Was “The Yellow Rose” a Tar Heel?
North Carolinians played a big part in the
Texas fight for independence; and “the
decorative girl named Emily” was prob¬
ably one of them.
This is a story of old Texas that is
part legend and part history and with
no clear dividing line to separate one
from the other. It goes back to the year
1836 when Texas was still a sparsely-
inhabited province of Mexico and it
concerns a girl who is credited by many
with having been the instrument
whereby Texas won her independence
and was later able to become part of
the American Union.
The Texans, mostly recent immi¬
grants from the states to the east, had
gone into revolt against Mexico in the
Fall of 1835 and the struggle raged
on through the winter. In February,
1836 Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna, President of Mexico, crossed the
Rio Grande and, with an army of 4000
men, marched to San Antonio where
he found a mission chapel known as the
"Alamo" in the hands of a group of
182 Texas rebels. Santa Anna at once
laid siege to the place and demanded
the surrender of the garrison. But the
Texans, led by Cols. William B. Travis
and Jim Bowie, with the immortal
Davcy Crockett, defied the Mexicans
and held out for twelve harrowing days
before Santa Anna ordered an assault
and the place was overrun on March
4th. The entire garrison was slaugh¬
tered on Santa Anna’s command but
the delay caused by the defenders was
enough to allow Sam Houston to or¬
ganize his own army for resistance.
The Skirt-Chaser
A few days after the seizure of the
"Alamo," Santa Anna captured some
3(H) more rebels at nearby Goliad and
set an example for Texas by having all
of them executed. In the high tide of
his bloody success, El I'resUlente
turned his army eastward to ravage the
coastal settlements around Galveston
Bay. He reached the coast on April
By TOW PA R RA WORE
18th and made camp at Morgan's
Point, the plantation home of Colonel
James Morgan. Col. Morgan was at the
time commanding the rebel forces on
Galveston Island, a few miles to the
southeast, which had become a haven
for thousands of refugees from the
mainland, including Morgan’s family.
Upon reaching the Morgan planta¬
tion, the Mexicans took custody of
some of Morgan's Negro servants who
had been loading a flatboat. Among
the Negroes, as the story goes, was "a
decorative long-haired mulatto girl"
named Emily, "a very comely ‘Latin
looking’ woman of about twenty." The
Mexican General was a notorious skirt-
chaser and womanizer and had only re¬
cently sent on to Mexico a new mistress
acquired during the siege of the
"Alamo." He had no sooner caught
sight of Col. Morgan's Emily than he
Jomct Morgon, who went Wc»l from North Coro-
lino to
о
distinguished career in Teios, was the
owner o( Emily, "The Yellow Rose of Te«os."
This photo of Morgon
(со.
1865 > shows him ot
about oge 79, when he wos blind.
ordered that she should be brought to
his big, red and white striped silk tent.
It was this impromptu command which,
according to the legend, scaled the fate
of the Texas Revolution and altered the
course of Mexican history.
Santa Anna had not planned to tarry
long at Morgan’s Point. He meant to
leave in a day or two by water for
Mexico, and in fact on the next day
after arriving at the bay made arrange¬
ments with a German ship to leave the
place. The Texans, however, had in the
meantime assembled a rag-tag little
“Navy” of four vessels and these now
blockaded the bay. making it impossi¬
ble for Santa Anna to leave by water.
For the moment, there was little for
the General to do but to remain at
Morgan's Point and savor the society
of his new mistress.
How Texans Won Revenge
On the afternoon of April 21st,
Santa Anna retired to his tent in mid¬
afternoon for another “siesta” and was
basking comfortably in Emily’s arms,
so the story has it, when, at 4:30 p.m.,
a bugler sounded an alarm and the cry
flew through the camp that the enemy
were approaching. Sam Houston and
his Texas army had caught the Mexi¬
cans totally by surprise. In the melee
that followed, culminating in a pitched
battle a few miles away on the banks
of the San Jacinto River, the Texans
won revenge for the “Alamo” and a
victory that was to break the power of
Mexico over the province of Texas.
In accounting for the Mexican de¬
feat, British ethnologist William Bolla-
ert, following an interview with Col.
James Morgan, later gave this explana¬
tion:
"The Battle of San Jacinto was
probably lost by the Mexicans ow¬
ing to the influence of a mulatto
THE STATE. MARCH 1974
