Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.) -- Siege, 1836 -- Fiction; Texas -- History -- Revolution, 1835-1836 -- Fiction; War stories; Western stories
“And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees.”
The memorial of wrongs, which resulted in the Declaration of Texan
Independence, was drawn up with statesmanlike ability by David G.
Burnett, a native of New Jersey, a man of great learning, dignity, and
experience; who, as early as 1806, sailed from New York to join Miranda
in his effort to give Spanish America liberty. The paper need not be
quoted here. It gave the greatest prominence to the refusal of trial
by jury, the failure too establish a system of public education, the
tyranny of military law, the demand that the colonists should give up
arms necessary for their protection or their sustenance, the inciting
of the Indians to massacre the American settlers, and the refusal of
the right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their
own consciences. Burnett was elected Governor, and Houston felt that he
could now give his whole attention to military affairs.
The seat of Government was removed to Harrisburg, a small place on the
Buffalo Bayou; and Houston was sure that this change would cause Santa
Anna to diverge from his route to Nacogdoches. He dispatched orders to
the men scattered up and down the Brazos from Washington to Fort Bend--a
distance of eighty miles--to join him on the march to Harrisburg, and he
struck his own camp at the time he had specified.
In less than twenty-four hours they reached San Felipe, a distance of
twenty-eight miles. The suffering of the women and children on that
march can never be told. Acts of heroism on the part of the men and of
fortitude on the part of the women that are almost incredible, marked
every step of the way. The Senora sat in her wagon, speechless, and lost
in a maze of melancholy anguish. She did not seem to heed want, or
cold, or wet, or the utter misery of her surroundings. Her soul
had concentrated all its consciousness upon the strand of hair she
continually smoothed through her fingers. Dr. Worth, in his capacity of
physician, accompanied the flying families, and he was thus able to pay
some attention to his distraught wife; but she answered nothing he said
to her. If she looked at him, her eyes either flamed with anger, or
expressed something of the terror to be seen in the eyes of a hunted
animal. It was evident that her childish intelligence had seized upon
him as the most obvious cause of all her loss and misery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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