Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  Suddenly Travis and Bowie tried to manage a flurry of confused activity. The fifty or more sick and wounded Mexicans from Cós's command they would leave behind for their comrades to find and care for.8 The rest of their own sick had to walk or be carried across the San Antonio, while the able-bodied men took with them everything they could carry that they might need. Seguín moved his company through town down Potrero Street, past weeping women crying out: “Poor fellows you will all be killed,” hardly an encouraging sendoff.9 Most of the rest of the men ransacked every possible source of grain and meat to take into the fort. Bowie took a detachment and broke into several deserted houses, or jacales, in the vicinity of the fort, and found nearly ninety bushels of corn, and another small company of Texians quickly drove in thirty beefs belonging to a tejano willing to hand over his small herd. The volunteers who had sold their rifles ten days before to get drinking money now frantically tried to get them back, and through the streets of town a cacophony of shouts and swearing echoed from the adobe walls. But there was no panic, and no one sought to escape.10Nearly forty of the tejano citizens of San Antonio also decided to take refuge with the garrison, among them Bowie's sister-in-law and Horace Alsbury.11 At least one man decided that it was time to leave, however. Jesse Badgett, elected delegate to the consultation, departed several days earlier, but Samuel Maverick had stayed on. Now he made ready to go. Travis was standing on the top of the outer wall of the Alamo, watching for the Mexican advance into the town, when he saw Maverick ride up below. He hailed him and they spoke for a few minutes, Travis urging Maverick to spread the alarm through the country as he rode to Washington, and to implore Texians to send men and money.12

  When Travis caught his first sight of the head of the Mexican column, which he could not know was Santa Anna himself with his staff, he ordered a flag raised from a makeshift staff, perhaps the very same flag he had bought for five dollars back in San Felipe. To the Mexicans it appeared to be their national tricolor, with two stars in the middle, denoting the two states of Coahuila and Texas.13 It was late afternoon by the time the Mexicans occupied San Antonio, Travis and Bowie and probably most of the rest of the garrison watching from the west wall of the compound. They saw a red flag go up on the San Fernando belfry, where so recently they had stood, and took it to be a sign of no quarter. In defiance Travis ordered the big eighteen-pounder fired in return, and following that the Mexicans unlimbered their cannon and sent four shells in quick succession toward the fort, none doing any harm.14

  Travis and Bowie, still sharing command, held a brief discussion, and immediately disagreed. Travis wanted simply to await the Mexicans' next move, while Bowie, always the talker, wanted to try a parley. He had persuaded so many people in the past that perhaps he thought he could sway Santa Anna, and as Veramendi's son-in-law, he would certainly be at least known to many of the officers in the enemy army. He and Travis came to an impasse on the matter, though not necessarily to a falling out. But then Bowie heard from someone that the cannon fire might have drowned out the sound of a bugle call, sounding a request for a meeting. True to form, Bowie simply went ahead on his own. He found the only piece of paper readily at hand, a blank page from a child's copybook. Not trusting his own Spanish for something this important, he dictated a note to Seguín, then called Jameson to take it out under a white flag. “I want to know if a parley has really been called,” it said tersely. When Bowie looked at the note, he saw that the writer had out of habit ended it with the standard “God and the Mexican Federation,” but Bowie crossed that out and in Spanish wrote instead “God and Texas.” In the address he also crossed out the word “Federal” in Santa Anna's title, Bowie's way of stating that he did not recognize Santa Anna as holding a legitimate position under the federal constitution of 1824. That done, he affixed a shaky signature to the document, his hand probably unsteady thanks to the high fever he was running.15

  When Travis saw Jameson ride out of the fortress with a white flag he became furious at Bowie's unilateral action.16 No doubt there was something of a scene between them, punctuated by Jameson's return with a terse note from Santa Anna's aide José Batres refusing to discuss terms “with rebellious foreigners to whom there is no other recourse left, if they wish to save their lives, than to place themselves immediately at the disposal of the Supreme Government.”17 Travis interpreted this as a “surrender at discretion,” meaning that Santa Anna would have their lives at his disposal and might well execute them.18 He probably overreacted, for Batres clearly stated that they “ may expect clemency after some considerations are taken up.” Most likely some would be executed, such as Travis and Bowie, or there might have been incarcerations. Certainly, though, they would not be allowed to leave their post with the honors of war accorded to Cós when he gave up Béxar, and in the absence of equivalent terms, Travis would not continue the negotiations. Jameson said he had talked with Col. Juan Almonte of Santa Anna's staff, hinting at a desire for “some honorable conditions” for a proposed surrender, but obviously to no avail.

