Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Indeed, Johnson, Neill or Bowie could, and should, have ordered San Antonio and the Alamo abandoned as Houston had suggested, because then its garrison could link up with the largest concentration troops in Texas at Goliad. Here, less than 100 miles southeast of the Alamo, Colonel James Walker Fannin, Jr., commanded newly arrived United States reinforcements and members of the aborted Matamoros Expedition. Not only a fine dirt road but also the easy-flowing San Antonio River led straight from San Antonio to Goliad and safety, almost beckoning the Alamo leadership to make the wise decision of abandoning their doomed position to save the tiny garrison.

  However, the relative closeness of Colonel Fannin’s force at Goliad—83 miles southeast of San Antonio—only bestowed upon the Alamo garrison a false sense of confidence. They naively believed that if Santa Anna’s Army marched on San Antonio, then nearly 500 soldiers of Fannin’s command could rush to the Alamo’s relief. But despite his lofty rank in the Texas Army and unfortunately for the Alamo garrison, one of the highest-ranking officers in all Texas was in fact already a failed soldier. The illegitimate son of an influential Georgia physician and planter and raised on his grandfather’s cotton plantation, he had followed in his father’s footsteps, as Fannin himself was a Georgia planter, slave-owner, cotton planter, and physician. He had gained entry into the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1819, but only to discover that serious soldiering was not for him. In fact, he had already tired of the Texas Revolution by this time 43

  Nevertheless, thanks to the West Point experience that paid high dividends for him in a frontier land where few had received any kind of education, Fannin, not unlike Neill, possessed a lofty, if unfounded, reputation throughout Texas as “an able, decisive man” of action. 44

  From beginning to end, Alamo garrison members had made a big mistake in gambling that they could depend upon Fannin for timely support if Santa Anna descended upon San Antonio. After all, he had gained sufficient West Point knowledge about strategy to know that he would have to fight through Santa Anna’s Army to reach the Alamo, after leaving the coast undefended and Mexican Army’s right wing an open avenue to push north along the road to strike the east Texas settlements. 45

  Meanwhile, to celebrate Crockett’s arrival in San Antonio on February 8, as a member of Captain William Harrison’s Mounted Company, Travis and Bowie held a fandango on February 10. Most important for the garrison’s ladies’ men, of which Travis was the leading candidate of the well-combed dandies of the Alamo garrison, “all of the principal ladies of the City” were present. Around 1:00 a.m. on February 11, and with the fandango in full swing, a Tejano messenger arrived from Placido Bienavidas of Goliad, with a most timely report from the little Mexican town of Camargo, where Bienavidas had been watching for a crossing on the Rio Grande’s south bank that indicated the first troops of Santa Anna’s Vanguard Division had crossed the Rio Grande. Even more, the messenger warned that Santa Anna was closing in “with the view of taking San Antonio” with an estimated 13,000 troops. Clearly, the “Napoleon of the West” and his large army would arrive much sooner than anyone imagined or expected.

  Shaken by the report, Bowie called Travis, who was dancing to the music and no doubt feeling the effects of some potent liquid refreshment, over to read the letter that contained such startling news. But Travis merely retorted that “at the moment he could not stay to read letters, for he was dancing with the most beautiful lady in San Antonio.” Yet to be legally divorced after having departed Alabama for Texas in 1831—just another newcomer from the United States on the make— Travis left behind his wife, Rosanna, who was five months pregnant with their second child and already with a small son, and considered himself a frontier ladies man at age twenty-four. Proud of himself and what he could do in bed, despite violating traditional societal codes of Southern gentlemanly conduct, he carefully recorded his growing number of nocturnal conquests—more than 50 including prostitutes and slave women—in Spanish in his diary. Despite a “bad” case of venereal disease stemming from his quite “active libido” that fueled his personal downward spiral into moral “degradation,” and regardless of an engagement to Rebecca Cummings—which did little to end his ardent pursuit of single, married, or working women—Travis had his sights set on the Tejano beauty this night.

