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

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  But at this critical moment and almost as if by a miracle, the 62 men who had fled the Alamo were not without assistance during their lifeor-death bid to escape. In one of the most spirited, selfless actions among the Alamo defenders on this morning, about a dozen cannoneers of both Captain Dickinson’s and Carey’s artillery companies rose to the fore. Swept by chilly winds whistling across the prairie and especially at the top of the church, these ill-clothed gunners, who were stationed on the elevated wooden gun platform at the church’s rear, spied the attempt of so many men to save themselves. Or perhaps an officer or enlisted man with foresight had had the presence of mind to have previously informed them of the escape attempt and requested protective fire before the breakout. After Romero’s troops had earlier shifted to strike the north wall, these gunners had no targets for most of the morning. Now they saw a good many finely uniformed targets on the open prairie before them.

  From their elevated perch, the gunners, including cannoneers like thirty-seven-year-old Jacob Walker from Nacogodoches, a member of Captain Carey’s artillery and the brother of the famed mountain man Joseph R. Walker, went into action to aid their fleeing comrades, old friends, and perhaps relatives. They therefore hurriedly man-handled their 12-pounder guns, that had been facing east, at an angle to the right, or more southeast. In the early morning half-light, they now sighted their guns, loaded with cannon balls for long-range shots rather than short-range canister, on the Mexican cavalry that had suddenly appeared on the horizon and was now descending on the 62 men, now vulnerable, after having left the area of the ditch.

  Commanding the Alamo’s most elevated battery, Captain Dickinson, and even perhaps Captain Carey if present, very likely helped to serve the 12-pounders at the top of the gradually-sloping elevated ramp that led to the wood and earth artillery platform at the church’s rear. Raised on the busy, cobblestone streets of Philadelphia, Captain Dickinson, no longer serving as the garrison’s unofficial physician, was now attempting to save more men in a combat situation than he ever could as a man of medicine. After all, the effort to provide protective fire for the escapees was an act of salvation on this early Sunday morning in hell. Here, at Fortin de Cós, the former Gonzales blacksmith was about to forge one of the most heroic actions at the Alamo.

  Acting with haste while Mexican bullets from the plaza and nearby walls whistled around their heads, this handful of feisty artillerymen sighted their guns upon the lengthy line of brightly colored Dolores, Vera Cruz, and Tampico lancers, who were swiftly approaching the escapees. Santa Anna’s cavalry was yet far enough from the fleeing soldiers that these gunners now prepared to fire over the escapee’s heads to send projectiles toward the surging Mexican cavalry formations.

  At least one, perhaps two, 12-pounders now blasted away at the cavalrymen in the vain hope of preventing the inevitable slaughter on the prairie. With a sense of admiration rather than pity, Sergeant Francisco Becerra of the Activo San Luís Potosí Battalion, never forgot the sight of the valiant attempts of the artillerymen, even though they knew that they were hastening their own doom by assisting their fleeing comrades instead of defending themselves: “On the top of the church building I saw eleven Texians [and] They had some small pieces of artillery, and were firing on the cavalry. . . .” 48

  But of course this gallant action of the few artillerymen, who willing sacrificed themselves to save their comrades, came at a high price. Ironically, in now firing more times at the fight’s end than perhaps all the Alamo’s other cannon this morning, these hard-working gunners from a commanding height loaded and fired their guns as fast as they could and as long as possible in attempting to save their comrades, even while they knew that they had only a short time to live. Here, at the church’s rear and in close conjunction with the exodus from the compound, was what could be described as Captain Dickinson’s last stand, the Alamo’s authentic Thermopylae in miniature. As long as ammunition remained, these few artillerymen of Fortin de Cós continued to fire even while the Mexicans entered the church and gained the ramp’s base, and then shot down the gunners, now sitting ducks, one by one. Additionally, some of Santa Anna’s men outside the walls, evidently Mexican troopers who had advanced close to the wall to cut off more escape attempts from this point, also opened up to eliminate this booming threat to their own horse-soldier comrades, who continued to descend upon the 62 escapees.

