Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (15 page)

The first shot of nails and cut-up horseshoes from the tiny “Come and Take It” cannon initiated the war, echoing over the brown-hued Guadalupe River. The cannon was forged in Mexico, and was the only one loaned to the Anglo-Celtic colonists for protection against Indian raids; Mexico’s demand for its return soon became a bone of contention. Neill had easily driven off Mexican cavalry sent from San Antonio to retrieve the gun during the “Lexington of the Texas Revolution,” and he could never forget that glorious day when he became, along with Bowie, the first hero of this rustic revolution of amateurs. Since he had proved that he knew what he was doing at Gonzales, or so it seemed to others, then it might have been logical to assume Neill also knew what he was talking about in strategic terms. This, however, was not the case.

For the most part, these frontier leaders failed to see the serious defensive liabilities of the Alamo. There was no systematic arrangement of firing platforms, nor were there parapets for riflemen along the perimeter, or even mutually supporting strongpoints like bastions, ravelines, or interior “redoubts.” Part of this negligence stemmed from historical and cultural bias—nothing more influenced the tactical thinking of an entire generation of American military men than General Jackson’s defensive stand, bolstered by cannon, that resulted in victory at the battle of New Orleans, or “the good old Orleans plan,” in the words of the history-minded editor of the
New Orleans Advertiser.

But most of all, overestimation of the defenders’ own military abilities, combined with a serious underestimation of their opponents’, led to the disastrous decision to make a defensive stand at San Antonio.

Located almost 150 miles west of the gulf, and looming on the far southwestern frontier “in the midst of a prairie wilderness” that spanned to the horizon, San Antonio was as remote as it was isolated. The Tejano town, at a distance of two weeks travel by land from New Orleans, was situated in the middle of nowhere. Located amid an expanse of chaparral, mesquite thickets, and rolling prairie, this obscure frontier location disguised the fact that San Antonio had long served as the Spanish colonial capital of Texas, situated in an ever-volatile border region between Spanish and French territory.

San Antonio was a small town in 1836, consisting of clusters of onestory abode buildings. This isolated vestige of Tejano civilization was lost amid a vast expanse of grasslands, which mirrored the town’s lack of strategic importance. Nevertheless, San Antonio was now the largest Mexican community north of the Rio Grande—a status that belied the unsavory spectacle of endless dust, flies, and skinny dogs that filled its narrow streets, and the single-story abode houses of which the town largely consisted. An unimpressed Frenchman who maintained a diplomatic tone in his evaluation, Jean-Louis Berlandier, wrote that Béxar “resembles a large village more than the municipal seat of a department” of the Republic of Mexico.

Strategic and military priorities had dominated San Antonio’s history from the beginning. Issued in September 1772, only three years before the American Revolution, a Spanish royal order provided for the establishment of a defensive cordon to protect the northern frontier of New Spain, consisting of a string of fifteen far-flung presidios, or forts, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to nearly the Gulf of Mexico. This decision stemmed from the international, strategic chess game between Spain and France over possession of the vast expanse between Pensacola, Florida, and the Rio Grande River.

As part of an ambitious plan, presidios were established to protect Spain’s claim to Texas against French encroachment from the east. One was located along the San Antonio River at the future site of San Antonio, and another at La Bahia, later known as Goliad. As if to make a point about the fate of future foreign encroachments in Texas, now claimed by Spain, La Bahia was built upon the site of an old, evacuated French settlement.

This string of presidios was also created to protect the Mexican settlers, or Tejanos, against the wrath of the native people, the “Chichimecs” whom Santa Anna had once fought as a young cavalryman. Unlike in central Mexico, these native Texas tribes could not be subdued by the Spanish military methods that had conquered the Aztec. The presidios were a direct response to a tough native people, skilled in waging war on horseback across the northern frontier, and whom the Spanish could not defeat despite their best efforts.