  At more urging by Bowie, the distracted Travis finally relented. He read the letter, which was written in Spanish. Irritated that his seducement of one of San Antonio’s fairest young maidens had been interrupted, Travis dismissed the stunning intelligence with the equally startling announcement that it would yet take Santa Anna 13–14 days to reach San Antonio from the Rio Grande more than 100 miles to the south, and that this was only the fourth day. Then, the young Alabama officer proclaimed in almost fatalistic fashion, “Let us dance to-night and to-morrow we will make provisions for our defense.” Therefore, the fandango continued far into the night, not ending until around 7 a.m. Once again, the Alamo’s soldiers were putting off tomorrow what they should of done today. 46

  With the almost casual dismissal of this recent intelligence, the folly of not only holding the Alamo, but also in doing relatively little to strengthen its defenses was raised to new heights. Clearly, in standing firm at the Alamo, Neill, Bowie, and Travis had made “a decision beyond their strategic abilities,” wrote historian Mark Derr. 47

  As a native South Carolinian, evidently Travis, while loving the Tejano ladies, felt little esteem for Tejano men—even under the best circumstances. He routinely continued to dismiss the words and intelligence reports from Tejano males, both among the garrison and the San Antonio population, even though he had employed earlier reports from his Tejano “spies” of large numbers of Mexican troops concentrating on the Rio Grande to alarm the government in the hope of securing assistance. Even worse, Travis also ignored the sound advice of a Tejano priest of San Antonio, named Rodriguez, “to retreat from San Antonio before Santa Anna’s forces overwhelmed him, but Travis did not believe that Santa Anna could mount so large an army within only three months after the Texas volunteers conquered San Antonio.” 48

  Ironically, however, another priest had earlier informed Bowie that Santa Anna planned to invade to the east along the coast by way of Matamoros and would only “send a few hundred cavalry against this place at the same time.” This advice came in January 1836 from Father Refugio de la Garza, who would later hold Mass for Santa Anna’s troops. He had apparently played an insidious part in deliberately influencing Bowie’s ill-fated decision to hold San Antonio. 49

  The Alamo’s leaders held onto such delusions, even though one of Sequín’s “spies”— his own cousin Balz Herrera—brought vital intelligence on February 20 that he had seen Santa Anna’s mighty army crossing the Rio Grande to enter Texas four days before. Again, this timely information was simply dismissed because “it was only the report of a Mexican,” even though Sequín begged the Anglo-Celts to listen and take the report seriously, but to no avail. Even more, Sequín also warned that Cós and hundreds of his men would not honor their paroles, and that they would have to be fought all over again. Captain Sequín was ignored. 50

  Regardless of what garrison members believed, Santa Anna was now in the process of demonstrating that he was very much the “Napoleon of the West,” displaying the same energy, resourcefulness, and tactical ingenuity as he had in repulsing earlier Spanish bids to reclaim Mexico, or in crushing previous rebellions. 51

  He had already gained the element of surprise, employing a stealthy march north, while the garrison expected Santa Anna to advance by way of the Laredo Road from the south. As cleverly planned by Santa Anna, he was instead about to descend upon San Antonio from the west by way of the Camino Real. 52

  The overconfidence was so complete that it proved nearly fatal for the San Antonio garrison, almost negating a struggle altogether. General Santa Anna planned to overwhelm the Texans before they even knew what had hit them. Therefore, Mexican dragoons under Sesma, who led the army’s adv
ance north and his Vanguard Division, had been ordered to descend upon San Antonio in one swoop. It was a good plan based upon a combination of stealth and surprise, worthy of Napoleon’s dashing premier cavalryman, General Joachim Murat, who became the most famous cavalry leader in Europe. 53

  This plan was based on timely intelligence gained from his effective Tejano spy network that he had ordered in early January to “report with certainty of the actual state of the City [San Antonio] and intentions of the rebels.” In addition, Santa Anna picked the perfect time and opportunity to strike. He planned to capture the entire garrison when they were celebrating George Washington’s birthday on the evening of February 22. Of course, the Anglo-Celts, cozy in San Antonio, had no idea that Santa Anna, with his 50-man, elite escort of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment, had crossed the Rio Grande on the cold afternoon of February 16 and reached the Texas-Coahuila border on February 21. But while Santa Anna prepared to strike with Sesma’s 1,500-man Vanguard Division, with his Army of Operations yet far behind—ignoring the fact that February 21 was his forty-second birthday—the Alamo garrison members celebrated like their was no tomorrow. Rainy, cold weather had kept these young men idle and indoors most of the day, and now their pent-up energies erupted during the nighttime festivities.

