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

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  The escape attempts by a majority of the Alamo garrison—more than 100 and perhaps as many as 120 men—has been revealed by more than half a dozen reliable Mexican sources, especially General Sesma’s March 11, 1836 report, and the San Luis Battalion logbook. While the mythological Alamo has long romanticized that these men all died will

  302 ingly in a heroic example of self-sacrifice so that Texas would live, the historical reality of what actually happened on March 6 was the exact opposite. Indeed, Texas had a better chance to live if the Alamo garrison had escaped and survived to fight another day, when the odds were better and the tactical situation was more favorable.

  At the Alamo, therefore, it perhaps took more real courage—and certainly more sense—to escape from a deathtrap than to die for no gain, advantage, or purpose. Attempting to escape the Alamo instead of dying in vain for abstract, rhetorical principles of “a borrowed cause,” since so few garrison members were native Texians, was only a natural response for these unfortunate men, who had been abandoned by Texas and her people. In addition, the flight of Alamo defenders might well be explained by the fact that ammunition was low or largely unusable. Toward the battle’s end, some men fought until ammunition had been expended before bolting from the Alamo. Such factors would further demonstrate the wisdom of flight rather than fight. After all, the Alamo garrison lacked adequate amounts of both powder and bullets from the beginning, and especially after thirteen days of siege. 2

  Along with other accounts and Travis’ own words, Enrique Esparza recorded that the ammunition “of many was entirely spent” by the time the Mexicans poured over the walls, indicating that solid resistance was all but impossible, and that flight rather than fight presented a sound alternative. 3

  Given such realities, perhaps the most lofty example of defender heroism on March 6 was the fact that most Alamo garrison members waited until almost the final moment before attempting to break out of a deathtrap instead of days before. Indeed, the greatest heroism was not in struggling in vain to the death, but that fact that these men of such diverse backgrounds had united at all in a common decision to defend the Alamo in the first place. In this regard, the defenders were truly heroic, living up to the idealized and romantic image of the mythical Alamo, and leaving an inspiring moral example.

  In the words of historian Wallace O. Chariton, “The truth is, it’s a miracle the men stayed as long as they did. They were tired, hungry, frustrated over the poor conditions and the lack of promised pay, and bewildered because the people of Texas did not turn out in mass to come to their aid. . . . There was little to do but watch and wait for the end. For the besieged Texans there was no longer any doubt about what the end would be; the only question was when would it come, today, tomorrow, or the day after. The fact that the men did not run until the final assault was underway and all hope was literally gone is testimony to their grit and gallantry.” 4

  Ironically, the truth of what really happened on March 6 can be seen in a fact that has been most often overlooked by historians. Like in regard to so many other traditional aspects of the Alamo’s story, historians have never questioned or investigated why the bodies of Alamo garrison members were burned so far away from the Alamo. Why would Santa Anna’s men have taken so much trouble and effort in hauling so many bodies some 300–400 yards up the gradual slope to the relative high ground of the Alameda, when battlefield dead were almost always buried where they were slain? Quite simply, the long-overlooked answer to this Alamo mystery was the fact that Santa Anna’s men never dragged the vast majority of bodies from the Alamo compound as so long assumed.

  When the fighting ended, the bodies of most Alamo garrison members were lying not inside the Alamo’s walls, but around and near the Alameda, because of the multiple escape attempts. For health reasons, the bodies of the relatively few men killed inside the Alamo were hauled out of the fort by Santa Anna’s cavalrymen to the Alameda—an unpleasant, but relatively easy exercise because they represented the minority of defenders.

