That the Alamo defenders could see ladders being constructed is noted in John Sutherland’s draft account, reprinted in Hansen, p. 179.
For a discussion of Ben Milam’s line in the dirt, see notes for chapter 6, above.
Biographical details regarding Louis “Moses” Rose can be found in Blake, “Rose and His Escape from the Alamo,” part of which is reprinted in Hansen, pp. 274–82, and Zuber, “The Escape of Rose from the Alamo,” reprinted in Hansen, pp. 245–50. See also the Afterword for a discussion and analysis of the evidence for the line. In an interview conducted in September 1877, Susanna Dickinson said: “Col. Almonte (Mexican) told me that the man who had deserted the evening before [March 5, the night before the attack] had also been Killed & that if I wished to satisfy myself of the fact that I could see the body, still lying there, which I declined” (reprinted in Hansen, p. 48).
Crockett’s request for a clean change of clothes is related in Dr. J. H. Barnard’s June 9, 1836, letter from Velasco, published in the August 26, 1836, Missouri Argus, in which he states of the Alamo battle: “The Americans fought to the last, and were killed to a man. There were several friends who were saved, and who informed me that the men, with the full prospect of death before them, were always lively and cheerful, particularly Crockett, who kept up their spirits by his wit and humor. The night before the storming, he called for his clothes that had been washed, stating that he expected to be killed the next day, and wished to die in clean clothes, that they might give him a decent burial.” (Thanks to Kevin Young for generously providing a copy of this item.)
Details of the men entrusting their valuables to the women, and Bettie being allowed to stay with the women, are in file 3 (Notes, Handwritten, Interview with Enrique Esparza), box 2M129 (Descendants of Gregorio Esparza), Adina de Zavala Papers, BCAH.
For a discussion of the ring that Travis gave to Angelina, see Hansen, p. 62.
Susanna Dickinson related that Robert Evans was given orders to set fire to the gunpowder; her accounts are reprinted in Hansen, pp. 55 and 59. She is also the source for the story of Bonham sharing some tea with Almeron Dickinson’s mess, in an account she gave to Bonham’s younger brother, Milledge Luke Bonham, reprinted in Hansen, p. 706.
The final column assignments and deployments are discussed in Tom Kailbourn’s unpublished “Concordance Comparing Troop Assignments per Column in Alamo Assault,” as well as in several other sources. José Juan Sánchez’s two map indexes (1836–39 and 1840)—as translated in Ivey, “¡Viva la Patria es nuestro el Alamo!”—describe slightly different final column assignments, but the San Luis Potosí battalion daybook (original translation by Gregg Dimmick, revisions by Tom Kailbourn) lists the assignments I have used here. The fact that only four line companies of the San Luis Potosí battalion were present in Béxar was ascertained by Kailbourn from a report on officers who passed in review in Béxar in March 1836, found in Expediente 1713, SEDENA files, beginning on p. 528, online at www.archivohistorico2010.sedena.gob.mx/busqueda/busqueda.php (accessed December 13, 2011).
De la Peña’s final thoughts on the battle can be found in With Santa Anna in Texas, pp. 46–47.
SIXTEEN: “THAT TERRIBLE BUGLE CALL OF DEATH”
The title phrase is from de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 47, as is the de la Peña epigraph, p. 51.
There is no primary source to definitively support the playing of the degüello save for one account by a certain Madame Candelaria (Hansen, p. 303), and it is highly unlikely that she was in the Alamo during the battle. But she could certainly have heard it from Béxar. Additionally, Reuben Potter, the first serious student of the battle, claimed that the air was played, and he talked to Juan Seguín (and several others who may have heard of its playing from residents of the city) as well as officers and enlisted men of the Mexican army who were present at the battle (Hansen, p. 701). It is clear that the Mexican regimental bands played martial music throughout the siege and during the March 6 assault, and researcher Kevin Young wrote that “Mexican cavalry manuals of the 1840s carried the bugle call, El Deguello, which was to be blown at the climax of a cavalry charge to signify no quarter to the enemy” (Young, “Finding a Face”). Young has also pointed out to me that the degüello is mentioned in an 1824 cavalry manual, Reglamento para el ejercicio y maniobras de la caballeria (Mexico: Martin Rivera, 1824).
