Emily West - The Yellow Rose Of Texas

The most memorable day in the life of General Antonio López de Santa Anna started with great sex. It ended with getting his ass kicked. Hey, it sounds like a typical day in Texas to me!
The song "Yellow Rose Of Texas" is very famous - even many "yankees" know the words, thanks to Mitch Miller, the bearded bandleader who made a hit with the tune in the late 1950's. Nobody knows who wrote the song, but historical documents prove it was originally titled "Emily, The Maid Of Morgan's Point", and became a popular song nationwide during the 1850s. During the Civil War, it was used as a marching song by both sides, and especially by General Hood's Texans.
The story begins just after the war of 1812, when a British Naval officer named Peter West fathered an illegitimate child with a black Bermudan slave woman named Hester. The child was named Emily. The British law that ended slavery freed Emily, but she was so poor that in 1835, at the age of 19, she sold herself into indentured servitude for a one year term, in exchange for $100 and passage to America. The man who "bought" her was erstwhile Texas land-grabber James Morgan.
Morgan was a Philadelphia-based wheeler-dealer when he caught Texas fever in 1830, and decided to get in on the business and land opportunities. In 1830, he founded New Washington, at the mouth of the San Jacinto River near present-day LaPorte. Within a few months the town was flourishing.
On frequent trips to New York, Morgan rounded up investors, immigrants, and workers for his growing town and plantation. Because slavery was illegal in Texas, Morgan bought indentured servants in Bermuda as workers. During a voyage to Bermuda in 1835, Morgan spied Emily West selling candles at King's Harbor. Like nearly everyone who saw the beautiful and graceful young woman, Morgan was taken with her. Because she was free, beautiful, and half Caucasian, Emily received better terms from Morgan than anyone else ever did. He took her aboard his ship bound for Texas. By the time the ship sailed into Galveston Bay, war had broken out with Mexico.
Morgan was immediately commissioned by Sam Houston to defend Galveston, and young Emily turned out to be more than just "eye candy". She took over the task of providing food for troops at Morgan's Point, 30 miles north of Galveston, and by all accounts did a great job. When Santa Anna and his army finally came to New Washington, nearly everyone in the town ran off. Emily bravely stayed at her post. Santa Anna captured her and a young "yellow boy" named Turner loading a flatboat with food and supplies headed for Houston's army. Santa Anna cajoled Turner to lead his Mexican scouts to the Houston encampment. But as they were departing, Emily convinced Turner (who was also infatuated with her beauty)  to escape from Santa Anna's men and rush to Houston's camp to inform him of the Mexican general's arrival. He alerted the Texans and they prepared for battle.
General Santa Anna believed himself quite the ladies' man. And although still married to a woman in Mexico, he had also bigamously married one of his teenage captives from his Texas campaign. He had been without his most recent bride for two weeks now. Emily looked like she would make a very suitable replacement. One soldier's diary described her as "long haired, full-breasted, the color of molasses - and of a willing disposition". Santa Anna took one good look and decided today would be a good day to get laid in the balmy breezes coming across Galveston Bay. I can relate to that.
Thus, he ordered the immediate setting up of his encampment on the plains of the San Jacinto despite loud protestations from his colonels who insisted the location violated all principles of wartime strategy. And they were right. The Mexican army could not have selected a worse spot to encamp. Houston, upon hearing of Santa Anna's location from Turner, moved his troops into the woods within a scant mile of the beguiled general's headquarters. Santa Anna had made the common mistake of "thinking with the little head", and it was going to cost him dearly.
The next morning, April 21, Sam Houston climbed a tree to spy into the Mexican camp. He saw Emily preparing a champagne breakfast for Santa Anna, and reportedly remarked, "I hope that slave girl makes him [Santa Anna] neglect his business and keeps him in bed all day." Houston was not to be disappointed. She entered the tent carrying breakfast, and the pair remained inside as the sun grew high in the sky. No one can be sure what happened in the tent, but conventional wisdom says sex was involved.
Early that afternoon, the great final battle for the independence of Texas was engaged. The Mexican army was caught completely by surprise, and Santa Anna was literally caught "with his pants down." (Reports say he was caught running away with his silk shirt open). Houston's men overran the Mexican Army and won the war that day, thanks in large part to the marathon sexcapades of Emily and Santa Anna.
Emily survived the battle and made her way back to New Washington. Two days later, James Morgan, who had not heard of the battle, returned from Galveston and Emily told him of her "ordeal" and the outcome of the last great battle. The colonel was so impressed, he repealed her indenture and gave her a passport to New York. She sailed out of Galveston two months later aboard one of Morgan's ships. Morgan made certain everyone knew of Emily's sexual heroics, and recorded the story in his journals. He also told his story to an English friend and ethnologist, William Bollaert, who recorded the story in every detail.
Recent historians have suggested Emily's efforts might have been made more because she was attracted to the opulence and good looks of the Mexican general than out of patriotism. Her acts have been attributed to a case of "the hots". But the accounts from those who were there indicate she was a loyal "Texan" who did what she could for the independence of Texas.
Today, the heroic sexual acts of the "Yellow Rose" are still reverently commemorated. In San Leon, a group known as the Western Historical Order of the Rose (WHOR), observes April 21 of each year by having wild sex orgies in tents.
Whether she was a hot-natured sex machine, or a patriotic heroine who "just laid there", Emily was instrumental in winning Texas independence.   GATOR