The Messed Up Truth Of The Texas Revolution

In the rankings of iconic American moments, it's hard to think of one more iconic or more American than the Battle of the Alamo. The bloody siege endured by Texan revolutionaries at the hands of Mexican dictator Santa Anna is so intertwined with the legend of America's rise that it's hard not to picture Davy Crockett fighting while draped in the Stars and Stripes and yelling, "'Murica!" We're all familiar with the basic outlines of the story: Texas got fed up being in Mexico, Mexico tried to stop it leaving by killing everyone at the Alamo, so Texas righteously pummelled the Mexican army, then had a victory party by joining the USA. Man, just reading that sentence is enough to bring you out in a severe case of patriotism.

The trouble is, that spirit-stirring summary is just that — a summary. And it's one that misses all the really dark and disturbing stuff that happened in the course of Texas's 1835-36 revolution. Stuff so unsettling it might make you see Texas' foundational myth in a whole new light, one that's less "remember the Alamo!" and more "what the heck, Texas?" From fights over grass to that peculiar institution, here's the messed up truth of the Texas Revolution.

We've all seen places where gentrification has pushed the locals out, and that's basically what happened in northern Mexico after 1823. Only instead of tech gurus and failed screenplay writers, it was an influx of Stetson-wearing farmers that turned Coahuila y Tejas from a Mexican state to an overwhelmingly white one.

Here are some figures, according to Smithsonian. By 1830, white settlers in Texas outnumbered Mexicans five to one. This was partly due to Mexico's generous immigration policy, but it was also due to poor border screening. The people in charge of monitoring the influx were often white settlers themselves, like Stephen F. Austin (pictured above). Many of these guys tended to look the other way even if the new arrivals were con men on the run from the law (stand up, Jim Bowie). They also weren't great at checking if the newbies were loyal to Mexico. In fact, a whole bunch of Texians — as they called themselves — moved in while openly proclaiming that they wanted Texas to secede.

Eventually, the Mexican government cottoned on to the fact that it had shot itself clean through the foot and cancelled the settlement program. By then, though, they had tens of thousands of seditious white guys living on their northern frontier. All it would take would be the slightest spark to turn this smoldering issue into an inferno.

When Santa Anna became president of Mexico, people in Texas were all like "party time!" As the biggest respecter of states' rights in Mexico, Santa Anna was the guy the settlers had been dreaming of — someone who'd leave them alone to run Texas like an independent state. But Santa Anna was a political weasel who'd take any position so long as its end goal was helping Santa Anna. After he secured the presidency, he dropped his federalism faster than a flaming pair of pants, and instead, he laid down his Seven Laws.

Coming in late 1835, the Seven Laws were so hilariously anti-federalist they must've seemed like a practical joke. Basically, if you boiled the laws down, they would read something like this: "Laws One through Seven — Santa Anna rules, everyone else drools." States' rights were crushed, and every department was placed under military command. Those nightmares about the guv'ment that keep your paranoid uncle awake at night? Santa Anna was basically making all of them come true at once.

To say this was a screw you to the population of Mexico is a little like noting the religious propensities of Popes or the defecation habits of mammals from the genus Ursidae. The states of Zacatecas and Coahuila y Tejas exploded in revolt. Spoiler alert: Only one of those revolutions is actually gonna pan out.

With Zacatecas now standing as a flaming monument to what happens when you cross Santa Anna, the revolutionaries in Texas decided to get serious about their revolt. Things technically kicked off with the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835, but that was such a half-hearted effort that calling it a battle is really overstating it. Mexican casualties were minimal, and the only Texan injury was a guy who fell off his horse and bloodied his nose (via Medium). Nah, the action only really started when a Texan militia laid siege to San Antonio. Unfortunately, even this serious attempt at playing soldiers would wind up leaving everyone embarrassed, courtesy of the Grass Fight.

