Michener, James A. (78 page)

When 1 revived, very sore in the head I can tell you, there was Otto standing over me with his gun. The Mexican, a young man with dark skin and a mustache, was hiding behind him. Otto told me that the Mexican was Benito Garza, and that he had saved Otto's life at Goliad. ! had the strange feeling that this Garza was looking at me as if he were a rattlesnake, seething inside with hatred which must some day spit forth.

At the end of that last paragraph I fell asleep, and I'm sure you can understand why, but 1 awoke this morning to a magnificent piece of news. One of our men, name of Yancey Quimper, by a feat of arms which he says was extraordinary, has captured Santa Anna, and we have him now in a tent being guarded by seven. Otto and I and all the men around us wanted to kill Santa Anna, and we were downright angry when General Houston treated him like an honorable foe, giving him better food than we're getting. I was one of a committee of six who met with Houston and told him 'We want to hang that man,' but he reasoned with us and said 'Our battle is only half won. Bigger ones may lie ahead, and I plan to use Santa Anna as our principal cannon.'

My friend Otto would not accept this, and when he told General Houston what he himself had seen at Goliad and how his own father had been run down like a coyote, tears came to General Houston's eyes and with his forefinger he traced the scar on Otto's face and asked 'Did you get that at Goliad?' and Otto said 'I did, Sir, killing a man who was trying to kill me,' and Houston said 'It is your badge of honor, son, and mine will be to treat Santa Anna better than he treated us.'

Tonight I am very afraid, Sir, and I hope that you will pray for me, and for Otto and for all the brave Texicans who fought so many with so few, for if the Mexicans assemble their armies in this area, they could still overwhelm us.

It is rumored that if I survive the next great battles, I shall be entitled to many acres of the best land in Texas, and this is a country with a potential for greatness. Inform Miss Betsy Belle, if you will, that she should start now to prepare the things she will want to bring to Texas, for Otto tells me that he once traveled along some excellent land on the Brazos River and he will show me how to claim on it. If I live, Sir, I shall post haste to Mississippi and marry Miss Betsy Belle the morning I arrive, and please to inform her of same.

Your loving son in God, Martin

p.s. Do not tell Mother or Betsy Belle about the knife work in the swamp. They might not understand.

Ascot's report of Quimper's heroism in capturing Santa Anna did I not reflect the truth. On the morning after the battle, Quimper and two buddies, one a young fellow from Kentucky named Sylvester, had quit trying to capture Mexican survivors and were hunting deer for the mess. When they saw six or seven bucks suddenly take flight for no apparent cause, Sylvester, a skilled huntsman, said: 'Somethin' spooked them deer,' and when they investigated, Yancey saw a man huddling on the ground and trying to hide in some bushes, dressed in old clothes.

He was about to shoot him when Sylvester shouted: The battle's over, for Christ's sake. Let him live.'

'Get up, you swine!' Yancey shouted, but the quivering man remained on the ground, whimpering. The men dragged their prisoner into camp, and he would have been thrown into the ordinary compound except that sharp-eyed Yancey saw several Mexicans begin to salute.

'Stop that!' one man commanded his fellow prisoners, but it was too late.

'He's a general, by God!' Yancey called, and when the man was . shoved forward the Mexicans in the compound began to kiss his hands and call him El Presidente.

'We've got Santy Anny!' Quimper shouted, and he spent the rest of that day parading about the Texican tents, announcing himself as 'the man who captured Santy Anny.'

Otto, who was near General Houston's cot when the Mexican general was brought before him, heard Santa Anna's first words: 'Congratulaciones, Mi General, ha derrotado El Napoleon del Oeste.'

'What did he say?' Houston asked.

Otto translated: ' "You have defeated the Napoleon of the West." '

'Tell him to sit down.'

Houston had more difficulty with another visitor, Mrs. Peggy McCormick, owner of the farm on which the historic battle had taken place: Tell me, who's going to bury all these dead bodies cluttering up my place?'

'We'll bury the Texicans,' Houston replied graciously as he adjusted his throbbing leg.

'How about those hundreds of Mexicans?'

'Why, madam, your land will be famed in history as the spot where the glorious battle was fought.'

'To the devil with your glorious victory. Take off your stinking Mexicans.'

