I've totally forgotten the Alamo

I once drained my radiator against a wall of the alamo, i felt relieved when I walked away.

snood wrote:

When I was first in San Antonio about 16 years ago, I found the Alamo by mistake - while looking for a fast food place at which to have some lunch. I left Burger King after eating, walked across the street and there it was - a totally underwhelming, drab little building. I remember thinking "this must be like a replica or something of the real thing". Not.

Yeah, true, in todays laser show, blockbuster movie, celebrity obsessed, jaded culture, it does look underwhelming.

When we went to visit it, my initial reaction, was "are you sure this is it? Is this maybe just the entrance"?

But then...going in, it all got very real. Yes it's small, but it made all the more impact of what went on there.

May sound corny, but I felt the ghosts, and their emotions.

Chai you ignorant slut....

I think the John Wayne movie of The Alamo was worse than the Disney version, because it was drawn out, preachy, and plain boring.

The mission building itself was not particularly important in what passed for a battle there. James Bowie was in a room there, dying of a septic disease (typhus or typhoid fever), which had already taken his wife's life. He was being tended by his sister-in-law, and none of the crap you've seen in the movies was true--he didn't leave his bed, and when the Mexicans came in to kill him, he was very likely already at death's door, and didn't know what was happening.

There was a low wall around the mission grounds, and the commander of the garrison, William Travis, had done what he could to make it defensible, by putting up fire steps (boards on which the defenders could stand to fire at the enemy) and building crude redoubts along the wall in which it was assumed the defenders would have a better field of fire. David Crockett was found dead in one of these outer redoubts after the battle (no Fess Parker running up the steps, killing evil Mexicans all the while).

There are three "heroes" of the Alamo. James Bowie is the least heroic. In Louisiana, where his family moved when he was still a boy, he got a deservedly bad reputation as a brawler, and was accused of murder in what he and his defenders called a brawl. One of his older brothers had taken an old iron rasp, and using his primitive farm forge, had heated it and hammered it out to make a rather common form of skinning knife, which is the origin of the myth of the "Bowie knife." James Bowie was accused of using the knife to murder a man after calling him out. Bowie learned to speak Spanish fluently, but he never learned to write either English or Spanish well. After the War of 1812, Jean and Pierre Lafitte set up a "hideout" on an island in the bay at Galvez Town (modern Galveston), from which they smuggled slaves into Louisiana. Bowie is alleged, based on a good deal of circumstantial evidence, to have joined them in their slave smuggling operation. As Federal authority moved into the area after the war, Bowie drifted into the land game, the biggest "get rich quick" game in town. His method was to forge land grant documents allegedly given by the last Spanish governor of Louisiana, Galvez. His forgeries were not very good, and long before he had to get out of town, Federal land agents had begun to disallow claims based on Bowie's land grant documents. Finally, he forged some of these claims for land in Arkansas, and there, a Federal judge declared them forgeries, and issued a warrant for Bowie's arrest. Bowie fled to Texas. There, he met and married the daughter of the alcalde (mayor) of San Antonio de Bexar. He went briefly to the city of Mexico, attempting to get the government to give him large land grants, on condition that he bring in "Anglo" settlers. That was entirely unreasonable, the Mexicans having already decided they could defend their northern frontier by bringing in Protestant American settlers to act as a buffer between the plains Indian tribes and the settled areas of Mexico--Moses Austin and his son Stephen Austin brought in settlers on a contract they had signed with the Mexican government.

But the Mexicans became suspicious of Bowie, and probably had learned about his forgeries in Louisiana and Arkansas. At one point he was apparently about to be arrested when he left town and returned to San Antonio. There his wife contracted a septic disease, and died. Bowie was charming and well-liked in San Antonio, and seems to have been a friend of Juan Seguin, one of the Mexicans who joined in the revolution against the government at the city of Mexico. When Travis arrived, Bowie argued with him over command of the defense at the Mission, but by the time the seige was actually begun, Bowie was dying. The Mexicans considered Bowie to be a major rebel (not actually true, he just had a big mouth), and they really wanted badly to get him. When the dawn assault overwhelmed the mission (the fight lasted about 30 minutes or less), they found him in the mission building, and pinned him to his bed with bayonets.

David Crockett ran away from home when he was about 14 or 15, and took up with a carter who took him to Baltimore and employed him for a couple of years. At about age 16, Crockett returned home, but soon quarreled with his drunkard father, and soon left again. He went into the Tennessee territory, and began a process he would repeat all his life. He would make a land claim, clear the land and build a cabin, and then get bored, going off on hunting expeditions which sometimes lasted months. Eventually he would sell the land, but since such land sales usually involved letters of credit, many of which were unreliable, he never made much money. Even after he married a widow with children, he continued the process.

