The Legend of Emily (Morgan) West

The Legend of Emily (Morgan) West. The Yellow Rose of Texas. , Legend has it that Emily Morgan, Mulatto servant of Col. James Morgan, actually "won" the Battle of San Jacinto for Texas by catching Gen. Santa Anna's eye when he sacked and burned Morgan's Plantation on April 19, 1836. According to the legend, Santa Anna took Emily with him at the time and at the moment of the Texans' attack on the afternoon of April 21, 1836, she kept the Mexican general so occupied in his tent that he was unable to rally and command his troops to prevent defeat. Emily is supposedly also immortalized as the subject of the 19th century ballad "The Yellow Rose of Texas.", The first mention of Emily in any writing was by a William Bollaert in 1842, who wrote that he heard from an officer who had been at San Jacinto, that the battle was lost because of "the influence of a Mulatto girl (Emily) belonging to Colonel Morgan, who was closeted in the tent with General Santana...", Emily D. West, a free black woman, was known to be at the San Jacinto Battlefield, but there is no verified record that places her in the tent of General Santa Anna. Historians point to the fact that eyewitnesses who had no reason to be sympathetic to Santa Anna made no mention of the supposed dalliance in the tent incident., It is known that Emily West arrived in Texas with free papers in December of 1835 and that she was at Col. Morgan's plantation (New Washington) on April 16 when Col. Juan Almonte and company of Mexican dragoons arrived. She accompanied these troops to the plains of San Jacinto on April 20. She escaped during the battle on the next day but lost her free papers. After the death of Lorenzo de Zavala, vice-president of the provisional Texas government, Mrs. Zavala and Emily left Texas and returned to New York. There is no evidence she ever came back to Texas.