The presence of rockets was noted by several observers, including Ben (both in Newell, History of the Revolution in Texas, p. 88, and Colonel Edward Stiff, The Texan Emigrant [Cincinnati, OH: George Conclin, 1840], p. 314) and Susanna Dickinson (Hansen, p. 47). That the Mexican army possessed signal rockets and used them is evidenced by a quote in Samuel Maverick’s diary entry for November 8, 1835, during the siege of Béxar, in which he notes the Mexican army firing them off (Green, Samuel Maverick, Texan, p. 37).
Travis’s actions during the battle, and his rallying cry as he stood upon the north wall, was remembered by Joe in his account, reprinted in Hansen, p. 74. The location of Travis’s body was described by Francisco Ruíz in his “Fall of the Alamo,” originally appearing in the 1860 Texas Almanac and reprinted in Hansen, pp. 500-501. This placement of Travis’s body, and thus the site of his death, is reinforced by Reuben Potter’s “Attack and Defence of the Alamo” in the San Luis Advocate of November 18, 1840, the existence of which has been overlooked by modern scholars, though the eminent Texas historian Eugene Barker wrote a summary of it that is among his papers (Alamo File, box 2B120, Eugene Campbell Barker Papers, BCAH). An incomplete copy of the article is part of the holdings of the BCAH, though the issue is not included on the microfilm copy of the newspaper’s files. Unfortunately, the actual text of the pertinent part of the article is missing due to a large tear, but this is Barker’s summary: “Heard different stories as to where Travis fell, the most [illegible] says that he was found dead at breach of a gun near where right column entered.” Earlier in the article, Potter’s description of the attack makes fairly clear that what he designates as the right column was the column led by Colonel Duque toward the northeast part of the north wall. Potter in the story claimed to have talked to several members of the Mexican army present during the attack, and it is doubtful that he had visited Béxar at this point, making it unlikely that his source was Ruíz, whose account confirming Travis’s position would not appear until twenty years later.
De la Peña’s quote regarding the trail of wounded and dead left by the columns is in With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 47. The anonymous author of the newsletter account of the battle published in El Mosquito Mexicano on April 5, 1836, remembered Cós shouting “Arriba!” De la Peña’s quote about the disorder in the Mexican ranks is in With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 48. “Muerte a los Tejanos!” was heard by bexareño Juan Vargas and related in a 1910 interview reprinted in Hansen, p. 538.
Ruíz, in “Fall of the Alamo,” reprinted in Hansen, p. 500–501, locates Crockett’s body “toward the west, and in the small fort opposite the city.” Early Alamo researcher Reuben Potter, who claimed to have talked to several members of the Mexican army (including some officers) who participated in the attack, also located Crockett in the area: “Crockett’s body was found, not in an angle of the fort, but in a one-gun battery which overtopped the center of the west wall, where his remains were identified by Mr. Ruiz, a citizen of San Antonio, whom Santa Anna, immediately after the action, sent for and ordered to point out the slain leaders of the garrison” (Magazine of American History, February 1884, p. 177). Two and a half years later, Potter wrote a letter to the editors of another magazine, The Century, to correct some facts about Crockett that had previously appeared in that magazine. Wrote the editors: “Captain Reuben M. Potter, U.S.A., writing to correct some statements in an account of the fall of the Alamo that appeared in an article on General Sam Houston, in The Century for August, 1884, states that Crockett was killed by a bullet shot while at his post on the outworks of the fort, and was one of the first to fall” (The Century, October 1886).
> Santa Anna’s quote describing the “extraordinary” scene is from his March 6, 1836, letter to Tornel reporting the taking of the Alamo, reprinted in Hansen, p. 341.
De la Peña mistakenly claimed a blond defender in the courtyard was Travis in With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 50. Potter, in his 1878 account, recounted the Texians on the west wall who turned their cannon around to fire upon the Mexicans in the courtyard (reprinted in Hansen, p. 702).
Almeron Dickinson’s last words to his wife were remembered by her in an interview conducted before 1874 and published in Morphis, History of Texas, pp. 174–77. Her description of Galba Fuqua and his broken jaw appears in Sowell, Rangers and Pioneers, pp. 138–39.
