Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  But then he got to the meat of his report. He confessed in this letter to the convention at Washington what he surely did not tell the men: He did not believe that Fannin was really coming. He had sent several expresses to Fannin himself, and yet not one word came from him in reply. If Fannin did not come, or if those other reinforcements promised in Williamson's letter should not arrive, he would have no choice but to await the enemy's pleasure, and he left no doubt of what would be the outcome. “I feel confident that the determined valor & desperate courage, heretofore exhibited by my men, will not fail them in the last struggle,” he said with a greater hint of fatalism and less melodrama than before, and not without cause. For several days mow he and his men had seen the red flag flying above San Fernando. When it first went up it may have been a poly to intimidate them into giving up. Now its sanguine folds seemed more like a grim promise. “Although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse for him than a defeat.”

  He needed powder, at least a quarter ton for his artillery, and projectiles in four calibers, plus several kegs of rifle powder and enough lead for the soldiers to cast their own bullets, since the large store of captured bullets for the brown Bess muskets would not fit the volunteers' rifles. With that, and the promised reinforcements, he would hold his fort, and they could still stop Santa Anna on this frontier. Without it, he and his men would meet their ends “With desperation, and that high-souled courage that characterizes the patriot, who is willing to die in defence of his country's liberty and his own honor.”69 Travis could not close without venting his anger at the tejanos who had left the garrison. He believed there were only three tejano men left in the Alamo. The rest he considered now as traitors, and promised to deal with them as such if somehow they came into his hands. He suggested that the government should declare them public enemies, and issue orders to confiscate their property. He did not mean that to apply to every tajano in Texas, of course, but only those who had abandoned him, yet his words contained a bitterness that only a sense of betrayal could inject. “I will visit vengeance on the enemy of Texas,” he threatened this afternoon, “whether invaders or resident Mexican enemies.”70

  Shortly after Travis sent the courier out with his letter—it contained a comment that he did not feel entirely confident that the man would make it through the Mexican lines—Travis heard loud cheers of “Santa Anna! Santa Anna!” and the ringing of the church bells in San Antonio. Some suggested to him that it must betoken the arrival of Santa Anna himself, though he had been there all along. Rather, it celebrated modest victory at San Patricio a few day before.71 To dampen enemy spirits a bit, or at least to drown out the sound of the cheering, he used some precious powder and fired a few cannon and rifles at the town, to no effect other than perhaps to relieve some of his own pent-up frustration.72 The relief was short lived, for he and his men saw the Mexicans that afternoon building scaling ladders, and there could be no mistaking their purpose.73 Needing to do something to fight back, Travis used the weapon that always made him the strongest, his pen. He asked “El Colorado,” Who had already gone out and retuned once, to make another try at the enemy lines. Travis had several letters for him. Once he addressed to Jesse Grimes, a delegate to the Washington convention, and in it he urged the body to declare for full independence. “We will then understand and the world will understand what we are fighting for,” Travis declared. Then, in the only comment about surrender that he made during the siege, he added that “if independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms and so will the men under my command.” It was only said for effect, for he knew by now that surrender was out of the question. They would only trade death in battle for dying standing against a wall. But he did not entirely despair. Give him just five hundred men, he said in a return of the old bravado, and he would take the offensive and drive Ramírez y Sesma back to the Rio Grande. “I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms,” he reiterated, “Yet I am ready to do it, and if my countrymen do not rally to my relief, I am determined to perish in defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect.”

  There were yet two more, brief letters to go out with Smith. One he asked Grimes to forward to Rebecca, possibly the first time he had been able to write to her with all that he had to do.74 The other he sent to David Ayers at Montville. Smith was almost ready to go out in the darkness, before the rise of the moon made him too easily spotted, and Travis had to rush. Tearing a strip from some old yellow wrapping paper, he scrawled hastily an injunction to Ayers to “take care of my little boy.” If Texas won its independence, he might yet make a name and a fortune for him to be proud of. “But if the country should be lost, and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country.”75 Handing the letters to Smith, Travis told him that every day from now on he would fire a signal gun three times a day: morning, noon, and night. Any Texian hearing that gun would know that the men in the Alamo still held out. Then Smith crept away into the night.76

