March 6 —
(as it looked at the battle)
Today at 5pm, in 1836, a dreadful silence breaks out over a former mission and important but indefensible fort. The shelling is over, and the uneasy quiet is louder than the shelling that had preceded it. On 6 March 1836, at the Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna’s forces killed 189 Texan defenders and later executed more than 342 Texan prisoners including James Walker Fannin at the Goliad Massacre (27 March 1836) in a manner similar to the
executions he witnessed of Mexican rebels in the 1810s as a young soldier. The few survivors are quickly rounded up and executed by order of the commanding general, Antonio De Lopez Santa Anna. It was his intention to
prevent the men from re-grouping and coming after him, as well as to prevent them from becoming martyrs. The defeat at the Alamo however served its real purpose of buying time for General Sam Houston and his Texas forces.
Texas Governor and Hero of Texas’s War of Independence
Houston and his soldiers defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836, with the Texan army shouting “Remember Goliad, Remember the Alamo!” The day after the battle, on 22 April, a small band of Texan forces led by James Sylvester captured Santa Anna, dressed in a dragoon private’s uniform and hiding in a marsh.
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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com