Saturday is San Jacinto Day in Texas, marking the 182nd anniversary of General Sam Houston's victory over Santa Ana's Mexican Army. The Battle of San Jacinto marked the end of the Texas Revolution, giving way to the Republic of Texas.
“When we fail and we don't give up, and then we eventually we succeed, those people who came here in the 1820s and 1830s left us that legacy, and that's something we all benefit from today,” says Larry Spasic, president of the San Jacinto Museum of History.
“We have our own separate history, other states cannot claim to have been a nation at one time or another,” he says. “And people who travel the United States think of two things, they think of the United States and then they think of Texas.”