who had overthrown Mexico’s democratic
government now wanted to rule the “unruly” Texans.
The defenders of Gonzales rallied under the crude
flag above, which was hastily made from the silk of a
local gal’s wedding dress. After a brief battle, the first
of the Texas Revolution, the people of Gonzales kept
their cannon. But the skirmish wasn’t really about the
gun (the thing barely worked). It was about defending
local self-government from distant, centralized power—
a notion that’s as dear to Texans today as it was to the
Gonzales guys in 1835. And just like your typical
present-day Texan, those grassroots rebels knew the
value of fighting words. “Come and Take It.” You
couldn’t pay an ad agency a monster fee to come up
with a better slogan than that.
The Battle of Gonzales (see opposite page) in
October 1835 may have provided the spark for the
Texas Revolution, but the settlers who won it proba-
bly didn’t anticipate just how hot the flames of their
new war would burn. By early the next year, six thou-
sand Mexican troops had poured into Texas to put
down the insurrection. Mexico’s dictator, General
Santa Anna—who in early 1835 had ransacked the
Mexican silver-mining town of Zacatecas to crush the
rebels who were fighting to preserve their freedom
under the Mexican Constitution of 1824—
issued a decree to his troops to take no
prisoners. Five months after the
rebels at Gonzales rallied under
the slogan “Come and Take
It,” 187 of their brethren
(including nine
Tejanos, or Texans of
Mexican descent)
met their end at
the point of a bay-
onet or barrel of
a gun, fighting
bitterly, to the
last man and
Bowie knife, at
an old Spanish
religious outpost
called the Alamo. A
The Alamo, originally named Mis-
sion San Antonio de Valero, was a
home to missionaries and their Indian
converts for almost seven decades
before it was secularized in 1793.
few weeks later, Mexican troops massacred 342
Texan prisoners at Goliad, where an early version of
the Texan Declaration of Independence had been
signed. But the Texas rebels were not deterred.
They’d thrown in all their chips with a perilous
cause—that of independence from a dictatorship—
and they were going to take that cause to its
conclusion.
TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!
21
After the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad (see pre-
vious pages) in 1836, Sam Houston’s army was being
pursued by General Santa Anna. Things were not
looking good. Of course, that
is exactly the kind of moment
when a Texan likes to double
down. Which is just what Sam
Houston and his men did.
Taking up positions in a forest
next to the plain where Santa
Anna and his troops had set
up camp, Houston became the
pursuer. On the afternoon of April 21, 1836, his
Texans charged their enemy, shouting, “Remember
the Alamo!” and “Remember Goliad!” The Battle of
San Jacinto, as this fight came to be known, was over
in eighteen minutes. Santa Anna’s troops were
routed, and he was taken prisoner. A month later he
signed the Treaties of Velasco, which laid the founda-
tion for Texan independence. The men of Sam
Houston’s army hadn’t
buried the memory of the
Alamo and Goliad; they ral-
lied around it. Those Texan
fighters, whose democracy
had been usurped by Santa
Anna, knew in their hearts
that to keep fighting was the
only way forward.
Top: Uncle Alfred Wyly leads the charge in Charles
