THREE TYPES OF
HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION
This monument and this Library and Museum which are the
occasion of our celebration today commemorate a great event.
Whether or not the battle of San Jacinto was precisely the
"Sixteenth Decisive Battle of the World," it was decisive, and
it had momentous consequences. Immediately, it restored the
fleeing colonists to their homes and 'relieved Texas of a ruthless
invading army. More remotely, if we follow the chain of suc-
ceeding events, it carried Texas into the United States, and led,
in part, to the Mexican War and the expansion of the United
States over California and all the rest of the Great Southwest.
It would be beside the mark to ask whether another chain of
circumstances welded at the forge of time might not have
brought similar results to pass, had victory been reversed at
San Jacinto. Such speculation lies in the realm of fiction or of
philosophy. Historically, it was the battle fought here, and not
some other event, that started the succession of happenings
that ended in the addition of nearly one-third its present area
to the continental territory of the United States.
So this beautiful and awe-inspiring monument is appropriate;
not only to the men who won victory here, but to the results
which victory brought to pass.
But I am most grateful for the Library and the Museum that
shall grow at the base of this majestic shaft. They will become
the storehouse of books and manuscripts and artifacts, an ever-
increasing body of material for the accurate writing and in-
terpretation of history.
It is this matter of the accurate writing and interpretation
of history that brings me to the subject of my reflections here
today. There is too much inaccuracy in both writing and in-
terpretation-- and particularly in interpretation. I have no
quarrel with differences of conviction growing out of the honest
consideration of all the facts that an honest investigation can
discover. Such differences are inevitable. It is the careless in-
terpretation, founded upon incomplete assimilation of the facts,
and the contrived interpretation, based upon falsification, against
which we need to guard.
I can illustrate the sort of differences that develop in different
minds where all the essential facts are known by the written
history of the campaign that preceded this battle of San Jacinto.
Thirty-eight years ago, in 1901, I wrote a brief narrative of
the San Jacinto campaign. It was the second piece of writing,
I think, that I ever published. Since then Mr. Clarence Whar-
ton, Mr. Marquis James, and Colonel Andrew Houston have
published books or parts of books on the subject. We were all
about equally acquainted with the local facts, I think, when we
wrote. We know the movements of the Mexican and Texan
armies —if the Texan force can be called an army. We know
that the Texan force was made up of volunteers, undrilled and
largely undisciplined, some of them not enrolled in any com-
pany organization, some going away daily and others arriving
and taking their places. We do not know at any point, after
the movement from Gonzales, the precise number of men in
Houston's camp. The puzzle is to determine what was Houston's
plan of campaign. Should he have attacked an inferior Mexican
force on the Colorado? Why did he move up the Brazos from
San Felipe? Did he intend from the beginning to fall back to
the Sabine in the hope of inviting intervention by the United
States? I doubt that any amount of industrious investigation
can ever answer these questions convincingly.
Mr. Wharton and Mr. James believe that Houston's intention,
which he would naturally have kept to himself at the time and
never have admitted afterward, was to fall back to the Sabine.
Colonel Houston and I certainly agree in part, I think, though
we may express it in different ways, that the immediate plan
was purely opportunistic; to hold some sort of force together
at all cost; to drill it as well as possible; and to be ready to
use it if opportunity offered. Looking backward with such
knowledge of the situation as I have, I must admit that I am
not qualified to condemn the General's procedure.
Houston declared thirty years later that he avoided the enemy
until he was in a position to make one battle decisive. As a
statement of actual procedure, this covers the case completely;
but as an explanation of policy, it leaves something to be de-
sired. No sane human mind could have anticipated Santa
Anna's separating himself from his major army and dashing
with an inferior force far in advance of the Texan army.
Houston did not lead him there or drive him there. He set no
trap. He merely shut the trap that the impetuous Napoleon
of the West set for himself and marched into. The opportunist
was ready to take advantage of the opportunity. But, with the
colonies abandoned from the Guadalupe to the Trinity, what
would he have done if Santa Anna had not entrapped himself?
In such dilemmas the conviction of the historian varies di-
rectly with his boldness and assu'rance. For myself, I am not
confident enough to say what Houston ought to have done, or
what I would have done; and I am only mildly annoyed or
ironically amused when an armchair historian-commander tells
me now what he would have done then. In such differences of
opinion there is no danger.
