Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The honor of the nation being concerned in this engagement against the lawless foreigners who oppose us, His Excellency expects every man to do his duty and exert to allow the country a day of glory, and gratification to the Supreme Government, who will know how to reward distinguished deeds by the brave soldiers of the Army of Operations.

  The brigades that assembled in the chilly pre-dawn darkness on the open fields beyond the Alamo on March 6 were veteran, and good. They were well-fed, smartly uniformed, and armed with flintlock muskets, which were still the standard weapon of every army of the day. Each man carried a long bayonet in good order; the Chief of Staff's instructions emphasized this. Despite some weaknesses in the top commands, where matters devolved on politics, the officer corps was professional, and competent. Throughout the officers were sprinkled numerous Europeans, most of whom were veterans of the Napoleonic or other respectable wars.

  The tactics used were the standard Napoleonic techniques; attack in columns, cavalry on the flanks and in reserve, batteries to soften the enemy before the charge. Two weaknesses here, however, glared: Santa Anna lacked sufficient guns to give the enemy a sufficient Napoleonic blasting, and his heavy cuirassiers could not hurl their shock action against thick limestone walls. The assault had to be infantry in column, bearing bayonets and scaling ladders. Probably, no marshal of France would have faulted the organization or the charge. But neither Napoleonic marshals, nor Santa Anna, had ever assaulted American riflemen ensconced behind high walls.

  Nor could they know that British army instructions of the time warned that American riflemen, behind breastworks, could be attacked frontally only at unacceptable cost. British officers had seen the Sutherland Highlanders shot to a standstill, and battalions chopped to pieces, before the massed cotton bales at New Orleans in 1815. There, Jackson, and men like these men in the Alamo, had commenced firing at the unheard-of range of three hundred yards. At one hundred yards, a British, or a Mexican, musket could not hit a man-sized target one time in ten.

  Both history and legend record that Travis gave only one coherent order to his awakened, stumbling men: "The Mexicans are upon us—give 'em Hell!"

  The Alamo cannon smashed some columns, then the flat crack of small-bore rifles swelled. Flame and lead sleeted and sleeted again from the sprawling walls. Marksmanship was hardly an American, rather a Western, tradition. The Tennesseeans, Kentuckians, and all the others shot and seldom missed. On the frontier men got guns at about the age of seven; and a boy or man who missed with a single-shot weapon usually went hungry, or lost his hair.

  The smartly columned army, marching with its regimentals, bayonets flashing in the dawn, its bands blaring the "Degüello," a blood-tune that reached back to Moorish days, stumbled into a swarm of lead. The first ranks went down, then the ranks behind them. Everywhere, colonels and majors and captains cried out and fell. It was an American tradition to shoot at braid.

  The first assault never reached the walls. The defenders sent up a ragged cheer; they were still fighting for their lives.

  The bands roared, and the Mexican bugles sent the columns forward again. Now, the ladders went up the walls—but they could not stay. Fire, ram, put powder, patch, shot, ram, splash the flash pan, aim, fire—this was weapons-handling the Mexican officers had never seen. Some felt there must be a hundred men inside the fortress merely loading guns. At the wall the ladders wavered, then collapsed. A scattered trail of uniformed corpses marked the Mexican retreat.

  But massed musketry had knocked many Texans off the walls, this time; the great fortress had always been thinly held with less than two hundred men. There were now some sections with few defenders, and several Mexican officers had spotted weak points, from where the fire was less.

  These brigades were brave men, and as disciplined, if not so stolid, as any British grenadiers. After several hours, in which the battalions were regrouped and the reserve called, the Mexicans came back, at about eight in the morning. Santa Anna remained across the river in San Antonio. If he sensed what was happening to his army—the deeper wounds beyond the dead and groaning wounded he could see—he gave no sign. One of his column commanders was already dead, but the others beat the battalions back into line. Now, from all four sides of the Alamo, a new general assault began. This time, the ladders went up against the north wall and stayed. Mexican soldiers sprayed into the fortress like scuttling ants. Men fell all over the walls. Only flaming courage, and the determined leadership of a number of Mexican junior officers took the charge into the heart of the Alamo.

