Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth
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Starting after the American Revolution’s end in 1783, Jefferson’s utopian vision of a “land of liberty” that spread into the Deep South, thanks in part to General Jackson’s crushing of the Creek Nation, had evolved into one of the greatest slave empires on earth. This process only continued unabated after San Jacinto, thrusting southwestward into the former lands of Mexico. In this sense, what happened at the Alamo could be seen as only part of the overall American expansionist push into the southwest that spread slavery by violent means, including by way of revolution. After all, though separated by more than half a century, both the American Revolution and the Texas Revolution were major victories for the continuation of slavery.
As part of the triumphant march “of Jacksonian nationalism and its inseparable ingredient of slavery”—that Crockett had hated so passionately—which resulted in the relentless advance of a slavery frontier, Texas would become as Southern as Mississippi, and San Antonio as Southern as Montgomery, Alabama, by the time of the antebellum period. As envisioned by Austin so long ago, much of Texas had evolved into a vast plantation and cotton empire, thanks in no small part to what happened at the Alamo. The attacking Texans and Americans, inspired by the cry “Remember the Alamo” in their victory at San Jacinto, unleashed an uncontrollable flood of human misery that brought the “demographic, economic, and political weight of plantation slavery” across Texas. 76
Texas thrived as part of the Cotton Kingdom of the United States. Symbolically, in the same late winter and spring of 1836, when the dead bodies of the Alamo defenders were unceremoniously burned by the victors, African-Americans in the United States were burned alive by angry mobs of white Americans. But while Santa Anna’s final act of burning the remains of the Alamo defenders solidified his place as the stereotypical arch-villain, white Americans who committed the same act against blacks—even though they were alive and not dead—were treated as local heroes in their white communities. 77
Despite having fought in the Texas Revolution against Santa Anna, free blacks were banished from Texas because they were seen as dangerous, inspirational examples for slaves. Instead of promising opportunity and liberty to free blacks, the Texas Constitution that created a new republic proclaimed: “No free person of African descent either in whole or in part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the republic, without the consent of Congress.” 78
And thus the additional entry of free blacks into Texas was limited. Such harsh legal discrimination based upon race was ironic, because a black presence in Texas dated back hundreds of years and to the beginning of Spanish settlement in Texas. African-Americans living, fighting, and dying in Texas was a longer-established tradition than in any other section of the United States, existing centuries before the first AngloCeltic settlement in Texas. 79
But the Texans themselves could hardly be blamed for this pervasive racism that differed so markedly from more enlightened Tejano attitudes around them. Clearly, like their music, food, architecture, and cultural beliefs, the Anglo-Celts had brought their own racial stereotypes and hatreds—the accepted norm of the day—with them when they migrated across the Sabine. In striking contrast, Tejano culture, including in San Antonio, readily accepted African-Americans, especially those of mixed race. By 1777, at the time of the American Revolution, for instance, more than 150 African-Americans lived in San Antonio. 80
Beyond the simple romantic mythology and hero-worship, Alamo garrison members had been sacrificed in the name of the relentless tide of Anglo-Saxon progress and westward expansion across the North American continent. In the end, what happened at the Alamo played a key role in transforming a vast expanse of Mexican lands into one of the great land grabs in American history, while also setting the stage for an even larger national land grab, the Mexican-American War. In this sense, the “battle” of the Alamo was only one chapter of the ongoing clash between race, culture, value systems, politics, economics, and class that yet continues to this day.
