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Editor says, what if Santa Anna had won the Battle of San Jacinto? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the May 2010 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1836, at the Battle of San Jacinto, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna defeated the forces of U.S.-born Gen. Samuel Houston, commander in chief of the revolutionary forces of the breakaway state of Texas, and captured Houston himself, after the latter's attempt to counter the superior Mexican numbers with a surprise attack failed.
Santa Anna wins the Battle of San Jacinto by Eric LippsThe battle would deliver a crippling blow to Texan morale, and would prove to be the tipping point in the failed struggle for Texan independence. The American Texans, or "Texians" as they were commonly called, had been retreating toward the border with the United states since the fall of the Alamo. Now that retreat became a rout, joined by many American settlers whose presence complicated the efforts of the Texian army to regroup. Tattered remnants of the once-proud force eventually limped across the border into Louisiana along with several thousand civilian refugees.
Houston would be freed by the Mexican government as a result of diplomatic efforts on the part of President Andrew Jackson. He would, however, return home in humiliation. He had emigrated to Texas originally to avoid the stigma attached to his name by a fight with Ohio congressman William Stanberry which had led to a high-profile trial and conviction for assault for which he had escaped serious punishment only with the help of influential friends.. Now his failure in Mexico was added to that burden. An ambitious man, he saw his political prospects shrivel. He resumed his long-abandoned practice as a lawyer, but found his reputation a serious hindrance in attracting clients.
Houston's disgrace and the defeat of his "Texians" meant the end of the idea of Texan independence, Ironically, Houston himself had preferred not independence but annexation of Texas by the United States. Texas would remain the property of Mexico despite periodic efforts by U.S. "filibusters" to foment a new rebellion. The last such effort would come in 1859, as civil war loomed in the United States and slaveholding Southerners sought to add one or more new slave states to the Union to strengthen their position. Its failure arguably shortened the war, which ended in Northern victory in November 1864, just after the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln.
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Eric Lipps
© Eric Lipps,2007-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Sam Houston, Texas, Santa Anna, San Jacinto, Texian.
~ Sounds kinda ASB-ish, if you ask me...
~ Not really. Houston's forces were steadily retreating even in our timeline after the Alamo, until his surprise attack at San Jacinto allowed him to capture Santa Anna. I don't think it's all that hard to imagine the attack failing, especially given that Santa Anna had more men.
Comment from Ahmad Desai on Facebook: "Don't think it would have made a diff. in the long run. Santa had lots of political enemies back home and Mexico was broke. The empire was hell-bent on stealing all of that land and there was no way that Mexico was going to be able to keep it."
~ That would pretty much end things for the moment for anglos in Texas but with American interest in expansion it is likely that Jackson or his successors would try to what Polk tried in offering Mexico American money for Texas and other territory since Mexico was bankrupt and America was rich. Polk offered Mexico a Louisiana purchase deal, which Mexican politicans refused for political reasons and America eventually found reason to go to war and got everything they wanted. Admittedly with Texas Indepenance the pretext was easy and legitimate but politiicians are creative in their schemes.
~ This would have been a setback for the Americanization of Texas, but I think that the writing was on the wall no matter what happened at San Jacinto. And I can't see a blockhead like Santa Anna being smart enough to not kill all his prisoners---see what he'd done in the Yucatan sometime---and that would have infuriated the US even more than the Alamo did.
Comment on Gregory Mitchell on Facebook: Then Texas and the Southwest would have a huge Hispanic population. ....... Oh, wait.....
Comment from Robert Fries on Facebook: The annexation of Texas was prompted by the influx of English speaking people. We are now reversing that trend.
Comment on Gregory Mitchell on Facebook: Si.
~ The huge Hispanic population makes no sense. The biggest reason why Mexico lost the lands they did was failure to populate them. The big Hispanic populations in our Southwest date from the Mexican revolution of 1911. the big Mexican populations in the adjacent states date from the post WW2 period. In pure demographic terms US could have annexed the rest of north Mexico for all it mattered anytime up to 1911.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
