“remain in this fort…resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible. I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line.” Colonel Travis at the Alamo, March 5, 1836
By the time dawn broke on March 6, 1836, those Texans still alive within the walls of The Alamo surely new the end was near. The Mexican army of several thousand strong was advancing on 200 or so defenders from all directions. For 13 days, the Texans had withstood cannonade and infantry assaults. But during that pre-dawn Sunday morning, General Santa Ana had unleashed his entire force. Before noon, the battle was over. Except for a couple of women and their children, everyone fighting within the walls was dead. This is not an attempt to re-tell the battle; there are plenty of books and Hollywood films that have done that. I will however attempt to give a reason as to why these men so willingly gave their lives that day.
At first glance it would seem that there would be no reason whatsoever to fight for a place that would come to be called Texas. As late as 1820, there was only a very small population living in the land between the Rio Grande and Sabine Rivers. In fact, there were so few people living in the entire northern portion of Mexico that two of its states, Texas and Coahuila were combined into one with the capital in Saltillo. About this time, Moses Austin was petitioning the Spanish government in Mexico City for a land grant to bring in colonists to settle land along the Brazos River. In 1821, shortly after gaining Spanish approval, Moses Austin died and the Mexicans drove the Spanish out of Mexico. Stephen F. Austin took over the land grant from his father and successfully convinced the infant Mexican government that the colony his father was preparing should be established. From 1822 to 1824, the first settlers began arriving and have become known as the Old 300. The land called Texas would never be the same.
There are many rivers bigger than the Brazos, Colorado or San Bernard and other lands more fertile than these, but for the people who came to Texas, it wasn’t just any land, it was their land. They came mostly from Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri, were generally Protestant Christians of British ancestry, fiercely independent, brash, and quick to speak out. Their hosts were of Spanish ancestry, familiar with subservient living under royalty, and Roman Catholic. A clash of some kind was inevitable, a matter of when, not if. By 1828, there were an estimated 1200 families living in Austin’s colony. Other colonies were established later and by 1834 there was an estimated 9000 people living in Texas. As word spread throughout the U.S. of the almost endless amounts of land available in Texas, thousands began to pour in, not always worrying about the details of paperwork with the Mexican government. By 1836 it is estimated that 35,000 people lived in Texas, mainly on the coastal plain, along the inland riverbanks, and scattered throughout the forest of East Texas. That is 35,000 independent minded, self-sufficient landowners and a few hundred Mexican officials trying to collect taxes and enforcing Mexican law. It would take an army to gain control of Texas and in late 1835 that is exactly what the government in Mexico City did when Santa Ana began sending his north. After several skirmishes in late 1835 and January 1836, the first big test for Texans would start the afternoon of February 23 when the leading edge of Santa Ana’s army reached San Antonio.
But this still does not tell us why 200 men went to San Antonio to fight the Mexican army. After successfully pushing a Mexican garrison out of San Antonio in December 1835, they still had time to think about what was about to happen. General Sam Houston had ordered San Antonio evacuated and the old mission there blown up. But the men did not consider themselves soldiers in an army subject to orders from someone not at the fight; they were just fighting men organized as a militia, with each militia commander doing pretty much whatever he get his men to do. The two leading militia leaders in San Antonio that winter were Jim Bowie and William Travis. They had reclaimed San Antonio from the Mexican army and they had no intention of just giving it back. But still,
they knew that a huge military force was headed to San Antonio and most if not all the men there still had relatives back in the U.S. They could have decided that this experiment of living under the Mexican government was not at all what it was advertised to be and could have just gone back to from wherever they had come. But they did not. There was some kind of crazy mixing of land, culture, and dreams that fueled their desire to stay and that crazy brew is still alive today. And that old mission, well it just happened to be known as The Alamo. Twice James Bonham would leave the fortress, breaking through the Mexican lines with letters from Colonel Travis pleading for more volunteers; and twice he would return to the fight. Some men from Gonzales made it in, but that would be all that would make it. By the time Travis gathered his men together on March 5, he knew the last chance to leave The Alamo was near. With a line in the sand, he asked who would join him. Everyone, including a very ill Jim Bowie crossed over. One last time a rider left The Alamo with Travis’s famous letter. The rest made their peace. They were no longer Americans from their past and they were not going to become Mexicans in the future. Their ancestors had fought the British twice, once for independence and once for survival. It was now their turn to fight for this new land and a country of their own.
Santa Ana would lose 600 men that Sunday and his army lost a lot of its fighting spirit. Before April would end, Texas would be a free and independent country. For the next 9 years, Texas would answer to no other sovereignty. Some say that we still do not. Maybe David Crockett said it best when he was leaving the U.S. Congress in 1835, “You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas.” Crockett and some 200 others died March 6, 1836. But from their death a new people were born; those people are Texans.
The Men of The Alamo
by Dave Roberson
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