Talk:Runaway Scrape/Archive 1

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Edits

Section "The Runaway" I'm going to restore after the edit removing mention of Mina/Bastrop as the original text directly addressed the Runaway-- that is, the Texians diluted military strength to protect the citizens fleeing eastward toward Louisiana (although most were at the crossing of the Trinity River by the time word of victory at San Jacinto was received) while the military maintained an organized and strategic retreat.

The civilian exodus was not merely at Beason's, nor was that location the primary route. Puesta del Colorado at Bastrop (a.k.a., Mina) was the crossing on the San Antonio Road which Gaona's Division used while pressing eastward and before proceeding southward to San Felipe and then to Fort Bend before crossing the Brazos.

Also, will change "Benjamin Beason's crossing" to the proper name used at the time, "Beason's Crossing." Alternately, we could use "Beason's Ford." The Texas Army from the 17th 18th and 19th of March had partial control of at least three major crossings: Burnam's, where Houston crossed; Dewees's (a.k.a., Mosley's), held my Sherman and Teal's Company; and finally Beason's, where all gathered. Ample records exist indicating that the civilians used all crossings from Bastrop at the north down to the coast. Strategically, these were all above the Atascosito Crossing which eventually was used by the main Mexican forces (Santa Anna and Sesma).--cregil (talk) 15:27, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Parallel to Flores story; civilian priority

If appropriate, perhaps content regarding how Major Williamson dispatched Captain Tumlinson and the Lieutenant to attend to the evacuees with half of the unit, leaving the First Ranger Detachment under its supply clerk (Second Lieutenant Petty) for the scouting and spy missions-- an interesting prioritization. Upon reaching the relative safety of the Trinity River-- virtually uncrossible due to flood, most armed men left their families there and rode hard to reach San Jacinto and took place in that battle. Tumlinson, Williamson and Smithwick are all primary sources for this.

Note also that if Santa Anna had allowed Gaona's Division to continue to Nacogdoches as originally planned, than protection of the civilians would have decreased the available Texian men at San Jacinto-- it was a very odd change of orders, and contributed to Santa Anna's defeat as Gaona played no part after taking the nearly deserted Bastrop.--cregil (talk) 23:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Background

Rebellion to the dictatorial rule of Santa Anna

The final paragraph lacks a source-- frankly, it seems unlikely to be in its present form. The merciless brutality of Santa Anna became apparent at Zacatecas, but I am not aware of any prior evidence.

However, according to Olson in his A Line in the Sand (p. 26) even at Zacatecas, Santa Anna ordered all Anglos executed, nonbelligerents included. He sources Spanish Language documents as follows:

Josephina Zoraida Vsquez, Don Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Mito y Enigmo (1987), p. 22-23.
Rafael F. Munoz, Antonio de Santa Anna (1937), p. 104.
Elias Amador, Bosquejo Historico [de Zacatecas], II p. 419.

--cregil (talk) 18:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Horrible article

"Genocide of whites" by Santa Anna? That is a rather simplistic characterization of the Texas Revolution, to say the least. Certainly, nobody participating in the events, whether Mexican or American, thought in those terms. And no professional history of the Revolution would reduce these events to a racial dichotomy. This article cannot rely on a 150 year old source, and it definitely cannot rely on websites. And, less importantly, why is half the article a biography of Santa Anna? Please see the Wikipedia article on the entire Texas Revolution for an example of competent writing and citation. -- Unregistered user, 16 March 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.117.144.145 (talk) 18:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Much has changed in the last two years, but I am amused by the statement, "This article cannot rely on a 150 year old source." Yes, it must-- the practice of doing so is called, "History." The practice of not doing so is called, "Revisionist."

Although I am not sure that the "genocide of whites" statement exists, it is essentially accurate, but more specifically and more accurately is that Santa Anna had a genocidal policy against Anglos not whites. Armed Hispanics were allowed mercy, whereas armed Anglos were to be executed. Mexico in 1836 was ruled by a white European, not an indigenous, class, and European prejudices were under-girding policy decisions and the bias traded upon the native language and surnames, not on race. It is still bigotry and it is still practiced-- even in Mexico. --cregil (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Nearly two years after the previous comment, this article still remains distressingly poorly written. The narrative meanders, leaving large gaps, and there are significant portions of purple prose, many with little or no references cited. Briefly put, this article lacks a cohesive, encyclopedic air, hence the "needs expert attention" flag. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Piledhigheranddeeper, I agree with your comments. Seems no one is watching this. Texas is for all intents and purposes a dead project. In March 2014, somebody deleted a hunk of sourcing, and no one did anything about it. For starters, I just removed sections of the article that rambled about Texas history up to 20 years prior to the Runaway Scrape, and replaced it with a link to Texas Revolution. Re your tag " needs attention from an expert on the subject", I think any "expert" on Texas history has long departed Wikipedia. All the good ones are no longer active. I'll see if I can touch this up when I have time, but no promises.— Maile (talk) 20:03, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Done, — Maile (talk) 00:08, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Structure question

Hi Maile66. I noticed this article isn't organized chronologically, but by topic. That caused me a bit of confusion when I started adding a little. For example, I expected to see news about the Declaration of Independence in the Gonzales section (since the troops didn't learn about it until Houston arrived), and not in the Prelude - where it was mentioned before the first Battle of Gonzales. What made you take this approach instead of more of a chronological order? 22:01, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Desperation. I felt a little in over my head doing this one, and I guess I was. If you would like to rearrange it into something that works better, please do. You in particular, that is, because I am familiar with your output. Do what you want here.— Maile (talk) 22:41, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I may start a little work in a sandbox later this week and then see what you think. I think it will be good practice for trying to make all of this make sense. Karanacs (talk) 23:02, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

