Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (29 page)

With the end drawing closer, and with the hope of reinforcements having faded away like the dropping late winter sun, the Alamo’s defenders could only find solace in the heroic example of their own Anglo-Celtic ancestors of the American Revolution, not unlike how Santa Anna’s soldiers looked with pride upon their forebears in Father Hiladgo’s 1810 revolt against the Spanish. Ironically, both Americans and Mexicans shared an equally distinguished revolutionary heritage in throwing off the yoke of European and colonial powers.

Here, at the Alamo, Bowie took pride in his hardy ancestors, who first migrated from Scotland to the rich tobacco country along the Patuxent River country of southern Maryland during the first decade of the 1700s. Ancestor Captain Daniel Bowie had defended his piece of Prince George’s County, Maryland, while serving with distinction in the spirited attack of Colonel William Smallwood’s Maryland battalion during the campaign for New York in the Revolution. This headlong charge against impossible odds—both British and Hessian—helped to save hundreds of Washington’s defeated troops at the height of the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn on August 27, 1776. Nearly every Marylander became a casualty, including Captain Bowie, who was captured.

But other Bowie family members moved south beyond the tobacco country of southern Maryland, migrating to South Carolina before the American Revolution. With a name denoting distinct Scottish roots, Rezin Bowie served in the command of Francis Marion, the famous “Swamp Fox,” who repeatedly struck at British patrols and garrisons in the South Carolina lowlands.
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Like Bowie, who revered his American Revolutionary ancestors, Crockett admired his father’s role at the unexpected patriot victory at Kings Mountain, South Carolina, in October 1780. He was especially proud of the fact that his father had served as a lowly private with the “over-mountain” men. Winning everlasting fame for the Long Rifle, these frontiersmen defeated Major Patrick Ferguson and his Loyalist troops—vanquishing an entire expeditionary force with one blow that began to turn the tide in the Southern theater. Indeed, while “his son David lost all recollection of anything else his father did in the Revolution, he never forgot John Crockett’s role at King’s Mountain.”
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Here, trapped inside the Alamo’s cold, dark confines without a prayer—even though he had yet to fully realize that bitter truth—Travis might well have recalled his family’s role during the American Revolution. After migrating south from Virginia, Travis’ ancestors lived in the largely Scotch-Irish community of Ninety-Six, South Carolina, which stood at the vortex of a vicious civil war among neighbors. In 1781, the Americans besieged the Tory garrison of Ninety-Six for 28 days without achieving victory. It is not known if Travis’ ancestors in arms served as patriots or Tories, or remained neutral like so many Americans in the South.
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Perhaps some fatalistic Alamo defenders from Ireland identified with the last words of martyred revolutionary Robert Emmet, leader of the failed 1803 Irish revolt, before his September 20, 1803 execution by the British in Dublin: “I am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life is nearly extinguished [and now] The grave opens to receive me . . . I am ready to die.”
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By taking some inspiration in the military roles played by ancestors in America’s struggle for independence, the Alamo defenders had no way of knowing how much they actually had in common with the Mexican troops, who had been sent north to “exterminate” them, sharing a proud revolutionary tradition. Instead, however, the Anglo-Celts only emphasized superficial differences in their opponents, especially a darker skin.

Indeed, the tortured course of the histories of both Mexico and the United States meant that Santa Anna’s soldiers and the Alamo’s defenders had very much in common, despite the considerable cultural and racial differences. Imbued with the identical republican ideals and enlightened revolutionary visions stemming from the 18th-century Enlightenment, the colonial people of both nations, Mexico and the United States, had broken away from their respective mother countries, Spain and Great Britain, in successful revolutions based upon the concept of egalitarianism for all men. But Mexico’s enlightened vision applied to people of all colors, including those of African descent, unlike in the United States. And now, in early March 1836, a good many Americans and Mexicans were about to meet in mortal combat for supporting what were in essence the same principles, at least in theory. Therefore, in this sense, a strange fate and destiny had seemingly brought not only the Alamo defenders to wintry San Antonio in the first place, but also Santa Anna’s soldiers.
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Contrary to the traditional views of the Alamo, the siege was somewhat of a farce. The Mexican artillery arm that had completed the lengthy journey all the way from Mexico’s depths under harsh winter conditions was even weaker, both in numbers and the diminutive size of the pieces, than the Alamo’s “long arm” arsenal. Santa Anna’s artillery arm was so weak that the mere idea of a siege reducing the Alamo’s defenses was unrealistic. All that Santa Anna could rely upon to batter down the Alamo’s walls was eight small artillery pieces: two 6–pounders, two– pounders, two 4-pounders, and two 7-inch howitzers—far too light to be effective. Even worse, these cannons were aging, nearly obsolete guns mounted on Gribeauval wooden carriages. By this time, the Mexican army’s artillery arm was a hollow shell of its former self, having peaked more than a decade earlier in 1825. At that time, the power and accuracy of Mexican guns had forced the surrender of the Spanish garrison of the mighty fortress San Juan de Ulloa that protected Vera Cruz.

