The Sex Issue

Among President Richard M. Nixon’s favorite songs to play on piano was the Confederate anthem “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” It’s doubtful, though, that Tricky Dick knew the salacious story of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s ill-fated fling with Emily Morgan, a beautiful mixed-race slave girl and the subject of the song, just before the decisive 1836 Battle of San Jacinto. The tryst turned out to be the fornication that forged a nation—the Republic of Texas, and a hard lesson, so to speak, for Santa Anna in what can go wrong when a general makes love, not war.

The tale begins with the Texan war of independence with Mexico, which broke out in October 1835 following years of rising tensions between Anglo-American settlers and Santa Anna’s Mexican government over issues such as slavery, which Mexico had outlawed but the settlers wanted to establish in Texas, the Texans’ desire for autonomy, and President Andrew Jackson’s expansionist views.

An Anglo settler, James Morgan, had emigrated from Philadelphia to Texas in 1830, bringing with him a mulatto slave girl, Emily (whose actual name, some historians say, was Emily West), whom he had designated as an indentured servant to circumvent the Mexican anti-slavery law (this was a standard practice among slaveholding settlers at the time). Accounts portray her as having finely chiseled features, coal black hair, and the kind of golden complexion often described as “high yellow.” Her owner had a plantation at New Washington near the mouth of the San Jacinto River and, having supplied Gen. Sam Houston’s men with food, had been made a colonel in Houston’s Army of Texas.

After annihilating the 189 defenders of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, following a costly 13-day siege, and then massacring 342 Texan prisoners of war at Goliad on March 27, Santa Anna’s troops reached the coast near San Jacinto by mid-April. The enemy’s advance forced Col. Morgan to retreat from New Washington, leaving Emily to coordinate the provisioning of Houston’s men. She was captured by Mexican soldiers at Morgan’s Point on April 15, and soon caught the eye of the notoriously randy general. Santa Anna already had a wife back in Old Mexico as well as a teenage bride in San Antonio, but the biracial beauty was now his prize of war, and by the night of April 18, Emily was in Santa Anna’s silk tent.

Meanwhile, Texan scouts had learned the whereabouts and size of the Mexican army. Houston knew he had to strike quickly before Santa Anna received reinforcements. On April 20, Santa Anna’s 1,250 men took fortified positions at San Jacinto, a sea-level plain of 3 square miles bordered by a marsh and the San Jacinto River. Houston’s roughly 800 men encamped three-quarters of a mile away, behind a rise and some woods. The first day’s action consisted only of a minor artillery duel, and in the evening Santa Anna retired with his mistress.

The next morning, Houston took a spyglass and climbed a tall pine to reconnoiter. On observing Emily making a champagne breakfast for the general, he is reported to have said, “I hope that slave girl makes him neglect his business, and keeps him in bed all day.” He then ordered an afternoon attack.

As the amorously distracted Santa Anna had neither dispatched scouts nor posted sentries, Houston’s forces achieved tactical surprise, drawing near the Mexican lines before the alarm was sounded. At 4:30, the Spanish cry went up, “The enemy! They come! They come!” while the Anglos famously shouted “Remember the Alamo!” as they charged, but Emily detained Santa Anna in his tent until it was too late. Inflicting severe causalities, the Texans routed the leaderless Mexicans in just 18 minutes with minimal losses. Houston’s troops captured Santa Anna, disguised in a common soldier’s uniform, the following day.

For her part in winning Texas’s independence, James Morgan gave Emily her freedom and a passport to New York. Texas itself became a sovereign nation until being annexed by the United States in 1845.

The juicy story behind San Jacinto was pretty much forgotten until 1956, when the University of Oklahoma published an 1842 account of the Texas Revolution by an English scientist, William Bollart, describing Emily’s role in the battle. The year before the University of Oklahoma paper, Mitch Miller had a hit with “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” which is most likely how Richard Nixon came to play it on piano.

And, speaking of presidents, had it not been for Emily Morgan’s devious charms, Texas might have stayed in Mexican hands, and George W. Bush may never have gotten elected. Looking at it that way, I’d say Santa Anna wasn’t the only one who got screwed.

Editor’s note: Many of the details of this legend are matters of dispute among historians.