Father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares established what became known as the Mission San Antonio de Valero—the Alamo—as soon as he reached the San Antonio River on May 1, 1718. Founded in early July 1731 by the families that lived in and around the presidio, and migrants of Spanish ancestry from the Canary Islands who had arrived in March 1731, the nearby civilian community of Villa de San Fernando de Béxar lay close to the newly christened Presidio San Antonio de Béxar. This presidio had been established only four days after the creation of the Mission San Antonio de Valero, and was located about a mile north of the chapel and mission.
¹³

The Alamo was only one of five Spanish missions in the immediate area. The Alamo’s antecedents predated Father Olivares’ arrival on the San Antonio River, and can be traced back to the Mission San Francisco Solano, founded on March 1, 1700, which was moved north from the Rio Grande region to the Villa de San Fernando de Béxar. At this new location, near the future site of San Antonio, the mission was renamed San Antonio de Valero before acquiring the name Alamo. According to local legend, the Alamo was named for the large stands of cottonwood trees growing nearby along the sluggish waters of the river.
¹⁴

Ironically, like the village of San Antonio itself, the old Spanish mission was isolated even from nearby San Antonio, separated by the San Antonio River that flowed to the west. After the mission was secularized in 1793, the Alamo existed as an independent community, the selfgoverning Pueblo of Valero, which operated free of San Antonio’s control. Just to the Alamo’s south along the Gonzales Road, the La Villita, or little village, grew in independent fashion near the river’s east bank until its merger with San Antonio in 1809.
¹⁵

Symbolizing the so-called “civilizing influence” of New Spain, the other Spanish missions in the San Antonio area were located farther down the San Antonio River from the Alamo. Both the mission and the presidio systems were key ingredients of Spain’s strategic plan to develop and defend its vulnerable northern frontier region against French encroachments. However, Spain’s longtime efforts to tame the land and its native people seemed lost amid a sea of grasslands and rolling plains better suited to immense herds of bison, prairie dogs, and rattlesnakes than to a relatively few cultivators of the soil. To many with strategic insights, San Antonio seemed like the least likely place for a dramatic military showdown of any kind in early 1836. To note only one example, the lack of military and strategic importance of the Alamo prompted Lieutenant Colonel Jose Enrique de la Pena to describe it as a “holding . . . unimportant either politically or militarily.”
¹⁶

This sound viewpoint by one of Santa Anna’s most promising young officers was neither new nor an isolated opinion, as the judgment that San Antonio lacked importance had been pervasive for some time. After inspecting the northern frontier of Texas for the government of New Spain, Marques de Rubi, for instance, presented “bold” proposals in his 1768 report to Mexico City: much like the entire Spanish defensive arrangement to protect the lengthy northern frontier, San Antonio was vulnerable, weak, and indefensible, because it was located too far north, above Rubi’s ideal or natural line of defense—the Rio Grande—and its isolation disrupted the geometric logic of his protective cordon to protect the northern frontier. The presidio at San Antonio and the town obviously presented a logistical and military nightmare for New Spain if threatened by outside forces, because it was almost impossible to supply and adequately garrison with troops. Ironically, these same liabilities later plagued the Texas government and military, except that for them the Alamo was situated too far south and west.
¹⁷

From the beginning of the Texas Revolution, Texans themselves had realized the vulnerability of the Alamo. After the capture of San Antonio in December 1835, and the return of victorious Texas warriors to their farms and ranches—falsely believing that the war was over— San Antonio continued to be garrisoned by a diminutive force. Because the Texas Army had dissolved quickly after capturing San Antonio, this isolated forward position was only held as an advance warning post, through which the small garrison could obtain intelligence to warn the East Texas settlements of an impending invasion from Mexico. By late 1835, no one of sound tactical and strategic insight had dreamed of defending it if an entire Mexican army advanced from the south.

In overall strategic terms, San Antonio therefore should not have been garrisoned in the first place. Anglo-Celtic soldiers were stationed in San Antonio in early 1836 only because they had captured the Tejano town in December 1835, remaining in place simply because it was newly won. Captain Carey explained the rationale for the garrison soldiers in a January 12, 1836 letter: “After we took this place . . . it was thought requisite for some to remain to protect it, [therefore] volunteers [were] called for to enlist [sic] for four months.”
¹⁸

As if ordained by an ill-fated destiny, the Alamo garrison was also waiting for the formation of a Texas regular, or “standing army,” to relieve the untrained, ill-disciplined volunteers who had decided to stay in San Antonio. The quarrelsome Texas government dissolved in early 1836, and the concept of a regular army remained more fantasy than reality. Consequently, the Alamo defenders remained at San Antonio awaiting relief from sizeable numbers of regular troops who would never come.