  Indeed, perhaps the best physical evidence of the mass exodus that streamed out of the Alamo was the fact that most bodies lay so far beyond the Alamo’s walls. Such placement of the slain can explain why Santa Anna ordered the bodies gathered and placed into three funeral pyres on either side of the double rows of cottonwood trees along the Alameda. 5

  Other solid evidence—equally ignored—of the large-scale flights of so many defenders from the Alamo, was that more men than previously believed actually escaped the slaughter of the Mexican lancers and cavalrymen. Collaborating what Sesma recorded in his March 11 report and other Mexican accounts, even Santa Anna alluded as much when he described how among the “large number” of men who escaped the Alamo compound in making a dash for life, “I am, then able to guarantee that very few will have gone to notify their companions of the outcome” of the Alamo. 6

  An unknown number of escapees hid under cover on the prairie or in the irrigation ditch, praying for darkness when they could slip away undetected. Some of these men were discovered. We have already seen how Sergeant Loranca of the Dolores Cavalry described one soldier who had “ensconced himself under a bush” and nearly escaped detection, until finally discovered and dispatched without mercy. 7

  Another account has revealed that six garrison members who escaped the Alamo were discovered hiding under the small wooden bridge where the Gonzales Road crossed the San Antonio River, southwest of the Alamo. These escapees—most likely from the west wall lunette—had run around 220 yards undetected to find shelter under the bridge, located just west of the Alameda on the road to Gonzales. In keeping with Santa Anna’s orders, these men were all killed out-of-hand by the first soldados who spied them. 8

  The Alamo’s most famous escapee was the French Napoleonic veteran, Louis (or Moses) Rose. Like the mythical line supposedly drawn in the sand by Travis, so the story of Rose’s departure from the Alamo has been shrouded in legend. Alamo mythology, which unfairly branded him as a coward and even a turncoat for not dying in the mythical last stand, strongly hints of anti-Semitism. The legend has been long espoused that Rose left the Alamo and deserted his more heroic nonJewish comrades—who willingly chose to die in an example of heroic self-sacrifice—on the night before the attack. In this sense, Rose served as a convenient scapegoat—a Frenchman and a Jew, a double handicap, who were so often lampooned and hated in this period—so as to diminish any idea that true-blooded Anglo-Celts might have tried to escape the Alamo. In truth, Rose was most likely a member of the three groups of escapees who fled the Alamo, and survived to tell the tale.

  In the view of historian Bill Groneman, Rose “probably escaped during the predawn battle itself, rather than after a solemn line drawing ceremony. . . . However, men escaping from the Alamo just because they did not want to be shot and stabbed to pieces did not exactly fit the story, so it is possible that [William P.] Zuber may have jumped into the breach and invented the [Travis] line drawing scene.” 9

  Another lucky soul who escaped the Alamo massacre was Henry Warnell, a rather slick horse trader, a bit of a con artist, and somewhat of a “rouge and an outlaw”—ideal characteristics for a survivor of one of the most infamous slaughters in American history. Warnell was a wheeler-dealer, who made a living outsmarting less worldly customers, including selling stolen horses. In and around the little Texas town of Bastrop, where he migrated in 1835, he was called “jockey,” as he was also known among garrison members, not only because of his small size but also because of his easy way with temperamental horses.

  Warnell manned one of the two or three cannon inside the ovalshaped lunette that protected the main gate near the south wall’s center. One of the self-styled “Invincibles” of Captain Carey’s artillery company, Warnell was almost certainly among the second group of escapees from the “center” lunette who survived the infamous “massacre at the Alamo.” The hope of seeing his wife, Ludie Ragsdale, and their infant son, born in November 1834, and his beloved Red River country
fueled the race for his life outside the Alamo’s walls. Warnell barely made it, but succeeded in getting away. He was wounded by Mexican cavalrymen, who killed so many garrison members around the Alameda area. Defying the odds, he eventually reached the safety of the low-lying gulf coast. But this spunky soldier died of his wounds at Port Lavaca on the gulf less than three months after the Alamo’s capture. 10

  On March 8, 1869, Susanna Dickinson, now remarried after her husband’s death, gave a disposition on behalf of Warnell’s heirs. She recalled a statement from Warnell that reflected the sentiment of so many garrison members, and which he fulfilled by somehow managing to escape the Alamo and survive the onslaught of hundreds of Mexican lancers and cavalry: “I recollect having heard him remark that he had much rather be out in the open prairie, than to be pent up in that manner” inside the Alamo. 11

