The Goliad Massacre: Palm Sunday, Eighteen Thirty-Six

On Palm Sunday, March twenty-seventh, eighteen thirty-six, the men imprisoned at Presidio La Bahia believed they were going home. They had surrendered a week earlier at Coleto Creek under terms they understood to promise prisoner-of-war status and repatriation within eight days. Some were handed bundles of their belongings. Guards marched them out through the fort's gates in three separate columns, as if for a departure.

Instead, at a predetermined signal, the Mexican soldiers turned and opened fire. Those who did not die immediately were clubbed or bayoneted. Between four hundred twenty-five and four hundred forty-five Texians were killed that morning. Colonel James Fannin was executed last, seated in a chair because a wound prevented him from standing. He reportedly asked to be shot in the chest, not the face, and that his personal possessions be sent to his family. Neither request was honored. He was shot in the face, and his body was burned with the rest.

The order came directly from President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He cited a Mexican law declaring all foreigners taken under arms to be pirates, subject to immediate execution. General Urrea, the officer who had accepted Fannin's surrender in the field, reportedly opposed the order and sought a reprieve that never came.

A small number survived by fleeing into the brush or hiding beneath the bodies of the fallen. A few who were physicians or who had skills deemed useful were spared. One survivor, Dr. Joseph Barnard, later wrote an account that documented the massacre for history.

The shock of Goliad shook both Texas and the United States. Two newspapers in New Orleans carried the news within days. Volunteers and supplies flooded into the Texian army. At the Battle of San Jacinto on April twenty-first, eighteen thirty-six, just three weeks after the massacre, Texian soldiers shouted two names as they broke the Mexican lines: the Alamo, which had fallen the month before, and Goliad. Texas won its independence in eighteen minutes. The graves of Fannin and his men were not formally marked until eighteen fifty-eight.