  Now, the defenders no longer fought to win. They charged into the Mexican soldiery to kill as many as they could. These troops had seen much cruelty and understood it; but they had never seen the savagery of the Trans-Appalachian American at close range. The Texans had no bayonets, but by Mexican standards they were enormous men, towering a head higher or more. They smashed, butted, used tomahawks and knives. They had fought as paladins, each touchy of his rights and his own section of the wall. Now, they died as paladins, each with his ring of surrounding dead.

  A terrible and understandable fury and hatred suffused the Mexicans who broke into the courtyard. They had been punished in the assault as they had never been punished before. Inside, at last they could employ their bayonets. They had crushing numbers. They killed, and after they had killed, mutilated the bleeding corpses with a hundred wounds. At the end, as the defenders were at last exterminated, Mexican officers admitted they lost control. The one woman in the Alamo, the wife of a Texan lieutenant, who with a Negro slave was spared expressly at Santa Anna's orders, saw Bowie's body tossed aloft on a dozen bayonets. He had been taken on his deathbed. Mexican accounts say, probably accurately, that a few defenders vainly attempted to surrender. These, who may have included Crockett, were shot.

  No white defender survived; as the inscription on a later monument stated, Thermopylae had its messenger, the Alamo had none. Mrs. Dickenson, the Negro, and several Mexican women and children were the only ones to tell the story. These Santa Anna released, not so much in gallantry as in the trust that their tale would spread terror throughout Texas.

  At nine o'clock, March 6, 1836, five hours after it began, the assault was over. The Alamo had fallen.

  Gallantry of itself in battle is worthless, until its results may be assessed. Travis to begin with had given Anglo-Texas twelve precious days. The five-hour engagement on March 6 extended his country several weeks. These were weeks without which Anglo-Texas could not have survived.

  When the fury of the assault passed, the tolling bells of San Fernando rang out over a shattered army. 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; they were made by Alcalde Francisco Ruíz of San Antonio, who also indicated Santa Anna left 500 wounded when at last he was able again to march. This Santa Anna's secretary again confirmed.

  These were casualties to shatter the morale of any army. They came from the permanent, best-trained battalions, the flower of the Mexican force. A thousand Mexican settlers now flocked to Santa Anna's cause, but these could hardly fill the ranks. The Mexican army, like the Roman, was organized and disciplined; new recruits under the Mexican system could not be trained in weeks. Nor did Mexican civilians, unlike North Americans, learn to use firearms as youths.

  The damage to the soul of Santa Anna's army was not to be revealed for another forty-six days. At the Alamo, only the Mexican loss in blood and bone could be assessed. But this was enough to sate even Travis's and Bowie's bloody-minded ghosts—here, for the first time, the legend of the diablos tejanos, the Devil Texans, was spawned, a shuddery legend that would go into Mexican folklore.

  The casualty figures were to be disputed over the years, mainly by Mexican historians. Santa Anna's official report to the Supreme Government stated 600 Americans had been killed, and minimized his own losses to 70 dead. Oth
er Mexicans later claimed at least 1,500 defenders had been behind the walls of the Alamo. But Alcalde Ruíz stated positively that the number of Texan bodies burned under his supervision was exactly 182. Ruíz also found no room to bury all the Mexican dead in the San Fernando churchyard; he ordered many corpses put into the San Antonio River.

  The charred remains of the Alamo dead were dumped into a common grave. Its location went unrecorded and was never found.

  Whatever the numbers engaged on each side, whether 1,600 Mexican soldiers out of 5,000 were killed, or 600 out of 1,800, the historic result of the battle remains the same, and is indisputable.

  While the funeral pyres and campfires of the groaning Mexican army were lit on the night of Sunday, March 6, Santa Anna penned a report of a glorious victory for the Mexican nation. But Colonel Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, who had something of a classical education, was heard to repeat King Pyrrhus's despairing remark. Whatever mystical title to the soil of Texas Travis's stand had won, Santa Anna had paid too great a price to gain this ground.

