On the night before the final Mexican assault, one man escaped the Alamo to testify to the defenders’ courage. Or so goes the most famous story of the 13-day siege.
He was Louis Rose, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars and the dreadful 1812 retreat from Moscow. Unwilling to die in a hopeless battle, he slipped over a wall and sneaked through Mexican siege lines.
At Grimes County, he found shelter at the homestead of Abraham and Mary Ann Zuber. Their son, William, later claimed that his parents told him of Rose’s visit–and his story of Travis’ “line in the sand” speech.
In 1873, he published the tale in the Texas Almanac.
But many historians believe it is a fabrication. The story comes to us third-hand–from Rose to the Zubers to their son. And it was published 37 years after the Alamo fell.
Even if Travis didn’t draw a line in the sand, every member of the garrison, by remaining to stay, had crossed over his own line.
After a 12-day siege, Santa Anna decided to overwhelm the Alamo.
Some of his officers objected. They wanted to wait for bigger siege cannon to arrive–to knock down the Alamo’s three-feet-thick adobe walls. Without shelter, the defenders would be forced to surrender.
But Santa Anna insisted on an all-out assault: “Without blood and tears, there is no glory.”
The first assault came at about 5 a.m. on Sunday, March 6, 1836.
The fort’s riflemen–aided by 14 cannons–repulsed it. And the second assault as well.
But the third assault proved unstoppable. The Alamo covered three acres, and held at most 250 defenders–against 2,000 Mexican soldiers.
When the Mexicans reached the fort, they mounted scaling ladders and poured over the walls.
Travis was one of the first defenders to fall–shot through the forehead after firing a shotgun into the Mexican soldiery below.
Death of William Barrett Travis (waving sword)
Mexicans broke into the room where the ailing James Bowie lay.
In Three Roads to the Alamo, historian William C. Davis writes that Bowie may have been unconscious or delirious. Mistaking him for a coward, the soldiers bayoneted him and blew out his brains.
But some accounts claim that Bowie died fighting–shooting two Mexicans with pistols, then plunging his famous knife into a third before being bayoneted. Nearly every Alamo movie depicts Bowie’s death this way.
As the Mexicans poured into the fort, at least 60 Texans tried to escape over the walls into the surrounding prairie. But they were quickly dispatched by lance-bearing Mexican cavalry.
The death of David Crockett remains highly controversial.
Baby boomers usually opt for the Walt Disney version: Davy swinging “Old Betsy” as Mexicans surround him. Almost every Alamo movie depicts him fighting to the death.
David Crockett’s Death
But Mexican Lieutenant Colonel Jose Enrique de la Pena claimed Crockett was one of seven Texans who surrendered or were captured and brought before Santa Anna after the battle. Santa Anna ordered their immediate execution, and they were hacked to death with sabers.
Only the 2004 remake of The Alamo has dared to depict this version. Although this version is now accepted by most historians, some still believe the de la Pena diary from which it comes is a forgery.
An hour after the battle erupted, it was over.
That afternoon, Santa Anna ordered the bodies of the slain defenders stacked and burned in three pyres.
Contrary to popular belief, some of the garrison survived:
- Joe, a black slave who had belonged to William B. Travis, the Alamo’s commander;
- Susanah Dickinson, the wife of a lieutenant killed in the Alamo, and her baby, Angelina;
- Several Mexican women and their children.
Also contrary to legend, the bravery of the Alamo defenders did not buy time for Texas to raise an army against Santa Anna. This didn’t happen until after the battle.
But their sacrifice proved crucial in securing Texas’ independence:
- The Alamo’s destruction warned those Texans who had not supported the revolution that they had no choice: They must win, die or flee their homes to the safety of the United States.
- It stirred increasing numbers of Americans to enter Texas and enlist in Sam Houston’s growing army.
- Santa Anna’s army was greatly weakened, losing 600 killed and wounded–a casualty rate of 33%.
- The nearly two-week siege bought time for the Texas convention to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declare independence from Mexico.
On April 21, 1836, Santa Anna made a crucial mistake: During his army’s afternoon siesta, he failed to post sentries around his camp.
That afternoon, Sam Houston’s 900-man army struck the 1,400-man Mexican force at San Jacinto. In 18 minutes, the Texans–shouting “Remember the Alamo!”–killed about 700 Mexican soldiers and wounded 200 others.
