Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  76 Sutherland, “Fall of the Alamo,” Williams Papers, UT. Again, Sutherland says that he was told this by Smith after the fall of the Alamo. It should be noted that Williams, “Critical Study, II,” 21n, speaks of her being shown a scrapbook of clippings collected by Smith's daughter, presumably dealing with her father, who unfortunately seems never to have given for publication his own account of the Alamo. this scrapbook has not been found to date.

  77 Affidavits of V. Bennett, n.d., Lewis Ayers, November 8, 1836, William L. Hunter, William Rosenberg, and Thomas Kemp, November 8, 1836, Williamson Oldham statement, n.d., Petition of Administrators of James Bowie, Memorial No.451, TXSL.

  78 “Mrs. Alsbury's Recollections of the Alamo,” Ford Memoir, vol. 1; Sutherland account, Ford Memoir, UT; Testimony of Mrs. Hannig, September 23, 1876, TXSL. According to Williams, “Critical Study, II,” 43n, Susanna Dickenson's granddaughter said in 1929 that her grandmother had told her that on March 3 Bowie was taken from his sickroom and into the small room at the southwest corner of the Alamo church. Enrique Esparza agreed, and so did the aged Andrea Castañán Villanueva, called Madame Candelaria. But Candelaria probably was not even in the Alamo at that point—if ever at all—and Esparza's recollections are so belated, and wildly inaccurate and self-contradictory, that little faith should be put in them on this point, as he was probably influenced by the numerous, and equally confused and contradictory, Candelaria accounts. As for Dickenson's granddaughter's supposed statement, in the first place it is second hand at best. None of the reports of interviews with Susanna, from first to last, make any mention of Bowie being brought into the church, though she did mention him once or twice, in the 1876 interview cited above saying that “she knew Col Bowee & saw him in the Fort, both before & after his death. He was sick before & during the fight, and had even been expected to die.” Given the increasing inaccuracy of statements attributed to her in her later years, and the unmistakable evidence that she incorporated other stories and rumors into her accounts, no reliance can be placed on this supposed hand-me-down story. Besides, Bowie had isolated himself because of his typhoid, and his contagious condition was presumably well known in the fort. It seems incredible, then, that Mrs. Dickenson and the others who occupied that room in the church would choose to expose themselves to the same virus that was probably killing him. Also, the southwest room in the church happened to be the baptistry, already occupied by the magazine. So far as any reasonable conclusion may be made, Bowie remained in the room beside the gate until he died.

  79 John Stuart to Houston, March 15, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 86; Baltimore Nile's Weekly Register, March 19, 1836.

  80 Asbury, “Almonte Journal,” 20, March 4, 1836.

  81 This is not asserted as a fact, but merely as a speculation based on the fact that in the final minutes of the battle, this is what the surviving defenders did, as described subsequently.

  82 Potter, “Fall of the Alamo,” 7; Matovina, Tejano Accounts, 27. It has to be said here that while the tejano accounts in Matovina and others are certainly interesting and often quite colorful, as historical documents they cannot be regarded as very trustworthy so far as the events in the Alamo are concerned. Of the thirty- seven accounts in the book, including the one cited, only seven were actually written within twenty years of 1836, none of whose authors were inside the Alamo, and only one was even in the vicinity. With the exception of the statements of Juana Alsbury, Brigidio Guerrero, and Enrique Esparza, all these accounts are by people who claim to have been in San Antonio. Only Juana Alsbury's 1880s statement is truly valuable for what went on inside the fort. Esparza's accounts are mostly useless, being written sixty-five to seventy-five years after the fact, highly imaginative, and contradictory. Madame Candelaria, who claimed to have been inside during the fight, was clearly either lying or senile, repeatedly changing her story, incorporating the recollections of others as her own, and contradicting herself. These accounts are not unreliable because they are by tejanos, it should be emphasized, but simply because they are by people who were for the most part quite aged when they made these statements, and who had become accustomed to being minor celebrities because of the stories they could tell, and therefore had considerable motive to exaggerate them in the retelling.