  Later, as revealed in the March 29, 1836 edition of Little Rock’s Arkansas Gazette, two other fortunate survivors, who had also escaped General Sesma’s vengeful horsemen, reached the town of Nacogdoches, Texas, northeast of San Antonio. One of the men was seriously wounded and likely soon died of his injuries. Here, to the horrified town folk, they brought the first news of the “massacre” at the Alamo. Indeed, the two dirty, ragged survivors “said San Antonio had been retaken by the Mexicans, the garrison put to the sword—that if any others escaped the general massacre besides themselves, they was not aware of it.” 12

  But because so many garrison members had fled the Alamo in what could only be described as a mass exodus, the odds of escaping the Mexican cavalry poised outside the Alamo was much greater than previously realized by those who had embraced the romance of the mythical last stand. A veteran of San Antonio’s 1835 capture and the battle of San Jacinto, William C. Murphy, who presented an amazingly accurate version of both the exodus and a higher number of survivors than previously believed, stated to a reporter that when the garrison was “compelled to abandon [the Alamo] only eight men escaped alive.” 13 Most likely, these fortunate survivors were among those who fled from the main gate, having the best chance for survival because Sesma’s men had been focused on chasing down and slaughtering the first group of 62 escapees before turning on the second group. Murphy’s revealing statement coincided with the first battle report written by Santa Anna at 8:00 a.m., when his cavalry was yet engaged in hunting down and slaughtering escapees on the open prairie, revealing that these men continued to fight back, hide, and evade their pursuers. Disgusted by the slaughter and Santa Anna’s no-quarter order, or just tired of killing, some compassionate Mexican cavalrymen might even have allowed hiding or fleeing men to survive. 14

  Another long-overlooked lucky escapee who somehow dodged Mexican sabers, bullets, and lances this bloody morning was young William James Cannon. Indeed, “There was a survivor [at the Alamo and he was] A boy [who] by some miracle escaped the universal slaughter. It was William James Cannon, ‘the child of the Alamo’.” Perhaps his fluency in Spanish and familiarity with Tejano ways and culture had assisted Cannon, one of the youngest garrison members, in escaping the bloodbath. 15

  But despite the many collaborating primary Mexican sources, the truth of what really happened at the Alamo—the exodus—has been overlooked by historians, scholars, and writers since 1836. One of the few American historians who has even dared to hint—and even then ever so carefully—at the scale of the exodus from the Alamo was the respected author of Blood of Noble Men: The Alamo, Siege and Battle (1999), Alan C. Huffines, who later served with distinction as a U.S. Army colonel in Iraq. However, he only dealt with this most controversial aspect of the Alamo’s story in a footnote, reasoning like a detective in attempting to uncover a central mystery of the Alamo’s story: “It appears that near the end of the battle a large group of Texian defenders attempted a withdrawal. This is absolutely contrary to current Alamo interpretation, but [more than half a dozen Mexican, both officers and enlisted men] witnessed it. . . . How would the cavalry have taken casualties several hundred yards away from the battle? Why did the Texian gunners [under Captain Dickinson] on the church fire on the cavalry. . . . The answer is simple: A large body of Texians made a break for it, going in the only direction they knew, toward Gonzales.” 16

  Alamo authority Gary S. Zaboly wrote with honesty in early April 2008, revealing the truth of the exodus from the Alamo: “But a sober reflection will allow that, if all seems lost, fighting men aren’t always so disposed to stand in place and just let themselves be killed. For what purpose?The Alamo defenders weren’t all as heroically Byronic as Travis: an escape route seemed open, and there was the chance to live and fight another day. So, many of them took it. A similar thing occurred at Little Big Horn.” 17

  Roger Borroel, historian and translator of many rare Mexican documents pertaining to the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, concluded in no uncertain terms: “Well over 100 Alamo defenders sought to escape the battle by fleeing for their lives at the height of the struggle . . . they left their buddies [all] alone to die in the Alamo fort [therefore] Sesma’s Dolores Cavalry Regiment [and other horse units] played a major role in the struggle, killing at least 50% of the Alamo garrison as they tried to escape” the Alamo. 18

  Even the leading role played by the Mexican lancers and dragoons on March 6 has been largely distorted by historians, who assigned Santa Anna’s horsemen solely with the mission of driving the “cowardly” Mexican peasants forward to the attack and “to shoot every man that turned back.” 19Of course this convenient explanation not only reveals cultural and racial arrogance, but has also masked the real and more important role played by Sesma’s cavalry, obscuring the truth about the mass exodus from the Alamo.

