May 14, 2009 - The story of Emily Morgan, a.k.a. the Yellow Rose of Texas, is a good one even if it’s not true, and it’s probably not. Her name may not even have been Emily Morgan, but Emily West instead.
The story a lot of us want to believe takes place in April of 1836, not the best of times for a retreating volunteer army like that of the newly-formed Republic of Texas. The Alamo had fallen and the garrison at Goliad had been massacred. Texans were fleeing the state in droves. Faith in the Republic’s army commander, Sam Houston, was at a low ebb.
Mexican general Santa Anna’s army was making its way through Texas virtually unimpeded, pillaging and plundering at will. The Mexican army was big, but not very fast, carrying a large carpeted tent for Santa Anna along with supplies of champagne and opium and even a piano. This army, or at least its general, traveled on a lot more than its stomach.
Even so, Santa Anna seemed to have all the advantages in this little skirmish, which why his actions on April 21, 1836 is all the more puzzling. Maybe it was the champagne and opium giving the orders, but Santa Anna set up camp alongside a bayou, effectively cutting off one possible avenue of retreat, even as Houston and his troops were lurking just half a mile away. The situation was so tense that the Mexican army decided to take an afternoon siesta.
To answer the question why he did these things, the popular answer has always been that the General was involved in an afternoon dalliance with Emily Morgan, said to be a slave of James Morgan. Emily was captured when Santa Anna marched through Morgan’s Point and seized her the same way he seized a piano at Harrisburg. Thus, because of Santa Anna’s interest in Emily, the Texans were able to “surprise” the Mexicans and rout them in 18 minutes.
This may have only served as a little more than an undocumented footnote in some forgotten volume, except for another story that popped up concerning Emily Morgan. She was said to be the inspiration for the song “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” one of the most popular songs ever written about a state that has had thousands of songs written about it.
The song, as originally penned, was heavy with racial overtones that are missing from the version you hear today, which was made popular in 1955, by Mitch Miller. One of the earliest sheet music versions was published in Macon, Georgia in the 1860s. The original transcription bore the initials H.B.C., but we don’t know who that was or if H.B.C. wrote the original song.
We do know that Texans adopted the song as a sort of unofficial anthem along with the stories connected with the song. The veracity of the stories connected with Emily Morgan and the “Yellow Rose of Texas,” has been cussed and discussed by historians for decades.
Emily Morgan was actually Emily West, who in 1835, signed a contract to work for a year as a housekeeper at James Morgan’s New Washington Association Hotel at Morgan’s Point. She may or may not have gone by the name Emily Morgan, but that is the name she was given because people at the time assumed she was Morgan’s slave.
As to her dalliance with Santa Anna, even the most squinty-eyed skeptic admits that it probably is true that she was in Santa Anna’s tent when the General should have been preparing his troops for battle. There is little reason to believe she was there of her own free will. What’s more doubtful is that she knew what Houston was up to and sacrificed her virtue in service to the Texas cause; it was after all a surprise attack.
The idea that the song was written to honor Emily Morgan is ultimately a matter of conjecture. Nothing in the original lyrics has any overt allusion to San Jacinto, and as originally written was to be sung by a black soldier pining for his mixed-race sweetheart.
The more the stories of Emily as a real-life “Yellow Rose of Texas,” are investigated, the harder it is to accept the story as it has been handed down to us for these last several decades. That doesn’t keep the story from being told or the song from being sung. This is one place where facts have not gotten in the way of a good story, or a good song.
