The Runaway Scrape

March 13 is a little-noted date in Texas history - the date in 1836 when General Sam Houston, his 400 man army and hundreds of terrorized Texas citizens began their retreat from General Santa Anna's Mexican Army.  This strategic retreat lasted more than five weeks, until Houston decided to camp his army near Lynch's ferry on the San Jacinto River on April 19. 

Two days later, after Santa Anna had assembled his own army of more than 1,000 across the plain that is now known as the San Jacinto Battleground, Houston led his men in a mid-afternoon siesta time surprise attack, routed the Mexican army, and secured independence for the nation of Texas from Mexico.

The Runaway Scrape is the equivalent in Texas history to the winter at Valley Forge endured by Washington's Revolutionary Army.  The spring of 1836 was miserable in Texas - unusually cold, fraught with heavy rains that turned roads into almost impassable mud, and rivers into boiling cauldrons.  The Texian army lacked proper equipment and clothing, and moving any amount of men across the Texas terrain during that season was a near-impossibility.

The Scrape began at Gonzales, Texas, where Houston had chosen to asseble his rag-tag army, and await news of the battle of the Alamo.  Interestingly, although Gonzales lies only about 80 miles from San Antonio, it took a full week after the Alamo fell on March 6 for the news to travel to Gonzales in the person of Susanna Dickenson, one of a handful of Alamo occupants who was spared by Santa Anna's 'no quarter' doctrine.  By that time, Santa Anna had divided his army with his cousin, General Martin' Perfecto de Cos, sending Cos south with about 500 men, and taking the remainder with him to the east, towards the Texas border with Louisiana.  Immediately upon hearing from Mrs. Dickenson, Houston began moving his own army east, staying just ahead of Santa Anna until he and his war council decided to make a stand at San Jacinto.

Houston has been often derided as a poor general and even a borderline coward in some quarters for mounting such a long and miserable retreat in the face of an enemy.  But the reality is that the Texian Army would have lacked any element of surprise had it chosen to stay and fight in Gonzales, and that the Runaway Scrape, at the end, became one of the great enablers of Texas Independence.

So, for a Texan, March 13 is a day well worth remembering.  God Bless Texas.