Placing the Alamo in a proper historical perspective, the enlightened editor of the Patriot in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, praised Santa Anna’s march of liberation across Texas and the commander-in-chief himself: “How can we style him a tyrant . . . who opposed the efforts of rebels and used them with deserved severity [in part because they desired to] substantiate the horrible system of slavery.” 81
Ironically, by overlooking such contradictions to the myth, the Alamo was transformed into a great moral victory, based upon racial and cultural superiority, to justify not only the stealing of this fertile Mexican province, but also to justify the enslavement of thousands of African-Americans. An Englishman early understood as much before San Jacinto, writing how in contrast to the Texans, “the Mexicans stand at a proud moral distance from them in regard to slavery, which is abolished in the republic [and] in defiance of human freedom [the AngloCelts proceed] to people the country with slaves.” 82
Consequently, the Alamo’s defenders stood in the path of the march of human progress and enlightenment in regard to slavery. After all, Santa Anna himself wrote on February 16, 1836, only a week before trapping the tiny garrison inside the Alamo: “There exists in Texas a considerable number of slaves . . . who, according to our laws, should be free.” 83
When Santa Anna was taken to Washington, D.C. after his capture at San Jacinto, he was greeted wildly by anti-slavery American citizens across the upper South, who viewed the Texas Revolution as a Southern conspiracy to extend slavery. Therefore, the commander was hailed in the United States as a great “hero of human liberty” by enlightened, race-blind Americans. Clearly, what had happened at the Alamo was already forgotten by many Americans, paling in significance to larger, more important moral issues of the day. 84
A MORE HONEST PERSPECTIVE
For the young men and boys who were massacred at the Alamo, there was neither glory nor romance, but only ugly, miserable deaths both inside and outside of the compound. Mirabeau B. Lamar, who commanded the Texas cavalry at San Jacinto, perhaps best summarized the “battle” of the Alamo in a letter to his brother on April 10, 1836: “San Antonio has been retaken by and every man in the fort murdered.” 85 Only the ceaseless efforts of generations of imaginative historians, writers, journalists, screenplay writers, and filmmakers have transformed this massacre into an epic battle, especially the defiant last stand, that the struggle for the Alamo never was.
It is most paradoxical that perhaps the most glorified battle in American history was in truth merely a brief slaughter. A veil of darkness mercifully shrouded a brutal massacre from the sight of many participants. There was nothing glorious in Santa Anna’s no-quarter policy and its bloody results: scared young men far from home attempting to surrender in vain, and scores of escapees running for their lives out on the open prairie, only to be cut down by the sabers and lances of Mexican cavalrymen outside the Alamo.
Perhaps a United States major named John P. Gaines, best summarized the real truth of the battle of the Alamo, when he scribbled in his diary on October 13, 1846, after visiting the site: “The town [of San Antonio and the Alamo] is here called a slaughter pen, many battles having been fought in it, and a vast number of lives lost [and] I might call it ‘the dark and bloody ground’.” 86
Ironically, had not a minor military miracle occurred at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, what happened at the Alamo would have been all but forgotten by Americans, not unlike the massacre at Goliad, which has only recently received its due notice from historians. But thanks to the myth makers, the Alamo slaughter was transformed into something that it was not: a climactic, epic clash of arms. Perhaps no better example of the time-honored axiom that history was written by the winner can be found than in the Alamo’s case.
In addition, if the primary triumvirate of Alamo heroes—the “holy trinity” of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis—had not died at the Alamo, the brief struggle at a remote frontier outpost would have been largely forgotten by history. But the death of these three Alamo leaders helped to ele
vate a massacre into an enduring, romantic legend.
Historians have failed to tell the Alamo’s true story in regard to its most important aspect, the exodus, preferring a time-honored, sociallyconstructed, racially-inspired, and idiologically-based mythical narrative. More than any other aspect of Alamo historiography, the exodus from the Alamo challenges the most sacred of all traditional views: the heroic last stand. Soldiers in all wars, in all times, and of all nations have responded the same—flight rather than fight—under such disadvantageous circumstances—a natural response that is part of the human condition, and one that rose to the fore at the Alamo.
To think that Americans, especially those of the Alamo, were incapable of such an instinctive response to a no-win situation blinds us not only to the truth of the past, but also to present and future realities. What Americans must accept about the past is our nation’s real history, and not a romantic mythology. In this way, we can better understand ourselves, other people, and our present and future military operations in a seemingly incomprehensible world that continues to become increasingly complex. Here, perhaps lies the Alamo’s real, but forgotten, importance and meaning for today.
