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The Alamo’s Most Bitter Legacies

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From the beginning, no Alamo myth has been more time-honored than the belief that all the Alamo defenders willingly sacrificed themselves for the greater good, ensuring the birth of a new Texas republic, and buying time for Houston to create an army. But in the insightful words of historian Bill Groneman, “The traditional and incorrect view of the Alamo battle is that every man there made a conscious choice to die gloriously in its defense. Any scenario which deviated from that preconceived notion, such as the willing surrender of any of its defenders, has hardly been tolerated over the years.” ¹

Groneman also argued against an enduring controversy of the Alamo story, Crockett’s supposed execution, which the author refuted in his 1994 book, Defense of a Legend: Crockett and the de la Pena Diary. But in fact, the most groundbreaking aspect of the Alamo’s story should never have been the manner of Crockett’s death—in itself unimportant—but the fact that such a large percentage of the garrison attempted to escape the Alamo only to meet their deaths outside the walls. Indeed, historians, scholars, and the public have missed the point in regard to the real importance of the de la Pena account, focusing mostly on how a single garrison member died instead of the more important story, about so many “of the enemy who attempted to escape.”

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

However, the example of the Alamo provides, by far, the greatest distortion and exaggeration of both Mexican numbers and casualties. First published not long after the Second World War, The Alamo, written by John Myers, represented a classic example of depicting the mythical Alamo. After elaborating on the traditional interpretation of the defender’s heroic self-sacrifice to ensure that Texas would live forever, Myers maintained that “there were about sixteen hundred [Mexican] dead, and there must have been a good few wounded, many of them seriously.” ²⁴ The figure was based on evidence from more than a century earlier, as it is the total given by Travis’ slave Joe, who could neither read nor write, and as published in the April 12, 1836 issue of the Memphis Enquirer. Joe boasted how “SIXTEEN HUNDRED of the Mexicans [were] killed” at the Alamo. ²⁵

Thereafter, this ludicrous figure of 1,600 Mexican killed has been accepted as fact to this day. This distortion began before the battle of San Jacinto, not afterward, as commonly believed by historians. For instance, author Thomas Ricks Lindley speculated that the number of Mexican dead was deliberately exaggerated by Mexican prisoners captured at San Jacinto to patronize the victors and save themselves. Lindley emphasized: “Because the Texians were consumed with the belief that they were far superior soldiers to the soldiers of Mexico, they seem to have accepted the unbelievable figures.” ²⁶

However, modern historians have only perpetuated the fairy tale of astoundingly high Mexican casualties. In 1968, an almost pleading T.R. Fehrenbach retold the traditional Alamo story in Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans, saying how the battle lasted more than four and a half hours and grossly overstated Mexican losses. He described how during “The five-hour engagement . . . The Battalion of Toluca, the assault shock force of 800 men, had lost 670 killed. The other battalions had lost in each case approximately 25 percent. In all, there were nearly 1,600 Mexican dead. These figures are reliable.” ²⁷

And even the notoriously precise and conservative Walter Lord more than doubled the actual number of Mexican casualties in A Time to Stand, writing that the “best estimate seems about 600 killed and wounded.” ²⁸

But the inflation of Mexican casualties was hardly a feature of 20th century Alamo historiography. The root of such outlandish distortions developed almost immediately after the battle, in part to bestow upon the Alamo defenders—especially Crockett and Bowie—heroic, glorious deaths against all odds. In Smith’s 1836 Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas, he emphasized not only multiple assaults but also frightful Mexican losses: “The loss of the Mexicans in storming the place was not less than 800 killed and mortally wounded, making their losses since the first assault more than fifteen hundred.” ²⁹

Much of the myth of high Mexican casualties developed in part from the traditional interpretation that the defender’s firepower was maximized because each garrison member had many loaded muskets by his side. As Historian William C. Davis explained in his fine book, Three Roads to the Alamo: “ . . . every man on the parapets had several loaded rifles, muskets, or pistols at his side, for that was one commodity of which Travis suffered no shortage [because of the] number of captured long arms taken in the surrender of Béxar in December came into his hands [and] As a result, there were 816 rifles, shotguns, pistols and English brown Bess muskets on hand and with his garrison now numbering more than two hundred men, that meant that four apiece.” ³⁰

