existing in American public opinion between aiding the cause of Texas, resisting despotic government, and undertaking a predatory expedition, with filibusters or soldiers of fortune, against a purely Mexican town. Technically, and from Santa Anna's viewpoint, Texas and Tampico, alike, were Mexican soil. That many of the Texan leaders failed also to see this distinction was one of the underlying causes of the sacrifice of Fannin's men. Even so, there is no excuse for Santa Anna's having so completely misjudged his means to an end. Relying on the Tampico precedent, he decreed, before beginning his invasion of Texas, that all "foreigners" taken in arms in Texas should be treated as pirates and shot. He thought thus, by intimidation, to cut off Texas from American aid. It was, of course, a complete misunderstanding of the American people to suppose that such a fulmination would be likely to have that effect. But when Fannin's men were captured by Urrea, the first wave of American sympathy for Texas was spent. Even at New Orleans, where the American interest was most consequential and direct, the Texan Commissioners had difficulty in finding money and were compelled to secure it on drastic terms. There was a marked reaction against Texas because the marine underwriters, and the New Orleans merchants trading in Mexico, were effectively back-firing Texan support. American reaction against the Tampico expedition; the stupidity of the Texan Provisional Government; tales of neglect and hardships whispered by volunteers returning from Texas; and the divisions in Texan counsel, apparent to all, were having their effect. The Texan defeat at the Alamo, and the capture of Fannin, had restored the prestige of the Mexican arms. As at no other time during the revolution, Texas was dependent on help from the United States. Had Santa Anna seized the opportunity of Fannin's surrender to dump his men, with Miller's, on the wharves at New Orleans, humiliated, starving, half naked, penniless, homesick, and forlorn, and each with his painful story of Texan mismanagement and Texan neglect, Texas' standing with the American people would have fallen to a new low; and American men, and American money, for the Texan venture would have been scarce indeed. Killing them was exactly the fillip needed to American sympathy and American pride to insure for Texas the financial and moral backing of which the struggling young Republic was then in such dire and desperate need.