culture
Flags of the Texas Revolution, Coahuila y Tejas 1821 - 1836
Texas is famous for flying flags. We fly them at courthouses, schools, ranch gates, football stadiums, and occasionally on pickup trucks large enough to have their own ZIP code. But the six flags flying in front of the San Jacinto Monument are a little different. These aren't the traditional Six Flags of Texas. Instead, they represent the key sites and events from the Texas Revolution, the places where Texas independence was debated, fought for, and ultimately won. The victory at San Jacinto may have lasted only about eighteen minutes, but the road leading to it took months of political arguments, military campaigns, sacrifices, and enough determination to fuel a cattle drive from the Gulf Coast to the Panhandle. After all, Texas didn’t win its freedom in a single afternoon at San Jacinto, even if Texans sometimes like to tell the story that way. The victory on April 21, 1836, was the grand finale. Before that came political meetings, heated arguments, desperate battles, and enough determination to fill every pickup truck in the state. Without the spark at Gonzales, would the Revolution have begun when it did? Without the tragedies at the Alamo and Goliad, would so many men have joined Sam Houston's army? And without the meetings at San Felipe de Austin and Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas might have looked less like a new republic and more like a very large disagreement with the neighbors. Some of these flags are instantly recognizable to Texans. Others are so obscure that even lifelong Texans may look at them and say, Some of these flags will be familiar to most Texans. Others are obscure enough that even lifelong residents may scratch their heads and say, “Well, I’ll be darned, that's one they forgot to teach us between the Alamo and state history tests.” Yet every one of them played a role in the birth of Texas.