'That's Santa Anna's problem.'

She demanded to see the general, and when he was produced she asked him in Spanish: 'And what do you intend doing about all those bodies?' and he replied: The fortunes of war, madam. I can do nothing.'

The true miracle of the battle of San Jacinto transpired some days after it ended, because a greater danger persisted than the one Houston had conquered. The Mexicans had under arms in Tejas some five thousand of their best troops, led by skilled generals: Filisola the Italian, Woll the Frenchman, and Ripperda from Yucatan, who had joined forces with Urrea, the victor at Goliad. If they coalesced, and they were not far separated, they could drive Houston right to the borders of Louisiana, and annihilate him if they overtook him.

But now Houston's brilliance showed itself, for by the force of his remarkable personality he kept Santa Anna alive, appreciating the fact that if he allowed him to be hanged, as most of the Texicans wished, the man would become an instant martyr, a hero who had to be avenged, just as the martyrs of the Alamo and Goliad had had to be avenged. But if he could be kept alive, a prisoner in humiliating disgrace, his martyrdom would be avoided;

also, he would be available to issue orders to the other generals to disband their troops and go home. As dictator of Mexico he would still command their obedience.

So with a skill that Metternich or Talleyrand would have applauded, this Tennessee cardsharp used Santa Anna the way a long-practiced fisherman uses a fly to trap a trout. He coddled him, he flattered him, he even arranged for him to be sent to Washington to interview the President of the United States, but first he obtained from him orders to his generals to go home.

Miraculously, they obeyed. This powerful army, which could have won so many battles, dislodged so many plans, supinely obeyed their imprisoned leader—when the whole tradition of war dictated that they ignore any command issued by a man in the clutches of an enemy—and took their men quietly out of Tejas, which would know that lovely Spanish designation no more. It was now Texas. By the merest thread of chance it had become Texas, and so it would remain.

Of the three men from the Victoria dog-runs, each lost his battle: Campbell in the Alamo, Macnab at Goliad, and Garza in the swamps at San Jacinto. But each contributed to the grandeur upon which the Republic of Texas was founded.

For the living, the fortunes generated by this battle were both mundane and dramatic. Yancey Quimper appropriated the title 'Hero of San Jacinto.' Peggy McCormick, in the years following the war, earned tidy sums from selling the endless battle mementos scattered across her farm, but both Pamela Mann and Juan Seguin ran into trouble.

After the war Mrs. Mann moved to the burgeoning town of Houston, where she ran the Mansion House, a disreputable hotel noted for its brawls, duels and repeated police raids, which she handled deftly with her two pistols. However, an especially blatant disregard for the law resulted in a court trial, and she received the death sentence. It was commuted because of her bold behavior during the war.

Seguin started out famously as the mayor of San Antonio, but his tenure was turbulent, and he fled to Mexico. Later he returned as a member of a Mexican invading army that captured San Antonio and held it briefly. A strong opponent to union with the United States, he did his best to make Texas once more a part of Mexico, and died, disappointed, at the age of eighty-three.

Benito Garza, languishing in a prisoner-of-war camp, had to relinquish his dream of ever becoming Gobernador de la Provincia de Tejas; he spent his idle hours brooding over his opposition to the Texicans, an obsession that would intensify and never abate.

And Joel job Harrison acquired the right to conduct Methodist services openly, which he did in wooden churches he established in various parts of the new nation.

Immortality was visited upon the least likely participant in the battle. Emily Morgan, who had diverted General Santa Anna's attention that hot afternoon just before the charge of the Texicans, became celebrated in song as 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' and few who sing it in romantic settings realize that they are serenading the memory of a mulatto slave.

Meteoric was the rise of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar: 25 March 1836, return to Texas; 20 April, private foot soldier; 21 April, cavalry colonel; 5 May, Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Sam Houston; 24 June, major general; 25 June, commander in chief of the entire Texas army; 5 September, vice-president of the republic. And even greater glories lay ahead.

And Otto Macnab went his quiet but very determined way.