  Part III

  STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT

  Chapter 13

  AT THE SAN JACINTO

  When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and, so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression . . .

  THE BEGINNING OF THE TEXAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, MARCH 2, 1836

  I have travelled near five hundred miles across Texas, and am now enabled to judge pretty near correctly of the soil, and the resources of the Country, and I have no hesitancy in pronouncing it the finest country to its extent upon the globe. For the greater portion of it is richer and more healthy, in my opinion, than West Tennessee. There can be no doubt the country east of the Rio Grand of the north would sustain a population of ten millions of souls. . . . It is probable that I shall make Texas my abiding place. In adopting this course, I will never forget the country of my birth. . . .

  SAM HOUSTON'S REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 1832

  Remember the Alamo!

  COLONEL SIDNEY SHERMAN, COMMANDING THE 2D TEXAS REGIMENT, AT THE SAN JACINTO

  GENERAL Don José Urrea, with approximately a thousand men, crossed the Bravo at Matamoros February 17, 1836. In his vanguard rode a light brigade of 301 heavy cavalry, cuirasses and lance heads glittering in the sun. Urrea's orders were clear: protect Santa Anna's eastern flank from Texan action and destroy the foreign army at Goliad. With his cavalry, Don José Urrea was superbly equipped to operate on the Gulf crescent coastal plain. Urrea was an honorable man, who handled his troops splendidly in the field. He could not know he was marching into infamy.

  The two Anglo-American bodies of troops, at San Patricio and Goliad, were anything but equipped to march or fight in this wide-spread country. Two hundred miles separated them from their goal of Matamoros. The Georgia and New Orleans volunteers had arrived on foot. They, and their commanders, were accustomed to the forested country of the east. Both Grant and Fannin were effectively halted on the edge of the southern savannah; neither knew quite how to move his men across this arid, riverless plain, where waterholes were few and trees grew only in scattered clumps. Fannin waited in vain for ships to sail south. Grant and Johnson took to catching the mustangs that ran wild around San Patricio.

  Neither Frank Johnson nor Dr. Grant was in complete command of their approximately 150 troops. Major Morris, of the Grays, was independent, and most of the volunteers were their own men. Due to a quarrel over horse hunting, Grant and Morris split off, while Johnson remained in San Patricio. Each group contained only about 50 men.

  Urrea's cavalry swept into the dusty, straggling settlement of San Patricio after nightfall on February 27. The Americans were taken completely by surprise. There was a shout, a spatter of shots, and a few screams; the entire force was cut down. Johnson, and Grant's business partner in Mexico, Dan Toler, by sheer luck escaped in the night and fled northward to Goliad.

  The Mexican lancers spread out to locate Grant and Morris, who were known to be nearby. The horse hunters were run down March 2, 20 miles to the west at a place called Agua Dulce, or Sweet Water. The Mexican cavalry surrounded Grant in a neat action, and attacked. Grant, Morris, and Placido Benavides died on the end of Mexican lances. Only three Americans survived; one, who was roped and taken prisoner, later escaped, and said he had seen Grant mutilated with a dozen sword cuts. Grant was well known, and particularly disliked, in northern Mexico.

  Fannin, at Goliad, now knew from Grant's survivors that Urrea was in the country. He drew back into the presidio at Goliad. His supplies, especially of powder and provisions, were pitifully low, and Fannin hesitated in an agony of indecision.

  Colonel Fannin's actions at Goliad, beginning February 16, 1836, do not bear inspection. On that date he received a message from Travis in the Alamo, requesting aid; Fannin refused this in writing. Bonham arrived with this refusal February 23, the day the Mexicans under Ramírez y Sesma marched into Béxar. With Mexicans actually at San Antonio, Travis confidently again requested help. Fannin commanded the largest force, in fact, the only real army Texas had, with his 500 men.

