be free desperately. Santa Anna wanted to stay alive. Therefore it was time to bargain(Hoyt 168-169).Santa Anna offered to remove all the Mexican troops from Texas if he were freed to return to Mexico. "It's not so simple as that," said General Houston. "I have no authority to negotiate a peace. That is for the civil government to do.""Civil government, what is that? Surely the two parties who fought can arrive at an agreement.""I'm sorry," said Houston. "I'm not empowered to negotiate. I can only offer you your life if you will order your troops across the Rio Grande.(Hoyt 168-169)"Santa Anna looked around him at the Texans who stood, muttering, blood in their eyes. "All right," he said, "I will order General Filisola to leave Texas." He sat down then and wrote a letter to dismiss all of Filisola's troops back to Mexico. A Mexican express rider was sent to General Filisola with the orders(Hoyt 169).Months later General Santa Anna was returned to Mexico, where he again assumed one man rule, but the infamy of having lost to Texas dogged him, and he proved an inept and corrupt leader. He eventually was ostracized so badly that he ended up in the Bahamas(Reavis 127).Skipping ahead a century and a half, one will discover a great monument near the city of Houston. Where the Battle of San Jacinto is commemorated, one finds one of the most unusual memorial parks. The mighty monument in memory of the battle where Texas won independence towers 570 feet above San Jacinto State Park--built illegally higher than the Washington Monument. At its top is a huge star, the emblem of Texas(Carpenter 73-74). The land for the San Jacinto State Park was purchased through many different people and eventually reached the size of 420 acres (about 2/3 of a square mile). A commemorative sundial also was donated through the Daughters of the Republic of Texas(Muir 1-2). Another interesting observation is that their are monuments all around Texas commemorat...