  Still another blow had come that day, though by now many expected this one. Bowie took a dramatic turn for the worse. If the soldiers brought him out to see Juana and her sister on March 3 at all, it was his last visit. Several times before now they carried his cot to the barracks on the south side of the compound, where many of his volunteers messed together. Whatever the misunderstandings of the past, now he urged them repeatedly to regard Travis as their commander so long as they chose to stay. But those lucid moments came infrequently now, and only when his fever temporarily abated. Instead, his disease so debilitated him that he lay in intermittent delirium, scarcely able to rise from his cot when conscious, and so dehydrated from the diarrhea and vomiting that any movement at all was painful. He could not even lift his head from the pillow. The typhoid had held him in its grip probably ten days or more, and he either approached or was already suffering the critical period of its progression. Susanna Dickenson expected him to die, or at least others who saw him told her that he lay near death. All he could do for the cause now was to feed it soldiers, for unknown to him, other volunteers, including Fannin's—the men who were supposed to be coming to relieve the garrison—were even now confiscating his cattle with the brand “JB,” and some of Veramendi's as well, from the rancho near Refugio.77 When the soldiers carried Bowie back to his room by the gate, now poorer by the measure of a herd of beefs, Juana Alsbury did not even know who would tend to him thereafter. But then, other than trying to get him to drink and take some nourishment, there was little anyone could do for him. As he had so many times before, Big Jim Bowie would fight this battle alone.78 Ironically, even then a report was gradually making its way eastward through the United States that Bowie had actually been relieved of his command.79

  For the rest, fully conscious of the progress of the siege, March 4 brought a warmer wind and a renewed Mexican bombardment that started early and concentrated heavily on the north wall. Travis held his fire, knowing by now that he would probably need his powder for the actual battle, whenever it came.80 Instead he kept the men indoors as much as possible, cutting loopholes in the walls of the buildings that lined the main rectangle. The situation hardly allowed for much of a plan of defense. All the advantages belonged to the enemy. Clearly Travis foresaw more and more the probability that if the enemy struck before reinforcements arrived, he would have to pull the men back from the walls when they were overrun, to make their last stand in these rooms. Perhaps he even gave instructions as to which companies were to occupy which rooms, though if that extremity came, organization would not matter in the scramble to reach cover. He may even have suggested that if the enemy breached their defenses, the men should resist as long as possible, then go over the east wall and try to get away as best they could toward Goliad.81

  Indeed, Travis must have wondered why the Mexicans had not completely sealed off the route to the east past the powderhouse, as he
sent out another messenger or two during the day. Some of the tejanos in town knew of this, and even speculated that Santa Anna ordered the east side loosely guarded intentionally, hoping that Travis would take advantage of it to get his garrison out in an escape.82 But that was nonsense. Ramírez y Sesma's lancers could still have ridden down a band of Texians on foot almost at will. Santa Anna wanted a victory as an example, and that was why he took his time spreading his army and emplacing his batteries. If he really wished Travis to evacuate the fort, it was only so that he could overwhelm the Texians in the open, away from their artillery.83

  By now it was too late for Travis to leave even if he wished. The Mexicans surrounded him. In fact the garrison could never have left as an organized unit from the first day of the siege. Ramírez y Sesma's lancers alone outnumbered the Texians, and Travis did not have enough horses to mount many—perhaps most—of his command, which meant abandoning those on foot or dooming the rest to a slow running fight in the open where they could be surrounded quickly. In short, despite his fiery— and sincere—proclamations about not giving up his post, Travis had no practical alternative but to stay and hope for reinforcements. The only option was to tell the men to try to slip out in the night like the couriers, every man for himself, but where one could get through undetected, two hundred or more must surely give themselves away, once again dooming the slow and the ill, and those without horses, to the point of a lance.

  It was a stark reality made all the more frustrating for the fact that by now, and in the absence of relief or any likelihood of holding Béxar and repulsing Santa Anna, the garrison had accomplished all that it could hope to do. Travis had held the Mexican advance stalled here for eleven days, buying time that, sadly, Houston and Fannin had squandered. Indeed, for several days now—if not from the first— Travis had not held the Mexicans there. Santa Anna stayed because he wanted to, taking his time to set up an inevitable and total victory. An army the size of his could have marched around the Alamo and on to the Texas interior with no fear at leaving two hundred or so Texians in a mud fort in his rear. The Alamo was as much prison as fort. It kept the Mexicans out, but it kept the Texians in as well, and Santa Anna need only leave behind one of his regiments or a few companies of lancers to contain the garrison, thus eliminating them from any role in the campaign despite being in his rear and on his supply line. In short, so far as the campaign in Texas was concerned, the Alamo and its garrison ceased really to matter by March 1 if not before. From then on it was important only because Santa Anna chose to make it so.

