Remember the Alamo!” ” Remember Goliad! – battle cries of vengeance, honor, and the revolutionaries of Texas .
Texians were residents of Mexican Texas regardless of race and, later, the Republic of Texas.
Native Americans and some Spanish of the era are referred to as Tejanos.
Anglo settlers were also sometimes referred as Texans, but all residents of modern Texas are known simply as Texans.
From October 2, 1835 – April 21, 1836 Texians revolted against Mexico due to an increasingly corrupt government.
Imagine that.
On December 25, 1835 while still at Velasco, the Georgia Battalion presented itself for service to aid the Texans in the Texas Revolution.
During Texas’ war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texan and other volunteer soldiers occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio.
On February 23, 1836, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort.
Though vastly outnumbered, the Alamo’s 200 defenders–commanded by James Bowie and William B Travis and including the famed frontiersman Davy Crockett–held out courageously for 13 days before the Mexican invaders finally overpowered them.
Over the years, the concept of defenders of the Alamo being heroic is ingrained in the history of this state—and in the psyche of most Texans.
The Alamo has been compared to the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, in which an outnumbered Greek army fended off a much larger Persian army for several days before being annihilated and has mesmerized the world ever since.
For Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became an enduring symbol of their heroic resistance to oppression and their struggle for independence, which they won later that year.
Blood for Blood and to hell with the odds.
Texans were the bravest and most indomitable fighters of all.
Colonel James W. Fannin, was commander of all the volunteer troops in Texas.
After the defeat of theat the Alamo, Colonel James Fannin and some Texans were in the town of Coleto Creek.
Sam Houston orders the Texans to retreat east across Texas in a zig zag pattern, but Fannin delayed.
Mexican General Jose Urrea surrounded Colonel James Fannin & the Texans at Coleto Creek .
The Texans surrender at the discretion of Colonel James Fannin.
Santa Anna orders the Texans to be massacred even though they surrendered.
Texans were shackled and shot at gunpoin,t with only a few escaping.
Eventually, these troops were all stationed at Goliad, near the San Antonio River.
When Sam Houston arrived in Gonzales on March 11 and was informed of the fall of the Alamo, he decided upon retreat to the Colorado River and ordered all inhabitants to accompany him.
Couriers were dispatched from Gonzales to carry the news of the fall of the Alamo, and when they received that news, people all over Texas began to leave everything and make their way to safety.
When the Texans first heard stories of Mexican troops swarming through the land, they reacted in standard and utterly human fashion—with panic and hysteria – the chips were down, and our forefathers hauled ass for the Sabine River.
Participants called the exodus the Runaway Scrape.
During the runaway, the colonists gathered a few personal possessions, abandoned their homes, and headed eastward under most difficult conditions.
Rain and cold weather during the period slowed the settler’s eastward progress along the muddy roads and trails.
There was widespread hunger and sickness, and many died where they fell.
As Gen Antonio López de Santa Anna began his conquest of Texas in February 1836. stories of the atrocities added to the frenzy.
He crossed in mid-February with his best generals, about 4,000 men, and artillery.
The tiny Texan garrison at the Alamo was annihilated, and the rebellious colonists began to run for their lives as early as January 14, 1836, when the Mexicans were reported gathering on the Rio Grande.
The first communities to be affected were those in the south central portions of Texas around San Patricio, Refugio, and San Antonio.
When Texas army commander Sam Houston received word of the tragedy on March 11, he was in Gonzales, a town that had sent 32 of its own men to join William Barret Travis at the
“There was not a soul left among the citizens of Gonzales who had not lost a father, husband, brother or son in that terrible massacre,” wrote colonist John M. Swisher. “I shall never forget the scene which followed the confirmation of the dreadful news. The mad agony of the widows and the shrieks of the childless and fatherless beggars all description.”
Expecting Mexican troops to overrun Gonzales at any moment, Sam Houston burned the town and ordered all civilians to follow his army eastward.
People left so fast that one house was found with fried chicken, a coffeepot, and a pitcher of milk on the dinner table.
Near Hallettsville, Indians killed and scalped two Irish immigrant families as they packed their belongings.
Rumors spread that an alliance of Cherokees, Comanches, Kiowas, Caddos, and Wichitas had joined the Mexicans.
The settlers believed that Santa Anna would kill them all: ( he probably would )Hadn’t he ordered the execution of more than three hundred prisoners at Goliad on March 27, Palm Sunday?