. . . TASK FORCE

As soon as the staff announced that our December meeting would be held near Houston at the monument marking the Battle of San Jacinto, we members decided that for this important session, no outside authority would be imported. Instead, we would invite the general public to a convocation at which we five would be seated at a table with microphones. Each would offer a brief opening statement regarding the significance of the Texas revolution, after which the visitors would be invited to make such observations as they wished, or pose questions that bothered them.

We anticipated a lively meeting, with perhaps two dozen local history aficionados who would know more about San Jacinto than we did. It was our hope to make them feel that they had shared decision-making regarding their schools, but when we approached the monument—'There she stands, five hundred and seventy-one feet high, taller than the Washington one'—we found a line waiting outside and standees crowding the inside. 'What's up?' I asked a guard, and he said: The experts you invited are here, but so is this mob. They're waiting to see Ransom Rusk,' and when I asked why, he said: 'They've never seen a real, live billionaire,' but a

woman who overheard this corrected him: 'We want to see Lorenzo Quimper and his boots. He's such a dear.'

When the last person had been wedged into the hall and loudspeakers installed for those outside, I opened the session with brief remarks, commending the condition of the monument and reminding visitors that when our meeting ended they would be served punch aboard the battleship Texas moored nearby: 'Unique among our great warships, the Texas patrolled the coastline during five major landings in World War II. Texans like to participate in major events.'

Miss Cobb started our presentation with a reminder that when Texas patriots defended their rights in 1836, they not only won their own freedom but also set in motion those currents which would, a decade later, secure liberation for New Mexico, Arizona and California: The geographical shape of the United States today was ensured by the heroic actions of a few Texicans who resisted General Santa Anna's brutal oppressions on this very field.'

Ransom Rusk told the audience: 'I think we must recognize that even if the Texas revolution had not occurred, states like Arizona and California might have stumbled their way into the Union, because of local conditions. In the case of Texas, it was essential that some kind of stable buffer be established between the anglo-dominated Mississippi River and the Mexican-dominated Rio Grande. During the nineteenth century we provided that buffer, and at times we seemed more like a separate nation mediating between two larger nations than a typical American state like Virginia or Ohio. And I think that Texas will always have that peculiar character. It's a part of the United States, unquestionably, but it has its own personality, something unique and wonderful, which the rest of this nation needs.'

Lorenzo Quimper, recognized by the crowd as a descendant of the Hero of San Jacinto, rather neatly down-played his ancestor's performance while at the same time implying that without the heroic Yancey, the battle would probably have been lost. Starting out with what he called 'my highfalutin' Texan,' he sounded like Pericles delivering his oration on the grandeur of Athens: 'On solemn days like this, when we celebrate our great victory, we must remember the true character of the Texicans who won freedom for us. Five times they faced the Mexican army, and four times they lost by tremendous margins: Alamo, Goliad, Santa Fe and the Mier Expedition, crushing defeats which might have disheartened the bravest. But mixed in with those defeats was a resplendent victory, San Jacinto.' Here the audience broke into cheers, which encouraged Lorenzo to relax his speech a bit: 'Us Texans have always had

that basic character. We can absorb one defeat after another: drought, plague, financial collapse, heartbreakin' loss in the Civil War, misbehavior of elected officials . . .' At the height of his impassioned oratory he hesitated for just a moment, half smiled, and added: 'Even losin' in football to Oklahoma!' When the crowd stamped and whistled he dropped into pure ranch-hand Texan: 'But us Texans, we always recover. Fact is, we don't never know when we're whupped, which is why we so seldom git whupped.' II Magnifico was the hit of the show, the authentic voice of Texas.

Efrain Garza took a more sober approach: 'My ancestor fought at San Jacinto, too. In the army of Santa Anna.' Silence. 'So it is highly probable that the early Quimper faced the early Garza that day, perhaps right where we sit.' Suddenly he shot out his hand to grasp Quimper's: 'But now we're friends. We're one people.' The crowd cheered and stamped again. 'But as so often happens, the battle settled only part of the problem that had caused it in the first place. It determined, as Miss Cobb has so accurately stated, that a huge corner of Mexico would ultimately become a part of the United States.' More applause. 'But it did not decide how the new addition would be incorporated. What theory of law would prevail? How would Mexicans like my ancestors who had lived here for many generations be received in the Union? And how would their rights be preserved? Some of these questions still wait to be settled.'