  83 There is a question of whether Travis may have sent out an offer of surrender on the night of March 4 or 5. Gen. Vicente Filisola in his Memoirs, vol. 2, 176-77, wrote of a rumor that on March 5 Travis sent a woman out of the fort to Santa Anna with a proposal that the garrison would surrender its arms and the fort, if he would spare their lives, but that the general refused, demanding a surrender at his discretion. Similar to this is the statement by José de la Peña in his Narrative, 44, that on March 5 Travis promised the garrison that if no reinforcements arrived that day, he would surrender the next day or try to break out and escape in the night, and that the Mexicans learned of this from a woman in Béxar. Neither the Almonte “Journal” nor the memoir of Santa Anna's private secretary Caro makes mention of any such rumor. Both Filisola and de la Peña probably derived their accounts from a common source and camp gossip, and de la Peña most likely confused some of the genuine stories no doubt going about Béxar among the tejanos who had left the fort in the previous few days. Of the two, only Filisola would have been in Santa Anna's headquarters, and thus able to speak from any direct firsthand knowledge. Travis did say in one of this letters that if the convention in Washington did not declare independence, he would lay down his arms, and such a statement, if made to the garrison or in hearing of the tejanos before they left, might easily have percolated into the version that appeared in de la Peña's memoir. There were a few stories in Texian accounts of a tejana woman going out of the fort that night and somehow betraying Travis to the Mexicans, but the fact is there is nothing such a person or persons could have known that would have benefited Santa Anna, who already had all the advantage on his side. The only thing Santa Anna might not have known was the extent of Travis's provisions and ammunition, and what word he had gotten about reinforcements. These rumors seem to originate with Susanna Dickenson in an 1874 interview cited in Morphis, Texas, vol.1, 175, and she seemed to imply that the traitor was Juana Alsbury, which is entirely erroneous, since she was still in the Alamo as of March 6.

  84 Ehrenberg, With Milam and Fannin, 101; Hollon and Butler, Bollaert's Texas, 224.

  85 Morphis, Texas, 174-75. Another reinforcement, perhaps the sixty men from San Felipe mentioned by Williamson, may have come in that day, bringing the total garrison—including those in the hospital—to something approaching 250. However, this is only conjecture at this point.

  86 Asbury, “Almonte Journal,” 20, 22, March 4-5, 1836; Houston to Fannin, March 11, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 52-53.

  87 Port Gibson, Miss., Correspondent, April 23, 1836.

  88 Report of munitions fired at the Alamo, March 21, 1836, Expediente XI/481.3/1655, Archivo Historico Militar Mexicano, Mexico City.

  89 Williams, “Critical Study, III,” 164.

  90 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 28, 1932; B. N. Pittman to Eugene C. Barker, April 4, 1932, Williams Papers, UT.

  91 San Antonio Express, May 12, 1907.

  92 “Mrs. Alsbury's Recollections of the Alamo,” Ford Memoir, vol. 1, UT. McDonald, Travis, 175, and Turner, Travis, 244-45. both carry the story of Travis giving a small cat's-eye ring to Angelina Dickenson. Neither gives a source for this old story, which in any case is probably myth.

  93 Frankfort, Ky., Commonwealth, May 4, 1836.

  94 Ibid. This is the account related by Joe, as taken down by William Gray and originally written in a letter to the Fredericksburg, Va., Arena. It has not been emphasized sufficiently in the past that this account and those of Mrs. Dickenson, the only survivors to give interviews after the battle, are not in their own words but are the reports of others who heard them and wrote down what was supposedly said. Consequently, even these early accounts may have some unintentional mistakes in them as a result of
not being written by the eyewitnesses themselves.

  95 Space does not allow here the extended discussion necessary to deal with the question of the Alamo's total manpower as of March 6, 1836, nor is it especially germane to the topic of this book. Suffice it to say that the traditional figure of somewhat over 180 has been revised upward steadily in recent years by scholars, and the best authorities expect that the number may eventually go well over 200, putting it in the range of the 250 or more reported by some. De la Peña, Narrative, 54, for instance, states that the Mexicans counted 253 bodies. See Austin Amercian-Statesman, March 12, 1996, and note 105 below.

