Ep 38: The Spoils of San Jacinto
Wise About Texas
Ken Wise
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2017
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
181 years ago this week, the Texian Army surprised the Mexican army and won the Battle of San Jacinto. The battle lasted a mere 18 minutes, but its effects changed the world. After the initial 18 minute rout, many of the Texans pursued the fleeing enemy into the bayous and swamps around San Jacinto while others took stock of what could be found in the Mexican camp.
From champagne, to silver, to fancy camp equipment, the Texians found a creative way to dispose of the spoils as well as improve the fiscal affairs of the hours-old Republic of Texas. But it wasn’t all celebration. A reckless youth set the prairie on fire and a lone guard almost changed world history with his bayonet!
Learn more about the immediate aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto and hear about how the victors handled the spoils of war.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History Podcast. This is your host Ken Wise and I want to |
| 0:14.4 | thank you for tuning in today for a little Texas history. This podcast is |
| 0:19.2 | being released on Monday, April 17th, 2017, and that can mean only one thing for Texas history lovers, |
| 0:27.2 | and that's that the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacino is coming up. |
| 0:31.2 | Friday will be April 21st, it will be the 181st anniversary of the |
| 0:38.6 | Battle of San Jacino. So we are right in that sacred time as Sam Houston and the Texian army approached Harrisburg too late to save the city from Santa Ana. |
| 0:48.0 | Santa Ana proceeded south to New Washington and was going to turn back to San Jacinto. So we can't have an |
| 0:56.0 | episode release this week without talking about San Jacinto. So today we're |
| 1:01.6 | going to talk about the spoils of San Jacinto. But before we get there, I want to thank Kevin Barron, the host of the podcast Beyond the River Walk, for having me on again. I taped an interview with him a couple of days ago about the |
| 1:16.5 | reimagined the Alamo master plan. That's Reimagine the Alamo.org and they have a new master plan for redesigning the area around the alamo, |
| 1:29.0 | making it more tourist friendly, making it a better attraction, and reinterpreting a lot of the history |
| 1:36.0 | to give you a more accurate experience at the Alamo. |
| 1:39.3 | And I was really excited to be able to talk about that because it's an exciting plan. It's not, you know, 100% complete yet. |
| 1:47.0 | But it is really going to make that area new and as their name says reimagined and I think it's sorely needed |
| 1:58.0 | it's going to be a real benefit to the city and I think it's going to be a benefit to the history community too. |
| 2:04.5 | Well you can talk about the Battle of San Jacino many different ways but one of the |
| 2:12.2 | things that we have yet to talk about on this podcast is we will |
| 2:16.9 | review the basics of the battle, but what happened right after the battle? |
| 2:20.7 | And I've called this episode The Spoils of San Joseo, because what I want to tell you about are a couple of things that happened right after the battle and how the Texian army reacted when the Mexican army had been defeated. So let's get into it. We're going to go back to |
| 2:37.3 | this week 181 years ago and get wise about Texas. As we start to talk about the Battle of San Jacino, |
| 2:45.0 | we need to put it in context and I cannot think of a better way to do that |
| 2:50.0 | and I've spoken, given speeches on the battle, you know, dozens of times and I think that the best |
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