  Just the same, unwilling to be entirely precipitous, Travis now sent out his own man, Albert Martin. With him Travis sent a verbal message that if Almonte, who was known and respected in Texas, wished to talk with him, he would be glad to open a discussion. From the wall, Travis could see the two men meeting on the foot bridge that spanned the San Antonio.19 Almonte, of course, could not speak on behalf of Santa Anna, and the general's position was already on record in the reply to Bowie. There was nothing further to discuss except whether or not Travis would accept Mexican terms.20 Almonte reiterated Santa Anna's conditional offer, and when Martin returned, Travis told him to tell Almonte that he would let them know if he accepted their terms. If not, he would fire another round from his cannon.21

  It was no doubt what Travis had expected, but he needed to hear it for himself. Moreover, he needed now for the garrison to hear the enemy terms. Assembling the men, Travis gave them an impassioned speech, still fired by his anger at Bowie, and no doubt spoke of rights and liberty and Mexican perfidy, and perhaps even raised for them, too, the specter of rape and pillage in their own homes if they did not stop Santa Anna here. In the end his harangue stirred them to a pledge never to surrender.22 That was all he needed. He gave the order to his gunners to send his reply with a cannon. Immediately a Mexican howitzer responded and commenced the bombardment.23 Faced with what he took to be a threat to put every man in his garrison to the sword, Travis might momentarily have recalled that he made the same threat himself with Tenorio back at Anahuac the year before. Had he been serious then? Was Santa Anna serious now?

  With the first concussions of the artillery ringing in his ears, Travis sat down with Bowie to dash off a message to Fannin in Goliad. “We will make such resistance as is due to our honour, and that of the country,” they said, but they expected assistance from Fannin, and immediately. That morning's muster revealed just 146 men among the regulars and volunteers, though they probably had a few more with the tejanos who came into the Alamo with them, and this tally may not have included 40 or more on the sick roll. If Fannin came, they could hold out, but they were firm in their resolve “never to retreat.”24 Travis also wrote a similar dispatch to send by express to San Felipe. If Texas answered his pleas, the Alamo garrison could hold on.25

  That done, there was little else to do except keep the men out of the way of the enemy shells, though the barrage did not last long and proved ineffective in any event. Not knowing if there might not be an assault even that evening, Travis and Bowie no doubt assigned the companies to positions on the walls. Their fortress was never designed for this use, certainly. The church had been built many years before—a shield over the door read “1758”—and named for the Flying Company of San José y Santiago del Alamo de Parras, but by 1835 everyone simply called it the Alamo. The main part of the compound was a large rectangle of intermittent single-story adobe houses, connected by an outer wall about eave height. The long west wall presented an unbroken face towa
rd San Antonio, with a number of doors and windows now closed and barred, and a semicircular earthwork redoubt jutted out from the center. The shorter north wall was much the same, with another center redoubt, and cannon mounted on a reinforced parapet. The south wall, equal in length to the north wall, held in its center the main gate, with a very substantial redoubt equipped with more cannon to guard the entrance, and more guns emplaced in the courtyard, fixed on the entrance to meet any attacker that broke through.

  The east wall was more complex, however. A long row of one- and two-story buildings composed most of it, but about sixty feet before it would have joined the south wall, the buildings stopped, and there was only a crumbling chest-high mud wall to continue the connection. At the point where the row of buildings stopped, a long extension broke off to the east, finally linking with the north wall of the Alamo church itself. The line of the church facade ran to the south, and stopped some fifty or sixty feet from the east end of the south wall. To span that gap, the Texians expanded on defenses previously erected by the Mexicans, and now had a picket palisade, with a ditch on the outer side, and beyond that abatis, tree limbs buried in the ground with their sharpened branches pointing in the direction from which an attacker would come. Also outside the east wall, and connected to it, sat two outer enclosures, a cattle pen and a horse corral.

  The Texians placed cannon at the southwest and northwest corners, another one in the palisade wall, and three atop the reinforced roof of the Alamo church, with two more in the outer horse and cattle corrals. The entire perimeter should have had 500 or more for a proper defense. With just 146-160 able-bodied men on hand, there was far too much for any one man to cover, and Bowie and Travis knew it. If hit from all sides at once, they must be overrun, and quickly. For now, though, with the Mexicans in San Antonio, most of the garrison would simply have stayed in the rooms lining the outer walls to avoid the enemy shells should they land in the center parade ground. Some even raised low earthen parapets outside the doors to the houses, to prevent any Mexican shells from rolling inside before exploding. No doubt Bowie and Travis kept a few men, themselves included, atop the walls to study the Mexican movements in the town, and placed sentinels at points around the perimeter to watch for an attack. Beyond that, they were well advised to stay under cover. Travis may have assigned Crockett and others of Patton's company to the palisade outside the church, though they, too, would stay indoors during the bombardment.26

  That first evening twilight came on shortly after the Mexicans commenced firing, and they ceased at nightfall, though their engineers immediately went to work building a battery emplacement near the Veramendi house, and Bowie could most likely hear them at their work.27 Travis meanwhile went about business as normal, not forgetting to give a tejano a receipt for the thirty cattle he allowed to be brought into the compound.28 No doubt he wondered why Captain Dimitt did not return from his reconnaissance, and perhaps concluded the worst—that the Mexicans were already spreading out so that Dimitt could not get through.29

