.
At sunset on the 4th of March the Mexican bombardment abruptly ceased, but no one knew better than Travis that it was but the lull which preceded the breaking of the storm. Drawing up his men in the great chapel, Travis drew a line across the earthen floor with his sword.
“Men,” he said, “it’s all up with us. A few more hours and we shall probably all be dead. There’s no use hoping for help, for no force that our friends could send us could cut its way through the Mexican lines. So there’s nothing left for it but to stay here and go down fighting. When the greasers storm the walls kill them as they come and keep on killing them until none of us are left. But I leave it to every man to decide for himself. Those who wish to go out and surrender may do so and I shall not reproach them. As for me, I shall stay here and die for Texas. Those who wish to stay with me will step across this line.”