That ended the battle. The men were not born who could face a fire like that. It ended the war also, and it was the last time Americans and Englishmen ever fought each other. Jackson became the hero of the country, and he was finally elected President of the United States. I cannot say that he was well fitted to be President. He was a very obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own way, and that is better in a soldier than in a President. But he was one who loved his country, and when one of the states of the South sought to secede from the Union, Jackson, though he was a son of the South himself, quickly gave the seceders to understand that he was a general as well as a President, and that no state should leave the ranks of the Union while he marched at its head.
CHAPTER XIX
HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE REVENGED
I HAVE told you the story of more than one war. I shall have to tell you now about still another in which the Americans fought the Mexicans in Texas.
I suppose you know that Texas is one of our states, and the largest of them all. That is, it is largest in square miles; not in number of people. In former times it was part of Mexico, and was a portion of what is called Spanish America. But there came to be more Americans in it than Spaniards. People kept going there from the United States until it was much more of an American than a Spanish country.
General Santa Anna, who was at the head of the Mexican government at the time I speak of, was somewhat of a tyrant, and he tried to rule the people of Texas in a way they would not submit to. Then he ordered them to give up all their guns to his soldiers, but instead of that they took their guns and drove the Mexican soldiers away. After that there was war, as you might well suppose, for a Mexican army was sent to punish the Texans.
I wish now to tell you about what happened to some very brave Americans. There were only one hundred and seventy-five of them, and they were attacked by General Santa Anna with an army of several thousand men. But they were commanded by Colonel Travis, a brave young Texan, and among them was the famous David Crockett, a great hunter, and Colonel James Bowie, who invented the terrible "bowie-knife," and other bold and daring men who had settled in Texas. They had made a fort of an old Spanish building called the Alamo.
The kind of men I have named do not easily give up. The Mexicans poured bomb-shells and cannon balls into their fort, battering down the walls and killing many of them, but they fought on like tigers, determined to die rather than surrender. At length so many of them were dead that there were not enough left to defend the walls, and the Mexican soldiers captured the Alamo. The valiant Crockett kept on fighting, and when he fell, the ground before him was covered with Mexican dead. Then Santa Anna ordered his soldiers to shoot down all that were left. That is what is called the "Massacre of the Alamo."