The real truth of what doomed the Alamo can in part be seen in the words of William Fairfax Gray. He complained how “the vile rabble here [the politicians at San Felipe de Austin] cannot be moved” to assist the men of the Alamo. After learning of the Alamo’s fall, Gray prophesied about what would happen in the future, which would come true with the creation of the mythical Alamo: “Texas will take honor to herself for the defense of the Alamo and will call it a second Thermopylae, but it will be an everlasting monument of national disgrace.” 87
Perhaps this is yet another forgotten reason why the Alamo has been endlessly glorified and romanticized: to hide ugly truths. Almost as much as Santa Anna and the Mexican Army, it after all had been Texas and its people who had actually sealed the fate of the Alamo defenders, who had been betrayed and sacrificed in the end for no gain. No historical event in American history has been shrouded in more layers of myth, romance, emotion, and fantasy, while hiding the truth of racial, cultural, and political agendas, than the Alamo. In this way, a sad, tragic historical narrative of disaster was transformed into a heroic epic centered around the last stand myth. 88
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Flames Rising High
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With the sulphurous smoke of battle yet hovering over the conquered Alamo on the early morning of March 6, and with the Mexican tricolor, planted by Lieutenant Torres, waving in triumph from its north wall, Sergeant Manuel Loranca of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment never forgot the scene of carnage. Loranca had seen the sheer brutality demonstrated “by the lance” when so effectively utilized by Tampico, Dolores, and Vera Cruz lancers on the unfortunate escapees. He described that last pitiful act on this tragic day: “There in front of the [fort, near the west end of the Alameda] were gathered the bodies of all those who died by the lance.” 1
Backing up his earlier promise that “he would burn the last one of them,” Santa Anna ordered that all bodies of the Alamo defenders be burned. Perhaps this gesture was calculated to be a special insult to the memory of these mostly Protestant soldiers, because the act of cremation had been outlawed by the churches of Europe in centuries past. Cremation denied these citizen-soldiers from so far away the Christian burial enjoyed by generations of their ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Since so many young men and boys had been killed outside of the Alamo, perhaps lying as far as several hundred yards away, two main funeral pyres were built by Santa Anna’s soldados on either side of the leafless cottonwoods of the Alameda. A distinctive landmark on the open prairie, the Alameda had been named for the stately Mexico City boulevard so beloved by upper class Creoles. 2 Ironically, perhaps no place in all San Antonio was more picturesque than the tree-lined Alameda, which meant a shaded public thoroughfare in Spanish. A Tejano of the town, Don Pablo, whose brother served in Santa Anna’s ranks during the attack, described the Alameda as “a broad and spacious place used as a promenade and also as a highway of ingress to and egress from the city on the east side of the [San Antonio] river [and] On each side of the Alameda was a row of large cottonwood trees.” These trees had been planted around 1804 by Spanish soldiers as part of a beautification effort. 3
But marring the Alameda’s beauty on March 6 was that its vicinity had been transformed into a place of slaughter. Because so many Alamo defenders had died near the thoroughfare, Santa Anna reasoned that it would be far easier for his men to drag the fewer number of dead from the Alamo to the Alameda. Here, around 5:00 p.m on March 6, as Pablo explained, the bodies of the Alamo men “were burned on two different pyres[.] These two separate pyres were located about 250 yards apart and one was on each side of the Alameda.” 4 If this estimation of distance is correct, it would indicate that some escapees might have managed to reach a point beyond the south side of the Alameda. The funeral pyre south of the road was about ten feet wide and sixty feet in length. The other pyre was larger, at around ten feet wide and some eighty feet long. 5 A smaller third pyre was later created to burn more bodies as they were found.
In the late afternoon of March 6 the yellow flames, fueled by additional offerings of dry mesquite and cottonwood “from the neighboring forest”—interspersed with layers of defenders’ bodies—leaped everhigher into the late winter sky. Perhaps some abatis limbs from in front of the fort’s palisade were used to fuel the flames. Here, the bodies of garrison members burned for some time. Santa Anna desired that no traces of his vanquished enemy should remain to be mourned. He hoped that this final act in the Alamo’s drama would serve as an unforgettable lesson to the other revolutionaries—Texan, Tejano, or Mexican—who dared to oppose him and his Army of Operations.
