David Crockett (46 page)

8
Ibid.

9
Ibid.

10
Ibid.

11
T. R. Fehrenbach,
Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans
(New York: Collier Books, 1980), 152.

12
Terry Corps,
Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny
(Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006), 306–7.

13
Eugene C. Baker, “Stephen F. Austin and the Independence of Texas,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online
13, no. 4 (1933): 271,
http://www.tshaonline.org/
. Mary Phelps Austin Holley, born in Connecticut in 1784, was a first cousin to Stephen F. Austin. Her brother, Henry Austin, and his family had gone to Texas to join the Austin Colony, and Mary was a frequent visitor. Both her father and her husband, Horace Holley, a Unitarian minister, died of yellow fever, as did Mary, in 1846.

14
Taylor,
In Search of the Racial Frontier
, 41.

15
David J. Weber, ed.,
Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), 152.

16
The University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, MS 1225, David Crockett letter “To the Editors” [Gales & Seaton], Weakley County, TN, August 10, 1835.

17
Hauck,
Davy Crockett: A Handbook
, 47.

18
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 212.

19
The Gazettte
, Little Rock, AR, November 17, 1835.

20
Time
magazine, “Just Around the Backbone of North America,” October 7, 1957,
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809942,00.html
.

21
Richmond Enquirer
32, no. 63, December 10, 1935.

22
Jones,
In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett
, 194–95. Jonesboro was established by ferryman Henry Jones in 1815 and became a major hub as both the farthest navigable point upstream on the Red River and a terminus for Trammel’s Trace.

23
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 213–14.

24
Pat B. Clark,
The History of Clarksville and Old Red River County
(Dallas: Mathis, Van Nort & Co., 1937), 14–15.

25
Ibid., xiv.

26
Ibid., 12.

27
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 216.

28
New-Bedford Mercury
29, no. 34, February 26, 1836.

29
Jones,
In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett
, 199.

30
Levy,
American Legend
, 245.

31
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 409.

32
Hutton, Introduction,
Narrative
, xxv.

THIRTY-SIX • EL ALAMO

1
Arkansas Gazette
, May 10, 1836. This account of the Nacogdoches banquet speech was published more than two months after the fall of the Alamo. Various versions of the speech also appeared in several other newspapers of the day.

2
Jones,
In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett
, 204, quoting
Niles’ Weekly Register
, April 9, 1836.

3
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 218–19.

4
Ibid., 216.

5
Ibid., 217–18. John Forbes,
The Handbook of Texas Online
,
http://www.tshaonline.org/
. Forbes was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1797 and immigrated to the United States in 1817. He settled in Cincinnati, OH, and in 1834 moved with his family to Nacogdoches, where he became chairman of the Committee of Vigilance and Public Safety. He was elected first judge of Nacogdoches Municipality on November 26, 1835, and administered the oath of allegiance to many army recruits, including Crockett, as they passed through Nacogdoches. He went on to become aide-de-camp to Sam Houston and served during the campaigns at Anahuac and San Jacinto. It was said that he acquired Santa Anna’s sword. In 1856 he became mayor of Nacogdoches, and he died there in 1880.

6
John H. Jenkins, ed.,
Papers of the Texas Revolution
, vol. 4 (Austin: Presidial Press, 1973), 13–14.

7
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 414. Corzine came to Texas from Alabama in 1835 and settled near San Augustine. In October 1836 he was elected senator to the First Congress of the Republic of Texas, but he resigned two months later to become judge of the First Judicial District. Corzine died in San Augustine in 1839.

8
Ibid.

9
Copy of original Crockett letter and accompanying transcript from Sally Baker, Crockett Tavern Museum Archives, Morristown, TN.

10
Rod Timanus,
On the Crockett Trail
(Union City, TN: Pioneer Press, 1999), 41.
Handbook of Texas Online
, s.v. “Patton, William Hester,”
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ online/articles/PP/fpa54.html
. Helen Widener, “Republic of Texas—Freedom Fighter—William Patton,”
Irving Rambler
, August 2, 2007, 11. At one point there were two William Pattons reported at the Alamo, but neither of them was there on March 6 when the old mission was stormed. The older one was William Hester Patton, a Kentuckian who had commanded a company of Texian insurgents at the siege of Bexar from December 5 through December 10, 1835. This Patton became the aidede-camp to General Houston. After the Battle of San Jacinto, he was given custody of Santa Anna and accompanied him to Washington, D.C., prior to the Mexican leader’s release and subsequent return to Mexico. Patton went on to serve in the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and was murdered by bandits at his home on the San Antonio River in 1842. The other Patton—Crockett’s nephew—may have been sent from the Alamo bearing a message. If so, he thus was spared the fate of the others who perished there. On March 17 his name appeared on the muster rolls of Captain Henry Teal’s company of regulars, an outfit that fought at San Jacinto. Although he was due a sizable parcel of land for his military service, Patton probably left Texas soon after his discharge.