Clinging to twin illusions, Alamo soldiers gambled with their lives in regard to the belated effort of the Texas government to form a regular army, and the hope that Texas settlements would rally to their assistance if they were threatened. If a Mexican Army crossed the Rio Grande, they hoped to be reinforced not only by the “Old Texians” of east Texas, but also by the newly enlisted troops of the Texas regular army. This, however, was a dual no-win gamble. First, even if they had attempted to assist the Alamo, those living in the “Cane Brake” and the “Red Lands” country of east Texas were too distant to be quickly galvanized; second, it would take months for Texas to create a real regular army.

The Alamo garrison failed to grasp these undeniable realities. Ample manpower did exist in the “Red Lands,” with its twin towns of San Augustine and Nacogdoches, known as the “Gateway to Texas.” But compared to the rich Brazos, Trinity, Red, and Colorado River Valleys, the vulnerabilities of the remote southwest frontier around San Antonio were only distant concerns at best for the “Old Texians” by early 1836.

Unfortunately, hundreds of potential Texas soldiers who were hardened veterans of the frontier, Indian warfare, and the 1835 campaign, now believed that the war was over. By early 1836, these men were back on their farmsteads and plantations, and there they remained until it was too late for the Alamo garrison. Much work had had to be done in their absence during the fall of 1835. Fences had to be mended, cattle and sheep slaughtered and the meat cured for winter, virgin oaks and pines had to be cut down, and more land had to be cleared for future pastures and fields to get an ambitious farming enterprise into full operation once again. These middle and lower class volunteers, especially those without slaves, had suffered economic losses, failing to get much of the 1835 cotton harvest crop out while they were away defeating General Cós’ troops.

Many Texans were now busily planting crops for spring, ensuring that they would remain absent from military service during the initial stages of the 1836 campaign. One of these primary crops was wheat, which thrived on the central plains. Spanning endlessly across rolling hills to the horizon, these flowing wheat pastures provided ideal winter grazing for cattle. Unfortunately for the Alamo garrison, a large percentage of the men of military age in the fertile “Red Lands” of east Texas were more interested in their own personal lives, future crops, and private lands than they were in military service.
¹⁹

The interim governor, James W. Robinson, realized that it would be an all but impossible task to rouse Texan farmers to take up arms for the 1836 campaign: “I regret to make [this request of] you at this season of the year, when the case of your domestic concerns, claims all your attention,” he wrote.
²⁰
Indeed, “many of the substantial men in the Redlands, which saw Americans settling there even before the establishment of the Austin Colony, failed to respond to Houston’s desperate call for reinforcements in the spring of 1836, either delaying military service or evading it altogether.”
²¹
This general apathy among such a large percentage of the east Texas population helped to seal the Alamo’s doom.

By early December 1835, even
before
the capture of San Antonio, “the Texas revolution had been [already largely] abandoned by the Texans and was being revived and carried on and principally officered by citizens of the United States,” and this included the Alamo garrison. In fact, only the timely arrival of the U.S. volunteers of the New Orleans Greys had “prevent[ed] the collapse of [Austin’s] army and, therefore, the revolution itself,” while ensuring the capture of San Antonio.
²²

Ironically, one reason the “Old Texians” abandoned the Alamo defenders was the same as that which led Mexicans and Anglo-Celts to war in October 1835: possession of the most fertile land in Texas and its boundless potential wealth. “Old Texians,” including Austin and the “Austin faction,” were concerned that all the lavish land bounties promised to the flood of United States volunteers might usurp the older land grants that the Mexican government had issued to the empresarios. If Texas broke away from Mexico, the victors—leaders and soldiers from the United States, and mostly recent arrivals to Texas—would have a more legitimate claim to this rich land than the “Old Texians,” especially those that were hedging their bets by remaining neutral or non-supportive of the United States volunteers. The mere prospect of independence posed a threat to existing land claims sanctioned and honored by the Republic of Mexico; a war to preserve the Mexican 1824 Constitution, not independence, would preserve the land grants already officially issued to the east Texas colonists.
²³