Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (58 page)
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Authors: Phillip Thomas Tucker
Tags: #State & Local, #Texas - History - to 1846, #Mexico, #Modern, #General, #United States, #Other, #19th Century, #Alamo (San Antonio; Tex.) - Siege; 1836, #Alamo (San Antonio; Tex.), #Military, #Latin America, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #History
Perhaps an indicator of what was really most relevant for the contemporary U.S. public was expressed in an emotional letter to Mrs. David Crockett not long after the Alamo’s fall. In his letter, Isaac N. Jones, who had met Crockett on the Tennessean’s way to meet his cruel fate at the Alamo, paid a final tribute to the former Congressman, who hated slavery and how it had corrupted the American republic’s most idealistic values: “His military career was short. But though I deeply lament his death, I cannot restrain my American smile at the recollection of the fact that he died as a United States soldier should die, covered with his slain enemy.”
38
Clearly, and like so many others, both then and today, Jones had allowed his imagination to take flight, because he believed that a popular personality of Crockett’s stature should have easily killed a horde of allegedly inferior opponents. Indeed, in the analysis of historian Mark Derr, who explained in part how the last stand myth—by way of a national obsession with Crockett’s demise—became so firmly entrenched in the national consciousness: “By the 1950s, American filmmakers and writers were fixated on the notion that Crockett had died while killing Mexicans, in no small measure because, fresh from the Second World War and the conflict in Korea, they were obsessed with the hero’s death in battle. The growing myth of the Alamo demanded too that all the brave defenders died fighting.”
39
Ironically, the story of the Alamo last stand began to grow to mythological proportions only in the later years of the 19th century. Even a principal leader of the Texas Revolution, realistic-thinking Colonel Francis White Johnson, was bemused by the power of the growing myth: “The old popular tale of Texas that the Alamo was stormed by ten thousand men, of whom a thousand or more were killed, shows how rapidly legend may grow up even in their age.”
40
And though without directly challenging the last stand mythology, respected historian David J. Weber concluded how: “A number of the cherished stories about the Alamo have no basis in historical fact, but have moved out of the earthly realm of reality into the stratosphere of myth.”
41
And in his recent book,
Sleuthing the Alamo
, James E. Crisp emphasized how in regard to the battle, “Myths offer the false comfort of simplicity, and this simplicity is accomplished by the selective silencing of the past.”
42
This is precisely why the truth of the mass exodus of defenders from the Alamo has been silenced for so long: because it runs so directly contrary to the iconic and romantic version of events.
This work about what really happened at the Alamo was written in the hope of presenting a more honest and realistic version of the events of March 6, 1836 than has ever been presented before. Based upon fact rather than fiction, truth rather than mythology, and an unbiased, openminded approach rather than embracing prejudicial stereotypes and an out-dated legend, this new perspective of the Alamo has also been presented in the hope of uniting many Americans who yet have radically opposing views of the Alamo’s meaning today. Perhaps the old, timehonored perceptions of the mythical Alamo, rooted in the complex dynamics of politics, economics, and race, should be erased from the national memory, especially given the new realities of American society and culture. Hopefully, a new and more honest understanding of what really happened at the Alamo will make it a story—of heroics on both sides—not from the biased perspective of a single group but of lasting importance for all Americans today. Horace Greeley’s famous words, “When the legend is better than the fact, print the legend,” should no longer apply to the Alamo.
In this sense, therefore, the Alamo should be a monument not to a mythical last stand, but as an enduring monument to folly and the inevitable high price paid by common soldiers for leadership mistakes. Ironically, the area around the Alamo church and in the compound itself very likely saw less fighting and killing than outside the fort’s walls, because of mass exodus from the Alamo. Today, now covered by parking lots, office buildings, and traffic moving along the busy, downtown streets of San Antonio, the area where most Alamo garrison members were killed has no marker or monument to memorialize the forgotten fights and last stands in and around a long-forgotten irrigation ditch outside the walls.