The other two types of interpretation which I have mentioned
are not so innocent or amusing. As an example of the interpre-
tation that is more or less contrived to deceive, I venture to
cite the expositions that we have been reading in the papers
and hearing over the radio for the past few years of the origin
of the Constitution and the functions of the Supreme Court of
the United States. All of this language has not issued from
the historian, but he has laid the groundwork for it, and
in a measure is responsible, therefore, for the license of the
expositors.
To destroy respect for the Constitution and all its works, we
are told first, as a portentous discovery, something that most
intelligent Americans have known for a hundred and fifty years
--namely, that the Constitution was written by fifty-five edu-
cated, experienced, and successful men. The average human
intelligence, for a space of six generations or so, saw nothing
sinister in that fact; but recently we have learned—had the
opportunity to learn if we believe what we are told--that we
have been blind and stupid. See how foolish we have been.
These men who wrote the Constitution owned property. Some
of them owned state and continental securities, representing
money or goods or service which they had advanced to the
government. By the Constitution, they created a government
which could pay these debts. Some had lent money on mort-
gages, and they Wrote a Constitution forbidding the states to
pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Some owned
land on the frontier, and they planned a government strong
enough to protect the frontier and thereby enable them to
start a boom in western lands. Some were merchants and
shipowners, and created a government with power to regulate
commerce with foreign nations and thereby enable them to
employ their ships and carry on trade for profit. Finally, lest
perchance some might have escaped in this classification of self-
seekers who sought direct profit through the Constitution that
they devised, the greater part of the members of the convention
that framed the Constitution were lawyers, and they, we are
assured, drew advantage from their employment by the capi-
talists whose interests the Constitution safeguarded and en-
larged.
To the expounders of this doctrine of the economic interpre-
tation of the Constitution it is futile to reply that education
and experience are desirable qualities for the establishment of
stable and orderly government; that the will and the ability
to pay its debts a're indispensable to a government that must
draw its strength from the confidence of its citizens; that neither
peace nor justice could exist in a free society resting on the
unilateral abandonment of contracts; that land is a national
asset only when employed; and that foreign commerce benefits
the producer of cotton and wheat and cattle as well as the ship-
owners and merchants who distribute them. Like stump poli-
ticians, they ignore such axiomatic observations and reiterate
their sensational implications. If you believe them--and, un-
fortunately, many do--the Constitution has been a covenant to
protect heartless wealth and an instrument of oppression to
the poor.
This style of interpretation is designed to undermine respect
for the Constitution as a whole by impugning the motives of
its makers. But, happily, most Americans still regard the Con-
stitution as a rather useful document, even if its framers may
not have been wholly disinterested. To overcome such resist-
ance, the attack is shifted from the whole to a vital part--the
authority of the Supreme Court to void an act of Congress
that the majority of the Court conceives to be unwarranted
by the Constitution.
The attack on the Court is founded on three assertions:
first, that the framers of the Constitution -- interested and
selfish though they are said to have been--did not give, and
did not intend to give, the Court the power to declare an act
of Congress void; second, that they not only did not intend
the Court to exercise such power, but definitely voted that it
should not; and third, that this power which the Court has
wielded since 1803 was usurped and fastened on our system of
government by the decisions of Chief Justice John Marshall. The
falsity of these assertions has been proved by evidence so clear
that it could be understood by the average district court jury;
but they are still fluently proclaimed in high places by men
and officials who really know the facts. Such men do not
thoughtlessly disregard the facts; they disregard them by design.
Another type of historical interpretation, less pernicious, is
that which carelessly explains complex social and economic con-
ditions by unsound generalizations. This is an indolent practice
sometimes indulged in by the best of historians. No doubt even
I am guilty; but I am not guilty of the example that I am
going to cite.
We must all have heard during the past few years that the
evils which we suffer were brought upon us by the "disappear-
ance of the frontier." This somewhat mythical event was pro-
claimed by the Census Bureau in 1890. It simply meant that
it was no longer possible to draw a continuous line separating
territory that had fewer inhabitants than two to the square
mile from areas that had more.
The explanation of the potent influence of the frontier, when
expressed, runs like this: Prior to the disappearance of the
frontier, it is claimed, the discontented inhabitants of the in-
dustrializing East could go West, obtain free land, and main-
tain independence and self-respect on a small ranch or farm;
after the frontier vanished, free land no longer existed and
they remained to swell the teeming population of the cities
and to become the victims of the industrial revolution. Briefly,
in other words, mobility of population was retarded the bold
statement implies that it was stopped; urbanization increased:
private industry became unable to provide jobs for all; henc€
the necessity for WPA and other forms of government relief.
