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.
RETREAT FROM GONZALES
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.
The reports of the Alamo slaughter terrified the people of Gonzales. They were panic-stricken by the general belief that Santa Anna next would sweep eastward with his well-trained army, in a drive to wipe the rebellious Texans from the face of the earth.
Then began the exodus of frantic colonists known to Texas history as the “Runaway Scrape.” Men, women and children packed what belongings they could take in wagons and carts, on horseback, or on their own backs, and fled their homes in terror across the rain soaked country ... all moving eastward toward the Louisiana border to escape the wrath of the bloodthirsty Santa Anna.
General Houston, realizing that his few hundred green troops were no match for the well-drilled hordes from Mexico, evacuated Gonzales and had the rear guard put the town to the torch. The Texans crossed the Colorado River on the 17th at Jesse Burnam’s, and camped there for two days. Then the army resumed its march down the east bank to Benjamin Beason’s crossing, some twenty miles below, near the present town of Columbus. Camp was pitched at Beason’s on the 20th.
Had the retreating column been fifty miles farther south, the troops might have heard the distant rumble and crackle of gunfire. On March 19, Colonel James Walker Fannin Jr., commanding about 450 volunteers withdrawing from Goliad toward Victoria, was defeated in battle on Coleto Creek by General Jose Urrea’s forces of 1200 infantry and 700 cavalry. Fannin surrendered. On Palm Sunday, March 27, he and 352 of his men were marched out on the roads near Goliad and brutally shot down, by order of Santa Anna.