"Sam Houston."
Both armies were on the field of San Jacinto, and Santa Anna had with him nearly two thousand men, against the 700 with General Houston. Houston advanced to the attack at three o'clock in the afternoon, with the war cry of "Remember the Alamo!" It was taken up by 700 men with such a shout of vengeance as mortal ears never heard before. With it on their lips they advanced close to the Mexican lines, while a storm of bullets went over their heads. Houston and his horse were both wounded, but both being of the finest metal, they pressed on regardless of wounds. The Americans did not answer the volley until they could pour their lead into the bosoms of their foes. They never thought of reloading, but clubbing their rifles until they broke, they then flung them away, and fired their pistols into the very eyes of the Mexicans. When nothing else remained, they drew their bowie knives and cut their way through the walls of living flesh.
Nothing comparable to that charge for freedom was ever made. Men said afterward that the unseen battalions—the mighty dead as well as the mighty living—won the battle. "Poor Fannin!" exclaimed General Sherman, "he has been blamed for disobeying orders; but I think he obeyed orders to-day!" Men fought like spirits, impetuous, invincible, as if they had cast off flesh and blood. The battle began at three o'clock in the afternoon of April 21, 1836, and after the Americans reached the Mexican line, it lasted just eighteen minutes. At four o'clock the whole Mexican army was flying, and the pursuit and slaughter continued until dark. It was a military miracle, for the American loss was only eight killed and seventeen wounded. Of the Mexicans, 630 were left dead on the field; multitudes perished in the bayou and morass; and there were nearly eight hundred prisoners. Only seven men are known to have escaped either death or capture. Santa Anna was found hiding in coarse clothing, and Houston had the greatest difficulty to save his life. For Houston knew that the lives of all the Americans in Mexico were in danger, besides which, he was needed to secure the peace and independence of Texas. It required Houston's influence, however, to convince men whose fathers and brothers and sons had been brutally massacred at Goliad and the Alamo, that their private vengeance must give way to the public good.
Just about the time that the battle of San Jacinto was fought, President Jackson was one day found by Mr. Buchanan studying earnestly the map of Texas. He was tracing Houston's plan of retreat—of which he had doubtless received information—and putting his finger upon San Jacinto he said, "Here is the place! If Sam Houston is worth one bawbee, he will make a stand here, and give them a fight!" A few days after this declaration, news was received in Washington that the fight had been given and won on that very spot.
The annexation of Texas was now publicly, as it had long been privately, the hope and goal of the Government; and for this end Jackson, says Mr. Parton, "displayed an energy and pugnacity seldom exhibited before or since, by a politician in his seventy-seventh year." But "failure" was a word not in Jackson's vocabulary; he annexed Texas, and dying as the measure was accomplished, talked only in his last moments of Texas and Houston.
Houston was elected President of the new Republic by acclamation, and he served the State two terms in this capacity. Both were marked by the finest statesmanship; and during them the Texans suffered little from the ferocious Apache, Comanche, and other Indian tribes. For Houston fearlessly slept in their camps, and treated them as brethren; and his Indian "Talks" have an Ossianic poetry about them. Thus he writes to the Indian Chief Linney: "The red brothers know that my words to them have never been forgotten by me. They have never been swallowed up in darkness, nor has the light of the sun consumed them. Truth cannot perish, but the words of a liar are as nothing. Talk to all the red men, and tell them to make peace. War cannot make them happy. It has lasted too long. Let it now be ended and cease forever," etc., etc.
After the annexation of Texas, Houston represented the State for three terms in the United States Senate; but in 1859 he failed of re-election, because he refused to go with the South on the fatal subject of Secession. Yet so great was the confidence of the people in his honor and ability, that they elected him Governor of Texas in the same year; and he entered on the office in December, 1859. The election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860 precipitated events; and though Houston used all his mighty personal influence, and all his charmful, potent eloquence to keep Texas in the Union, he failed, and was deposed from the Governorship on his refusal to sign the Ordinance of Secession.
Then he calmly withdrew from the scene, and there are many living who remember his pathetic parting words. "I have seen," he said, "the statesmen and patriots of my youth gathered to their fathers, and the government which they had reared rent in twain, and none like them are now left to reunite it again. I stand almost the last of a race who learned from them the lessons of human freedom!"
These events inflicted a mortal wound upon his great spirit, and when he heard the roar of the cannon announcing the secession of Texas, he turned to his wife and said, "My heart is broken!" The words were only too true; for two years he lingered a sad and solemn old man, mourning for the woes of his country and for the defection of his eldest son Sam, who had joined the Confederates, and been taken prisoner by the Northern army. He was also suffering from the wounds received both in the war of 1812 and also at San Jacinto; and it was evident that he had come to the close of life. He himself looked forward to the event without fear, and with a wise and well-grounded hope.
On March 2, 1863, Houston was seventy, and in response to an ovation in his own city of Houston, he made a short, broken little speech. It was his last public effort, and from it he went back home to Huntsville, to die. His last days were spent in incessant and heart-broken prayers for his country and for his family; and on July 26, 1863, three weeks after the fall of Vicksburg, he breathed his last to the words "Texas! Texas!"