43
Instead of the mythical “line in the sand” story in which every defender crossed Travis’ line, in reality the majority of Alamo garrison members unhesitatingly chose life when they attempted to save themselves by escaping a certain deathtrap in the cold, late winter darkness. It had been a bloody early Sunday morning that would live on as both history and legend. Even though most garrison members died outside the Alamo’s walls, romantic myth not only had these young men and boys of the Alamo garrison dying in the wrong location, but also under the wrong circumstances: the mythical last stand.
Chapter I: THE GREAT PRIZES: LAND AND SLAVES
1.
Randolph B. Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 1–3.
2.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, p. 3;
Connecticut Herald
, New Haven, Connecticut, September 22, 1829.
3.
Paul Horgan,
Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History
(Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), p. 485; Patrick J. Carroll,
Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race Ethnicity, and Regional Development
(Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 130–131.
4.
Horgan,
Great River
, p. 485.
5.
Horgan,
Great River
, p. 486.
6.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, p. 25; Editors of Time-Life Books,
The Texans
(Alexandria, Texas: Time-Life Books, 1975), p. 225.
7.
Robert H. Thonhoff,
The Texas Connection with the American Revolution
(Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1981), p. 7; Jack Jackson,
Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubi Military Expeditions, 1727 and 1767
(Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association, 1995), pp. 20–22, 25;
Connecticut Herald
, September 22, 1829.
8.
Donald E. Chipman,
Spanish Texas, 1519–1821
(Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1992), pp. 200, 206–207, 250.
9.
Cecil Robinson, editor and translator,
The View from Chapultepec, Mexican Writers on the Mexican-American War
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), pp. 36–37, 44.
10.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, pp. 2–4, 48.
11.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
; John Frances Bannon,
The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821
( New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 206–231.
12.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, p. 18; Time-Life Editors,
The Texans
, p. 16.
13.
Eugene Barker and Amelia W. Williams, editors,
The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863
(8 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938), vol. 1, p. 304; James Webb,
Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
(New York: Broadway Books, 2004), pp. 9–184; Jeff Long,
Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo
(New York: William Morrow, 1990). p. 12.
14.
Susanne Starling,
Land, Is the Cry!
(Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association, 1998), pp. 42–44, 52.
15.
Stephen B. Oates, ed.,
Rip Ford’s Texas
(Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998), p. 9.
16.
John A. Garraty,
The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877
(New York: Harper Collins, 1971), pp. 327–329; Fayette Copeland,
Kendall of the Picayune
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 17; Long,
Duel of Eagles
, pp. 12–84.
17.
Copeland,
Kendall of the Picayune
, pp. 17, 29, 31, 36–37.
18.
Barker and Williams, eds.,
The Writings of Sam Houston
, vol. 1, pp. 302, 304.
19.
New York Herald
, New York, June 18, 1836.
20.
New York Herald
, New York, March 21, 1836.
21.
Glenn Tucker,
Poltroons and Patriots: A Popular Account of the War of 1812
(New York: BobbsMerrill Company, Inc., 1954), p. 68; Walter Lord,
A Time to Stand: A Chronicle of the Valiant Battle at the Alamo
(New York: Bonanza Books, 1987), p. 86.
22.
New York Herald
, March 21, 1836; September 10, 1836.
23.
Phillip Thomas Tucker, “Motivations of United States Volunteers During the Texas Revolution,”
East Texas Historical Journal
, vol. 29, no. 1 (1991), p. 29.
24.
New York Herald
, June 20, 1836.
25.
Todd Hansen, ed.,
The Alamo Reader: A Study in History
(Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2003), p. 113.
26.
New York Times
, New York, December 15, 1907; Richard Boyd Hauck,
Davy Crockett: A Handbook
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 28–29, 36–48; Buddy Levy,
American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett
(New York: Berkley Books, 2005), pp. 56, 235; Kim Robertson,
Buffalo Bill’s Bridge
, “Woman born in Arnold captured Cody’s heart,”
ArnoldImperial Leader
, Arnold, Missouri, August 17, 2006.
27.