But such a defensive plan to unleash massive volumes of firepower would have been impossible. First, ammunition was of poor quality and in short supply. Indeed, a rare Mexican account from an unidentified officer of the Activo San Luís Potosí Battalion revealed the truth. He scribbled in his journal how the garrison not only “lack[ed] sufficient cannon balls,” but also Mexican troops were only greeted with little more than “pistol fire from the parapets” when they first neared the Alamo’s walls on February 25, before even more ammunition was expended during the next nearly ten days of siege. ³¹

Generations of authors had merely emphasized this traditional story of piles of weapons beside each defender to explain the allegedly high Mexican losses. In truth, and even before the struggle began, two distinct developments had already negated this alleged overabundance of weaponry: the damp and cold winter weather and the complete surprise of Santa Anna’s attack, which made such a scheme unworkable.

By the time of Santa Anna’s attack, many, if not most, defenders’ weapons had been rendered all but useless by the cold, wet weather of late winter. A wide discrepancy between the amount of powder in the church’s two powder rooms—extracted from an estimated 36,000 to 20,000 cartridges, containing inferior Mexican powder, left by Cós— and the actual amount of available good powder explains the mystery of Travis’ seemingly contradictory statements about the lack of ammunition and the large amount of powder found after the Alamo’s fall. On the early morning of March 6, in part due to the phenomena of “rising damp” that compromised powder reserves inside the church, the fragile black powder in muskets, rifles, shotguns, and the flintlock flash pans would have become damp, and thereby ineffective under such conditions. What historians have overlooked is the simple fact that for these weapons to have been operable to meet Santa Anna’s attack, they would of had to have been fired first, or “cleared.”

Defying logic, the enduring image of Texas defenders firing one loaded musket after another, inflicting terrible damage, became one of the long-accepted, time-honored tenants of the mythical last stand. Another myth was that more than twenty Alamo cannon, loaded with homemade canister, inflicted serious damage, cutting down hundreds of attackers, which was simply not true. The vast majority of the Alamo’s artillery was negated by the surprise assault, with most gunners unable to get into position and load their guns in time. Instead of homemade canister, artillery fire from the Alamo did not include canister but cannonballs. For instance, one cannonball took off the arm of an unfortunate Lieutenant Colonel José María Mendoza.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the Alamo’s story, the real truth of exactly how and who really inflicted the most damage upon Mexican troops on the morning of March 6, came not from the defenders, but ironically from the attackers themselves. In fact, according to a number of reliable Mexican accounts, the majority of Santa Anna’s casualties resulted from a widespread fratricide, or friendly fire, in the darkness. Foremost of these accounts was that of General Filisola, who described how “most of our dead and wounded” were caused by fratricide. In perhaps the Alamo’s most haunting irony, Mexican bullets from the English Brown Bess actually caused greater damage than all of the Texas Long Rifles, Bowie knives, shotguns, pistols, sabers, and cannon combined. Such a paradoxical development was all but inevitable in the collision of multiple assault columns, the attack in the darkness, and the fact that the Army of Operations was fighting its first battle.

In his classic work, Sacrificed at the Alamo, Richard Bruce Winders, the Alamo’s official historian, wrote of the widespread fratricide when “in the compound [the attackers] soon found themselves in grave danger from their own comrades. Fellow soldiers firing out of the darkness began to kill and wound those who had rushed ahead [and Mexican] officers later attributed the majority of their casualties to friendly fire rather than from the defenders.” ³²

In his book Duel of Eagles, Jeff Long went further, coming even closer to the truth. He reasoned that “fully three-quarters of the Mexican casualties . . . were caused by Mexican bullets” and not defender fire. Even this high estimate can be explained by General Filisola, who wrote how during the attack on the north wall: “Our own men . . . had to suffer all that [fratricide fire] from our men themselves from the opposite sides. Since they attacked in a closed column, all the shots, the direction of which was turned somewhat downward, aimed the bullets towards the backs of those ahead of them. Thus it was that most of our dead and wounded that we suffered were caused by his misfortune.” ³³

Conscripted into Santa Anna’s Army in 1835, Sergeant Felix Nunez, of Dúque’s assault column, described the frightful rate of fratricide, which existed from the beginning to the end of the attack, including inside the compound: “The soldiers in the moments of victory became entirely uncontrollable, and, owing to the darkness of the building [church] and the smoke of battle, fell to killing one another, not being able to distinguish friend from foe.” ³⁴