In his 1840 article “Attack and Defence of the Alamo,” Reuben Potter provides some details of the battle that were not included in his later accounts, including that of the Texian chased down by two lancers and killed.
Several Mexican sources support this late breakout. In Ramírez y Sesma’s March 11 report to Santa Anna, reprinted in Hansen, pp. 369–70, he describes three separate breakouts, though the number of escapees is provided for only one group (“about fifty”). Manuel Loranca, a sergeant in Ramírez y Sesma’s Vanguard Brigade, says in an 1878 newspaper article that “sixty-two Texans who sallied from the east side of the fort, were received by the Lancers and all killed…. These were all killed by the lance, except one, who ensconced himself under a brush and it was necessary to shoot him” (June 23 or 28, 1878, San Antonio Daily Express, reprinted in Hansen, p. 475). These retreating defenders are also mentioned in the San Luis Potosí daybook: “Regiment of Dolores. Presidiales and pickets of the regiments of Tampico and Veracruz under the command of General Ramírez, who spread out during the campaign in order to pursue the dispersed [Texians], of whom they killed 68” (de la Peña Papers, BCAH, translated by Gregg Dimmick and Tom Kailbourn). Additional references without specific numbers are in Almonte’s diary: “At half past 5 the attack or assault was made, and continued until 6 A.M. when the enemy attempted in vain to fly, but they were overtaken and put to the sword” (Asbury, “The Private Journal,” p. 23); de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas: “Those of the enemy who tried to escape fell victims to the sabers of the cavalry, which had been drawn up for this purpose, but even as they fled they defended themselves” (p. 52); Sánchez, who in an anonymously written letter refers to “the ones who sought safety in flight” (published in the April 5, 1836, El Mosquito Mexicano and reprinted in Hansen, pp. 486–87), and who, in the legend for his 1840 map of the battle, writes of the palisade: “At this point, some colonists attempted to escape” (reprinted in Nelson, The Alamo, p. 59); and, finally, Santa Anna himself, in his March 6, 1836, battle report: “a great many who had escaped the bayonets of the infantry, fell in the vicinity under the sabres of the cavalry” (reprinted in Hansen, p. 341).
Sánchez’s 1836 map of the Alamo and its legend, in which he writes, “Barracks for the troops. Col. José María Romero with the Battalions ‘Jimenez’ y ‘Matamoros’ assaulted and entered,” is reprinted in Nelson, The Alamo, p. 58.
The scene of the cannon firing into the hospital is from an interview with Mexican soldier Francisco Becerra, reprinted in Hansen, p. 457.
The taking of the Alamo flag is related in Lamego, The Siege and Taking of the Alamo, p. 38, and by de la Peña in Borroel, The J. Sanchez Garza Introduction, p. 24. See also Groneman, “The Taking of the Alamo Flag.”
De la Peña’s quote regarding the chaos in the courtyard in the last minutes of the battle is in With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 51.
The story of the Navarro sisters is drawn from Juana Alsbury’s account, reprinted in Hansen, pp. 87–88. Joe’s story derives from his account, reprinted in Hansen, pp. 74–76.
The description of Crockett’s injuries is related by Eulalia Yorba in her account published in the San Antonio Daily Express of April 12, 1896.
The earliest mention of Robert Evans and his attempt to fire the powder magazine is in the March 24, 1836, Telegraph and Texas Register article on the battle, details of which were supplied by John W. Smith and Gerald Navan after talking to Susanna Dickinson: “Major Evans, master of ordnance, was killed in the act of setting fire to the powder magazine, agreeably to the previous orders from Travis.” Mrs. Dickinson also told her grandchildren about Evans and his mission (Hansen, p. 59).
The scene of the Mexican soldiers grabbing the valuables from Bettie is related in file 3 (Notes, Handwritten, Interview with Enrique Esparza), box 2M129 (Descendants of Gregorio Esparza), Adina de Zavala Papers, BCAH.
