[MUSIC PLAYING] ANDREW TORGET: I'm Andrew
Torget with Texas History for Teachers. And we're in Goliad,
at Presidio La Bahia, to give you a tour of one of the
most iconic places of the Texas Revolution. [MUSIC PLAYING] Goliad was the place where
about 400 Texas soldiers were executed on the orders of
Santa Anna on March 27, 1836, just a few weeks after
the fall of the Alamo. And it set off
panic across Texas and opened the road
for Santa Anna's armies to march into East Texas. So Goliad became a rallying
cry for the Texas rebels for the rest of the war and
a symbol of the sacrifice of the revolution. Goliad's role in
the Texas Revolution goes back to the very beginning. When the first fighting
broke out on October 2, 1835, with the Battle of Gonzales,
some very similar fights also broke out in Goliad. In fact, some Santa
Anna's soldiers had been in Goliad,
back in September, and taken over the
Presidio and the town, leading to clashes
with some local Texans. And when many of
those soldiers then marched toward San
Antonio, a group of Texans came together and
attacked the few who remained on October 10, 1835. The fight didn't last long,
only about 30 minutes or so. And the Texans took
over the town of Goliad for the rebellion. Now, why did they do this? Well, they did it
because they believe that Goliad could be really
important to the revolution. You see, Goliad was
south of San Antonio, along the San Antonio River,
and it was close to the coast. And because of that,
the Texans believe that whoever controlled
Goliad would also be able to control access
to the Gulf of Mexico. So the Texans decided
that they needed to take the town because if
Texans could control Goliad, then they could prevent Santa
Anna's troops from being reinforced or resupplied by sea. And so while fighting
happened elsewhere, the Texans held onto Goliad
for strategic reasons during the fall of 1835. Nothing much happened in
the town during that time. There were no great
fights or clashes. Most of the action was in
San Antonio and in the Anglo colonies back East. But things heated up for Goliad
during the spring of 1836, on February 12, a man named
James Fannin arrived in Goliad and became the commander
of the Texas volunteers holding the town. And Fannin moves his command
into the old Spanish fort in town, Presidio La
Bahia, which they renamed Fort Defiance, to show Santa
Anna that they were going to defy his centralist regime. What most people don't
know is that Fannin did not plan to wait for Santa
Anna to invade Texas. He'd arrived in
Goliad because he planned to lead a Texas
invasion of a town of Matamoros in northern Mexico. But as Fannin was
preparing for this, he suddenly received word
that Santa Anna had beat him to the punch and had entered
Texas with his armies. And that changed things
pretty dramatically. So Fannin decided to
stay put in Goliad and build up the defenses
of Fort Defiance, to be ready for any
attack that might come. And Fannin could not
know it at first, but he had really good
reasons to be worried about an attack on Goliad. When Santa Anna marched
into Texas in early 1836, he had planned two
lines of attack. Santa Anna himself would
march his army to San Antonio, while he sent
another one, this one commanded by a man named
General José de Urrea, that would go toward Goliad. The idea was that once
both San Antonio and Goliad had been captured, then
Santa Anna's armies would have a clear path to march
eastward and put down the rest of the rebellion. So Fannin had his men
put to work basically fortifying the Presidio. And they had a lot of work
to do because the Spanish had built this place in the 1700s. And by the 1830s, they
had pretty much a century of neglect and had to
rebuild from there. So Fannin had his men
rebuilding the walls, and building them up as strong,
as well as they possibly could. At the same time, they're
digging all of these ditches and throwing that dirt up
against the walls in order to fortify them and make sure
that they're strong enough to withstand a cannon attack. While all of that was going
on, Santa Anna marched his army into San Antonio,
arriving on February 23, and immediately
surrounded the Alamo. For the defenders inside--
and there were only about 200 people inside the Alamo-- their only hope for survival
is to get reinforcements. So the Alamo sent out riders in
all directions asking for help. For the Alamo, Goliad
seemed like their best hope because they knew that
Fannin had 300 men here and that they were only 95 miles
away from San Antonio, which is only three days
of hard marching. So the idea was, for the
Alamo, if they could hold out for a few days, it
seemed like Fannin and the men here at
Goliad could literally come riding to their rescue. So the commander
of the Alamo, a guy named William Barrett Travis,
sent a rider down to Goliad, who arrived on February
25, to ask for help. And Fannin reacted right away. He told all of his
men, all 320 of them, to be ready to ride out the
next morning at first light. They came out of these
gates right here, heading down the
road to San Antonio. But the only made it
two miles because when they hit the San Antonio
River, everything started falling apart. First, the wagons
broke down, probably because Fannin had insisted on
hauling four cannons with him. Then the oxen, who were
hauling the wagons, managed to get away. And so Fannin's
men spent the rest of the day fixing the
wagon and chasing oxen. So after spending a cold
night along the river, Fannin decided to just give up. And he called the
whole thing off. He told his men to turn around
and march the two miles back to Fort Defiance. The truth was his men