New York Times
, December 15, 1907; Levy,
American Legend
, p. 241.
28.
New York Times
, December 15, 1907; Hauck,
David Crockett
, p. 39; Levy,
American Legend
, pp. 233–235, 141; James Atkins Shackford:
David Crockett, The Man and the Legend
, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 211.
29.
Levy,
American Legend
, p. 244.
30.
John H. Jenkins, ed.,
Papers of the Texas Revolution
(10 vols., Austin: Presidial Press, 1973), vol. 3, p. 453; Levy,
American Legend
, p. 247.
31.
Jenkins, ed.,
Papers of the Texas Revolution
, vol. 3, p. 453; Hauck,
Davy Crockett
, p. 50.
32.
Ron Jackson,
Alamo Legacy: Alamo Descendants Remember the Alamo
(Austin: Eakin Press,
1997), pp. 34–35; Lord,
A Time to Stand
, p. 46; Bill Groneman,
Alamo Defenders, A Genealogy: The People and Their Words
(Austin: Eakin Press, 1990), p. 30.
33.
Oates, ed.,
Rip Ford’s Texas
, p. 16.
34.
Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, p. 36.
35.
Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, p. 80; Marshall De Bruhl,
A Life of Sam Houston
(New York: Random House, 1993), p. 173.
36.
Copeland,
Kendall of the Picayune
, p. 55.
37.
Connecticut Herald
, September 22, 1829.
38.
Ibid., pp. 17–21; Bob Priddy,
Across Our Wide Missouri
, (3 vols., Jefferson City: Bob Priddy,
1984), vol. 1, p. 143; Lord,
A Time to Stand
, p. 24; Groneman,
Alamo Defenders
, pp. 7–8.
39.
William C. Binkley,
The Texas Revolution
(Austin, Texas: The Texas State Historical Association, 1979), p. 21.
40.
Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, pp. 21–25; Groneman,
Alamo Defenders
, p. 24.
41.
James E. Winston, “Kentucky and the Texas Revolution,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
, vol. 16 (1912), p. 53.
42.
Tucker, “Motivations,” pp. 25–33.
43.
H. W. Brands,
Andrew Jackson
(New York: Anchor Books, 2006), pp. 342–343.
44.
James Alexander Gardner,
Lead King: Moses Austin
(St. Louis: Sunrise Publishing Company,
1980), pp. 156–158, 160, 167; Horgan,
Great River
, pp. 485–486.
45.
Horgan,
Great River
, pp. vii–440; Chipman,
Spanish Texas
, 1519–1821, pp. 3–4; H. W. Brands,
Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence—And Changed America
(New York: Doubleday, 2004), pp. 3–4; William C. Davis,
Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic
(New York: The Free Press, 2004), p. 2.
46.
Binkley,
The Texas Revolution
, p. 20.
47.
Davis,
Lone Star Rising
, p. 59.
48.
Connecticut Herald
, September 22, 1829.
49.
William Trout Chambers and Lorrin Kennamer, Jr.,
Texans and Their Land
(Austin: SteckVaughn Company, 1963), pp. 1–23, 33, 35, 39, 103–104; Chipman,
Spanish Texas,
p. 4; Davis,
Lone Star Rising
, p. 2.
50.
Stephen L. Moore,
Eighteen Minutes: The Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Independence Campaign
(Lanham: Republic of Texas Press, 2002), p. 56.
51.
Horgan,
Great River
, p. 456; Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, p. 156.
52.
Lozano, Viva Teja,
The Story of the Tejanos, The Mexican-born Patriots of the Texas Revolution
(San Antonio, Texas: The Alamo Press, 1985), pp. 13–14.
53.
Ruben Rendon Lozano,
Viva Tejas
, pp. 13–14; Donald R. Hickey,
Don’t Give Up the Ship: Myths of the War of 1812
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 191.
54.