  96 These figures are derived from the newly discovered “Statement and manifest of the Arty, arms, munitions and other effects taken from the Enemy,” dated March 6, 1836, Expediente XI/481.3/1655, Archivo Historico Mexicano Militar, Mexico City. This listing is what the Mexicans captured after the end of the battle, and included a total of 1,118 artillery powder charges, 686 solid shot, and 449 grape and canister loads. Thus the figures stated in the text have been enlarged from this base to allow for usage by the Texians during the battle. The statement of eighteen usable cannon is based on Lindley, “Alamo Artillery,” which shows eighteen functioning cannon. The statement that Travis may have been out of ammunition for the 18-pounder and the 16-pounder rests on the fact that the statement of captures shows no ammunition for those guns. It is possible that the Texians simply exhausted all of it in the battle on March 6, but not likely, since none of these weapons was really practical for defending against an infantry assault. It is also possible that, the bore sizes of 12-, 16-, and even 18- pounders being fairly similar, the Mexicans doing the inventory may simply have mistaken the calibers in their survey.

  The statement of 60 rounds per man is derived from the statement of captures listing 14,600 rifle and musket rounds and 816 rifles, muskets, and pistols. That would equal roughly 18 rounds per gun after the fight. Given the brief duration of the battle—between thirty minutes and an hour—and the confusion and movement entailed, it seems likely that each Texian fired no more than 4 or 5 rounds on average. That times the number of men, not guns, would add roughly 1,000 loads to the number captured. It is interesting to not that de la Peña, Narrative, 47, states that every Texian had three or four loaded guns at his side, 816 weapons reported as captured, if there were 200 to 250 defenders.

  97 John N. Niles and L. M. Pease, History of South America and Mexico(Hartford, Conn., 1839), 327.

  98 Hardin, “Volley,” 4-5, effectively lays to rest the claims that Travis wore a coat of jeans (possibly denim). There is no credibly evidence to indicate any of his apparel.

  99 It will be apparent to all Alamo aficionados that no account has been given here of the episode of Travis supposedly drawing a line in the dirt on the parade on March 5, and telling those willing to stay and face certain death to cross. Since this is not a book about the Alamo, there are several questions like this that simply do not merit here the lengthy discussion necessary to treat them adequately. Suffice it to say that the only source for this story is William Zuber's account written May 7, 1871, and published in the Texas Almanac in 1873. Nothing in the story stands up to scrutiny, and none of the survivors made any mention of such an incident, except Mrs. Dickenson, and she only mentioned it after Zuber's account appeared in print, and at a time when her own accounts were becoming increasingly imaginative, inaccurate, and derivative.

  Zuber later admitted that he invented the speech Travis supposedly made on the occasion, but adamantly insisted that a man named Rose—Lewis or Moses—did actually refuse to cross such a line and make his escape. A Lewis Rose did later testify to having been in the Alamo until March 3, and several times gave testimony to establish the presence of others in order that their heirs or executors could apply for the land bounty due to the families of all of the Alamo slain. But Rose could easily have been inventing his story, since there was no one alive to challenge him except Susanna Dickenson and the other women, none of whom ever spoke up either to support or refute him. He says nothing in his statements about Travis drawing a line or making a speech, and these are the only two questions of importance that come out of the episode. A letter dated March 5, 1836, and credited to an Isaac Milsaps (William B. Bates Collection, University of Houston Archives) appeared to confirm that Travis made some sort of speech to the garrison on that day, but the letter has subsequently been proved to be a forgery.

  Turner, Travis, 239ff, discusses the controversy but does not take a firm position, while McDonald, Travis, 172-74, leans toward acceptance. For more discussion of the pros and cons, see: J. Frank Dobie, “The Line That Travis Drew,” in J. Frank Dobie, Mody C. Boatwright, and Harry H. Ransom, ed., In the Shadow of History (Dallas, 1939), 9-16; R. B. Blake, “A Vindication of Rose and His Story,” In the Shadow of History, 27-41; W. Zuber, “An Escape from the Alamo,” In the Shadow of History, 17-27; Lord, “Myths & Realities, ” 22; and Lord, A Time to Stand, 201-4.

