CHAPTER VII

BRAVE HEARTS IN THE ALAMO (1836)

NO SURRENDER AND NO RETREAT

HILE in American Florida the Seminoles were

W!! standing out for home and independence, in

Mexican Texas the Americans themselves were doing likewise. Tables had been turned.

Beginning in 1821 (the same year that Florida had been acquired by the United States), American settlers mainly from the South had moved into Texas, by permission of the Mexican government. The Texas lands were broad and fertile, and used not at all by Mexico. Thousands of acres might be had for nothing except the work of cultivating them.

In due time the Texas Americans found that Mexico was not to be trusted. They were being hedged about more and more by oppressive laws; were in danger of becoming mere subjects, and not free citizens. When they asked to be made a separate Mexican State, to be allowed to elect their own State officers, and write their own laws as provided for in the Mexican constitution of 1824, that was denied.

So in the fall of 1835 the Texas settlers rose to defend themselves against oppression. In southwestern Texas they won the skirmish of Gonzales, called the Lexington of Texas; they advanced upon the town of

San Antonio, by a house to house fight captured it, December 11. In southern Texas there were victories. By the end of 1835 no Mexican soldiers remained in all Texas.

The Mexican government which was supposed to be a republic but was ruled rough shod by the dictator president, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, prepared to subdue the Texas "rebels." Rebels they were, but they were fighting for their rights under the Mexican constitution.

After they had gallantly cleaned Texas, the American colonists, poor, brave, proud and hardy, did not pull well together. They chose State officers, but they divided as to the management of affairs. Sam Houston had been elected commanding general of the Texas troops. He issued orders that were not obeyed.

General Houston had served in the Regular army as lieutenant; he had campaigned with General Andrew Jackson against the Creeks; he viewed matters with a military eye. Texas was large, and thinly populated; as seemed to him, the little army was trying to cover too much territory. He directed Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Neill, who was holding San Antonio, to destroy the fortifications there and march east with his artillery into interior Texas before he was cut off by a Mexican army.

Lieutenant-Colonel Neill replied that he was unable to move his guns-that he had no horses or oxen for the purpose; therefore he should stay. In fact, the Texans hated to give up one inch of Texas, and particularly San Antonio. Officers wrote to the governor,

John Smith, protesting. Governor Smith and his council disagreed upon the methods to be used in carrying on the war with Mexico; General Houston's hands were tied by lack of support. It had been the same with General Washington, in that other war for American independence.

While the governor and the council were bickering, and General Houston appealed in vain for money and supplies, the garrison at San Antonio grew less and less. When Lieutenant-Colonel William Barret Travis arrived there in February, 1836, he found only about one hundred Volunteers; the others had gone home to put in their crops and to attend to their families.

This William Barret Travis was from North Carolina: was twenty-eight years old, six feet tall, slender and straight, round faced, blue eyed and red haireda determined, sandy fighting man and thoroughly American.

He had been appointed from captaincy in the Volunteers to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Texas First Infantry, regularly enlisted for the war. He brought with him to San Antonio, from his recruiting service on the way, some thirty new Texas Regulars. Those were all. His poor success in raising reinforcements worried him, but did not daunt him.

February 12 he wrote to Governor Smith, saying that General Sesma and two thousand Mexican soldiers. were at the Rio Grande River boundary, only two hundred miles southwest, on their way to retake San Antonio.

"We are illy prepared for their reception," he said.

"Yet we are determined to sustain our position as long as there is a man left, because we consider death preferable to disgrace, which would be the result of giving up a post that has been so dearly won." And he added:

"With two hundred men I believe this place can be maintained, and I hope they will be sent as soon as possible. Yet should we receive no reinforcements I am determined; and should Bexar [which was San Antonio] fall, your friend will be found beneath its ruins."

This shows what kind of a man William Barret Travis was.

Colonel Neill was obliged to go home, on the day of the letter, by reason of illness in his family. Nevertheless Colonel Travis had brave hearts left with him.

Colonel James Bowie was there, sharing the command. Colonel Jim Bowie and his brothers Rezin and Stephen were well known in Texas. He himself had come out from Louisiana in 1819. He had been naturalized as a Mexican citizen. In 1830 he had married the Senorita Luz Veramendi, daughter of the vicegovernor of the State of Coahuila and Texas; had a home in San Antonio and did a manufacturing business at Saltillo, the capital of the State, south of the Rio Grande.

Colonel James E. Bonham of South Carolina was there. He had known Lawyer Travis back in the United States; they had been boyhood friends and he had gladly followed Will to Texas. Now here they were together, for the defence of San Antonio.

Young Lieutenant Almeron Dickinson was there. He had come in with Colonel Travis and recruits from his home in Gonzales, sixty miles east. Lieutenant Dickinson was not far turned twenty; had a pretty Mexican wife and a tiny baby; was just about to send for them to visit him and their relatives in town.

No less personage than Davy Crockett the famous Tennessee hunter arrived with twelve other Tennessee "buckskins." At this time a number of volunteers from the United States were making for Texas, to help their fellow Americans win out. Davy Crockett and his band had traveled straight for San Antonio at the Texas frontier, as the place where they would see action quickest. Davy had brought his long-barreled, silver-mounted rifle-his "Old Betsy." In their worn leather clothes and their coon-tail caps the Tennesseeans looked fit.

They raised the garrison to one hundred and fifty officers and men. That was not many, in such a situation, for the Mexican troops were surely coming on.

San Antonio de Bejar (or Bexar, which is pronounced the same, Behar) was a very old town, located, as today, in the southewestern part of Texas, by shortest air-line about one hundred and fifty miles northeast of the Rio Grande River. It had been founded as a Spanish barracks in 1718, to protect the mission or church of San Antonio de Valero, near by, across the little San Antonio River on the east.

The mission de Valero was rebuilt in 1744 and named San Antonio del Alamo, but people generally spoke of it as the Alamo. Alamo is the Spanish word for