were poorly supplied. Many didn't even have shoes. And it was unlikely
that they could have made it to San Antonio,
much less into the Alamo. All of Fannin's volunteers were
deeply disappointed, though. And the whole mess made
Fannin look really indecisive. And it made him increasingly
unpopular with his own men. It also left the Alamo stranded. As the Alamo siege stretched
on for nearly two weeks, the only reinforcements
they ever got were 32 men from Gonzalez. The Alamo never stopped asking
Fannin to please, please, send help. But Fannin decided he
just couldn't do it. So instead, he simply
had his men work on rebuilding the old Presidio. Meanwhile, Santa Anna's other
army, under General Urrea was already in Texas,
and marching along the coast toward Goliad. As he got closer
to Goliad, Urrea attacked and defeated several
small bands of Texans. And Fannin heard
about these defeats. He knew that Urrea was
heading right for him, but he didn't do anything. He just waited. While Fannin waited, Santa
Anna's troops stormed the Alamo and put all the
defenders to death. So when Sam Houston got the
news that the Alamo had fallen, he recognized that it was
about as urgent a situation as Texas could face. And so he sent an immediate
order down here to Goliad, telling Fannin to retreat. What the actual order said
was for Fannin to blow up Fort Defiance, retreat
east toward Victoria, so he could join up his forces
with Sam Houston's and make for a much bigger Texas army. And it was about
as urgent a moment as Texas could possibly face. But for some reason,
Fannin decided not to retreat right away. And the question is, why? Why did he delay? Part of the reason
is because he'd sent a number of his
forces south of town to help civilians retreat. And so he wanted to
wait for those guys to come back before he
started his retreat. And he also kind
of needed to wait because those guys had all
the carts and the wagons that they would need. And so Fannin got the order
to retreat on either March 13th or the 14th. And he waited. He waited through March 15th,
the 16th, the 17th, the 18th. He waited until
the 19th, five days after he got the original order,
before he started his retreat. That gave General Urrea plenty
of time to get to Goliad. It also gave Santa
Anna time to send Urrea extra reinforcements,
500 more soldiers, that gave Urrea 1,400 men in all. So Fannin and his men
started their retreat at 9:00 in the morning on March 19. And they did it in the middle
of an immense fog, that really enveloped the
entire Presidio complex. And they needed that
because it provided them cover to get away. General Urrea, was in
town not too far distant. And so they needed to
basically sneak away. So they get out
here on this road, which is the road that
went out to Victoria. And they marched down here, all
the way down that direction, going as fast as
they possibly could. But they were
hauling nine cannons with them and 500 spare muskets. So it was really slow going. And again, they
had serious trouble at the San Antonio River. This time, one of the
biggest cannons fell in. And they wasted an entire
hour just fishing it out. [MUSIC PLAYING] Fannin made a fatal
mistake during the retreat when he called a halt for
his men in a big, open field. And the reason he did it is he
wanted to give his men a chance to rest. And he wanted to give the oxen
that were hauling the wagons, an opportunity to
graze on some grass. But there's a problem. There is a big, open field. And so as a result,
they were really exposed to attack at any moment. And a lot of Fannin's
men urged them to keep moving, two miles
further, to Coleto Creek, where there were some trees where
they could take shelter if they got attacked. But Fannin refused. And they stopped right there. And so, of course, that
was precisely the moment that Santa Anna's
troops came riding up under the command
of General Urrea. And it was a terrible
position for Fannin's men. They were caught out in the open
prairie, pretty much the worst place they could possibly be. They tried to make a break
for it, hoping to make it to the nearby woods for cover. But they're overloaded
wagon, with all the cannons and muskets, collapsed at
that exact moment, which left them stuck in the wide open. So Urrea's men came
riding up and quickly surrounded the Texans. The Texans didn't
have any choice, but to fight it out
right where they were. So they formed what's
called a hollow square. They piled up their
stuff on four sides, over here, over here, over
here, and then over here. When they piled it all
up, it provided them a little bit of
cover to get behind, to fire back at Urrea's men. So for the whole
afternoon of March 19, Fannin's men fought
against Urrea, in what became known as
the Battle of Coleto Creek. And the Texans did pretty
well, all things considered. Urrea had his men charge at the
Texans three separate times. And every time, the Texans
managed to fight them back. When night fell, and it was
too dark to shoot anymore, the Texans found they had
lost 10 dead and 60 wounded, including Fannin. Urrea's men had lost around
50 killed and 140 wounded. And they had survived the
day, but things were bad. They were still surrounded. And the Texans had
no food, no water. And they were running
low on ammunition. So when it got light enough
to see the next morning, the Texans saw that their
position had actually gotten a lot worse. Urrea had received
reinforcements overnight. And now he had two cannons that
were trained on the Texans. And so Fannin saw he
basically had two choices. He could either surrender
or they could just die. So Fannin asked for
surrender terms. And Urrea told him
that his only option was to surrender at discretion,