Houston continued to retreat, provoking desertions and mutinous grumblings among his rain-soaked troops.
One of his officers set San Felipe on fire when scouts mistook a small cattle drive for a squadron of Mexican cavalry.
By April 1 the tall-grass prairie was a scene of absolute chaos.
The spring rains fell in sheets; every river crossing was a terrifying ordeal.
Women floundered waist-deep in mud, babies in their arms.
At the Brazos, some families gave up running and simply cowered in the bottom land cane brakes.
One woman described campsites full of people singing, dancing, and laughing at the ridiculousness of their plight.
There was even a wedding.
But the comic relief did not last.
Many refugees sickened and died along the trail.
Children were abandoned.
Press-gangs requisitioned horses for Houston’s army; as often as not, those men were horse thieves.
As the exodus reached the East Texas forest, some settlers headed for Galveston Island or Louisiana
The people used any means of transportation or none at all.
More slogged through the Big Thicket.
All they wanted was the safety of American soil beyond the Sabine.
Wrote Guy M. Bryan(age 16), himself a hapless refugee,
“Often times you would pass for hundreds of yards the prairie white with feathers emptied out of the bedticks to lighten the wagons. … O! the cruel runaway scrape—how much of distress, suffering and loss it caused!”
The flight continued until news was received of Houston’s army surprise attack on Santa Anna’s troops during their siesta at San Jacinto.
At first no credence was put in this news because so many false rumors had been circulated, but gradually the refugees began to reverse their steps and turn back toward home, many toward homes that no longer existed.
Bryan recalled receiving the news:
“I could see what seemed a horseman coming rapidly towards us, he passed along the swaying line of people, they shouted and jumped about throwing up hats, bonnets … at length he passed our wagons his horse all covered with foam shouting hoarsely the Texas army has killed and captured all the Mexican Army, stop, go back to your homes.”
The Texans had, in a single day, transformed themselves from victims to victors, and the legend of virility and martyrdom that they were shaping could not admit the embarrassment of the Runaway Scrape.
The settlers immediately began the return to their settlements.
Almost before the episode was over, it was relegated to the fine print of history.
The recovery seemed speedy, however. Within a short time, the settlements were restored and the material evidence of the invasion disappeared.
As he departed from his home, one Major Bynum locked up his china and valuable furniture.
When he returned, he found that other refugees had broken in and butchered a hog on his fine mahogany table.
They were, after all, only human.
In late 1836 or early 1837 in Texas uniform
With part of the Mexican army advancing north, General Sam Houston ordered Fannin to leave Goliad and go to Victoria.
Fannin ordered a member of his staff, Lt Col William Ward, who had managed to evade the Mexican army while leaving Refugio, to meet him in Victoria.
Unfortunately, the Mexican army forced the surrender of Fannin and his men on March 20 after the Battle of Coleto.
They were taken back to Goliad as prisoners of war.
Meanwhile, Ward and his remaining men, numbering about 85, evaded the Mexican army and eventually took refuge in the Guadalupe swamp near Victoria.
While regrouping his men during the night of March 21, Ward inadvertently left behind eight men from the Georgia Battalion, one of whom was James P Trezevant.
Ward and the remainder of his men were captured by the Mexican army on March 22 near Dimmit’s Landing.
They, too, were marched back to Goliad as prisoners of war, bringing the total number of prisoners there to about 400.
On Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, most of them were lined up and bound before being gunned down by the Mexican army in what became known as the Goliad Massacre.
Virtually the entire Georgia command, and another volunteer force ,the “Red Rovers” of Alabama and the Texans including Fannin, a total of almost 390 men, were taken prisoner and massacred at Goliad ,after they lost the battles of Refugio and Coleto.
Though some of its members escaped during the massacre itself, the Georgia Battalion ceased to exist.
Those few who had stayed in the swamp or had escaped the massacre itself set out toward Houston’s army.
James Trezevant met up with three others from the swamp, Samuel G. Hardaway, Joseph Andrew, and M. K. Moses.
After a number of days of living with no provisions, they were found by scouts from Houston’s army and taken to his camp on April 2.
From there they and the army set out toward Harrisburg, on Buffalo Bayou near the San Jacinto River.
The armies of Houston and Santa Anna finally confronted each other east of Harrisburg in the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.
At least four other men from the Georgia Battalion also fought in the battle. The Texans won and Texas became an independent republic.