MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY VOL. IV a MAY 1880 THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO No. 5 HE battle of San Jacinto, though a remarkable instance of triumph. by a small irregular force over superior numbers of regular troops, is mainly interesting on account of its ultimate results. The defeat of about thirteen hundred men by seven hundred and eightythree, in a fight of eighteen minutes duration, in which the effective valor was all on one side, and the slaughter, wrought mainly in pursuit, was almost wholly on the other, may be viewed as uninteresting by a mere military student, but not so by the student of history. The reader is doubtless acquainted with Creasy's able and well known work, called "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of History." The actions included in its list, though selected with great judgment, are not all remarkable for numbers engaged, extent of carnage, or generalship displayed, nor for the immediate fruits of victory; but only for the consequences, more or less remote, of the event. They are battles which would have left a different course for history had the turn of success been opposite to what it was. Some of them are important only on that account. The action which the author selects as the most decisive of the many which, before the day of Waterloo, arose out of the French Revolution, is that of Valmy, though it seems insignificant if we cast no glance beyond the immediate field of combat. It was a big artillery skirmish, a drawn fight, with no uncommon display of skill on either side, far less important apparently than the victory won by the same French army soon after at Jemmapes, and less important than most of Napoleon's battles. But to that army the avoidance of defeat on the earlier field was a success. The trial of nerve at Valmy taught the raw French levies that they could stand fire in front of veterans. The Republican volunteer saw that none of his comrades flinched under cannonade, and this made. him firm and victorious on the next field. Had there been no Valmy, there would have been no Jemmapes; had there been no Jemmapes, there would have been no Austerlitz, and no Waterloo would have been needed to avenge it. With as much reason may we say: had there been no San Jacinto, there would have been no Palo Alto, and had there been no Palo Alto, it is highly probable there would have been no Bull Run or Gettysburg. The steps of the outcome I will endeavor to trace. Successfully as the defensive campaign of 1836 in Texas terminated, the merit of its guidance by General Sam Houston has been a subject of fierce controversy. He had the peculiar traits which create blind partizanship and bitter opposition; his defenders had as little candor as his assailants, and he had less than either. Hence his merits and faults have been themes of exaggeration, the truth, as usual, lying between them. Had he conducted to victory a campaign against such fearful odds, and under the most distracting difficulties, without one oversight or error, he would have been more infallible than Napoleon; and had he achieved success without possessing ordinary courage and judgment, we would have to class him with those, heroes of epic song whom the gods made invincible after leaving out the brains. Though a remarkable man, he was neither one nor the other of those impossible creations. To make an account of the battle of San Jacinto fully interesting it is necessary to tell of what went immediately before it; but in sketching that forty days' campaign, for the purpose of giving my own views of certain points, I shall relate as briefly as is consistent with clearness all undisputed events which are to be found in detailed histories, cas ordw Houston had been appointed, in 1835, by the Provisional Government of Texas, a major-general of regular troops, with the right to command all volunteer forces which might be raised in the country, or come from abroad to offer their services; but the anarchy into which that government fell so neutralized his authority that he was unable, as he conceived, to exert any effective control over the command of Fannin at Goliad, the garrison of San Antonio, or the smaller bands of Johnson and Grant, on the Nueces. The result was they were never concentrated, nor subjected to the orders of a single head; they were consequently cut up in detail about the time that Houston took the field. Thus over seven hundred men were sacrificed without any gain to the cause of Texas. Had Houston been on the western frontier during the whole time that those detachments were there, performing no profitable service, he could possibly have saved them by effecting a concentration. His mere presence has sometimes accomplished no little; and had it been more continuously with those troops, he could probably have made his authority (curtailed though it was) sufficiently effective; but during much of the |