It was the spark in the magazine. All Texas sprang to arms under such leaders as Houston, Austin, Travis, Bonham, Fannin, "Deaf" Smith, and "Ben" Milam; took Goliad, where Milam lost his life heading a desperate assault; captured Concepcion and San Antonio, until, by the middle of December, 1836, not a Mexican soldier was left north of the Rio Grande. But Houston, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan forces, knew they would return, and bent every effort to organize a disciplined army. It was a difficult thing to do with the high-tempered and lawless elements at hand; everything was disorder and confusion, and meanwhile came word that Santa Anna himself, at the head of an army of six thousand men, was entering Texas. No effective opposition could be offered such an army; the San Antonio garrison was entrapped in the old mission called The Alamo and killed to the last man; Fannin and his force, three hundred and fifty strong, were cornered at Goliad and brutally shot down in detachments after they had surrendered; and Santa Anna, certain that Texas had been conquered, divided his army into columns to occupy the country. Houston only was left, and the fate of Texas hung on his little force; he knew he could strike but once; if he were defeated, the war for independence would end then and there; so he watched and waited, gathering together the stragglers, keeping them in heart, laboring like a very Hercules. Hundreds of miles away, in Washington, old Andrew Jackson, a map of Texas before him, followed with his finger the retreat as far as he knew it, and paused with in on San Jacinto. "Here's the place," he said. "If Sam Houston's worth one bawbee, he'll stand here and give 'em a fight." And so it was. It makes the pulses thrill, even yet, the story of that twenty-first of April, 1836; how Houston destroyed the bridge behind them, so that there could be no retreat, and then, on his great gray horse, tried to address his men, but could only cry: "Remember The Alamo"; how old Rusk could say not even that, but choked with a sob at the first word, and waved his hand toward the enemy; how the solitary fife struck up, "Will you come to the bower I have shaded for you?" while those seven hundred gaunt, starved, ragged phantoms, burning with rage at the thought of their comrades foully slain, deployed on the open prairie and charged the unsuspecting Mexican army. It was over in half an hour--the enemy annihilated, 630 killed, 200 wounded, 700 prisoners--among the prisoners Santa Anna himself, begging for mercy. And Aaron Burr, dying in New York with the vision of his Texan empire still before him, reading, weeks later, the news of the victory, cried out, "I was thirty years too soon!"