which basically means, you can surrender
but no promises we won't still kill you. Those are awful terms. They're the same ones that
Santa Anna offered to the Alamo. But it seemed like the
only possible option. And Fannin agreed to surrender. What's strange is that he told
his men that their lives would be spared. And so it isn't clear if Fannin
simply misunderstood the deal. So for the 230 Texans who could
still walk after the battle, they were marched
back to Goliad, where they were put
into prison here in the church at the Presidio. And it took another three
days to move all the wounded Texans from the
battlefield back here, including James Fannin, who
laid on the battlefield for two whole days before he was
brought back to Goliad. And then there were
another 80 Texans, who were captured
south of town, who were then brought up to Goliad. And they were put
in here as well. So you had about
400 Texas soldiers crammed into this
church, where it's their prison for an entire week
while they wait to find out what their fate is going to be. [MUSIC PLAYING] While all of that was going
on, Urrea wrote to Santa Anna, telling him about
the great victory and strongly recommending
that Fannin's men be treated humanely as prisoners of war. But Santa Anna was
having none of that. He called the Texans, pirates. And he called them foreigners. And he ordered their
immediate execution for waging war against Mexico. And this is how Santa
Anna had treated the defenders of the Alamo. And he intended the same thing
for the Goliad prisoners. Urrea, for his part
though, wanted nothing to do with killing men who
had already surrendered. So Santa Anna then
sent a direct order to Colonel Jose
Nicolas de la Portilla, who is now in command at
Goliad, telling him to do it. Portilla received Santa
Anna's letter on March 26. And having no real
choice in the matter, ordered that the
prisoners be shot at dawn the following morning. At sunrise, on March
27, 1836, all the Texans who could still walk were
formed into three groups. And they were marched out in
three different directions, under heavy guard. Now, the prisoners have
been told a lot of things about where they were going. Some were told that they were
going to gather firewood. Others were told that they were
being marched to the coast, to board ships that would take
them to the United States. None of them knew
what was coming. So when the Texans were
ordered a halt, they stopped. And then the soldiers
who were escorting them, then turned and opened fire,
and killed almost all of them on the very first shots. For those who
would survive that, those guys take off
running across the field, trying to save their lives by
getting to the nearby woods. Most of those guys got run
down by men on horseback. And so in the end,
there were 342 men who were killed that morning. There were a few survivors. Miraculously, 28
men actually managed to escape the firing
squads and then got away by running as fast as they
could into the nearby woods. Some of them later made
it back to East Texas. And a few even ended up
in Sam Houston's army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Another 20 Texans were spared
by the Mexican army, some because they had important
skills, such as doctors and interpreters. Some of them were spared
because a Mexican woman, with Urrea's army,
named Francita Alavez, apparently did everything she
could to save the lives of some of the Texas prisoners. We don't know too
much about her. But she has since become
known as the Angel of Goliad. [MUSIC PLAYING] After the massacres, there
was still 40 wounded Texans back at the Presidio. And they were all quickly
shot, bringing the number of dead close to 400. Finally, it was time for Fannin,
who was one of the very last. They blindfolded him, sat
him in a chair, and shot him. Santa Anna's men then
burned all the bodies, stacking them in piles
where they had fallen. And this was the same thing
that happened to the Alamo defenders, as Santa Anna denied
them even a decent burial. News about the Goliad
massacre spread quickly throughout the rest of Texas. When Texans learned that
the Alamo had fallen, and all the defenders
have been killed, and then that all
of Fannin's men had been captured and
summarily executed, panic spread across
Texas homes and farms. People feared that Santa
Anna would kill them, too, if he found them. And that's precisely
what Santa Anna hoped his killing of everyone
at the Goliad would do, scare Texans into
giving up the rebellion. And thousands did
abandon their homes and run toward
the United States, in what became known
as the Runaway Scrape. But the Goliad massacre
had another effect that Santa Anna
did not anticipate. It became a rallying
cry for the Texas army that Sam Houston was building. And so when the fateful, final
battle came at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836,
the Texas soldiers who overran Santa
Anna and his army were shouting not just,
Remember the Alamo, but also, Remember Goliad. In fact, a few of the men
shouting Remember Goliad in Sam Houston's army
were actual survivors of the Goliad massacre. The remains of the
Goliad massacre victims remained unburied
until June of 1836, when a man named Thomas J. Rusk
and a group of Texas soldiers came running through Goliad. And they gathered
up all the remains and brought them here,
where they buried them with full military honors. And then there was really
nothing to mark this spot, except for a giant
pile of rocks. Until 1936, fully 100 years
later, when the state of Texas decided to build
this memorial, which was dedicated on June 4, 1938,
to the memory of the Goliad massacre victims. [MUSIC PLAYING]