  As usual, tequila, mescal, and good old corn whiskey were drank to excess during the wild fandango, made memorable by those charming, dark-eyed Tejano senoritas on this Monday. After all, it was a customary practice for Americans to celebrate the birthday of the republic’s founder, and Santa Anna knew as much. Therefore, he directed “a detachment of cavalry, part of the dragoons mounted on infantry officers’ horses,” which were relatively fresh, to push forward a good distance in army’s advance. 54

  Envisioning a master stroke to scoop up the entire San Antonio garrison—still groggy and half-drunk from the night’s partying—at the break of dawn before they could concentrate and defend themselves, Santa Anna planned to rush Sesma with a hand-picked detachment of cavalry mounted on fresh infantry officers’ horses into San Antonio at dawn on February 23, catching his unwary opponents by surprise. The entire San Antonio garrison could be captured without a fight.

  Ironically, this bold strategy was not unlike that of General Washington’s brilliant crossing of the Delaware River at night to catch the German Hessians, the paid mercenaries of the British Crown, by surprise just after dawn on December 26, 1776, assuming that the night had been spent by the Germans in celebrating with too much Madiera wine and other spirits. Washington’s early morning attack at Trenton, New Jersey, resulted in a complete success that helped to turn the tide of the American Revolution. 55

  After having dismissed intelligence reports of Santa Anna’s approach on February 11, young Travis, ever the ladies man like his father before him, was not about to let these reports from ragtag Tejano scouts ruin his good time. He was more intent on consorting with the most beautiful Tejano women, to add yet another easy conquest on his ever-growing romantic resume, during the February 22 fandango than taking necessary precautions to defend San Antonio. He ignored both the timely Tejano warnings and the fact that Tejano families, including some that would be wiped out by Comanches, had been evacuating San Antonio in ever-increasing numbers.

  Travis and the men of the Alamo, consequently, thoroughly enjoyed the drinks, good food, and dancing that enlivened the colorful establishment of Domingo Bustillo on Soledad Street in the heart of San Antonio. Even Crockett added to the merriment with the strains of his fiddle, as if back in the hills of northeast Tennessee—where Indians killed his grandparents during the American Revolution—or like his Irish ancestors in the old country. 56

  Ironically, however, other Americans under arms in Texas—including those now far from San Antonio in east Texas—were more circumspect and concerned than Travis. For instance, on this same day, February 22, Virginian Jesse Benton wrote from Nacogdoches a letter that was as sobering as it was accurate: “Official information has just reached us that Santa Anna has crossed the Rio Grande and is marching against us with a large army for the purpose of exterminating us.” 57

  But as in the past, Travis continued to refuse to believe these timely intelligence reports from Captain Juan Nepomuceno Sequín’s Tejano scouts, because they were not white, and therefore could not be trusted. His racism and personal prejudices were already in the process of spelling the doom of the Alamo garrison. 58

  Fortunately for the tiny band of garrison members in San Antonio, the rain-swollen Medina River had slowed down the Mexican cavalry on the afternoon of February 21. Then, upon approaching San Antonio, Santa Anna failed to order Sesma to attempt to capture both the garrison and the town, but only to reconnoiter and cut off all avenues of withdrawal. Outsmarting himself, he could not fathom that these Americans were not fully aware of the threat. Or perhaps he only wanted to lure the overconfident garrison out into the open to face the Vanguard Division, or expected a quick surrender when he arrived with overwhelming might. But what Santa Anna did not know was that Travis would not become aware of the Mexican presence until nearly noon. Therefore, Santa Anna’s ambitious plans for nabbing the garrison had vanished with the rising winter sun on February 23.