The explanation is too simple. It ignores the fact that there
remained in the hands of the government in 1890 more than a
hundred million acres of land subject to homestead settlement;
that the transcontinental railroads owned vast areas that they
offered at a moderate price; that much land is still available
on conditions that the average pioneer would have thought
alluring if not irresistible. It ignores also the fact that the
policy of our present government favors reduction rather than
expansion of tilled acres; that it prefers idleness and relief to
subsistence farming, which is the sort of farming that the "dis-
appearance of the frontier" might have affected. It ignores,
finally, the fact that few people would be willing now to subject
themselves, even relatively, to the hardships and privations that
the pioneer welcomed as milestones on the road to comfort and
contentment, if not to affluence and wealth.
Few of us now have any conception of what those hardships
were, and even contemporary descriptions are hardly adequate
to quicken our imagination to a vivid reconstruction of the
picture. I read a revealing document the other day, part of
the United States Treasury Report for 1832. The writer was
describing with enthusiastic approval the ease with which gov-
ernment land, sold then for $1.25 an acre, could be acquired
in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A laborer could earn 75 cents
a day, board himself for 25 cents a day, and buy eighty acres
in 200 days. Wages of mechanics were higher, and a skilled
workman might save $100 and buy a farm in six months. School
teachers with thirty pupils paying $3.00 a quarter could collect
$90 every three months, could board for a dollar a week, and
buy eighty acres in a year.
Many of the colonists who settled Texas started with little
more equipment than their bare hands. Jesse Burnham, one of
Austin's first colonists, tells of his experiences, which must have
been typical of no small number. He ma'rried in Tennessee at
the age of twenty. He had three knives and forks made by a
local blacksmith, paying for them by splitting rails, and putting
handles on them himself. His wife sold her wedding stockings
for plates--stockings which she herself had knit. She spun and
wove sheets and a tick for a feather bed; and they used gourds
for cups. He acquired a piece of land, and their housekeeping
began. He arrived in Texas twelve years later with all his
possessions, including wife and children and household goods,
loaded on three horses. In Texas, the family lived for many
weeks on deer and other game, He saw no bread for nine
months, until a man who had planted corn with a stick sold
him twenty bushels in exchange for a horse. He ground the corn
in a mortar and sifted it through a perforated deerskin, stretched
over a hoop. Having neither jars, jugs, nor cans, he stored wild
honey in skins. He tells of amputating a man's leg "with a dull
saw and a shoe knife, the only tools we had," he explained. "I
heated and bent a needle to take up the arteries with. I was to
have the management of it, and hold the flesh back, Tom Wil-
liams was to do the cutting of the flesh, Bostick was to saw the
bone, and Kuykendall was to do the sewing. I took his suspenders
off and bandaged the leg just above where we wanted to cut.
I put a hair rope over the bandage, put a stick in it, and twisted
it just as long as I could; then I was ready to begin operations.
When Mr. Kuykendall began to sew it he trembled, so I took
the needle and finished it." Strangely, as we should think, the
patient lingered eleven days after the operation.
Families began life in Texas in wigwams, palisades bound
together with wattles, stuccoed with moss and clay, and roofed
with earth and straw. Jonas Harrison, a man of learning and
culture, wrote Stephen F. Austin from East Texas in 1832:
"Strange as it may appear to those that are in the habit of
handling money, there are in these districts many good citizens
--very good livers--who do not handle five dollars in a year."
Noah Smithwick's first meal in Texas was "dried venison
sopped in honey." He settled in De Witt's Colony in 1827. He
tells how they raised corn without plow or hoe. They burned
cane brakes in the winter. In the spring they punched holes
in the land thus cleared, dropped in the grain, and when the
young cane began to sprout they beat down the tender shoots
with the same sharp stick that had punched the holes for the
corn. Few of the settlers had wheat bread, because they had
no money to buy it with. "Money was as scarce as bread," he
wrote. "Pelts of any kind passed current and constituted the
principal medium of exchange."
Austin announced to his first colonists that he would accept
in payment of fees: "horses, mules, cattle, hogs, peltry, furs:
beeswax, home-made cloth, dressed deerskins" -- any kind oí
property, he said, that would not be a dead loss to him.
Here are glimpses of pioneer life in 1834, within thirty miles
of Houston:
'March, 1834. The spring opened fine, no cold weather, corn
up and growing. . . . Father had two bushels of corn left.
He said if there was no cold weather at Easter he would have
it ground. We had been without bread three weeks. Mother
made a cheese every day. Father killed a deer on Saturday.
