A day that changed the landscape for two nations
Today is San Jacinto Day, marking the end of Mexican rule of Texas.Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Even those who understand that April 21 is not just another day in Texas sometimes fail to see its full significance.
In Texas, April 21 is known as San Jacinto Day, the day Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna — known in his day as the Napoleon of the West — met defeat at the hands of the Texian Army commanded by Gen. Sam Houston. The surrender not only ended Mexican rule of Texas but opened the door to ending Mexican domain over most of what is today the Southwestern United States.
When Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, the dream of Manifest Destiny moved a step closer to becoming reality. Spain controlled the west until 1821, when Mexico — which then included the modern states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado and California — won its independence.
Had Santa Anna been able to quell the rebellion of Texas secessionists in 1836, Mexico would have continued to block U.S. expansion westward. For how long is a matter of conjecture because Mexico didn't have the people or the resources to occupy territory that stretched from what is now Texas to California in the West to the Canadian border to the North. Losing Texas in 1836 set in motion events that would lead to the Mexican-American War 10 years later.
When that war was over, Mexico was cut in half and the United States expanded its borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, from the Rio Grande to Canada.
Houston's victory at San Jacinto wasn't a universal cause for celebration, however. Slavery, outlawed by the Mexicans, was allowed in Texas in its days as an independent republic and later as a state. Whether slavery would be allowed in the territory Jefferson purchased was a bedeviling and hotly debated topic at the time until the debate exploded in the U.S. Civil War in 1861.
Tejanos — Texans with Mexican roots — were subject to legal and social discrimination that is still being sorted out 173 years after Santa Anna surrendered.
History and its impact are never one-dimensional. One person's notion of glory is another's notion of gloom. Like all anniversaries, April 21 is a multi-dimensional one loaded with significance for the U.S. and the people who inhabited it then as well as now.
It's not just another day.
Today is San Jacinto Day, marking the end of Mexican rule of Texas.Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Even those who understand that April 21 is not just another day in Texas sometimes fail to see its full significance.
In Texas, April 21 is known as San Jacinto Day, the day Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna — known in his day as the Napoleon of the West — met defeat at the hands of the Texian Army commanded by Gen. Sam Houston. The surrender not only ended Mexican rule of Texas but opened the door to ending Mexican domain over most of what is today the Southwestern United States.
When Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, the dream of Manifest Destiny moved a step closer to becoming reality. Spain controlled the west until 1821, when Mexico — which then included the modern states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado and California — won its independence.
Had Santa Anna been able to quell the rebellion of Texas secessionists in 1836, Mexico would have continued to block U.S. expansion westward. For how long is a matter of conjecture because Mexico didn't have the people or the resources to occupy territory that stretched from what is now Texas to California in the West to the Canadian border to the North. Losing Texas in 1836 set in motion events that would lead to the Mexican-American War 10 years later.
When that war was over, Mexico was cut in half and the United States expanded its borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, from the Rio Grande to Canada.
Houston's victory at San Jacinto wasn't a universal cause for celebration, however. Slavery, outlawed by the Mexicans, was allowed in Texas in its days as an independent republic and later as a state. Whether slavery would be allowed in the territory Jefferson purchased was a bedeviling and hotly debated topic at the time until the debate exploded in the U.S. Civil War in 1861.
Tejanos — Texans with Mexican roots — were subject to legal and social discrimination that is still being sorted out 173 years after Santa Anna surrendered.
History and its impact are never one-dimensional. One person's notion of glory is another's notion of gloom. Like all anniversaries, April 21 is a multi-dimensional one loaded with significance for the U.S. and the people who inhabited it then as well as now.
It's not just another day.
