Book Description

Drawing upon Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Texas historian Clarence Wharton defined the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto-when Mexican Emperor Santa Anna and his army were driven out of that huge southern region-as the sixteenth most decisive battle in world history. Set against the backdrop of the defense of the Alamo by William Travis, and the subsequent Mexican massacre of American prisoners at Goliad, this work tells the story of the forty fateful days between the retreat from Gonzales and the epic battle at Lynchburg, now called San Jacinto. Wharton points out that Creasy's stipulations for a "decisive battle" as those in which a contrary result "would have essentially varied the drama of the world." "Had he won, the Texas settlements would have been wiped out and Mexican supremacy would have been re-established north and east of the Rio Grande. The Anti-Slavery sentiment in the northern States was so opposed to the acquisition of more territory in which the spread of slavery was feared, that these States would have been allies of Mexico against further Southern aggression. "Twenty years later we were in the throes of our Civil War and European statesmen were against our further western expansion. The vast territory won at San Jacinto and the still vaster area won by the Mexican War which followed as a proximate result, was an empire in domain which might have remained Mexican or passed to European countries. A million square miles, including the present States of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and portions of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, were won at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.