Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers

by Brian Kilmeade

  No one told a story like Crockett, who had published a memoir that had partly been key to his fame, and he regaled the men with his best stories, events from his own life, quickly winning their rapt attention. There were hunting yarns and stories of highfalutin politicians whom Crockett expertly humbled. He told them of his promise to his constituents in Tennessee, that if they didn’t want him to represent them in Washington, he would go to Texas. And here he was!

  As if he hadn’t already won their admiration and respect, Crockett refused an offer of an officer’s commission; despite his military experience and seniority, he was content to be a simple soldier: “[A]ll the honor that I desire,” he told them, “is that of defending as a high private . . . the liberties of our common country.”34

  Crockett would be a welcome soldier, valued for his wit, as well as his fiddle playing, and counted upon for the deadly accuracy of his famous rifle, Betsy. He was doubly welcome because he wasn’t above picking up a shovel, working to improve the Alamo’s defenses.

  WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?

  No one sat still at the Alamo. Following the orders of engineer Green Jameson, men worked at getting the twenty-odd cannons mounted on the parapets, and by midmonth Almeron Dickinson and the other artillerymen had positioned all but three.

  Colonel Neill watched the work—and waited for reinforcements. One by one, Jim Bowie, William Travis, and David Crockett had arrived, each accompanied by his own squadron. Even with the added troops, counted only in the dozens, the total number of ready fighters still remained at fewer than roughly 150. With Tejano volunteers, the defenders reached barely 175 men.

  When, on February 11, Neill departed unexpectedly—an urgent summons prompted by a family illness led him to take a leave—the chaotic divide in the new Texian government began to play out in San Antonio, too. Before leaving, Neill asked Travis, whose rank made him the obvious choice, to take command of the post. But volunteer Texians, as Austin had found to his frustration the previous fall, insisted upon voting their preferences. Travis had no choice but to permit an election and Travis, as the newcomer, got fewer votes than Jim Bowie, who, despite his lack of a formal officer’s commission, had led many of these men at Concepción. Lieutenant Colonel Travis might have the ear of the governor and the authority of the commander in chief, Sam Houston, but the famously daring Jim Bowie remained the volunteers’ favorite. There was no firm hand to settle the dispute since Houston, still far afield conversing with the Cherokee, was in no position to intervene.

  Worried about the chain of command, Travis dispatched a private letter to Governor Smith. “Since his election [Bowie] has been roaring drunk all the time . . . turning everything topsy turvey.”35 But soon Bowie, sobering up after a two-day binge, apologized to Travis, and the two came to an understanding. They would sign orders jointly, with Bowie in charge of the volunteers and Travis commanding the regulars and the cavalry.

  Meanwhile the work of strengthening Fortress Alamo continued, and Travis dispatched men to scour the countryside for provisions. Wells were dug to assure a supply of water within the walls. But the men needed a respite and on the occasion of George Washington’s 104th birthday, Travis and Bowie granted their soldiers permission to set aside their work at the Alamo.

  On San Antonio’s Soledad Street, Texians and Tejanos alike ate tamales and enchiladas. They drank and they danced the fandango with the women of the town, to the accompaniment of fiddles and guitars. The carefree carousing, which extended into the night on February 22, seemed less a celebration of the Founding Father’s life than a release of tension built up over weeks of preparation and anticipation.

  By the next day, however, the simple pleasures of the celebration returned to worries about the Mexican army. Travis’s best guess had been that Santa Anna would not arrive until mid-March, but with too few men to perform too many tasks, he was forced to rely on friendly Tejanos for scouting reports. One Tejano resident of San Antonio, freshly returned from the Rio Grande, reported that the Mexican army, numbering some thirty-five hundred on foot, accompanied by fifteen hundred cavalrymen, was crossing the river. If true, that meant the estimated time of arrival was a matter of days. But some Texians scoffed at the Mexican intelligence.

  Travis took a wait-and-watch approach, until the afternoon of February 23, when he heard five ominous words: “The enemy is in view!”36

  Accompanied by the pealing of bells, the voice came from a lookout, high in the belfry of the San Fernando church. A crowd gathered as several soldiers quickly ascended the bell tower. But they saw no enemy army. They “halloed down that it was a ‘false alarm.’”

  The crowd dispersed, but Travis wanted to be certain that the Mexicans weren’t simply hiding “behind a row of brushwood,” as the sentinel who’d seen them insisted. He dispatched two men on horseback to investigate, instructing them to return at speed if they spied the enemy. Travis himself then climbed the tower stairs to watch as Dr. John Sutherland and another scout, John W. Smith, departed.

  The men rode out on the Laredo road, which was muddy and slick from recent rainfall. And minutes later Lieutenant Colonel Travis got his answer: Barely a mile from the town, topping a low rise in the terrain, the scouts wheeled, spurred their horses, and made for the fort. They had seen the glint of armor of what they guessed to be fifteen hundred men on horseback.