OK. — Maile (talk) 23:10, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Scope

This does a good job of explaining the movements of the army and why certain choices were made. It gives very short shrift to the civilians, and I think that is a big problem with scope. In school, the Runaway Scrape was almost always framed as a civilian thing - the panic was inspired, in part, by the movement of the army, but the army retreat itself was not the Runaway Scrape. I'm posting some notes at Talk:Texas Revolution/Lack from his description of the Runaway Scrape, but my notes are generally a higher level. There is a lot more detail in his chapter on Anglo Texans that would be beneficial to this article. Karanacs (talk) 20:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I have just requested this be withdrawn from A-class consideration. I don't have access to the Lack book, and I never will. I appreciate the notes you are taking, but they are of no use to me without the book in hand. Hopefully, someone else who volunteered to help with the current project at hand can put the balance in this article. — Maile (talk) 21:31, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

That's a shame - the book has a lot about the Tejanos in Texas too. If no one else jumps in, perhaps later this year I'll have the time to add the civilian perspective. Karanacs (talk) 23:35, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, if you did it, perhaps it could go straight to FAC. Badda-bing! Badda-boom! See what confidence I have in your abilities. — Maile (talk) 00:21, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Working together, I'm sure we could get it there :) Thank you for inspiring me to jump back in. Karanacs (talk) 16:39, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Well good intentions, but 7 months later, I don't see anything that has happened about this on this article. However, now that we've made it through the Texas Revolution re-write, the section on The Runaway Scrape was written by you as a military issue with less mention of civilians than in this article. In light of that, I'm moving ahead with the A-class review on this one. — Maile (talk) 18:55, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Years required

The timeline of events in this article is very difficult for anyone to follow who is not familiar with this period. Throughout almost all of the article, reference is only made to the month when an event occurred, leading to detective work to work out whether the year in question is 1824, 1835, or 1836. It's easy for someone who is very familiar with the source material to assume everybody knows what year is referred to, but for most readers that will not be the case.

As an example, in Runaway Scrape #Ad interim government, the dates of events are: 1834; November 28; December; November 3 (presumably 1835); December 12; December 1; December 20; December 30; January 10, 1836; January 11, December 10; March 1 (presumably 1836); March 4; March 16. Note that these do not necessarily run in chronological order.

Most of these can be worked out because I assume that the Consultation of 1835 convened on November 3, 1835. Similarly I expect the Convention of 1836 met on March 1, 1836. But when did Santa Anna start amassing his army? November 28, 1834, or November 28, 1835? Did Joaquín Ramírez y Sesma lead the Vanguard in December 1834 or December 1835? Did Austin take almost a year to convene the Consultation of 1835? or was it convened in anticipation of a Mexican attack?

When the reader moves on to the Battle of Gonzales section, the scene is set in the second sentence when the date of September 1835, is given, and the events may be assumed to take place up to November 4, 1835. It's clear we have moved chronologically backwards from the final events of the previous paragraph. But when the reader then comes to the Béxar section, we have no way of knowing whether the reader is taken back to October 9, 1835 or forward to October 9, 1836. And so on.

I'm suggesting therefore, that each section is explicit about the first date it mentions. I shouldn't have to get a book out of the library or find Timeline of the Texas Revolution just to work out the sequence of events, especially not in a Featured Article. --RexxS (talk) 14:38, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I will take care of this. Somewhere in the history of getting this up to FA, some editor complained about the confusion of having the very dates you request. I agree with you, so I will take care of it. — Maile (talk) 14:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Maile, I have a much clearer overview of how events turned out now. FWIW, the other possibility I was considering was to set the scene in the lead: along the lines of "the events took place mainly between September 1835 and April 1836", which would make each mention of a month unique - as well as giving a good idea of the timescale of events - but I couldn't see how to fit that neatly into the current lead. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:38, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Done Thank you for mentioning this. I think I have gone through it all now, including adding the lead sentence you have suggested. Let me know if anything else is a-lop. As I was reading the Prelude section, it seemed dates were a bit mixed up and confusing. I have put things in order now. Hope this clears up everything. But if not, just ask me. — Maile (talk) 15:57, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Alamo?

The Alamo section stops at 29 February, before the battle itself even started, then jumps to Santa Anna's villainous statement about executing surrendered foes (except himself; he changed his tune in April when he became the captive). I search History but cannot find where the section was lost. Can someone with subject matter expertise please summarise the Alamo info (basically from Reinforcements section onward) in this article, please? Last1in (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

It wasn't lost, because this article was not about the battle. There is a link to the main Battle of the Alamo article right under the section heading. This article is about the gathering of Houston's troops, and the eventual reaction to what happened at the Alamo. Somewhat through Houston's timeline. If you go down to the next section, people were arriving in Gonzales giving their stories, Houston discounted their initial stories. However, I can see how as it was written, it could have been confusing. I've slightly adjusted that section. And I've added the date of the Alamo's fall in the section below. This puts the timeline in place as to when Houston himself heard about it, not the exact moment it happened. — Maile (talk) 20:57, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Richardson's Ferry

There is no mention of Benjamin Richardson's role in getting people across the Neches. 2603:8080:1801:5C8E:308F:980D:C943:F9F9 (talk) 08:49, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

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