He cut up the meat and dried it over a fire, and we ate it for
bread. Mother and I had been spinning. Father needed plow
lines, and there was not any rope in the country. The men
made their ropes out of hides and the hair from the manes
and tails of horses. ... I spun thread and mother made the
plow lines." . . .
June, 1834. "The crops were very promising. There were
plenty of roasting ears for cooking. We had been three weeks
without bread. By the last of June the corn was too hard to
cook. Uncle James said that if he had a piece of tin he could
make a grater. Mother gave him a tin bucket. He unsoldered
it, drove holes in it with a nail, fastened it on a board, and
grated meal for supper. . . . Mrs. Roa'rk had a Mexican
utensil for grinding corn, called a metate.
It was a large rock
which had a place scooped out of the center that would hold a
peck of corn. It had a stone roller. It was hard work to grind
corn on it, but the meal made good bread. Some of our neighbors
had small mills, called steel mills. . . . When the neighbors
would meet, the first word would be, 'Is your corn getting
hard? Have you had any bread? Send to my house and get
meal or corn.' "
At a barbecue on the Fourth of July: "We ate barbecued
meat, all sorts of vegetables, coffee, fowls, potatoes, honey, and
corn bread, but no cakes, as there was no flour in the country."
And the writer adds: "The whiskey gave out early in the eve-
ning, and there was no fuss or quarreling."
At a neighborhood dance: "We got there before dark. It was
only two miles in the bottom. The house was a double log cabin
with a passage between the rooms. . . . Before dark a servant
came in with a bunch of cane, each piece about twelve inches
in length. He laid the pieces of cane on a chair, got a knife,
split them, took out tallow candles, and lighted up the house."
A small volume could be filled with similar quotations and
descriptions.
I hope that I am not understood to advocate a return to
such primitive living as either possible or desirable. Emphat-
ically not. But such documents abundantly illustrate" the fal-
lacy of the explanation that the "disappearance of the frontier"
had much to do with the development of our present social and
economic conditions. And I do believe that a little clearer con-
ception of the realities of the frontier might inspire greater
patience with the imperfections of the present.
And now, Mr. Chairman, after distant--and you may think
dubious--wanderings, I return to the monument, the Library,
and the Museum which we are dedicating here. It would be
interesting to trace the development of the ideas that produced
this particular form of memorial, and I hope that it may be-
come the subject of an early publication by your competent
director. It should include also the history of the San Jacinto
Museum of History Association and the related agencies con-
cerned with the administration and upkeep of the memorial.
I could not presume to enumerate all of those who contributed
their thoughts and efforts and knowledge to the erection of this
monument. Officially, credit is due the Commission of Control
for Texas Centennial Celebrations. Members of this Commis-
sion were: Honorable Walter F. Woodul, then Lieutenant Gov-
ernor of Texas; Honorable Coke R. Stevenson, Speaker of the
House of Representatives; Mr. John K. Beretta, of San Antonio;
Mr. James A. Elkins, of Houston; Mr. Karl Hoblitzelle, of
Dallas; General John A. Hulen, of Fort Worth; Honorable Pat
M. Neff, of Waco; Mr. Wallace Perry, of El Paso; and Mr.
Joseph V. Vandenberge, of Victoria. The Commission of Con-
trol was assisted by the Advisory Board of Texas Historians,
composed of Mr. L. W. Kemp, of Houston; Professor J. Frank
Dobie, of the University of Texas; and Dr. Paul J. Foik, of
St. Edwa'rd's University.
To the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Historians credit
belongs for the eight dignified, informative inscriptions at the
base of the monument. Mr. Kemp's modesty leads him to ex-
aggerate the assistance that he received from twenty-five con-
sultants ; but the simple truth is that all of the thought and at
least ninety-eight per cent of the words are his. In fewer than
six hundred words these inscriptions recite the essential his-
tory and significance of the Texas revolution. They are a fine
example of compression and repression, and at least this once
they shall be read aloud:
The early policies of Mexico toward her Texas col-
onists had been extremely liberal. Large grants of land
were made to them, and no taxes or duties imposed.
The relationship between the Anglo-Americans and
Mexicans was cordial. But, following a series of rev-
olutions begun in 1829, unscrupulous rulers succes-
sively seized power in Mexico. Their unjust acts and
despotic decrees led to the revolution in Texas.
In June, 1832, the colonists forced the Mexican au-
thorities at Anahuac to release Wm. B. Travis and
others from unjust imprisonment. The battle of Ve-
lasco, June 26, and the battle of Nacogdoches, August
2, followed; in both the Texans were victorious. Ste-
phen Fuller Austin, "Father of Texas," was arrested
January 3, 1834, and held in Mexico without trial until
July, 1835. The Texans formed an army, and on No-
vember 12, 1835, established a provisional government.