As much as the clash of multiple assault columns converging on the north wall at different angles, this high rate of fratricide resulted from the confused assault in the darkness and fragmentation of commands, which began outside and then continued unabated inside the Alamo. Enrique Esparza, for instance, described the utter confusion among the Mexican ranks inside the Alamo amid the blackness, when Santa Anna’s infantrymen “kept firing on the men who had defended the Alamo. For fully a quarter of an hour they kept firing upon them after all of the defenders had been slain.” ³⁵

Not only had three separate assault columns collided, and even fired into each other on hit flanks, but also rearward troops fired to take “a fearful toll of those in front.” In fact, the high rate of fratricide revealed that Mexican troops were more deadly to themselves than from the fire of all the defenders’ Long Rifles and cannon combined. With a gift for understatement, Sergeant Manuel Loranca described: “In the act of assault a confusion occurred, in which the Mexican troops opened fire on each other.” ³⁶

Widespread fratricide was so extensive that it had even determined the struggle’s outcome. Historian Alan C. Huffines emphasized how such intense friendly hit Colonel Cós’ column, that his men were forced to surge closer toward the west wall for protection before veering northward, to eventually unite with Dúque’s and later Romero’s columns at the north wall. In striking the lightly manned northwest corner, Cós’ redirected attack “almost certainly made the difference in the overall assault on the Alamo.” ³⁷

Overall, this massive “crush” from three assault columns at the north wall was considerable, because hundreds of attackers possessed relatively few scaling ladders. Both General Cós’ and Colonel Dúque’s attack columns possessed only ten ladders each, while Colonel Romero’s column had only six, and Colonel Morales’ column brought along only two ladders. Clearly, all four Mexican columns had attacked with far too few ladders, and even these were of a “poor” quality. Besides the accidental merger of three assault columns, this lack of foresight also ensured a pile up of a great mass of soldados at the north wall’s base: an ideal scenario for fratricide, with attackers from behind firing blindly ahead and into the mass in the confused darkness. ³⁸

Fratricide occurred almost as much inside the Alamo as outside. De la Pena described how even after the Mexicans swarmed inside the Alamo compound, “Behind these [foremost attackers] came others, who [now] fired their shots against friends and enemies alike, and in this way our losses were most grievous [indeed] one was as likely to die by a friendly hand as by an enemy’s [and this] confusion . . . was increasing the number of our victims [and in total] around fifty thousand cartridges had been used up.” ³⁹
However, generations of American and Texas historians have underestimated this high level of fratricide at the Alamo, assuming that the Mexican losses came from the combat prowess of fully alerted defenders in the fabled last stand. But in truth, garrison members were either asleep or in the process of being aroused when the Mexican struck and gained the north wall. And the exodus from the Alamo also meant that far fewer defenders were firing back in attempting to repel the attack.

Perhaps as much as tactical mishaps, the highest level of fratricide occurred because the average Mexican soldier was a poor marksman. Poverty ensured the lack of firearms and the absence of a firearm cultural and hunting tradition among most of Mexico’s civilian populace. Marksmanship training in the Mexican army was rare, especially for the new recruits and conscripts that made up such a large percentage of Santa Anna’s forces. Therefore, Mexican soldiers generally fired their muskets, which packed a tremendous kick, from the hip rather than the shoulder, ensuring not only inaccuracy but also a high rate of fratricide, especially in a night attack during their first engagement. Recent archeological findings of soldado remains from a south Texas battlefield during the Mexican-American War—by that time not much had changed in this regard—revealed bruising on the hips of Mexican troops, who fired the Brown Bess musket without aiming: an indication that this common, popular perception in 1836 Texas was not an unjustified stereotype. ⁴⁰

Indicating the lofty rate of fratricide, casualties were highest in Dúque’s column, which received the brunt of friendly fire losses. Huffines emphasized how: “Of all the Mexican units taking part in the assault on the Alamo, the activo Toluca Battalion chalked up the highest casualty rate of all” in the attack of the Alamo. ⁴¹ According to General Filisola, the activo Toluca Battalion of Colonel Dúque’s column lost a total of 20 killed, and another 79 who fell wounded. ⁴²