  Inside the embattled church now surrounded by Mexican infantry and cavalry, Enrique Esparza described how: “The roof of the Alamo [church] had been taken off and the south side filled up with dirt almost to the roof on that side so that there was a slanting embankment up which the Americans could run and take positions [and now] I saw numbers [of artillerymen] who were shot in the head as soon as they exposed themselves from the roof.” 49

  One of these last-stand gunners was Captain Dickinson, who commanded the three-gun battery of 12-pounders at the church’s rear. But at least one, maybe two cannon, had expended their rounds by this time and, combined with the number of gunners shot down, now became useless. Therefore, and perhaps even hoping yet to escape to the outside after having seen so many of their comrades fleeing, three unarmed gunners had left the firing platform and entered the rooms on the church’s first floor, where they were dispatched by bullets from a tide of Mexicans swarming into the building. One of these unfortunate victims was Jacob Walker, who attempted to escape the elevated gun platform but too late. He was shot and then killed with a flurry of bayonets in a dirty, dank corner of a darkened room before he could escape from the chapel now engulfed by screaming soldados. Like his fellow cannoneers of Fortin de Cós, he had bravely given his life in part to save his fleeing comrades. 50

  Ironically, this dramatic episode and one of the most heroic actions of that March 6 has been overlooked by historians in part because of a stubborn refusal to accept reliable Mexican accounts that reveal, or even hint of, an exodus from the Alamo.

  Meanwhile, as more light of day illuminated the plain outside the fort, the sight of a large number of Mexican cavalry surging toward them presented a nasty surprise to the escapees. After all, during the twelve days of siege, garrison members had seen no such sizeable cavalry deployment, or even the repositioning of Mexican horsemen in the early hours of March 6.

  Not only had young men of dissimilar cultures, religions, and races clashed at the Alamo, but the battle also involved dissimilar means of waging warfare. And this wide difference in battle tactics was forcefully demonstrated outside the Alamo’s walls. What was now about to transpire outside the Alamo was a confrontation between two means of waging war that had been transferred to the New World. While most garrison members had learned how to fight as a foot soldier, Mexican superiority was manifested in its rich cavalry traditions and heritage. Even more than natives from the South, where horse culture dominated, the Mexicans, like the Spanish before them, were masters of horsemanship: a lengthy tradition brought from the dry plains and mountainous regions of Spain.

  Unlike the Anglo-Celtic riflemen primarily from the Deep and Upper South, the Mexican cavalry was ideally suited for waging war amid the dry, open prairies around San Antonio, which so closely resembled Spain’s interior. More then any other aspect of the struggle, therefore, the fighting outside the walls would represent the clash of two distinct traditional means of waging war. Contrary to the mythical Alamo last stand, meanwhile, only a relatively handful of men now attempted to defend themselves inside a compound now overflowing with the soldado tide. Eulalia Yorba described the final contest swirling in and around the Long Barracks, including the church: “It did not seem as if a mouse could live in a building so shot at and riddled as the Alamo was that morning.” 51

  However, the men who had stayed inside the Alamo were destined to die mercifully compared to the grisly fates awaiting those who fled outside the walls. Vacating the open prairie to seek some meager shelter after seeing the onrushing Mexican cavalry, they had retired back into the brushy shelter of the irrigation ditch
to make a stand. Dispatched by General Sesma, a lancer company of the Dolores Regiment swept down to smash into the 62 men from the flank after they took defensive positions in the “bushy and craggy ground,” while other Mexican lancers attacked them in front. While those garrison members who remained behind trapped in the Alamo faced ugly demises from muskets shots and bayonets, the escapees—who now made the forgotten last stand not inside but outside the Alamo—would have to face Mexico’s most highly skilled killers.