Crockett fought with Jackson's Tennessee Volunteers in the Creek War (1813), and although he was AWOL for a time, he returned in the end, and apparently was well thought of. He became a Major in the Tennessee militia, although there is no evidence that he took his duties seriously or ever again was involved in military operations. He was a charming man, though, and discovered a talent for "stumping." Political hopefuls would arrive in a wilderness clearing where there was a "town," and would stand on a stump to deliver a speech to the crowd. Crockett showed a real talent for that and was elected to the Tennessee legislature. He showed absolutely no talent for practical politics, though, and he managed to piss of Jackson and his political machine. Nonetheless, he remained an effective stump speaker, and he was twice elected to the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee, to the despair of the Democratic Party. He was really useless in the House, and managed to alienate those who should have been his political allies by his wrongheaded efforts to champion land reform measures where there was no evidence of corruption (there may have been corruption, but Crockett neglected to find any evidence to support his rants on the floor of the House).

For a while, he made an indifferent living as a representative of the backwoods "common man" in an era which historians have dubbed the "age of the Common Man." He wasn't very good at that, though, and people who wrote unauthorized accounts of his life, and had touring stage plays about him made more money on the rubber chicken circuit than he did. He went back to Tennessee, abandoned his wife and children and step-children once again, and fell back into the pattern of claiming land, clearing it, selling it for dubious letters of credit, and wandering of on protracted hunting expeditions. Finally, he decided to stand a third time for the House from western Tennessee (the frontier was retreating west in his lifetime)--but the Democrats were out to get him, and his stumping was not as effective as in the past. He had said during he campaign that if he were not elected, the voters could go to Hell, and he would go to Texas. He lost, and he eventually wandered off to Arkansas, where he picked up some local boys who were interested in a hunting expedition, and he wandered into Texas. Eventually, although he had not apparently had a plan to join the "Texian" rebels, he wandered southwest and learned about the defense planned for San Antonio de Bexar, and showed up with the boys who were still riding with him.

William Barrett Travers was a young man who had studied law in Alabama, gotten himself in debt, was prosecuted and convicted for debt, and fled Alabama, leaving behind a young, pregnant wife and a daughter. He went to Texas, and started a law practice there, which prospered modestly simply because there was no competition. He did stay in touch with his wife, and his son who was born after he left Alabama came to live with him for a time. When the rebellion came, he offered his services, helped to raise a troop of dragoons (basically, mounted infantry, or cavalry with rifles rather than swords), and was sent to take command of the defense of San Antonio.

Whether or not Crokett fought well i don't believe anyone can truly say. Despite what the movies tell you, for two weeks after Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arrived with his army, no attempt was made to surround the mission grounds, and Travis and his command could have walked away. That was not what Travis saw as his duty, though, and the principle was sound, if ineptly executed, that the western garrisons (San Antonio and Goliad) must delay the Mexicans while a "real" army was raised to oppose them. The Mexicans were veteran troops, and their officers knew their business, even if their favorite entertainment was quarreling with one another over silly matters of precedence and honor. A small sorties was sent across the river (the mission was then outside the town, across the river) to capture some outbuildings, and Travis managed to drive the Mexicans off after a short, sharp fight. That unfortunately convinced the Texians that they were doing well and could hold off the Mexicans, who they stupidly chose to despise. Juan Seguin rode off to raise the Spanish speaking population to oppose the Mexicans. Many did fight for Texas, but the slaughter at the Alamo, and of the Goliad garrison after they surrendered, convinced many Spanish speaking Texians to stay out of the fight.

Santa Anna's artillery was really useless for a seige. The filed artillery didn't have the range to shell the mission from across the river, and if he crossed the river with his guns, he'd have to take the army to protect them, because his gunners would then be in rifle range of the defenders. He had some siege artillery, but it was rather wasted shooting at men hunkered down behind mud walls. So, on the night of March 3-4, 1836, the Mexicans crossed the river. Travis still was able to send out a dispatch rider as late as March 3rd. Apparently, during the day of March 5, Santa Anna and his officers decided that the place was not very defensible, and rather than was time and supplies on a regular siege, they would launch an assault in the early morning. On the morning of March 6, the Mexican infantry moved up as close to the walls as they could before they were detected. A sentry called out, and Travis ran to one of the fire steps. Travis's "servant" (actually, his black slave) was one of the handful of survivors, and he reported that as Travis stepped up on the fire step with a pistol in one hand and his sword in the other, a musket shot struck him in the forehead, and he dropped down dead on the spot.

But none of that makes good myth, so Travis, Bowie and Crockett have become heroes. It is alleged, with some slim justice, that Travis' defense delayed Santa Anna long enough for Houston to amass an army. That is a dubious claim, however. Santa Anna would still have needed a couple of weeks to close up his column, which had marched literally thousands of miles to get to San Antonio. He was also short on supplies, and a good deal of the two weeks he spent in San Antonio before he crossed the river and took the mission was spent by his mounted troops gathering supplies, and especially forage for the horses and oxen, which was in short supply, and required them to ride for days out of San Antonio to round up enough to continue the march. The most realistic assessment is that after the Alamo, Santa Anna became as contemptuous of the Texians as they had been of the Mexicans. He divided his command, marched north (where the Texians were not), and then marched south with only part of his army. When he was defeated and captured at San Jacinto, the person most responsible for his defeat was himself.

But, once again, it makes a great myth--so don't tell any Texans i wrote this.