Rather than the fire from defender firearms and artillery, most of Dúque’s column were shot down by their own comrades, because it had been their unit that led the assault, paying a high price for charging ahead of everyone else in the darkness. The former Toluca Battalion commander, Colonel Dúque, was very likely the victim of fratricide instead of artillery fire as alleged by de la Pena, when cut down in the “vicinity of the enemy parapets,” which indicated that he was too close to be hit by cannon fire. In the darkness, the Mexican troops, including Santa Anna’s 400-man reserve, failed to realize that Cós’ and Romero’s troops were before them. Therefore, in the confusion of combat, they fired toward the wall in the night, striking the backs of the foremost attackers. Perhaps like Houston, who very likely was hit by friendly fire in leading his attackers across the grassy meadow at San Jacinto, Colonel Dúque went down from a large-caliber musket ball from a Brown Bess and not a canister ball from an Alamo cannon. Walter Lord was indeed correct in his analysis of how the three attack “columns— merging from different directions—continued to fire blindly ahead, more often hitting friend than foe. And the men in the rear, unable to see, took a fearful toll of those in front.” ⁴³

Correctly reasoning how Santa Anna’s reserves committed more slaughter among the soldados than Texan bullets or cannonballs, Long wrote how the Zapadores and five reserve companies of light troops, to the sound of bugles blaring in the night, “ran toward the Alamo, the four hundred reserves blindly fired off their weapons [and] bullets raked the shoulders and heads of [Dúque’s] troops in front of them, mowing down more Mexican soldiers,” who never knew what hit them. ⁴⁴

Additionally, Mexican Army reports have revealed that the second largest number of casualties suffered on March 6 was in the San Luís Potosí Battalion. In this fine unit, two officers—First Lieutenant Irineo Guerrero and Second Lieutenant Antonio Carricante—and seven enlisted men were killed. Among the slain enlisted men were Sergeant Anastacio Velaquer, Grenadier Victoriano Perez, and two cazadores, Privates German Sánchez and Victoriano Tenerio. Charging forward behind the activo Toluca Battalion in Dúque’s attack column, the San Luís Potosí Battalion suffered a total of 37 wounded and nine killed. ⁴⁵

Especially for the activo Toluca Battalion, which was initially massed against the north wall, these high losses came primarily from friendly fire from rearward soldiers, especially Amat’s 400 reserves, who could not see anyone before them in the dark. Fatally stricken officers, like Captain José M. Macotela, might well have been hit from the rear. Indeed, most of the San Luís Potosí and the Toluca Battalion’s losses came from the fire of hundreds of Santa Anna’s reserves. ⁴⁶

But in truth, the relatively low number of Mexican casualties revealed a most feeble defense of the Alamo. As printed in the pages of the newspaper El Mosquito Mexicano, a Mexican Army surgeon, Jose Faustino Moro, wrote a letter to the publication that revealed the relatively few losses. He described how “an assault was given and there was more than two hundred wounded men as a result of that battle” on March 6, 1836. ⁴⁷

Additionally, an unsigned pamphlet written by a Mexican soldier who fought at the Alamo was reprinted in Mexico City’s leading newspaper, El Mosquito Mexicanoon April 5, 1836. In this rare, anonymous account, the author emphasized how Mexican losses were surprisingly low, especially given the garrison’s relative strength in holding a fortified position defended by so much artillery. Most significant, he also wrote that Santa Anna’s Army had in fact suffered a loss of only two hundred men and officers wounded in the assault. ⁴⁸

Santa Anna estimated that the Alamo’s capture resulted in “costing us seventy dead and about three hundred wounded,” but this was a hasty conclusion. ⁴⁹The general had merely estimated both the number of killed and wounded soldados in the first official report of the battle that was written at 8 a.m. on March 6. Therefore, a later, more careful tally of the wounded Mexican troops was not made by the time Santa Anna estimated that he had suffered about 300 wounded, which was too high of a figure. ⁵⁰

Santa Anna also overestimated the number of fatalities in his hasty morning report. In reality, and after a more precise count after more time passed, General Filisola counted a total of only 60 Mexican fatalities suffered at the Alamo. ⁵¹

