Texians Won Their Independence at San Jacinto
Texians did not “win” their independence at San Jacinto. Although the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands all recognized the Texas Republic, Mexican officials refused to do so and continued to insist that the land was still part of Mexico. Mexican generals were eager to sweep across the Rio Grande, reconquer Tejas, and erase the shame of San Jacinto.
In 1842, two Mexican forays―the Vasquez Raid in March and the Woll Raid in September―embarrassed and angered Texians. While these raids proved bothersome, they also revealed a comforting reality. The Mexican government was simply too weak to take and hold ground north of the Rio Grande. These brief border raids were the best they could marshal. Mexicans hoped, however, that they would be enough to keep their claims of Texas possession alive and thwart American annexation plans. Indeed, Mexicans did not finally accept the loss of Texas until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and only then because General Winfield Scott’s army was occupying Mexico City―not the battle fought on Buffalo Bayou twelve years before. The best one can say of the Battle of San Jacinto is that it bought the fledgling Texas Republic some breathing space. Nevertheless, it failed to bring the Mexicans to the peace table or persuade them to accept Texas independence.
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Among the trendy Texas historians it has become fashionable to bemoan the “flight from modernity,” the “Texas macho myth, and the “Hollywood” caricature. “Self-conscious and schizophrenic,” Professor Ronald L. Davis intones, “Texas clings to its frontier heritage, viewing it in heroic terms, fearful that should the past be lost, with its courage and risk taking lifted to epic proportions, so will the state’s uniqueness.” Their message is clear: Get out of the nineteenth century. Enough of Davy and Sam; embrace the “new social history” with its emphasis on race, class, and gender. And, fearful that their oh-so-enlightened professors might condemn them as “provincial” or even (Heaven forfend) “filiopietistic,” today’s graduate students shun the Revolution and Republic periods.
Don’t get me wrong, Texas has a rich history and Texans should explore it in its entirety. Still, I have to chuckle when my young colleagues tell me that they research twentieth-century Texas because historians have so ignored the period.
Allow me to submit that the Texas Revolution is not settled history; much research remains before Texans can claim to have a full understanding of that pivotal event. President Ronald Reagan once quipped, “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” Likewise, our problem with the Texas Revolution is not that we have studied it too much, but that so much of what we know about it just ain’t true.