Too Far From Heaven, Too Close to the United States.

The Americans yearn for freedom, but they do not wish to grant it to black slaves.

Mexico's largest newspaper, Mexico News, dedicated an entire page to reporting the atrocities committed by American immigrants. It strongly condemned the horrific crimes perpetrated against slaves and called upon all people of conscience and faith to unite against the evil slaveholders.

They treat human beings like livestock! They strip away human freedom and force those poor souls into unpaid labor. These wretched people are beaten with clubs, lashed with whips, and forced to live lives worse than pigs or dogs while shackled in chains.

Even after these poor souls endure such pain and torture, the slaveholders refuse to spare them. They tear families apart, scattering them to the ends of the earth, knocking out their teeth, and branding their bodies with marks that symbolize humiliation and inhumanity.

They use starvation and torture to break those poor people.

This is wrong! This is sinful! This is shameless!

Must I explain everything?

No! There is absolutely no need!

Our time and energy should be spent on more valuable pursuits.

As things stand, those slaveholders have already taken up arms, ready at any moment to turn our free Mexico and the entire civilized world into their slave plantations.

We can no longer hope to move them with mercy; instead, we must take up our swords to defend our homeland, sever the chains of slavery, and cast those shackles into the furnace of the era so they can never return to plague our descendants.

God is with us!

This newspaper caused a great stir within Mexico. Not only in Mexico, but through deliberate dissemination, newspapers in Europe and the United States also reprinted the article.

Now, the entire Western world knows that a group of Americans intends to re-establish slavery in a country that has already signed a decree of abolition.

How shameless, how barbaric! Even within the United States, there are two factions, yet both acknowledge that those who seek to re-establish slavery in a nation that has already abolished it are evil.

For a time, Mexico held the upper hand in public opinion, and domestic factions were united as never before. With the Catholic Church acting as a lubricant, everyone intended to make these damned Protestants and their slave system crawl back to their own homes.

However, mere superiority in public opinion cannot bring about true victory.

September 27, 1835: Gonzales fell; the Mexican army did not fire a single shot.

October 21, 1835: Goliad fell; the entire Mexican garrison was killed in action.

October 2, 1835: San Antonio was besieged.

December 9, 1835: San Antonio fell.

December 30, 1835: The entire territory of Texas fell.

Goliad is the most important land and water transportation hub; whoever takes it controls San Antonio.

At that time, San Antonio was the capital of Texas, as well as its most important grain base and economic center.

Therefore, Santa Anna chose Goliad as the site of the first battle.

February 23, 1836: Santa Anna, leading an army of 8,000 men with 20,000 rifles and 30 cannons, set his sights on Goliad.

Santa Anna loves the feeling of being treated as a hero. To satisfy his vanity, Franz specifically prepared an "Emancipation Proclamation" for him.

Every time Santa Anna conquered a place, he would gather the local black slaves to listen to his speeches, causing the march to stop and start along the way.

Black slaves constantly requested to join Santa Anna's army. Santa Anna, worried about having nowhere to distribute his rifles, quickly formed three black rifle companies.

At the same time, following Franz's advice to unite all forces that could be united, Santa Anna sent men to contact nearby Indian tribes.

Santa Anna stated that as long as the Indians helped Mexico and obeyed Mexican law, they would be considered Mexicans and would not be treated differently.

In fact, American pioneers had given them similar words and promises, but the Indians had been deceived by white men too many times; they demanded to see Santa Anna's sincerity.

Santa Anna directly ordered his soldiers to issue them rifles, but only five rounds of ammunition per rifle, and made an agreement: as long as the Indians kept the alliance and helped Mexico attack the Americans, they would receive a batch of bullets every week.

This made the Indian chiefs immediately fond of the Mexicans. Of course, there was no way they would risk their lives fighting the Americans, but they could provide intelligence and harass the Americans' supply lines.

This was exactly the effect Franz wanted. In fact, as long as the Indians remained neutral, it was a good thing for the Mexican expeditionary force.

If the Indians could help gather intelligence, harass the supply lines of American pioneers, and hunt down straggling deserters, it would be perfect.

Let us turn to another matter.

American colonial merchant Sam Houston, the current commander-in-chief of Texas and future first president of the Republic of Texas, found that because the pioneers were divided into several factions and his own troops were too far from San Antonio, he did not want to make a meaningless sacrifice. He decided to abandon San Antonio and ordered the garrison there to abandon Goliad and retreat into the countryside to wait for the arrival of the main Texan force.

In fact, before Houston's order arrived, many militiamen and soldiers who had temporarily joined the army had already fled the fortress for various reasons.

The most common excuse was needing to go home to harvest wheat; everyone was a farmer, so going home to harvest wheat was perfectly normal, right?

However, Texas grows winter wheat, which is generally sown in mid-to-late September to early October and matures in late May to mid-to-late June of the following year. It was currently February, and the local plantation economy meant that all such work was done by black slaves.

Only Colonel William Travis and his 150 men remained, yet he still intended to refuse Houston's order.

William Travis knew how important Goliad and San Antonio were to the entire nascent Texas.

Because once San Antonio was occupied by the Mexicans, it could provide Santa Anna and his Mexican legions with a constant stream of supplies.

In William Travis's eyes, Texas's military strength was severely insufficient; the regular army was less than 2,000, and even adding the volunteers arriving from the United States, it would not exceed 3,500.

Meanwhile, Santa Anna's expeditionary force numbered 8,000, and they had the cooperation of local Mexican armed forces, plus those damned black slaves, Indians, and traitors who were joining Santa Anna's ranks in a steady stream.

William Travis pinned his final hope on the United States. He hoped the United States could directly enter the war, and for this reason, he absolutely could not lose San Antonio.

To hold Goliad, William Travis began writing letters to various places for reinforcements; he needed more soldiers and more weapons.

However, the Texans themselves were divided into several factions. The leaders of these factions were mostly heads of colonial groups, and these groups had long been in competition, so most chose to turn a blind eye to William Travis's plea for help.