  He was reluctant to march westward to San Antonio, although then he had no knowledge of Urrea's presence. Both Bonham, who tried again to obtain support, and Captain Juan Seguín, sent as a Spanish-speaking courier from the Alamo, were unable to get any effective response. After Seguín's appeal, a few days before the final assault on the Alamo, Fannin ordered the army to march west. Four miles out of town, an army supply wagon broke down. Fannin, according to his own word, took this mishap as a sign the relief of the Alamo was "not feasible." He called a conference of his officers; all agreed to turn back. There was no enthusiasm among the Volunteers to march—only determined leadership could have held them to such a purpose, and this Fannin simply did not have.

  Fannin's troops could not have met Santa Anna and defeated him. But an extra few hundred men in the Alamo, with the sally force of cavalry Fannin had, would have made that fortress the rallying point that Travis hoped for—it could have held until Texas mustered. Actually, when Fannin commenced his abortive march, Santa Anna, with superb intelligence from the Mexican countryside, detached a brigade to try to meet him. This force was allowed to turn back and be in at the finish of the Alamo. Fannin, apparently, though he is treated gently in most Texan accounts, was in that coma of indecision that strikes doomed commanders.

  It was the knowledge that Fannin would not move that led the gallant 32 settlers at Gonzales under Kimball to make their lonely effort, and march alone, to sure death at San Antonio. When they fought their way into the fortress on March 1, it was meant to be a symbol that Texas heard, and someone cared.

  Travis's calls from the commandancy of the Alamo were not entirely in vain. A few men began to move toward Gonzales, the southernmost Anglo settlement. But more important at the moment, the imminent danger brought an end to the worst of the colonists' governmental folly. A new convention assembled at Washington-on-the-Brazos, 150 miles northeast of San Antonio, on March 1, 1836. This convention probably took the wisest course by simply ignoring both Governor Smith and the impotent Council.

  By this time, the delegates knew that Travis was invested and in mortal danger, and that Urrea was slashing his way north from San Patricio. Santa Anna's intentions were widely known as well. This was no longer—and this should be remembered in the light of history—a limited war, to decide the form of government under which Anglo-Texans should live. This fight had become one of survival or extermination. The imminent peril was clear enough to prompt quick action, so far as action was within the convention's power. Texas had to have a government. It had to rouse its people. It had to delineate and enforce the government's powers.

  Sam Houston, still on furlough from the arm
y, attended the convention as a delegate from Refugio. He was instrumental in beating down one wild motion that the convention adjourn and hasten, gun in hand, to the Alamo. Houston denounced this seemingly patriotic move as folly and treason to the people. He shouted that the Alamo was in its present straits because Texans had not made a government. He was heard.

  Immediately, a commission was appointed to draft a statement on what was now in every colonist's mind: independence. Santa Anna's invasion had broken whatever ties that still bound some to Mexico. The commission worked all night, and on March 2 reported a declaration, which was adopted. If this was quick work, it must be remembered that George Childress, who wrote the document, had a model ready-made, one that Thomas Jefferson had penned sixty years before. He followed it assiduously, changing words and details to fit the time and place.

  Among the 59 delegates on the Brazos were several men of good education and vast experience, such as Robert Potter, Samuel Carson, Richard Ellis, Martin Parmer, Thomas Rusk, James Collinsworth, and George Childress. They had served in the Congress of the United States, or they had helped draft the constitutions of other Southern states. Lorenzo de Zavala, the eminent Republican, brought his mind to bear. Of all these men, most historians are agreed the most important man at the convention was Sam Houston. He was not an intellectual, but he kept the convention's mind to its business, which was to get something quickly done.

  Texas was declared an independent Republic on March 2, 1836.

  Now, the next step was to make a constitution. This was done again at breakneck speed; again, the delegates had a model they knew and loved. Zavala, who had a broad education and the knowledge of the centuries, at one point tried to begin a speech: "Mr. President, an eminent Roman statesman once said—" But he was cut off abruptly by Tom Rusk, one of whose descendants would one day be the American Secretary of State. Less diplomatic than his descendant, Rusk snapped that the problem was not dead Romans but live Mexicans. Spurred by such directness, the Constitutional Convention adopted a document on March 16.