The overall lack of resistance from the fort can be seen in the case of the elite Sapper Battalion. Historian John B. Lundstrom noted, with a sense of ironic contradiction, a major mystery of the Alamo, writing with some dismay how “the Zapadores only took 27 casualties, in spite of the fact that the unit was the first over the wall and led the assault down the east walls and barracks.” This surprising development can be best explained by the fact that these rearmost attackers upon the north wall suffered less from fratricide than those command in front. ⁵²

Overall, the fact that around 2,000 attackers suffered only 60 fatalities—many of which were caused by fratricide—indicated what weak resistance was offered that early morning, adding additional evidence that a large percentage of the Alamo garrison chose flight instead of fighting to the bitter end. While Santa Anna reported 70 killed and around 300 wounded, General Andrade, of the cavalry, listed a total of only 311 killed and wounded during the assault. In the first and earliest detailed summary of Mexican casualties, Andrade counted 60 dead and 251 wounded.

And Colonel Almonte described a comparably low casualty figure of 65 killed and 223 wounded for a total of 288. ⁵³ In his March 6 journal entry, he wrote: “Our loss was 60 soldiers and 5 officers killed, and 198 soldiers and 25 officers wounded—2 of the latter General officers. The battalion of Toluca lost 98 men between the wounded and killed.” ⁵⁴

Offering a more accurate tabulation and testimonial in the battalion’s journal, the adjutant of the San Luís Potosí Battalion revealed that 316 total casualties were suffered by Santa Anna’s attackers, which corresponded with other equally low totals of around 300. For instance, General Bradburn stated that “300 men were lost,” including killed and wounded. ⁵⁵

In his 2002 biography of Santa Anna, Robert L. Scheina came close to the truth by writing how: “Santa Anna lost 78 dead (which included 26 officers) and 251 wounded (including 18 officers).” ⁵⁶Providing evidence in his diary, Colonel José Juan Sánchez-Navarro wrote how: “two hundred forty-seven of our troops were wounded and one hundred killed”—a total of 347 men. ⁵⁷

Therefore, Mexican losses were not only well below 400, but possibly under 300. Therefore, Santa Anna was indeed correct in later deriding the politically inspired criticism for his relatively light Alamo losses that were “later judged to be avoidable and charge, after the disaster of San Jacinto, to my incompetence and precipitation.” ⁵⁸

Combined with other collaborating evidence, the final casualty figure from Colonel Almonte, who was the best educated member of Santa Anna’s staff, serving as the generalissimo’s trusty “chief” and “special advisor,” was in fact the more correct figure. Indeed, as Santa Anna’s chief of staff, he would have known better than anyone the exact number of losses for the Army of Operations on this day. Therefore, on March 6 he wrote in his detailed Order Book the correct total of the Army of Operation’s losses: 65 killed and 223 wounded, for a total of 288. ⁵⁹

One of the most heroic Mexican deaths was that of Lieutenant José María Torres of the Zapadores Battalion, who was killed while tearing down the garrison’s flag flying from the roof of the Long Barracks. Of course, equally heroic was the unknown Alamo defender who shot him down while while briefly able to protect the garrison’s banner.

The relatively low number of Mexican casualties is in line with the realities of the surprisingly brief—around 20 minutes—struggle for the Alamo’s possession. And if around half of the Mexican losses resulted from fratricide, as numerous Mexican accounts indicated, then all resistance from the Alamo’s defenders might well have accounted for less than 150 Mexican casualties.

It is also important to consider that there may have been more men present at the Alamo than previously recognized. De la Pena disputed the standard, long-accepted number of 182 Alamo defenders. As he wrote: “According to documents found among these men [and] subsequent information, the force within the Alamo consisted of 182 men; but according to the number [of dead bodies] counted by us it was 253.” ⁶⁰ It can be remembered that prior to the reinforcement of the 32 men of the Gonzalez Ranging Company, Travis had reported 150 men at his disposal, which corresponds with other primary evidence; however, he may have been referring only to able-bodied defenders, not those who were sick or disabled, some of whom may have been able to handle weapons, if not serve on active duty. After the tough fight in the Alamo’s hospital, there may indeed have been more bodies for the Mexicans to count than commonly recognized.