  Ruby Mixon, the first Travis student to study the matter, remained skeptical in her “Travis,” 272ff, though she later accepted Rose story. So did Amelia Williams, but by this time readers will understand that Williams's acceptance of almost anything hardly constitutes reliable confirmation. So far as this present work is concerned, the event simply did not happen, or if it did, then something much more reliable than an admittedly fictionalized secondhand account written thirty-five years after the fact is necessary to establish it beyond question.

  100 Mexico City El Mosquito Mexicano, April 5, 1836; Santa Anna, Manifesto, 14.

  101 Hollon and Butler, Bollaert's Texas, 223; Order of assault, March 5, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 4, 519.

  102 There are only two sources to be positively relied on concerning Travis's death. The first is Joe, whose account was recorded by the least two people several days later, and all versions substantially agree. One is by George Childress and appeared in the Columbia, Tenn., Observer, April 14, 1836, and the other is William Gray's letter to the Fredericksburg, Va., Arena, appearing in the Frankfort, Ky., Commonwealth, May 25, 1836. Will T. Sheehan, in an article titled “Commander of the Alamo Alabama Reared and Bred’ (Travis Surname File, ADAH), stated that in an interview with Travis's brother James conducted around 1900, the surviving Travis said that many years after the Alamo he visited the place in company with Joe—whom he called Ben, no doubt influenced by many confused stories later published that said this was the name of Travis's

  servant or Bowie's servant. The black told him that William Travis died early in the fight, and pointed out black spots on a wall that he thought were the blood-stains from Travis's wound. “He was struck by a rifle ball,” said James, “but continued to fight.” This sounds very much like a false recollection based on reading accounts like Susanna Dickenson's. Joe, it should be noted, disappeared from sight in the 1860's.

  The other account, which confirms Joe's, is by an anonymous Mexican soldier in a letter written the day after the battle, March 7, 1836, and appearing in the Mexico City El Mosquito Mexicano on April 5, 1836. It states: “Their leader, named Travis, died like a brave man with his rifle in his hand at the back of a cannon.” The Childress account says that when Travis was hit, he dropped his shotgun over the wall before he fell. The Mexican account is the earlier and possibly more accurate, since it speaks of seeing Travis in death still clutching his gun.

  The placement of Travis's wound was established by Francisco Ruiz, the man forced by Santa Anna to identify the bodies of Travis and Bowie, in a statement given in 1860. He spoke in Spanish, and his words were translated and written for publication by someone else, so allowance must be made for the possibilities of mistranslation or an inattentive or careless listener, but still the statement certainly seems simple and unequivocal enough. Ruiz said he found Travis's body on a gun carriage “shot only in the forehead” (Matovina, Tejano Accounts, 44).

  The best examination of the death of Travis is Stephen L. Hardin, “A Volley from the Darkness: So
urces Regarding the Death of William Barret Travis,” Alamo Journal 59 (December 1987): 3-4. Quite rightly Hardin dismisses as myth or embellishment all of the other stories about Travis's death, including the story attributed to Joe in the Childress account, but to Susanna Dickenson in the Gray letter, that before he died Travis killed a Mexican general named Mora with his sword. It is clear from the accounts that neither was telling this story as something that they saw, or claimed to see, but that it was told to them by a Mexican officer after the battle. Mrs. Dickenson would thereafter be the most frequent source of the Mora story (San Felipe Telegraph and Texas Register, March 24, 1836). The same sources that relate Joe's story also relate Mrs. Dickenson's, and Gray's letter says that she said Travis did live for a few minutes, and cheered on his men as the Mexicans swarmed past him. This, like the Mora story, is either invention or hearsay, for she was in the sacristy of the church and saw nothing at all of the fight outside. De la Peña gives an account supposedly of Travis's death in his Narrative, 50, but since it in no way agrees with either Joe's account or the anonymous Mexican soldier's March 7 letter, it must be hearsay, and part of what de la Peña added to his narrative from other sources. In later years Mrs. Dickenson also became more inventive, or forgetful, and in recollection moved Travis's body from the north wall to the top of the church with her dead husband (Morphis, Texas, 177). The stories that Travis shot himself are dealt with in subsequent chapter.