  In the end, therefore, considerable evidence has revealed that very likely the majority of the Alamo garrison was killed not inside but outside the Alamo’s walls, not by infantrymen but by cavalrymen, not in darkness but in broad daylight, and not only far from the Alamo but even farther from the romance and glory of the mythical last stand. Still haunted by the horrors he had witnessed, an unidentified soldado described the ugly truth of the Alamo in El Mosquito Mexicano on April 5, 1836, when he described the battle as “a pitiful but deserved slaughter of the ungrateful colonists, who threw down their weapons and thought to find safety in escape . . . Miserable souls! They no longer exist.” 20

  Unfortunately, the most popular book yet written about the Alamo—Walter Lord’s A Time to Stand, and other respected works on this ever-fascinating topic of heroism and sacrifice have failed to tell the Alamo’s true story, because that chapter simply did not fit neatly into the mythical Alamo, or conform to simplistic American notions of the meaning of heroism. But in truth, a more appropriately descriptive title of what really happened at the Alamo on the morning of March 6 should have been, A Time to Withdraw.

  LIGHT MEXICAN CASUALTIES TELL THE TRUE STORY

  From the beginning, Mexican reports and firsthand personal accounts presented a story far different than the one later told by legions of American writers, historians, journalists, and filmmakers, who possessed a vested interest, including cultural, emotional, and racial, in creating and then romanticizing the last stand legend. The greatest distortion—a direct corollary of the tenacious last stand with every man selling his life as dearly as possible against an avalanche of attackers—was the gross inflation of Mexican casualties to demonstrate last stand heroics. But the truth of what really happened was far different.

  The process of distortion began almost immediately after the battle—and has continued unabated to this day—with newspaper journalists across the United States dramatically inflating both the number of Mexican attackers, and especially their losses. For instance, the editor of the prestigious New York Heraldon April 12, 1836 wrote: “The loss of the Mexicans in storming the [Alamo] was not less than 1000 killed and mortally wounded, and as many wounded, making their loss in the first assault between 2 and 3000 men.” And two days later, the same newspaper reported how the Alamo garrison of 187
men had been overwhelmed with great difficulty by 40 times their number, or more than 7,000 troops. 21

  And in the May 12, 1836 issue of the same newspaper, the editor emphatically maintained to his news-starved east coast readers how: “It is also a matter of history that [Santa Anna’s] loss in killed and wounded exceeded one thousand” on March 6. 22

  One reason why the allegedly high number of Mexican casualties had not been seriously challenged by historians before was because a host of films and Alamo books, and utterly fictionalized paintings only continued the process of creating the myth of a great epic battle and a heroic last stand to the bitter end. The myth of the last stand was born out of the fiction that only a tenacious defense—fortified by “superior” Anglo-Celtic culture, fighting spirit, and character—could have possibly accounted for the supposed high casualties among Santa Anna’s troops. What was also fabricated was the fiction that Alamo garrison members all willingly choose to die rather than surrender to a dictator because of their egalitarian, republican convictions, or American values, that were worth dying for regardless of the odds and no matter how hopeless the situation: the mythical Alamo that automatically ruled out the mere suggestion or thought of any garrison member—except of course the much maligned Rose—escaping the Alamo.

  For such reasons, other Texas revolutionary battles—besides the Alamo—also provide evidence of over-exaggeration of Mexican numbers. A recent scholarly study by Allwyn Barr, Texans in Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835, has challenged the battle’s mythology in regard to the exaggeration of Mexican numbers: “The popular view has been that three hundred Texans captured Béxar [San Antonio] from twelve hundred Mexicans. Instead, a reconstruction of the armies shows the Texans to have been slightly more numerous than the Mexicans until late in the fighting. 23