  Sutherland’s horse lost its footing on the sloppy track, throwing its rider to the ground. But the doctor’s companion helped him back into the saddle, and together they galloped back to San Antonio. There, when Sutherland dismounted, his knee gave way beneath him, and he needed David Crockett’s shoulder to lean on as he reported to Travis.

  Sutherland and Smith told Travis what they had seen—and at the speed of sound the news spread around the town. By three o’clock, on February 23, Commandant Travis had penned a short but imperative dispatch. Dr. Sutherland, despite his painful knee, could still ride a horse; since he would be little use as a defender, the doctor played the messenger, carrying the news of Santa Anna’s arrival to Gonzales.

  The note, in Travis’s script, put the situation plainly.

  The enemy in large force is in sight. We want men and provisions.

  Send them to us. We have 150 men and are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance.37

  The countdown had begun.

  SEVEN

  Twelve Days of Uncertainty

  You know that in this war there are no prisoners.

  —SANTA ANNA, FEBRUARY 27, 1836

  El Presidente—General Antonio López de Santa Anna—mounted his horse. He led from the front, mimicking a portrait he once saw of his idol, Napoléon Bonaparte, at the head of his troops. This time Santa Anna’s advance corps consisted of staff officers, three companies each of light infantry and grenadiers, and artillerymen with two mortars. As the line of march snaked out from behind the low San Alazán Hills, the sun glinted off the Mexicans’ silver helmets and breastplates. Less than two miles away, Texian lookouts watched from San Antonio.

  Tall for his time—he stood five-foot-ten—Santa Anna looked lean and hungry. At forty-two, his hair remained dark, his skin olive toned. A man of little education, he spoke only Spanish, but his manners were practiced, and he had the carriage of a nobleman. He was here to put down a rebellion, but his greatest desires remained money and luxury. He flaunted a gold snuffbox and wore epaulets fringed with silver. He reveled in the attention and admiration of his people. A man of no fixed principles, his politics remained fluid—after fighting for Spain, then for Mexican independence, he fought now for himself, his comforts, and his own wealth and power.

  Santa Anna did not reserve his cruelty for the enemy. Though he slept in a luxurious tent and dined on monogrammed china, his two-month march north had been an ongoing ordeal for the troops, with frigid rivers to cross and a shortage of food and water. Santa Anna himself had spent two weeks sick in bed en route,
but he was luckier than many. His army lost about a man a mile, with more than four hundred of his 6,119-man force dying of dysentery, fevers, and exposure to cold and snowfalls of a foot and more. Occasional Indian raids also took a toll.

  He arrived with a mission. Ten weeks before, the honor of his country had been sullied, at this very place, by the surrender of General Cos. For that, he would punish the Texians at Gonzales, Goliad, and Concepción.

  He wasn’t intimidated by the rebels. To Santa Anna, the Alamo was no more than “an irregular fortification hardly worthy of the name.” He saw opportunity: Capturing the dilapidated mission would, he believed, “infuse our soldiers with that enthusiasm of the first triumph that would make them superior in the future to those of the enemy.”1 He anticipated only weak opposition, merely “mountaineers of Kentucky and the hunters of Missouri . . . an army ignorant of the art of war, incapable of discipline.”2

  He was a cruel and driven man, yet women found this man attractive, despite the fact that he rarely smiled, his expression perpetually unhappy, even gloomy. That inscrutability left some people wondering, but as one lady of the day would soon say of him, “It is strange . . . how frequently this expression . . . of placid sadness is to be remarked on the countenances of the most cunning, the deepest, most ambitious, most designing and most dangerous statesmen.”3

  The men of the Alamo would soon discover how utterly ruthless Santa Anna could be.

  THE ENEMY APPROACHES

  This time, no one doubted the meaning of the clanging bell. On Tuesday, February 23, the lethargy of a morning-after in San Antonio quickly gave way to furious activity as the bell tolled. Travis ordered the soldiers to withdraw to the Alamo, and double-quick the Texian fighters grabbed their guns, ammunition, whatever they could carry, and headed for the bridge.

  Time was tight: Mexican troops, now in full sight and less than two miles away, marched toward them. No one knew when the first shots would be fired, but the Texians corralled the horses, penning them in what, during the Alamo’s days as a mission, had been the convent garden. Still in the town, Jim Bowie went about San Antonio, searching for foodstuffs, ransacking deserted houses. He found some of what he was looking for, and the stores of corn at the Alamo went from three bushels to more than eighty.4 Other defenders confiscated a herd of thirty beef cattle and drove the animals into a pen within the mission walls. Wounded and sick men were transferred to the safety of the walled compound.

  The Texians’ refuge, consisting of about four acres enclosed by the makeshift ramparts, became home to not only the men sworn to defend the Alamo but a mix of Anglo and Tejano families. Bowie collected members of the Veramendi clan, including his late wife’s sister and her husband. In the hustle and bustle of the evacuation, Captain Almeron Dickinson reacted not as an artillery officer but as a husband and father.

  Riding bareback, he galloped to the house he shared with wife Susanna at the corner of Commerce Street and the main plaza. Without dismounting, he called to her, “Give me the baby! Jump on behind and ask me no questions.” With fifteen-month-old Angelina cradled in one arm, he helped swing Susanna up behind him.

