write:Mexico sustained fourteenhundred casualties in eighteen minutes while onlyseven of Houston’s men died. Texians took theirrevenge slaughtering defenseless Mexican soldiers whocr

actedbarbarously. First came the cruel slaughter of AmericanTexians by Mexican general Antonio López de SantaAnna at the Alamo. Mexican forces piled up Texiancorpses
soaked them in oil
and set them on re. AtGoliad
although his subordinate agreed to treatsurrendering forces as prisoners of war
Santa Annaarbitrarily set aside the agreement
marched 340Texians out of town
and had them all shot. Then camethe astounding victory of the rebels under the commandof a former Tennessee governor
Sam Houston
at theBattle of San Jacinto. Mexico sustained fourteenhundred casualties in eighteen minutes
while onlyseven of Houston’s men died. Texians took theirrevenge
slaughtering defenseless Mexican soldiers whocried out
“Me no Alamo. Me no Goliad.”12It made for great headlines
and Americans followedthe conict with intense partisanship. But not everybattle was deemed newsworthy: when Texas slavesattempted to seize their own freedom
the uprising wasbrutally quelled by white Texians. But since this storyhad no place in the newspapers’ heroic narrative ofwhite Texian freedom
it was relegated to a fewabolitionist publications and to the Mexican press.13Texians declared a republic in March 1836 andcaptured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto onApril 21. In May they forced him to sign a treatyacknowledging Texas’s independence and withdrawinghis troops south of the Rio Grande. In a second secrettreaty
Santa Anna promised to support boundary talkswherein Texas would have a boundary that would “notlie south” of the Rio Grande.14 Mexico’s governmentpromptly repudiated Santa Anna and all his negotiationswith Texas
but Texians and Americans rejoiced.Although Mexico steadfastly maintained that Texas wasa rebel province and not an independent nation