Fehrenbach,
Fire & Blood
, pp. 377–378; Webb,
Born Fighting
, pp. 135–139; Long,
Duel of Eagles
, p. 50; Billy Kennedy,
The Scots-Irish in the Hills of Tennessee
(Londonderry, Ireland: Causeway Press, 1995), pp. 19–25.
55.
Lozano,
Vivia Tejas
, p. ii–iii.
56.
Horgan,
Great River
, pp. 459, 485–486; Don M. Coerver and Linda B. Hall,
Tangled Destinies: Latin America and the United States
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), p. 16.
57.
Fehrenbach,
Lone Star
, p. 100.
58.
Fehrenbach,
Fire & Blood
, p. 378.
59.
Hugh G. J. Aitken,
Did Slavery Pay?
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), p. 212; Hardin,
Texas Iliad
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 6.
60.
Fehrenbach,
Fire & Blood
, p. 378.
61.
New York Times
, December 15, 1907; Brands,
Lone Star Nation
, pp. 164–167; Archie P. McDonald,
William Barret Travis
(Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1976), pp. 22–62, 69–70, 75–83, 92; William C. Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crocket, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
(New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998), pp. 202, 282–283, 262–266; Trevor Burnard,
Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World
(Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 39, 90–92; C. Richard King,
James Clinton Neill: The Shadow Commander of the Alamo
(Austin, Texas: Eakin Press 2002), pp. 7–8, 29, 37; Richard Penn Smith,
On to the Alamo: Colonel Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas
(New York: Penguin Group, 2003), p. xxxix; Randy Roberts and James S. Olson,
A Line in the Sand, The Alamo in Blood and Memory
(New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 35; Ray Raphael,
Founding Myths: Stories that Hide Our Patriots
(New York: MJF Books, 2004), pp. 185–191.
62.
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, pp. 379, 384, 447.
63.
Brands,
Lone Star Nation
, pp174–175; Hopewell,
James Bowie
, pp. 3–5, 11, 18–21, 23–24, 61, 63–67; Long,
Duel of Eagles
, pp. 29–30.
64.
James A. Michener,
The Eagle and the Raven
(Austin, Texas: State House Press, 1990), pp. 36–37.
65.
Alwyn Barr,
Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528–1995
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), p. 16; William O. Chariton,
Exploring the Alamo Legends
(Plano: Wordware Publishing, Inc., 1990), p. 136; Michener,
The Eagle and the Raven
, p. 134; Roberts and Olson,
A Line in the Sand
, pp. 132–133; Long,
Duel of Eagles
, pp. 29–30.
66.
Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, pp. 155–158; Steven M. Wise,
Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery
(New York: Da Capo Press, 2005), p. 13; John Hope Franklin,
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 138–163; Raphael,
Founding Myths
, 189–191.
67.
Long,
Duel of Eagles
, pp. 225–226, 252; Jackson,
Alamo Legacy
, pp. 52–53.
68.
William C. Binkley, editor,
Official Correspondence of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836
(New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936), pp. 60–61, note 1.
69.
Bob Boyd,
The Texas Revolution, A Day-by-Day Account
(San Angelo: Standard Times, 1986), pp. 27–28.
70.
New York Herald
, May 8 and May 19, 1836; Paul D. Lack,
The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History
1835–1836 (College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1992), p. 239.
71.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, pp. 1–4, 18, 48; Roberts and Olson,
A Line in the Sand
, p. 35.
72.
Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery
, pp. 13–14, 19, 26; Davis,
Lone Star Rising
, p. 60.
73.
Davis,
Lone Star Rising
, pp. 66–67; Roberts and Olson,
A Line in the Sand
, p. 35.
74.
Davis,
Lone Star Rising
, pp. 20–21; Roberts and Olson,
A Line in the Sand
, p. 35.
75.
The Telegraph and Texas Register
, Columbia, Texas, December 13, 1836; Editors of Time-Life Books,
The Texans,
pp. 28–29, 34, 36; Brands,
Lone Star Nation
, p. 149; Editors of Time-Life,
The Texans
, p. 28.
76.
The Telegraph and Texas Register
, August 23 and December 13, 1836; Nevin,