As the sun lowered over San Antonio and temperatures grew colder during this relatively short day, red and yellow flames continued to leap higher, as the fire was fed by more fuel for an intense heat. Even the bones of the Alamo men were incinerated by Santa Anna to eliminate all traces of the defiant rebels who had dared to oppose him.
Eventually, the flames died away, like this horrific day for so many young men from the United States, Texas, Europe, and Mexico. Then, the soft, swirling palls of smoke ceased rising through the lonely, twin rows of stately cottonwood trees that made the Alameda such a picturesque setting even in late winter. Finally, the last bodily remains of the Alamo men were no more. They had been reduced to ashes and shattered fragments of charred bone. Strangely, these piles of ash remained in place in forgotten piles unburied by soldiers or civilians, Tejanos, Mexicans, or Anglo-Celts, for months to come.
Some family members learned of the sad fate of relatives at the Alamo not long after the slaughter. One wife especially shaken by the news was Elizabeth Crockett. She learned of both her husband’s death and his enlistment in the Texas military at the same time, from a letter received two weeks after the Alamo’s fall. 6
In an emotional June 5, 1836 letter to her sister in Tennessee, a grief-stricken Frances “Menefee” Sutherland lamented the tragic fate of her son, William DePriest Sutherland, a seventeen-year-old medical student who had served with the garrison for less than two months. “I have lost my William. O, yes he is gone, my poor boy is gone, gone from me. The sixth day of March in the morning, he was slain in the Alamo in San Antonio. Then his poor body [was] committed to the flames.” 7
As in earlier failing to provide assistance during the siege, Texas and her people almost immediately forgot about those who were sacrificed at the Alamo, despite an emotional March 24, 1836 appeal from the concerned editors ofThe Telegraph and Texas Register: “Our dead were denied the right of Christian burial, being stripped and thrown into a pile and burned. Would that we could gather up their ashes and place in urns!” 8
A final resting place on either side of the Alameda signified not only the physical deaths of Alamo garrison members, but also the deaths of thei
r once-soaring personal dreams of Texas that had caused so many young men to cross the Sabine with such high hopes. After all, the Alamo defenders had gambled all and lost all in their bid to make their dreams come true. What they lost were thousands of acres of an earthly “paradise” second to none. One soldier who survived the Texas Revolution estimated that the lands that he gained for his military service equated to a monetary value of nearly $2,000—a fortune in that time. 9
Meanwhile, in the days, weeks, and months ahead, the majority of the families of the Alamo men, especially those from the United States, either never learned or were informed belatedly of what happened to their fathers, sons, cousins, brothers, or uncles. For instance, Cornelia Vancleve Barnes of New Haven, Connecticut, who feared the worst, wrote in an August 2, 1836 letter that was published in The Telegraph and Texas Register on August 2, 1836: “I had a brother by the name of Wm. D. LEWIS, who was in San Antonio on the 2d of last May, nearly a year ago, since which time I have not had a line or heard any thing from him. . . . Yesterday, we beheld the name of LEWIS among the murdered ones at San Antonio [and] My brother was [from] Philadelphia, but his father was from Wales.” 10
A distraught Cornelia was searching for news about Virginia-born Private William Irvine Lewis, age 29. The pampered son of a prominent physician in Philadelphia, he had been visiting a friend in North Carolina when he suddenly decided to head for Texas and what he thought would be an adventurous life in the distant southwest. William’s grieving mother never recovered from her son’s tragic loss at the Alamo. As late as October 1840, the poor woman even placed an appeal that was published in The Telegraph and Texas Registerbegging for a small memento of her long-lost son, who never returned home from his trip to North Carolina. Therefore, a “small monument carved from a stone from the Alamo ruins was sent to her.” 11