  Perhaps it was that very first night that one of the buildings on the edge of the parade became especially important. The Texians established their hospital on the second floor of an old convent building, right at the corner where the east wall ended and then turned east toward the church, and the sick may actually have been there already before the rest of the garrison came into the fort. There were forty or more of them, all with unspecified maladies, and they may not have been included in the 146 that reported for duty.30 Now there was to be another: James Bowie. For a couple of days he had probably felt ill, but not so much that he could not exercise his command, and take part in the withdrawal to the Alamo. But by now he ran a temperature of 101 or even up to 104 degrees. He felt lethargic, exhausted, and may have suffered his first bouts of vomiting and even bloody diarrhea, though if not, they would come. Something in the water he drank was in his system now, a bacterial infection, and though Dr. Sutherland had not been sure of its nature before he left, it was almost certainly typhoid. The onset may even have been sufficiently severe that the fever gave him chills and shakes, making his hand too unsteady even to hold a pen, for he would sign no more documents jointly with Travis. For the time being Bowie shared a room with the Alsburys and Juana's sister, where the two women could care for him.31

  Now Travis held the entire command, though he and Bowie may have tried to keep Bowie's incapacitation secret for a time, in order to quiet the volunteers. They would know soon enough, however. Meanwhile, the presence of the Mexicans outside would be more than enough to keep them obedient. February 24 dawned warm and cloudy. A strong northerly wind blew cold drizzle in the faces of the men as they left their buildings, though they could feel that the day would only get colder.32 Early in the morning they saw the Mexicans start putting up another battery near the river, about 350 yards distant, and by the afternoon it, too, opened fire on them. Travis and Crockett and the rest most probably saw Santa Anna himself riding up almost within musket range of the fort as he personally reconnoitered.33

  On and off through the day and into the afternoon the Mexicans continued their fire, and all Travis could do was sit it out. He put the time to its best use by doing what he did so well, composing a stirring call to arms, designed for publication. He addressed it to “The People of Texas & All Americans in the World”:

  I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man.—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.34

  Travis gave the letter to Albert Martin to take out, then turned his attention to the condition of the fort, pleased to find that so far the Mexican shells and cannonballs had only caused some damage to the outer walls, but nothing serious. That evening he and the rest of the garrison heard a band playing in the Mexican camp, though hardly intended to lull them to sleep, for the foe augmented the music with the firing of several exploding shells toward the fort.35 Apparently Travis spent a fair bit of time out on the parapet now, despite the enemy shelling, for Seguín saw him there and decided that his commander possessed “a high degree of constitutional bravery.”36

  The next morning the artillery started early, and the action suddenly escalated when Travis saw two hundred or more Mexicans of the Permanente Matamoros battalion crossing the San Antonio downstream, and then coming up within less than one hundred yards' range of the southwest corner of the fort, where they took cover in some jacales near the stream.37 At once Travis ordered his riflemen to pin them down, while he got his artillerymen to train cannon on the houses and start firing scatterloads of canister and grapeshot. For the next two hours the skirmishing continued through a light rain, the Mexicans immobilized by the Texian fire. When they withdrew, Travis saw them carrying off eight or more dead and wounded. Through the whole action the bombardment from Mexican guns on the other side of the river continued, yet Travis was delighted to see that not a man in his garrison was hit. Moreover, he watched as his men withstood the fire, behaving well, especially Dickenson at the artillery. He saw another, too. “The Hon. David Crockett was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty,” he said later that day. This, of course, was the sort of moment for a man like Crockett, staying cool under fire, jolly even, his own devil-may-care air giving courage and confidence to the others. When the Mexicans withdrew, Travis called for volunteers to go out and burn t
he jacales to prevent the Mexicans using them for cover again, and the men got the job done.

  The action convinced Travis that he faced a probable major assault soon, and he wrote another urgent appeal, this time addressed to Houston, whom he thought might be in Gonzales by now. Reporting the action of that morning, he reiterated that “I shall hold out to the last extremity,” and then went on to try to shame Houston if he did not send succor. “If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope posterity and our country will do our memory justice. Give me help, oh my Country! Victory or death!”38 Travis knew that he was writing for many eyes. Indeed, he hoped that his dispatches would be circulated or published.39 It would not have occurred to him that Houston and others might take his melodramatic prose as hysteria or exaggeration—that the situation in Béxar was not as serious as he made it seem.

  To date Travis had depended on volunteers to bear his messages, but today no one stepped forward to carry the dispatch to Houston. The morning's skirmish may have left them a bit stunned with the realization that there really was a battle in the offing. Some no doubt did not want to leave for fear of missing the time of trial, while others may have suspected that by now the Mexicans would have all the roads covered, making it impossible for a rider to get through. In the end the men of the legion and Seguín's company took a vote among themselves, since they were still the only companies unquestionably subject to Travis's command, and chose Seguín himself. Travis objected. He needed Seguín there. He spoke Spanish more fluently than most, and certainly better than Travis himself. He knew the customs of the Mexicans outside the fort, and more importantly those of the tejanos inside. But the rest of the men insisted that they wanted Seguín to go, and once again and excess of democracy had its way. Seguín left at eight o'clock, well after dark.40