  There would be no fight this day: The Texians conceded the town as indefensible and, by late afternoon, the Mexicans took possession of San Antonio. Mounted grenadiers and foot soldiers dispersed to scout the nearly deserted streets. A Tejano boy of the town who had been playing nearby watched as Santa Anna and his staff dismounted near the church. For twelve-year-old Enrique Esparza, the sight of the general was indelible. “He had a very broad face and high cheekbones. He had a hard and cruel look and his countenance was a very sinister one.”5

  As the Texians watched from behind the Alamo’s west wall, a distance of less than a half mile, a flag rose above the bell tower of the San Fernando church, previously the site of a Texian lookout post. Once again, Santa Anna’s men would take no prisoners and show no mercy in dealing with these rebels.

  But the Texians would not be intimidated: In response, they fired their biggest cannon, an eighteen-pounder, with a great, resounding boom.

  After the Mexicans returned fire, lobbing a few shells from their field pieces, the guns on both sides went quiet. When a white flag was raised, the Texians sent messengers under a flag of peace to parley. With the odds as they were, an honorable retreat like the one Neill had granted to General Cos in December might be worth considering. But Santa Anna refused to negotiate. An aide, responding on his behalf, stated that “according to the order of His Excellency, the Mexican army cannot come to terms under any conditions with rebellious foreigners.”6

  The flag of no quarter and Santa Anna’s unwillingness to talk left the Texians with no alternative. Travis and Bowie drafted a joint letter to Colonel Fannin, pleading for help. The commander of Goliad seemed their best hope—Fannin and his four hundred troops weren’t so far away, a hundred miles distant. The two Alamo commanders told Fannin that their garrison, as of that morning’s muster, amounted to just 146 effectives. They urged Fannin to send help—and assured him that they remained “determined never to retreat.”7

  As for Santa Anna, he received no plea from the Alamo. Travis gathered the men of the Alamo; they agreed to swear a collective oath to “resist to the last.”8 That day the Texians responded to Santa Anna’s threats with gunfire, as the report of their biggest gun once more echoed over San Antonio. The rebels would stand their ground.

  THE SIEGE

  The concussion of cannon blasts was almost constant. A five-inch howitzer and several field pieces bombarded the Alamo throughout the day. Though the cannonballs and shards of flying stone injured no one, the Texians did find themselves one man down when Jim Bowie fell ill, deathly ill.

  Bowie’s sister-in-law, Juana, cared for the fevered man in an upstairs room in the Alamo chapel. But the nature of his ailment could only be guessed. Cholera or typhoid? Pneumonia? Perhaps some long-lingering ailment like tuberculosis that had grown suddenly grave? Whatever it was, it was serious, keeping Bowie confined to a cot that, some feared, might become his deathbed.

  The illness meant that Bowie, weak and delirious, could no longer lead the volunteers. That put William Travis in charge of both Bowie’s men and the regulars. The responsibility for saving the lives of those around him, much less winning a battle against Santa Anna’s vastly larger army, had become Travis’s heavy burden.

  He considered the situation. Sam Houston’s worst fears seemed to be coming true. The enemy was near—but help far away. Windswept San Antonio sat amid a Texas wilderness. No help would come from the north, where the hills and plains were home to few settlers and many unfriendly Indians. Travis hoped reinforcements would arrive from Gonzales to the east and Goliad to the south, but the enemy now entirely controlled the territory west of the city. Santa Anna and his men occupied the nearby streetscapes, and scouting reports warned of other large Mexican forces on the march.

  Although the Texians had worked for weeks to make the Alamo battle-ready, the defenders, now withdrawn inside the fort’s walls, could see more clearly the weaknesses of their position. More men, rifles, and ammunition would be needed if they were to fend off an attack by hundreds upon hundreds of Mexicans. A worried Travis sat down once again, pen in hand, to plead for help, but this time he wrote not merely to other commanders but for a very much larger audience.

  Two weeks before, his instinct for leadership hadn’t been evident when he and Bowie bickered over which of them should be in charge. Now as the sole commander, suddenly boxed in by a merciless opponent, he found his true voice. He possessed a gift for words, one he had polished in his days writing for the small newspaper he’d founded back in Alabama, the Claiborne Herald. In drafting a public letter, he blended his fears with a steely resolve.

  To the People of Texas & all Americans in the world—Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bomba
rdment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.

  If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—VICTORY OR DEATH.

  William Barret Travis

  Lt. Col. comdt9

  Travis knew that he and the men around him, captive as they were, faced the fight of their lives. He understood, too, that defending the Alamo represented something larger. He and his Texians might occupy an obscure frontier town, but he wrote as if their story, their cause, transcended time and place, his a voice for the cause of liberty everywhere.

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1836

  No friend of liberty, Santa Anna tested his tactics. In the night his men planted batteries north and south of the mission, roughly four hundred yards from the Alamo. From these new positions, they maintained their fire.