The first shot of the revolution of 1835-36 was fired
by the Texans at Gonzales, October 2, 1835, in resist-
ance to a demand by Mexican soldiers for a small
cannon held by the colonists. The Mexican garrison
at Goliad fell October 9; the battle of Concepción was
won by the Texans, October 28. San Antonio was cap-
tured December 10, 1835, after five days of fighting in
which the indomitable Benjamin R. Milam died a hero,
and the Mexican army evacuated Texas.
Texas declared her independence at Washington-on-
the-Brazos, March 2. For nearly two months her
a'rmies met disaster and defeat; Dr. James Grant's
men were killed on the Agua Dulce, March 2; William
Barrett Travis and his men sacrificed their lives at the
Alamo, March 6; William Ward was defeated at Re-
fugio, March 14; Amon B. King's men were executed
near Refugio, March 16; and James Walker Fannin
and his army were put to death near Goliad, March
27, 1836.
On this field on April 21, 1836, the Army of Texas
commanded by Gene'ral Sam Houston, and accompanied
by the Secretary of War, Thomas J. Rusk, attacked the
larger invading army of Mexicans under General Santa
Anna. The battle line from left to right was formed
by Sidney Sherman's regiment, Edward Burleson's
regiment, the artillery commanded by George W.
Hockley, Henry Millard's infantry and the cavalry
under Mirabeau B. Lamar. Sam Houston led the in-
fantry charge.
With the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo! Re-
member Goliad!" the Texans charged. The enemy,
taken by surprise, rallied for a few minutes, then fled
in disorder. The Texans had asked no quarter and
gave none. The slaughter was appalling, the victory
complete, and Texas free! On the following day Gen-
eral Antonio López de Santa Anna, self-styled "Na-
poleon of the West," received from a generous foe the
mercy he had denied Travis at the Alamo and Fannin
at Goliad.
Citizens of Texas and immigrant soldiers in the
army of Texas at San Jacinto were natives of Alabama,
Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ken-
tucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New
York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont,
Virginia, Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, and Scotland.
Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the
decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas
from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the
Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United
States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyo-
ming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the
present a'rea of the American nation, nearly a million
square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.
It is a pleasant thought to me that the first inscription com-
memorates, in a world torn by racial rancor and international
strife, the generous Mexican policy which invited our alien
ancestors to establish free homes in Texas.
But, happily, the authorities who planned this monument
looked farther than the erection of a magnificent structure of
steel and stone, adorned with appropriate inscriptions. In the
provisions for the Library and Museum, they conceived an ever-
growing memorial. And not less happy was the selection of the
Trustees who were drafted to form the San Jacinto Museum
of History Association to administer this living soul of the
monument. It was rare judgment that placed upon the first
Board of Trustees a granddaughter of the victorious general
who won the independence of Texas; the architect of the monu-
ment; the historian whose patient investigations have given
him a personal acquaintance with nearly every man who fought
in the battle of San Jacinto; and a grandson of a distinguished
citizen who fought as a youth at San Jacinto and sixty-one
years later served as a commissioner in the purchase of the
battlefield by the state.
I have already confessed my own appreciation of the Library
and Museum. I venture the hope that the Library may become
a treasure house of Texana, reflecting the state's whole miracu-
lous development. Books, pamphlets, maps, letters, diaries, ac-
count books of plantation and store, old newspapers, programs
of such ceremonies as these are the very essence of history,
and the surest corrective to the sort, of misinterpretation that
I have described.
I have a hope, too, for the Museum. Besides the relics of
more comfortable pioneer living, I wish that it might exhibit--
if not in the main hall, in some properly obscured annex--the
homely artifacts of frontier life: the hand-forged knives and
forks; the gourd cups and dippers; the hewn tables, stools, and
benches; the frows for riving boards; the candle moulds and
bullet moulds; the wrought iron clevis and pin which, accom-
panied by a file rasping on a hoe, was the frontier equivalent
of a jazz dance orchestra, in default of music. Such memorials
of the past are veracious historical sources, and cannot be easily
misconstrued. Moreover, they invoke the gratitude of the hum-
ble and contrite heart for the comforts that we enjoy, remind-
ing us of the courage and hardships of pioneers, the rock
whence we were hewn.
The University of Texas.
FOOTNOTES:
1939.
Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, IV, 237-345 (April,
1901).—Ed.