  As best they could, these men now had to fend off blows delivered with heavy dragoon sabers that could split skulls open and sever and arms held up in vain for protection. But worst of all, they confronted the most feared of all opponents, the deadly Mexican lancers, who charged them in front. As revealed by Sergeant Loranca of the Dolores Cavalry, in a revealing 1878 article that appeared in theSan Antonio Daily Express, the “Sixty-two Texans who sallied forth . . . were received by the Lancers,” the pride of Mexico. 52

  But almost as shocking as facing lancers was the fact that the escapees now confronted some black soldiers for the first time in their lives. With the port city’s heavily mixed population, people of African descent had long served in Vera Cruz’s military units, including the elite Vera Cruz Lancers: an integrated military unit since the time of the American Revolution. And by 1798, the majority of the Vera Cruz lancers consisted of pardos—lighter skinned descendants of blacks and Spaniards—and morenos, who were darker-complected offspring of Spanish and African parents. These dark-skinned Jarochos (citizens of “Puerto de Veracruz”) were proud of their beautiful port city and their African heritage. Ironically, for the doomed white soldiers, even the lengthy lances that were now employed with such business-like efficiency had been inherited from Islamic Moors of African descent. 53

  The unfortunates outside the Alamo’s walls were all but defenseless at this time. With little, if any, powder remaining, they were also without bayonets, the standard weapon with which infantrymen defended themselves against cavalry throughout the Napoleonic Wars. Without bayonets to fend off charging Mexican horsemen, mounted on fast mustangs that were smaller than American horses, these escapees were at the mercy of the seven-foot-long deadly lances. 54

  Before Santa Anna began his march on San Antonio, at least one insightful evaluation from the Red River Herald had offered a grim warning for any unlucky Texas riflemen caught in the open, and that now proved most prophetic for the 62 escapees: “ . . . they will be powerless against cavalry. . . . Bayonets and lances are what are, therefore, needed by American volunteers” fighting in Texas. 55

  The struggle outside the walls began as a conventional fight: an organized defense that was remarkable under the circumstances. While hit in front by the lancers, the dragoons of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment smashed into their flank, flushing some survivors from the irrigation ditch. Now out in the open and far from the Alamo’s walls, those men who sought to escape met a grisly end during a brutal mismatch that was little more than a bloody game of predator pursuing its doomed quarry. They could neither escape nor survive out in the open for long. Meanwhile, other men continued to defend themselves from the ditch’s cover.

  Contrary to traditional accounts and newer, more controversial assertions, including the de la Pena memoir, Crockett very likely was killed at this time far from the Alamo’s walls and not far from the Alameda. One of the most persistent Alamo myths has been the alleged tenacious defense at the wooden palisade by Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers. Armed with Long Rifles, they have been viewed as the Alamo’s most deadly defenders. But very likely the Tennessee men were among the 62 who escaped through the palisade. It would have been almost beyond human endurance, not to mention common sense, for a handful of Tennessee men to stand by to die for no gain, after so many garrison members had left by way of the palisade.

  If the Tennesseans had been part of this exodus, which was likely the case, then might Crockett have joined them instead of remaining in the church area? The former Tennessee Congressman possessed perhaps more reasons than anyone to depart with more than 60 comrades: a bright political future in a new Texas revolutionary government that he would “consider . . . a paradise,” as he wrote in a letter; the Alamo’s defense was already compromised by this time; and, of course, he had a wife and family yet dependent upon him. Therefore, he quite likely joined the first escape attempt out of the compound. He might even have led it.

  Earlier, Crockett had informed Susanna Dickinson that “we had better march out” of the Alamo death-trap. If he had led the escape effort, this would also explain why so many garrison members departed from the palisade. A natural leader, any decisions made by this popular Volunteer State frontiersman-turned-politician would have been followed by many garrison members. For his part, the Tennessean faced two distinct choices once the Mexicans had poured into the fort: either withdraw to the “safety” of the Long Barracks or the Alamo chapel, or go out through the palisade not only with his Tennessee boys, if that is the case, but with the day’s largest concentration of defenders on that nightmarish morning.