Cut off from Spain’s cannon-making foundries after Mexico won its independence, Mexico’s arsenal of artillery consisted of an odd assortment of antiquated Spanish and French artillery pieces from a bygone era. No cannon of Santa Anna’s artillery arm came close to the size of the Alamo’s 18-pounder. In addition, the overall inferior quality of Mexican black powder—extremely coarse, not fine like United States powder—bestowed relatively low propellant capabilities.
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Not surprisingly during such a feeble siege, no Alamo garrison members were killed during nearly two weeks of bombardment. Quite simply, Santa Anna’s siege was little more than an imitation of a legitimate one. As Travis boasted in his March 3 letter: “. . . the walls are generally proof against cannon balls.” Mocking Santa Anna’s artillery fire throughout the bombardment, Travis added in the same letter: “At least two hundred shells have fallen inside of our works without having injured a single man.”
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But as additional regiments and battalions of the Mexican army came marching into San Antonio, it became clear that, no matter how feeble the army’s artillery, the sheer size of the besieging force would soon spell doom for the tiny Alamo garrison. And the no-quarter flag that began flying on the first day of the siege indicated Santa Anna’s confidence. A writer for the
New Orleans True American
emphasized an undeniable reality that not only sealed the Alamo garrison’s fate, but also was destined to send shock waves across the United States: “It is worthy of remark that the flag of Santa Anna’s army at Béxar was a BLOOD RED ONE, in place of the constitutional tri-colored flag” of the Republic of Mexico.
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Such a development should not have surprised the Alamo garrison. The recent tragic fates of the 28 volunteers—mostly from the United States—after the mid-November 1835 attempt to capture Tampico should have served as a stern warning. A letter printed in the February 20, 1836 edition of the
Telegraph
and
Texas Register
explained the tragedy: “We the undersigned prisoners of war are condemned to be shot on Monday December 14, 1835 at Tampico.”
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Some more realistic men in Texas had early warned in vain of the brutal brand of warfare that was about to sweep across Texas. As written by a history-minded Lieutenant Governor Robinson to the General Council on January 14: “The defenseless situation of our oppressed country calls for your prompt attention and speedy relief [because of the] glittering spears and ruthless sword of the descendants of Cortez, and his modern Goths and Vandals.”
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The xenophobic Santa Anna possessed an almost identical low opinion of the Anglo-Celts of Texas, especially those recently from the United States. With undisguised contempt, he explained how the American “invaders were all men, who, moved by the desire of conquest, with rights less apparent and plausible than those of Cortes or Pizarro, wished to take possession of that vast territory extending from Béxar to the Sabine, belonging to Mexico.”
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Clearly, not only fighting to gain permanent possession of the same object—Texas—both sides in the Texas Revolution saw the other as immoral barbarians, a dark plague that had descended upon the land to threaten their respective civilizations. Such emotional and largely racial analogies of the Texas revolutionaries to ruthless Conquistadors had special appeal to the many Indians and Mestizos in Santa Anna’s Army at the Alamo.