According to ThoughtCo, during the siege, the Texans spotted a relief column of Mexicans approaching the town with pack animals laden down by heavy bags. Determined not to let the besieged Mexicans get any supplies, Jim Bowie and around 150 men rode out to make mincemeat of the relief column. As the Texas State Library describes, the Texans attacked the Mexicans, killing three of them and seizing their animals. It's at this point that things got really dumb.

Opening the animals' heavy bags, the Texans discovered not supplies or coins but piles and piles of grass. The "relief column" they'd attacked had been a bunch of local guys just trying to get some food for the animals trapped in San Antonio. Awkward.

The Battle of the Alamo is famous for its heroism, as around 200 Texans valiantly held off over 1,000 Mexican soldiers for 13 days. But the image you might have of these rag-tag frontier men staring down a well-trained army isn't exactly accurate. See, when Santa Anna (pictured above) marched north to mess up Texas, it wasn't at the head of a gung-ho invasion force. It was at the head of hundreds of ill-equipped indigenous peasants dragooned into fighting.

According to Smithsonian, Santa Anna's army was run on conscription, and conscription in 1830s Mexico meant being told at gunpoint to leave your village and come fight. Many, if not most, of his men were indigenous peasants corralled during the long march north, and plenty of them were ill-equipped. Winter that year was viciously cold, and there are tales of men forced to wrap their bare feet in rags to stave off frostbite. Many died on the journey.

If you've ever seen the casualty statistics from the Alamo and given a little inner cheer at the much higher number of Mexican deaths, just know that most of those killed were starving, frostbitten peasants forced to choose between marching toward a fortified compound and likely death or refusing to go and facing certain death at Santa Anna's hands. Err ... 'Murica?

The Alamo's endgame was a series of massacres. Inside, the Texans were chopped up with bayonets, while outside, Historian Alan Huffines contends some 50 men who tried to flee were run down and gored with lances (via Smithsonian). After it was all over, Santa Anna had all the free male survivors executed (women and slaves he allowed to leave). But if that sounds seriously messed up, just know it wasn't even Santa Anna's worst massacre of the revolution. That would come at Goliad.

The next major Texan battle after the Alamo, Goliad isn't well-remembered today because it was less a heroic last stand and more an epic blunder. After a series of incompetent decisions (via History), some 350 Texans managed to get themselves captured. The Mexican commander assured the prisoners they would be treated as POWs, and he even wrote to Santa Anna asking him to show leniency. Instead, Santa Anna wrote back demanding all 350 men be executed.

On March 27, the prisoners were put into four columns and marched off in different directions. They went peacefully, having been told they were being transferred to prison. But the minute they were out of sight of the other columns, the guards opened fire, slaughtering the prisoners. Some 350 died that day. But the last laugh was on Santa Anna. It would be the Goliad massacre that spurred the Texans on to their final victory at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Despite what historical movies would have you believe, the Battle of the Alamo was not a bunch of white guys facing down hordes of swarthy Mexicans. While white Texans made up the majority of the revolutionaries, they were joined by Mexican-descended Tejanos, southern Europeans, Native Americans, free blacks, and even slaves who fought alongside them. In fact, the only reason we know what happened at the Alamo is because a slave named Joe was spared and later reported it. The Texas Revolution was so multi-ethnic that Smithsonian has called it "almost a laboratory in multiculturalism."

Yet barely had the smoke settled over the Alamo than the story of all the non-white fighters was being written out of history. Paintings, textbooks, and (later) movies all conspired to enforce the myth that the revolution was a race war. It was whitewashing on a colossal scale. And the end result was a sad, enduring belief in the Texas Republic as some kind of white's only paradise, all courtesy of those lies taught in history class.

Smithsonian's article interviewed Latinx Texans who grew up in the mid-20th century and recalled being bullied during history lessons on the Alamo (sometimes by their white teachers). At the same time, the fact that many of the heroes of the revolution were slaveholders was carefully deleted, creating a myth not just of heroic white dudes but heroic white dudes who didn't own other people and treat them as disposable possessions. History, kids — it's sometimes really messed up.