In conclusion, based on Colonel Almonte’s casualty figure of 288, from his highly precise journal, and de la Pena’s figure of 252 defender’s bodies, the ratio of defenders to killed or wounded attackers has increased considerably. Even more, if approximately half of the Mexican losses were inflicted by fratricide, which was very likely according to Mexican sources, then less than 150 Mexican casualties resulted from defender’s fire. These facts and figures all additionally verify the exodus from the Alamo relatively early in the battle, as opposed to the last stand mythology of fighting to the bitter end. ⁶¹

NEW VIEW OF CROCKETT’S DEMISE

Ironically, the attempt to explore what really happened on March 6, 1836 has resulted in discovering a good many revelations not originally intended or even expected, including a new perspective about what has been the most controversial aspect of the Alamo story: that Crockett indeed died a hero’s death, though not in the conventional sense according the traditional legend of the mythical Alamo. Not a single eyewitness account exists of the traditional view of Crockett’s death, with the forty-nine-year-old Tennessean swinging his musket and slaying great numbers of the enemy.

Therefore, author James Atkins Shackford, who wrote the definitive account of Crockett’s life, was quite correct in his final analysis of the historical record: “According to the evidence, David was not among the five who surrendered. Nor was he one of the last to die, inside the fortress, in the [church] doorway, fighting off a whole regiment. Instead, he died on the outside, one of the earliest to fall, with no gun on him, going on some mission which apparently made him oblivious to danger.” This view seems to partly coincide with Ruiz’s account of having seen Crockett’s body at the main exit point in the west wall’s center at the lunette. If this was the case, then Crockett was killed early in his mission. ⁶²

Indeed, in attempting to separate fact from fantasy about the most romanticized death at the Alamo, Shackford emphasized in no uncertain terms how: “What evidence remains suggest that, in fact, David’s death was quite undramatic, that he was one of the first to fall, and that he died unarmed.” ⁶³

Since this 1956 analysis, a considerable amount of new information and documentation has come to light, especially about the flight of so many Alamo defenders. Shackford, however, was incorrect about where Crockett died. Ironically, Crockett’s death was most likely not inside the Alamo but on the outside, and not while engaged in some unknown daring “mission,” but when fleeing with so many others to escape certain death inside the old Spanish mission.

But if Crockett did not flee the Alamo with so many other escapees, then even this distinct possibility would be most revealing, because that would place the Tennessean’s decision to remain in an entirely new perspective. The fact that such a large percentage of the Alamo garrison fled in a desperate bid to escape has transformed Crockett’s alleged capture and execution in a much more heroic light, which, ironically, would be in keeping with the romantic image and legend, if that was the case. Indeed, perhaps unlike a majority of the Alamo garrison, Crockett, despite being stationed in the most vulnerable defensive position—the low palisade—and with more opportunity to escape than anywhere else along the perimeter, did not flee the doomed Alamo like so many others. Even more, because the largest body of men departing the Alamo passed through the edge of the palisade, which was defended by Crockett and the Tennessee volunteers, he might have watched these men leave, after deciding not to join them. Crockett had faced a quandary. After all, his political career was at stake, and perhaps his dream of becoming the future president of the Republic of Texas. If he fled with the other 62 escapees, then Crockett realized he risked earning a coward’s label, which would have ruined a future political career in Texas. ⁶⁴

Crockett, therefore, might have made his fatal decision to remain behind, sealing his fate inside the Alamo compound for political reasons. Nevertheless, he remained true to his contrarian nature in defying convention: one reason why he had come to Texas in the first place. In this sense, Crockett did what he thought was the right thing to do under the circumstances: remain behind in the Alamo and defend it to the very end. Instead of fleeing, which certainly would have been the natural impulse with a no-quarter fate awaiting him, Crockett might well have stayed behind to die with a minority of the garrison. In such a situation, Crockett would have certainly proved to be one of the most courageous Alamo defenders.With perhaps the majority of the garrison having fled the Alamo, there was nothing else to do for remaining defenders but to seek safety in the church and other buildings. From such shelter, according to the de la Pena diary and other Mexican accounts, Crockett later emerged in a futile attempt to surrender but was executed.

