336 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS lor disobeying orders ; but I think he obeyed orders to-day ! " Men fought like spirits, impetuous, invincible, as if they had cast off flesh and blood. The battle began at three o'clock in the afternoon of April 21, 1836, and after the Americans reached the Mexican line, it lasted jtist eiglUecti tniniiies. At four o'clock the whole Mexican army was flying, and the pursuit and slaughter continued until dark. It was a military miracle, for the American loss was only eight killed and seventeen wounded. Of the Mexicans, 630 were left dead on the field ; multi- tudes perished in the bayou and morass ; and there were nearly eight hundred prisoners. Only seven men are known to have escaped either death or capture. Santa Anna was found hiding in coarse clothing, and Houston had the greatest difficulty to save his life. For Houston knew that the lives of all the Americans in Mexico were in danger, besides which, he was needed to secure the peace and independence of Texas. It required Houston's influence, however, to convince men whose fathers and brothers and sons had been brutally massacred at Goliad and the Alamo, that their private vengeance must give way to the public good. Just about the time that the battle of San Jacinto was fought. President Jackson was one day found by Mr. Buchanan studying earnestly the map of Texas. He was tracing Houston's plan of retreat of which he had doubtless re- ceived information and putting his finger upon San Jacinto he said, " Here is the place ! If Sam Houston is worth one bawbee, he will make a stand here, and give them a fight ! " A few days after this declaration, news was received in Washington that the fight had been given and won on that very spot. The annexation of Texas was now publicly, as it had long been privately, the hope and goal of the Government ; and for this end Jackson, says Mr. Parton, " displayed an energy and pugnacity seldom exhibited before or since, by a politician in his seventy-seventh year." But " failure " was a word not in Jack- son's vocabulary ; he annexed Texas, and dying as the measure was accomplished, talked only in his last moments of Texas and Houston. Houston was elected President of the new Republic by acclamation, and he served the State two terms in this capacity. Both were marked by the finest statesmanship ; and during them the Texans suff'ered little from the ferocious Apache, Comanche, and other Indian tribes. For Houston fearlessly slept in their camps, and treated them as brethren ; and his Indian "Talks" have an Os- sianic poetry about them. Thus he writes to the Indian Chief Linney : "The red brothers know that my words to them have never been forgotten by me. They have never been swallowed up in darkness, nor has the light of the sun con- sumed them. Truth cannot perish, but the words of a liar are as nothing. Talk to all the red men, and tell them to make peace. War cannot make them happy. It has lasted too long. Let it now be ended and cease forever," etc., etc. After the annexation of Texas, Houston represented the State for three terms in the United States Senate; but in 1859 he failed of re-election, because he refused to go with the South on the fatal subject of Secession. Yet so great was the confidence of the people in his honor and ability, that they elected him Governor of Texas in the same year ; and he entered on the office in December,