11
Hutton, Introduction,
Narrative
, xxix–xxx.

12
H. W. Brands,
Lone Star Nation
(New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 349–50.

13
John M. Swisher,
The Swisher Memoirs
, edited by Rena Maverick Green (San Antonio: Sigmund Press, 1932), 18–19.

14
Ibid.

15
Ibid.

16
Paul Robert Walker,
Remember the Alamo: Texians, Tejanos, and Mexicans Tell Their Stories
(Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2007), 34.

17
Michael Wallis and Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis,
Songdog Diary: 66 Stories From the Road
(Tulsa: Council Oak Publishing, 1996), 146–49. After March 6, 1836, Santa Anna was also called the “Butcher of the Alamo,” depending on the side of the border. “His Serene Highness,” the moniker Santa Anna preferred, had a love-hate relationship with the Mexican citizens he governed off and on for many years. “If I were God,” he once said, “I would wish to be more.” He survived a few expulsions, coup attempts, and exiles, as well as battles against the United States and France. The dictator, who had lost a leg to a French cannonball at Veracruz in 1838, died alone, in poverty and mostly forgotten, on June 21, 1876.

18
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 204–6.

19
James L. Haley,
Texas: From Frontier to Spindletop
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 29.

20
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 282–83.

21
Amelia Williams, “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
32, no. 4 (1934): 237. John McGregor was born in Scotland in 1808 and emigrated to Texas in the early 1830s. When Sam Houston put out the call for volunteers, McGregor left his farm, armed with a shotgun and his bagpipes, and rode west to San Antonio, where he became known as the “Piper of the Alamo.”

22
Editorial in the
Telegraph and Register
, published at San Felipe de Austin (vol. 1, no. 24), Thursday, March 24, 1836.

23
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 214.

24
Walker,
Remember the Alamo
, 54–55.

25
Levy,
American Legend
, 285–86.

26
Hauck,
Davy Crockett: A Handbook
, 50–51.

27
Marshall J. Doke Jr., “A New Davy Crockett Story,”
Heritage
4 (2007): 29.

28
Brazoria Courier
, Brazoria, TX, March 31, 1840.

29
New York Times
, May 18, 1893.

30
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 568.

31
A Guide to the José Enrique de la Peña Collection, 1835–1840, 1857, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. The bulk of the collection consists of Peña’s personal papers, which provide an eyewitness account of the Mexican army’s campaign to suppress the Texas Revolution. The personal papers fall into two sections: a field diary of 109 pages and an extended memoir of 400 pages based upon the diary. Peña wrote the memoir by verifying happenings he recorded in his field diary and by adding information based on his fellow officers’ reports.

32
“Controversial Alamo Memoir Appears Authentic, Says UT Austin Forgery Expert,” University of Texas at Austin, Office of Public Affairs, May 4, 2000. Following several weeks of evaluation, a University of Texas forgery expert said that he found the memoir’s paper consistent with the materials of the period, and watermarks in the diary paper match watermarks in the paper used by the Mexican army at the time. He further declared the narrative to be genuine and said he saw “no signs that the memoir had been tampered with.”

33
Hutton, Introduction,
Narrative
, xxxv–xxxvii.

34
The Texas Constitutions of 1836 or 1876 and the U.S. Constitution do not provide explicit provisions for the state’s right of secession. Proponents of Texas secession, however, point out that Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution adopted in 1876 states that “Texas is a free and independent state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States,” and makes no mention of the state’s being subject to either the U.S. President or U.S. Congress. They also note that the Texas Constitution states, “All political power is inherent in the people…they have at all times the inalienable right to alter their government in such manner as they might think proper.” In 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry, as part of a reelection campaign, suggested secession as an alternative that Texas might want to pursue. “There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said at that time. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.” The Texas Constitution does clearly spell out an option to divide itself into five separate entities. The Ordinance of Annexation, passed on July 4, 1836, by the Texas Convention, reads: “New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution…”