Yet other evidence—a significantly lesser amount, and more circumstantial, than exists about his possible execution—indicated that Crockett might well have joined the flight of the 62 men who went out through the wooden palisade, where he and his Tennessee boys were stationed. After all, this was the ideal place to exit the Alamo. Such a possibility coincides with existing “evidence that indicates that Crocket was not among the five who surrendered.” ⁶⁵

Ironically, perhaps some indirect evidence of Crockett’s flight might indirectly be gleamed from the controversial de la Pena memoir. De la Pena became Santa Anna’s sworn enemy who had a heavy political axe to grind—seemingly the overall purpose of writing his postwar memoir based upon a diary and then embellished—and because of the lingering doubts about the diary’s authenticity and provenance and because he also incorporated other Mexican soldier accounts and even American 1836 newspaper articles that described Crockett’s execution after surrender, he evidently only rewrote an old tale of Crockett’s surrender and execution scene to raise even more hatred against Santa Anna after the Alamo’s fall. ⁶⁶

Actually, the distinct possibility also existed that Crockett actually died a death even more heroic than imaged or previously known. If Crockett indeed went down fighting around his assigned position at the palisade, as tradition has it, then his last stand was in fact far more heroic than simply slaying as many Mexicans as possible for no gain: Crockett may well have stayed in position at the palisade to buy time and protect the flight of his comrades. If so, then such a heroic scenario was reminiscent of what Captain Dickinson and his gunners accomplished in providing timely protective fire for the escapees, during one of the most valiant acts on the bloody morning of March 6.

Ironically, while the Alamo defenders became heroes across Texas and the United States, the young soldados, who won a one-sided victory, continued to be yet denounced as inferior fighting men during this campaign. In a strange paradox, the overall character and quality of the Mexican fighting man continued to be held in utter contempt by the Anglo-Celts. For instance, the Louisville Journal ran an Alamo story under the headline, “Convicts Used to Storm Béxar!!!”

What was occurring was an attempt by Texans and Americans— both in Texas and the United States—to retain the moral high ground by yet demonstrating the inferiority of Mexican people, represented by their fighting men, in order to provide a guilt-free, righteous basis for a claim to bountiful Tejano and Mexican land that was not their own. Not long after the Alamo’s fall, the editor attempted to solve the mystery of how allegedly inferior Mexican soldiers could possibly have defeated even a relative handful of Anglo-Celts at the Alamo: “The tyrant [Santa Anna] brought with him 1,508 convicts from the Mexican prisons [and] he placed the whole body of them as a forelorn [sic] hope in advance of the rest of the army [and] each convict who attempt to escape or retreat, should be instantly shot or cut down” by those troops in the rear. Even in reaping a one-sided success, the courage of the average soldado was yet derided by Americans.

This Kentucky editor also described how Santa Anna “then ordered the convicts to storm the fortress, setting before them liberty and promotion if they succeeded, and immediate death in the event of their failure. They rushed forward with the fury of devils, and, in less than an hour, every man in the garrison was massacred. Out of the fifteen hundred [attackers], all but three or four hundred were either killed or mortally wounded.” ⁶⁷

Even de la Pena was confused about “convict” troops. Santa Anna had ordered his commanders to secure “useful men familiar with firearms” from the towns along the army’s path toward Texas. Therefore, what had been incorporated into the army were border men, frontiersmen from northern Mexico, especially along the Rio Grande. Because of their rough manner and looks, de la Pena, an aristocratic, inexperienced young officer with a naval background, believed them to be convict soldiers, which was not the case. Nevertheless, he was complimentary of their military skills in unconventional warfare, which far exceeded those of the regulars. ⁶⁸

Popular negative stereotypes—of freedom-loving Alamo garrison members having been overrun by a mindless, barbarian “Aztec horde” that had been prodded forward by officers and rearward troops—not only robbed the average Mexican soldado of a well-deserved valor in storming the Alamo, but also overlooked the success of Santa Anna’s tactical plan. ⁶⁹

While the Alamo’s legacy has been glorified and romanticized by generations of American historians and writers to create a heroic epic based upon the last stand, what has been overlooked were the forgotten victims—the real long-term casualties—resulting from the Texas Revolution’s success, the Mexican and Tejano people of Texas. The mythical Alamo played a role in setting the cultural, racial, and political foundation for the establishment of modern Texas. This mythology provided a moral, righteous justification for discrimination and the acquisition of Tejano and Mexican lands, because it was based upon an alleged Latino inferiority, which was exemplified by a relative handful of Anglo-Celts bravely standing up to multitudes of allegedly inferior soldiers: the mythical last stand With the silencing of the truth of massive flight rather than fight, the Alamo’s story was transformed into a moral triumph and the legendary “Cradle of Texas Liberty,” symbolizing the birth of a new republic, or the domination of Anglo-Celtic Texas over Tejano and Mexican Texas.

