Not John Wayne’s Alamo

Like most Americans, especially those of us a bit advanced in our years, I have a pretty firm understanding of what happened at the Alamo.

The noble, peaceful Texians are being oppressed by the tyrannical dictator Santa Ana. Forced to fight for their freedom, they take up arms. Standing between the invading Mexican army and the still forming Texian army led by the great statesman, Sam Houston, a couple of hundred brave Texians decide to make a stand at the Alamo. There, taking over for the ailing yet heroic Jim Bowie, the dashing William Travis gives a fine speech asking them to die for Texas. He dramatically draws a line in the sand and asks all that are willing to die with him to step over the line. All but one does. That man is allowed to leave. Davy Crockett, hearing of the fight and eager to strike a blow against tyranny, shows up and stays to fight.

After a couple week siege, the treacherous Mexicans attack in the middle of the night. Though hopelessly outnumbered, the Texians fight valiantly. Everyone stands their ground. Although all of the Texians are killed, the Mexican army pays a heavy price. One of the biggest heroes of all is Crockett. Running out of ammunition, he wields his gun like a club. When he finally falls, he is surrounded on all sides by dead Mexicans. 

Although the Alamo falls, their sacrifice saves the Texian army. This respite gives Houston the time to organize his army and they later catch Santa Ana’s army unawares at San Jacinto. The Mexican army is virtually destroyed and Santa Ana is captured. This battle secures the future Republic of Texas.

From that day onward, all Americans look to the Alamo as one of our great moments.

OK, how much of that is actually true? Well, I’ve been reading a history book called Forget the Alamo. It’s been very enlightening. 

All Texians did die at the Alamo.  Houston did use the death of those Texians to inspire his army to attack the Mexican army at San Jacinto with no mercy. Santa Ana was captured. The negotiations leading to his release did lead to the founding of the Republic of Texas.

Let’s talk about the rest.

First of all, the peaceful Texians weren’t all that peaceful. They were working land grants growing cotton. In the 1800s, if you were growing cotton, you had slaves. Growing it any other way was unthinkable. Recently, Mexico had achieved independence from Spain. The Mexican government was built on a liberal philosophy. They found slavery abhorrent and wished to outlaw it in the country.

The Texians saw this as a threat to their livelihood and protested vigorously. Santa Ana, who had become dictator of Mexico, made significant concessions to the Texians to allow them to keep slaves, but still it was not enough for them. So yes, the Texas Revolution that resulted in the Republic of Texas was started because of slavery.

How crucial was the Alamo? The Alamo was generally considered to be undefendable, especially by such a small group of soldiers. It held no practical value. Sam Houston ordered it to be evacuated and destroyed. Bowie refused to leave. There were reports of a large Mexican army moving towards them. The reports were discarded or disbelieved. When the Mexican army finally made their appearance, the Texians were trapped. Travis began writing increasingly frantic, grandiloquent notes begging for men and supplies. 

How about our heroes?

Well, Bowie was a slave trader that engaged in land fraud at a huge level. He moved to Texas to start over, if not actually to escape a hangman’s noose.

Travis, bankrupt and ruined in Alabama, also escaped to Texas for a new start. He promised to send money to his young wife and two children. He never did. He also kept a sex diary. In it, he recorded his liaisons as well as mercury treatments, which is typically treatment for venereal disease. One side effect of this treatment is excitable fits of madness, which seems kind of on point for his behavior. There is absolutely no first hand accounts of Travis drawing a line in the sand with his sword.

Davy Crockett was the equivalent of a nineteenth century Kardashian. Famous for being famous and at one point thought of as a possible successor to Andrew Jackson, he was now also down on his luck. He was looking to start over in Texas. Hoping for independence, he was hoping for high office.

How about the battle itself? The battle, once started, lasted all of one hour. Travis was killed by a shot to the forehead within the first minutes of battle. Bowie, who had become seriously ill, was probably killed in his bed. He might not even have been conscious. After initial confusion at one of the walls, the Mexican army quickly gained access. They turned the Texian cannons around and fired directly into the barracks where the surviving Texians were holed up. Several groups, not willing to stand and fight, ran out of the Alamo and headed either for the river or for woods. The Mexican cavalry was laying in wait for them and ran them all down.  It’s not absolutely clear, but there are seven first hand reports from Mexican soldiers that Crockett actually surrendered. All survivors were executed, which considering the revenge that the Texians laid upon the Mexican army at San Jacinto, probably wasn’t the best strategy. 

Sam Houston doesn’t start off looking great here either. He also ignored reports of a marching Mexican army and refused to believe that it was besieging the Alamo. Once he got definitive news that it fell with no survivors, he promptly went into disaster control mode. He turned the lemon into lemonade by turning the Alamo debacle into a call for bloodthirsty vengeance. It worked. At San Jacinto, Mexican soldiers were annihilated, regardless of whether or not they tried to surrender. 

Oh yeah, remember the Alamo? Well, it turns out that the US pretty much forgot the Alamo for decades. In the histories immediately following the establishment of the Republic of Texas, the Alamo was considered to be pretty much a footnote. There was no annual commemoration. Major parts of the Alamo were leveled. The Long Barracks, site of the infamous last stand, became something like a grocery store. Bats and mice were the only things in the Alamo church. It wasn’t until the early 1900s, some seventy years later or so, that people tried to make the Alamo a thing.

When I write my thoughts on the book Forget the Alamo, I’ll probably touch on how we got from this little known, inconsequential, forgotten battle to it being this vital battle, our Thermopylae, exemplifying all of the greatness of America.

Isn’t history fascinating?