  Nevertheless, the sudden approach of Mexican troops, both infantry and cavalry, relatively late in the day came as a surprise. After the Mexicans captured a handful of pickets, the Anglo-Celts just barely escaped the town to flee into the Alamo, racing down dusty Potrero Street like madmen. Ironically, no one seemed to note the irony that Cós and his men had also fled inside the Alamo when under attack—a place from which there was no escape. One of the last to flee to the Alamo was Captain Almeron Dickinson, who was staying with his wife and young daughter at the Tejano home of Don Ramón Múzquiz, where they were quartered. 59

  One of the foremost Mexican officers to lead the Vanguard Division men into town was the experienced Colonel José Vincente Miñon. With pride, he described how: “I was the first with a company of cazadores from the Matamoros Battalion that took possession of the Plaza de Bejar whose church was occupied by the enemy who deserted [the sacred place] at this moment, withdrawing themselves in self-defense and order to the nearby fortification of the Alamo.” 60

  Santa Anna described how: “Our army’s crossing into Texas was the cause of great surprise on the part of the filibusters, for they believed that Mexican soldiers would not cross again into Texas. Frightened by our invasion, they ran to a fortress called the Alamo [which had been] erected by the Spaniards.” He also mocked “the celebrated Travis,” who had become a source of contempt. 61

  Ironically, one of the great Alamo myths was that the legendary Long Rifle was destined to inflict a high toll on Santa Anna’s troops. In truth, the Alamo garrison lacked a large number of Long Rifles in defending the Alamo, even before the Mexicans came. And this situation only became worse thanks to the Mexican cavalry’s surprise arrival into San Antonio. So thorough was the lack of preparations that 50 invaluable rifles were left behind in San Antonio during the sprint to reach the Alamo’s safety. Incredibly, no one had thought—not even Travis—to make sure that the rifles were relocated at the Alamo, even though they knew that Santa Anna was on his way: a mere continuation of a comedy of errors.

  Therefore, with some disbelief, Santa Anna boasted in his report: “Fifty rifles, of the rebel traitors of the North, have fallen in our possession” when capturing San Antonio. Ironically, along with the chronic lack of ammunition, some of which was likewise evidently left behind in the town, this timely capture of a good many rifles helped to ensure that the Alamo’s defense would sorely lack long-range firepower from the Long Rifle. Even more, evidence reveals that the weapon of choice, even for Travis and garrison members like Dr. John Sutherland, at the Alamo was in fact the shotgun and not the Long Rifle. 62

  But, in reality, this coup was small consolation. Santa Anna’s failure to capture San Antonio and the Alamo left the generalissimo in a particularly bad mood only two days after his
forty-first birthday. Ironically, this was a repeat performance for him. At only age 19 back in the hot summer of 1813, he had first seen San Antonio as a member of an invading Royal Spanish Army dispatched to crush rebels, including many Anglo-Celts. He now unfairly blamed Sesma, who had been only ordered to block the garrison’s withdrawal rather than capture the town, and even the rainy weather—much like Napoleon had blamed winter weather for his failings in Russia in 1812. Offering an excuse, he wrote how this advance cavalry task force “should have fallen on Béxar in the early morning of February 23 [and] although the city was captured, the surprise that I ordered to be carried out would have saved the time consumed and the blood shed later in the taking of the Alamo.” 63

  The garrison’s existence now depended upon what Bowie, Travis, and Fannin would do in the next few days. All three men had already tired of the war, wanting to resign rather than fight to the bitter end. A thorough lack of preparation at the Alamo fueled Travis’ plea, dispatched by courier, to Fannin at Goliad: “We have all our men into the Alamo. . . . We have one hundred and forty-six men [and] We have but little provisions, but enough to serve us till you and your men arrive.” 64

  Ironically, almost no adequate defensive preparations had been made for withstanding a siege at the Alamo. Supplies, munitions, including even a good many rifles, and even firewood in the cold winter weather had not been brought into the compound in the past period of relative inactivity. Even worse, neither Travis nor Bowie had ensured open fields of fire around the Alamo by eliminating obstacles, such as jacales, that would prove advantageous to an attacker. Clearly, the garrison would have to pay a high price for its inexperience and untrained leaders to learn the art of war on the job. Ironically, this “surreal” situation was comparable to when Napoleon, then the complacent, overconfident master of Europe, had himself paved the way for one of the greatest disasters in military history by remaining in Moscow too long without preparing for either winter or a retreat from Russia. 65