The description of the fort after the battle, and the soldiers stripping the corpses, is related by de la Peña in With Santa Anna in Texas, p. 52 (“Quite soon some of the bodies were left naked by fire, others by disgraceful rapacity, especially among our men”), and Ivey, “¡Viva la Patria es nuestro el Alamo!” p. 13, in which he translates Sánchez’s journal: “the troop was allowed plunder.”
An hour as the total time elapsed since the beginning of the attack until the battle’s end is from Almonte’s journal, quoted in Lamego, The Siege and Taking of the Alamo, p. 37: “By six-thirty in the morning not a single enemy existed.”
The scene of the execution of the captured Texians is in Caro’s account, translated and quoted in Castañeda, The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, p. 106. See also the anonymous Mexican account quoted in Huffines, Blood of Noble Men, p. 182.
David Crockett is frequently cited as being one of the prisoners brought before Santa Anna and executed. Since the publication of With Santa Anna in Texas, the English translation of José Enrique de la Peña’s reconstructed memoir of the 1835–36 Texas campaign, several historians have used that account and a half dozen other second- and thirdhand accounts to write, as history, that David Crockett did not perish in the Alamo battle but was executed afterward with a few other defenders. But if these accounts are examined critically, there is little evidence to support such a scenario—certainly not enough to write it as history. Each of the accounts has serious credibility problems.
Though unsubstantiated rumors placing Crockett among the executed began to circulate just weeks after the battle, the claim took root in the public mind soon after the appearance of the 1975 English translation of With Santa Anna in Texas, first published in Spanish in Mexico City in 1955. De la Peña was an officer in Santa Anna’s Army of Operations who took part in the assault on the Alamo—and who was also an observant, eloquent, and passionate writer. In one passage, he claimed to have witnessed the execution of “some seven men” who “had survived the general carnage” and had been brought before Santa Anna. One is described at great length and identified as “the naturalist David Crockett, well known in North America for his unusual adventures, who had undertaken to explore the country and who, finding himself in Bejar at the very moment of surprise, had taken refuge in the Alamo, fearing that his status as a foreigner might not be respected.” Santa Anna orders the troops closest to him to execute Crockett (and presumably the other men); neither these men nor their officers support the order, but several nearby officers draw their swords and fall upon the defenseless men, hacking them to death.
If Crockett really was one of the executed prisoners, for some reason it was not mentioned in the accounts and reports of several members of the Mexican army present, including Colonel Almonte, Santa Anna himself, and his secretary, Ramón Caro, all of whom wrote accounts of the campaign and the Alamo battle shortly after their return to Mexico. Neither did José Juan Sánchez, who kept a journal of his experiences, mention it, though his reference to “the death of an old man named Cocran” has been used as evidence of a Crockett execution and indeed is one of the Mexican accounts often cited by the Crockett execution theorists. A Crockett execution is not mentioned in an account by Sergeant Manuel Loranca, who does relate the finding in the convento of “all refugees which were left,” and says that Santa Anna “immediately ordered that they should be shot, which was accordingly done.” It’s also not
mentioned by General Vicente Filisola, Santa Anna’s second in command, who wrote a detailed account of the campaign and the Alamo battle gleaned from participants’ oral and written accounts. In short, several high-ranking witnesses who would have been aware of such an event never mentioned Crockett as being one of the executed, even though most or all of them would have had good reason to. And neither in his March 6 report, written just an hour or two after the battle, nor in his lengthier 1837 account did Santa Anna ever mention Crockett’s execution—though in his March 6 report, he listed Crockett as “among the corpses” and in his memoirs, written much later in life, he wrote of the rebels, “Not one soldier showed signs of desiring to surrender.” Santa Anna would have been eager to brag about killing such a prominent U.S. citizen, particularly since it would have been further evidence of a claim he was constantly making—that many of the rebels were American citizens. And the others were all highly critical of Santa Anna in the years after the campaign, and would have gladly seized on such a cold-blooded act to make him look worse in the eyes of the world. But none of them mentioned Crockett as one of the executed. Also worth considering is the fact that in the extensive (more than two-hour) interrogation of Santa Anna immediately after he was captured, and during the seven months in which he was a captive in Texas and the U.S., there was no mention, or at least none was recorded, of Crockett being one of the men executed after the battle—by him or his interviewers.
The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation Page 42
