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JC, Freelance Public Relations Specialist, Mount Airy, NC
Answered June 14, 2019

After the "no quarter" orders from Mexican General Santa Anna at the
Alamo, why did Sam Houston not execute him upon his capture at the
Battle of San Jacinto six weeks later?

Sam Houston didn’t fight San Jacinto under an order of no quarter. In
fact, he ordered his men to stop slaughtering the Mexicans when some of
their own officers were refusing quarter to Mexican troops who were
begging for mercy and telling the Texans that they weren’t even at the
Alamo.

Santa Anna did warn the Texan defenders at the Alamo that he would not
give quarter if he had to storm the fortress. Under the laws of war, he
was entitled to do this. Nathan Bedford Forrest used the same tactic in
the Civil War a number of times, nearly three decades later, although he
never carried out the threat.

It wasn’t the Alamo that was a war crime, it was Goliad, where Santa
Anna offered honorable terms of surrender to the Texan garrison,
received their surrender on the basis that he would parole and deport
them to the USA, and then murdered them.

It was for this perfidy that Santa Anna’s life was forfeit when he was captured at San Jacinto on 22 April 1836, the day after the battle.
Santa Anna was brought before Sam Houston and told him that as the
victor, he could afford to be merciful.

Houston, who had been wounded the day before, replied “What right have
you to mercy, when you showed none at the Alamo and at Goliad?”

The only reason Houston didn’t hang Santa Anna as a common criminal was because the Mexicans still had 4,000 other troops in Texas, and all of
them were commanded by better generals than Santa Anna, the “Napoleon
(III) of the West.” That was more men than Houston had, even after
wiping out Santa Anna’s force. After making it clear that Santa Anna
lived or died at his discretion, Houston made him order the other
Mexicans to leave Texas. Then he made him sign a treaty signing away
nearly three times the amount of territory where the American settlers
from Texas lived. Texas was never able to enforce these boundaries, but
after independent Texas joined the United States, the USA attempted to
claim the borders Santa Anna had conceded under pain of death, and
thereby used the terms of the so-called Treaties of Velasco as a pretext
to start the Mexican War.

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