Ironically, the initial success of the United States and Tejano revolutionaries of the 1813–14 Gutierrez-Magee Expedition, who had captured Béxar and the Alamo during an earlier liberal revolt against the government in Mexico City, was hailed in sympathetic U.S. newspapers as a military expedition greater than that of Cortes.
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In historical terms, Mexico’s extermination policy was not only a product of Moorish warfare, Cortes’ conquest of the Aztecs, and the savage warfare between the Spanish and the Mexico people for the heart and soul of Mexico, but also a traditional feature of frontier warfare brought to Texas by the Anglo-Celts themselves. When Magee’s American revolutionaries of the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition marched into San Antonio and took possession of the Alamo, which became their headquarters after the Spanish garrison surrendered, the head of one especially hated Spanish officer was cut off. The Spaniard’s head was then placed on a pike at the Alamo’s main gate to serve as a grim warning to liberal-minded Tejanos of San Antonio.

And while Santa Anna’s greatest infamy stemmed from his no-quarter policy at the Alamo and Goliad, what has been conveniently overlooked is the fact that it had been the Texans themselves who had first entered the no-quarter concept into the equation of the Texas Revolution. Ironically, in a strange twist of fate, the Alamo’s now disabled co-commander, Bowie, had in fact first threatened no quarter on Mexican troops in summer 1832. At that time, he declared that all Mexican troops of the Nacogdoches garrison who failed to surrender would be killed without mercy.

Then, in another irony, the second example of the Anglo-Celts threatening to unleash a no-quarter policy in the Texas Revolution came from Travis himself. He swore that he would “put every man to the sword,” slaughtering the Mexican soldiers of the Anáhuac garrison if they refused to surrender. Therefore, a strange fate had seemingly come full circle for both Bowie and Travis, who by now no doubt regretted their earlier no-quarter pronouncements that helped to doom them and the Alamo garrison if captured, or if they surrendered to Santa Anna.
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Other examples of threatening no quarter by Texians can be found. In early October 1835, for instance, Captain Philip Dimmitt—who luckily departed the Alamo before it was overrun—and his Texians had threatened to vanquish the small Mexican garrison at Lipantitlan, Texas, by either “unconditional submission [surrender], or putting it to the sword.”
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At an earlier date, even acting Texas Governor James Robinson got into the no-quarter act, fueling passions higher by imploring the people of Texas to give Santa Anna “war to the knife and knife to the hilt.”
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Therefore, and for good reason, Santa Anna sincerely believed that it was not the Mexicans but the Texians who “have audaciously declared a war of extermination to the Mexicans and should be treated in the same manner.”
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His message to wage no-quarter warfare was transferred to his top lieutenants early in the campaign. In his December 7, 1835 orders to General Sesma, Santa Anna emphasized how these “foreigners, who wage war against the Mexican Nation, have violated all laws and do not deserve any consideration, and for that reason, no quarter will be given them” to the garrison at San Antonio.
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Consequently, Alamo garrison members were about to pay a high price for all of the bravado, arrogance, and threats of their leaders— both military and civilian—since the Texas Revolution’s beginning. As revealed in the pages of the
Tamaulipas Gazette
: “Don Santa Anna [plans] to wipe out the stain [to national honor] in the blood of those perfidious foreigners” who had rebelled against Mexico.

And as if ordained by the natural order of things, a seemingly high price had to be paid in full by the victorious Anglo-Celts of the Jackson generation for the destruction of the pro-British Creeks in Alabama, and the brazen confiscations of their ancestral homeland, the future Alabama. A veteran, Crockett was yet haunted by this brutal war, not to mention the slaughter of his own grandparents by Creeks in northeast Tennessee during the American Revolution. For both sides and for generations, this struggle between Native people and the Anglo-Celts for possession of the North America continent was a total war, often without compassion or mercy from either side.

As a ninety-day volunteer who enlisted in the Tennessee Mounted Militia when “my dander was up,” after the Fort Mims massacre of nearly 300 whites and friendly Indians by the Red Sticks, Crockett would never forget the awful slaughter of men, women, and children by Jackson’s revenge-seeking troops at the Creek village known as Tallusahatchee. With an odd mixture of pride and sympathy, he recalled how: “We shot them like dogs.” Before the hell of Tallusahatchee ended, those yet resisting Creek warriors not shot were burned alive in their log lodges, bringing the final tally of Indian victims to nearly 200 killed.