The next day, a Texas patrol captured Santa Anna–wearing the uniform of a Mexican private. Resisting angry demands to hang the Mexican dictator, Houston forced Santa Anna to surrender control of Texas in return for his life.
The victory at San Jacinto won the independence of Texas. But the 13-day siege and fall of the Alamo remains the most famous and celebrated part of that conflict.
In 480 B.C., 300 Spartans won immortality at Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass in ancient Greece, by briefly holding back an invading Persian army of thousands.
Although they died to the last man, their sacrifice inspired the rest of Greece to defeat its invaders.
Like Thermopylae, the battle of the Alamo proved both a defeat–and a victory.
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MEXICO: A PAST VICTIM OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 30, 2018 at 12:09 amOn May 8, 2018, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that a “zero-tolerance” policy toward people illegally entering the United States might separate families while parents are prosecuted.
“We don’t want to separate families, but we don’t want families to come to the border illegally and attempt to enter into this country improperly,” Sessions said. “The parents are subject to prosecution while children may not be. So, if we do our duty and prosecute those cases, then children inevitably for a period of time might be in different conditions.”
Children who are separated from their parents would be put under supervision of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Sessions said.
Jeff Sessions
Thomas Homan, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s acting director, backed up Sessions’ “get tough” policy change: “Every law enforcement agency in this country separates parents from children when they’re arrested for a crime. There is no new policy. This has always been the policy.”
Since then, that policy has gone into effect. And it has generated widespread outrage by
“Criminalizing and stigmatizing parents who are only trying to keep their children from harm and give them a safe upbringing will cause untold damage to thousands of traumatized families who have already given up everything to flee terrible circumstances in their home countries,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director.
In fact, alien-smugglers have increasingly used children as a wedge against American immigration laws. Their strategy: “Surely, Americans won’t arrest innocent children—or the adults who bring children with them.“
The Trump administration is proving them wrong.
This is typical behavior for law enforcement agencies: When criminals devise new ways to defeat existing police measures, the police devise new ways to counter those methods.
Meanwhile, those who believe the United States should throw open its doors to everyone who wants to enter are missing—or ignoring—a vital historical lesson.
Ironically, Mexico knows even better than the United States the perils of unchecked illegal immigration.
In 1821, Moses Austin sought a grant from Mexico to settle Texas. After he died in 1821, his son, Stephen, won recognition of the grant by Mexico.
The Mexican government had been unable to persuade large numbers of its own citizens to move to Texas, owing largely to raiding by such fierce Indian tribes as the Comanches.
The government saw the Anglo settlement of Texas as its best hope to tame an otherwise untamable frontier.
Stephen Austin
Austin convinced numerous American settlers to move to Texas, and by 1825 he had brought the first 300 American families into the territory.
Throughout the 1820s, Austin helped ensure the introduction of slavery into Texas, even though, under Mexican law, this was illegal. Tensions developed between unchecked numbers of Anglo settlers flooding into Texas and the Mexican authorities in charge there.
(“GTT”—“Gone to Texas”—was often carved on cabin doors by debt-ridden settlers who decided to seek their fortune in Texas. And some of the most notorious criminals on the frontier—such as land swindler and knife-fighter James Bowie—joined them.)
James Bowie
Eventually, the irresistible force of unlimited Anglo illegal immigration rebelled against the immovable object of Mexican legal/military authority.
The result:
Mexico was forced to give up all rights to Texas—which, nine years after winning its independence, became a state.
But ongoing conflicts between Mexico and the United States over Texas led to the Mexican war in 1846.
This, in turn, led to a series of devastating American victories over the Mexican army, and the capture of Mexico City itself.
Territory (in brown) that Mexico lost after the Mexican War
Mexico suffered the humiliation of both military defeat and the loss of its land holdings within the American Southwest—which, up to 1848, it had controlled.
This territory later became the states of California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and western Colorado.
And the United States finally spread “from sea to shining sea.”
So Mexico knows what it’s doing when it unloads millions of its own citizens—and those of other Latin and Central American countries—on the United States.
Mexico, in short, is a textbook case of what happens to a country that is unable to enforce its own immigration laws.
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