  A number of Mexican officers and soldados viewed this large-scale escape from the Alamo, because it was not only the first but also the most concentrated attempt of a large number of garrison members to reach safety. Mapmakers José Sánchez-Navarro and Estado De Parras both noted this desperate flight from out of the palisade. On his 1836 map and quite correctly, Navarro described the wooden palisade as “the weakest part of the fort. It is defined only by a stockade and a bad tree fall [abatis]; from this post, in vain, when all was lost some colonists attempted to escape.” 56

  And in his 1840 map, Parras also indicated that the wooded palisade was the “point [where] some colonist[s] attempted to escape” the slaughter inside the Alamo’s walls. Evidently, not knowing the location of the little gate, or sally port, at the church’s southwest corner at the palisade’s edge, he indicated, as in the 1836 map, that the exact point of escape was located at the cannon embrasure, or opening at the center of the wooden palisade. But most significant, both early Alamo mapmakers considered the flight of garrison members from the palisade to be of some historical significance, when they instead could have omitted it to glorify the victory won by embracing the core tenants of the mythical Alamo last stand. 57

  But there was little to glorify in the struggle so far outside the walls. In General Sesma’s words that described the attack on the 62 escapees, including perhaps Crockett himself, around the aqueduct: “The gallant lancer officers charged them, and in the same manner the troop [of the Dolores Cavalry] that they had commanded also charged” the defenders in a one-two punch. 58

  All the while, the lively, almost festive “music of the regiment of Dolores” inspired hundreds of lancers and dragoons to make their killing as efficient as possible. After initial resistance was broken, the slaughter of so many garrison members took on an almost a carnivallike atmosphere far from the Alamo’s walls in a vicious, life-and-death struggle that has long been overlooked by historians. 59

  Meantime, either shortly before or while while the 62 escapees were under attack outside the walls, the panic among the few survivors along the south wall—in the low barracks and at the main gate—became more widespread, with every man for himself. The mounting shock and terror caused primeval instincts to rise to the fore, and it was now a matter of simple survival, which called for one final act—flight—to escape the massacre. Unlike the first escape attempt out the palisade, therefore, the two subsequent flights of Alamo men would not be as organized, resulting more out of panic to escape a slaughter than a prearranged design. However, one Anglo emphasized not only the first escape attempt but also those that followed, concluding that nearly the entire garrison had fled. William C. Murphy, who evidently learned what had really happened from Mexican prisoners taken at San Jacinto or from Tejano eyewitnesses, spoke to a reporter and described how resistance inside the Alamo had continued until “finally [the garrison] was compelled to abandon th
e fort.” 60

  Appearing in his obituary in the February 23, 1895 issue of the New York Times (appropriately on the 59th anniversary of the arrival of Santa Anna’s army in San Antonio), Murphy’s rare account of what actually happened on the morning of March 6 is most significant, because it is the only known Texian version in existence today that has described the exodus from the Alamo, coinciding with Mexican accounts before the latter were known or seen by him. 61

  But besides the ample number of Mexican accounts, perhaps the best evidence of these multiple flights of escapees was the fact that overall resistance had been so feeble from beginning to end. As revealed by the journal of Juan Nepomuceno Almonte (both the aristocratic general and his journal were captured at San Jacinto) less than 300 Mexican soldiers would fall on this day, including a large percentage from friendly fire. The illegitimate son of Mexican revolutionary leader Jose Maria Morales, he served as Santa Anna’s Chief of Staff, and knew the truth of what actually occurred on March 6th. He therefore penned in his journal how, less than a half hour after the attack’s opening, “the enemy attempted to fly” from the Alamo. Most important, both Murphy and Colonel Almonte indicated a widespread collapse of resistance and how a large percentage of the garrison attempted to flee. 62

  As a proud member of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment, however, Sergeant Loranca had only witnessed the first flight of 62 men from the palisade, and he spent sometime that morning fighting and slaughtering escapees on the open prairie. Consequently, he failed to bear witness to subsequent flights from the Alamo. 63

  But the account of Colonel Almonte, a highly respected officer esteemed on both sides, was especially reliable. No wonder the surprised editors of the New York Herald who published Almonte’s journal, which had been picked up on the San Jacinto battlefield by Private Anson Jones, a future president of the Texas Republic, could only write with some dismay: “The assault on the Alamo is very briefly given. It will be observed that Almonte’s account differs very essentially from what we received at the time through the Texas papers.” 64