Another Thing That Never Happened The Most

Josh Blackman tries to use this tale from Texas history to counter Justice Sotomayor’s shredding of the Solicitor General in oral arguments yesterday. He does about as well as the SG.

We have a similar story in Texas history. During the Texas Revolution, the Mexican Army demanded that the Texians in the City of Gonzales surrender their cannon. What did the Texians say? Come and Take It! The remedy here was not equitable; it was belligerent. The Texians did not reply with a canon of construction; they replied with a cannon of destruction. This was the Lexington of Texas. And the Battle of Gonzales led to the Battle of the Alamo, which led to Texas Independence. Sensing a pattern of what happens when the government tries to disarm the people?

Yeah...no. That’s not what happened at all.  Here, I’ll just quote myself:

Here, I'll quote from Forget The Alamo, a book I'm sure Cruz has never read:

The nearest cannon in American hands was at Gonzales, seventy miles east [of San Antonio]; it had been given to the town to ward off Comanche attacks years earlier. Ugartechea sent a squad to fetch it, but the American alcalde refused to hand it over and buried it.  On October 1, a Mexican force of two hundred arrived, upping the ante.  Texas militiamen, smelling a fight, were already pouring into Gonzales.  There was a lot of yelling back and forth.  Some smart-aleck American made a flag with a picture of the cannon and the words "Come and Take It." Thus was born the Texas T-shirt industry; to this day, it's hard to spend a half hour in Dallas or Houston without seeing a "Come and Take It" tee.

Forget The Alamo: The Rise and Fall of An American Myth, by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford.  Penguin, 2021.  p. 61.

As for the battle, there wasn't one.  On October 2 the "Texians" opened fire on the Mexican troops.  200 Mexican troops were soon 800, but they withdrew to San Antonio.  The Texians took that as a victory.  No surprise; to this day they think the Battle of the Alamo was a victory, instead of an almost useless massacre.

Santa Anna eventually bypassed Gonzales on his way to San Jacinto. You’ll note the alcalde in Gonzales buried the small gun. It’s never been found. Blackman includes a picture of it at the Gonzales museum. He probably doesn’t realize it’s a replica. And no, nobody in Texas fought for independence because of a small cannon the town of Gonzales buried rather than use in battle.

Mexico eventually marched from San Antonio (after the battle at the Alamo) to San Jacinto, bypassing Gonzales, but the army slaughtered 3000 down the road, in Goliad. It was that massacre that actually prompted Texans to fight back for independence. Not for a gun; for the people.

Like Alito, Blackman prefers to make up facts that support an opinion, rather than consider ordinary human motivations like anger at gross injustice, or just consequence of actions on human beings. His argument against Sotomayor’s questions is about as effective as that buried cannon was.