I finished this one last night, sandwiched in between the first and second volumes of U.S. Grant’s memoirs, and it was well worth the buy and the read. It’s billed as the most comprehensive look at the massacre, and I’d go along with that, though I haven’t read many others. Especially interesting is the section on weapons, which explains how so many of the American volunteers killed so many Mexican soldados in the Battle of Coleto, while they survived, and how the few survivors of of the massacre got away: the Mexican Brown Bess flintlock muskets were rendered poorer by weak, field-made powder.
I’ve seen several descriptions of how Fannin, who was executed last, supposedly asked not to be shot in the face but was, anyhow. Author Jay Stout quotes from the only eyewitness account, available at this site at Texas A&M, that Fannin actually asked only that the Mexican muskets not be held so close to his face that it receive powder burns, but he was disregarded. A strange sort of vanity, either way. You can find a good deal of the background material Stout cites here and at the A&M site. His bibliography is worth having by itself, and much of it also is online. Despite recent efforts to get the Mexican government to return the flag of the New Orleans Greys, about half of whom were murdered at Goliad, I agree with Stout that it belongs in Mexico, but wish that it would be put on display or, at least, photographed for public view.
Good as Stout’s book is, I must reiterate, that if you can only afford/read one book on the Texas Revolution, Stephen Hardin’s Texian Illiad is still the best.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 