Therefore, the Alamo’s story—based upon the mythical last stand— evolved into a holy resurrection, a defeat that only paved the way for decisive victory by Houston’s ragtag army at San Jacinto, justifying a sense of cultural and racial superiority and a “racial enmity” that continues to exist to this day. In this way, the slaughter of the Alamo garrison was transformed into a great moral victory, a regenerative act of God’s will, a necessary sacrifice for the establishment of a dominant Anglo-Celtic civilization. ⁷⁰

Therefore, the Alamo’s story was really, in essence, one of the first battles of a war of politics, culture, economics, race, and power in a larger, ongoing struggle that continues well into the 21st century. As emphasized by Richard R. Flores in his classic work, Remembering the Alamo: Memory, Modernity and the Master Symbol, the Alamo myth, especially the heroic last stand, served as an essential foundation for the creation of a modern Texas and the establishment of the new social, political, and racial order, justifying a sense of cultural, moral, and racial superiority during both the 19th and 20th centuries. ⁷¹

Consequently, even respected Tejano Texas Revolutionary heroes eventually became villains, while Anglo-Celtic real-life tyrants became heroes. Ironically, despite his own distinguished service in leading his hard-riding Tejano cavalry company during the Texas Revolution, Juan Nepomuceno Seguín, a Castilian as fair-skinned as those who now targeted him, became an early victim when his former Texian allies turned against him. Officially denounced in Mexico during the summer 1836 as “Seguín and his henchmen,” which consisted of 65 Tejano rancheros and vaqueros, he would eventually be forced from Texas—his own homeland that he had fought to defend—just “for being Mexican,” after his ranchero was burned down by vengeful Texans.

A revival of a lust for land, a “Texas fever,” once again consumed white Texans, who now held all the political power in the antebellum period. The legacy of the Alamo’s dark shadow loomed over long-time Tejano rancheros around San Antonio, especially along the San Antonio River. More than one hundred Tejano families were forced to leave their well-developed, ancestral lands. But the land grabbing was especially prevalent in the ranching country of south Texas. Existing for hundreds of years, legitimate ancient Spanish land grants were routinely dismissed by white judges. Additionally, state and local government raised taxes to force foreclosure of Tejano properties, which were then eagerly gobbled up by large white ranchers. Unlike in the early 1830s, stealing vast amounts of lands from the Tejano people was now systematically accomplished legally, and with the blessings of power brokers. ⁷²

Like Captain Seguín, another Tejano victim was Placido Benavides. In commanding a band of rancheros during the 1835 Texas Campaign, he was second only to Seguín as a leading Tejano patriot. Not long after the war began, he had organized local Tejano rancheros from the Goliad area to fight against Mexico. This young Tejano captain served at the battle of Concepcion, then in San Antonio’s capture, and later at the Alamo as part of Travis’ “Legion of Cavalry.” Benavides was denied a well-deserved pension for his Texas military services as late as 1875, even though he and other Tejanos had risked all by having taken “up arms against our own kindred and country, believing we were right.” ⁷³ Segregation of Tejanos in Texas, along with its accompanying discrimination, became regular features of daily life in Texas for generations. Justification for this widespread discrimination and disenfranchisement was partly founded upon the righteous Anglo-Celtic versus evil Hispanic stereotype rooted in an Alamo story that had evolved into an idiological and racial symbol for the state. ⁷⁴

But the most tragic legacies of both the Alamo and San Jacinto ensured the enslavement of tens of thousands of African-American men, women, and children for the next nearly thirty years. New Texas laws and constitutions protected slavery when Texas became part of the vast slave empire of the Deep South. Human rights were defined in purely racial terms, ensuring that Texas slaves of the new Republic of Texas remained in bondage for life. And because the victorious Texans described freedom for whites only, even the liberties of the free black population were stripped away. Not surprisingly, some free blacks had departed with the retiring Army of Operations after San Jacinto. After all, for generations of African-Americans, the Republic of Mexico was viewed quite correctly as the true land of the free. ⁷⁵

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 elevate 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