  And so did Travis. Still there were some hopeful signs. Though the bombardment did a lot of damage to the Alamo church walls, some of its architectural ornaments remained, even the statues of St. Anthony and St. Ferdinand standing in their wall alcoves on either side of the main door.84 The spirits of the men still seemed high, thanks in large part to the perennial good humor of Crockett. When the shelling lulled, he brought out his fiddle and entertained the soldiers with jigs and reels she had known since he was a boy in East Tennessee. Maybe a speech or two helped. He could remember tight spots before, like that flatboat about to sink in the Mississippi with him on it until friends pulled him out. Well, his old friend Houston could still pull them out of this sinking ship, and Williamson's March 1 letter said men were on the way. They could arrive at any minute. Privately he felt less sanguine. “I think we had better march out and die in the open air,” he told Mrs. Dickenson one day. “I don't like to be hemmed up.”85

  Travis fired only signal rounds at the Mexicans on March 4, and the same three rounds the next day, in case there was anyone on the way who might hear them and know that he still held out.86 Perhaps he noticed that now the Mexican batteries concentrated their fire heavily on the north wall, which was practically ruined. Travis and Jameson had to have the men build a timber revetment on the outside of it at night, and then pack earth in the space behind to shore up the crumbling facade. Ideally they needed to cover the horizontal exterior timbers of the revetment with earth as well, otherwise those logs would provide hand holds that could aid an attacker in scaling. But there simply was not time. Because of the need to keep the men sheltered during the daylight bombardment, Travis could only send them out to repair the damage done to the walls after dark, when the enemy ceased firing. That meant that by now the men were worn out, working late hours every night and unable to recover lost sleep during the day for the roar of the artillery. On top of that, Travis mounted extensive guards every night, fearing an attack in the dark, and he took his turn as sentinel like the rest. His servant Joe, with him now for more than two years, saw the toll the tension and fatigue took on the men. “The garrison was exhausted by incessant watching,” he said a few days later.87 Travis could see what the Mexicans had arrayed against him, mostly six- and eight-pounder field pieces, and by nightfall on March 5 they had fired some 334 cannonballs at the walls, and another eight-six rounds of exploding shells.88 The place was starting to crumble faster than the Texians could make their repairs.

  As darkness fell on March 5 it was time to send another courier. By now Travis had sent out between fifteen and twenty men, and only one or two, like Bonham, had come back.89 He could ill afford to lose even a single man now, but it was imperative to let the rest of Texas know that the garrison held out, and that the men were still up to the challenge before them. He called for a volunteer, and young James Allen stepped forward. He was a slight lad, with a very fast mare, and Travis sent him off toward Goliad with one more effort to make Fannin stop dithering and do something.90

  There were other demands to be met. For some time now Travis kept the women and children in the sacristy, a room near the northeast corner of the church itself, about as far from any anticipated direction of attack as possible.91 There they were to stay every night. Believing that Santa Anna would spare them if the garrison fell, he left his watch with Juana Alsbury for safekeeping about now, and handed other personal effects to some of the others, not because he believed the end was near but simply because it was prudent.92 In the event that the enemy did attack before relief came, he would have no time in his last moments to be vouchsafing things to people. Meanwhile, the room on the southwest corner, the baptistery just to the right of the main church door, the Texians used as their powder magazine. It seemed an illogical choice, since the south wall of the baptistery formed part of the south wall of the fort itself, and a fortunate penetrating shot might well detonate the magazine and destroy them all. But the Mexicans showed relatively little interest in the south wall during the siege, probably because of those abatis and the heavily fortified main gate. Forced to consider the possibility that there would be an attack before help came, Travis finally gave orders that the last man alive or the last to evacuate the fort was to fire the magazine if possible.93

  Travis and the men worked late into the night on March 5, probably not laying down their tools until after midnight. He put the sentinels out as usual, though seeing how exhausted everyone was by now, himself included, he should have wondered if they would be able to stay awaked at their posts.94 Asleep or awake, 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. Many of the volunteers had brought more than one with them, as had Crockett, and a number of captured long arms taken in the surrender of Béxar in December came into his hands. As a result, there were 816 rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and English brown Bess muskets on hand, and with his garrison now numbering more than two hundred men, that meant four apiece.95 In the event of an attack, the Texians could deliver a deadly rate of fire in the first few minutes of a defense. Beyond that he had more than fifteen thousand prepared cartridges of powder and ball, most of them for the muskets, enough for sixty rounds or more per man, sufficient for a lengthy engagement, though loading would be slow after the initial volleys. He also had twenty-five exploding shells with fuses equipped to be used as grenades, to drop among attackers as they approache
d the walls, and if the Mexicans made it onto the walls themselves, they would meet two hundred bayonets that fit the brown Besses, though not the volunteers' rifles and shotguns.

  In an attack he could hope that his artillery would keep the enemy from reaching the walls in the first place, but here he had some problems. His gunners had enough powder to fire more than twelve hundred rounds among the eighteen remaining operable guns, but in an attack his 686 solid shot offered little benefit, and it is just possible that he had run out of ammunition for his big eighteen- and sixteen- pounder guns. He really needed grapeshot and canister to beat back an infantry assault, and for the guns he had available with proper ammunition there were no more than five hundred loads, still more than enough to do great damage, and likely his gunners would not have time to fire all those before an attack either succeeded or failed.96

  For Travis the last hours of that late March 5—really the earliest hours of March 6—passed no differently than any of the several nights before. He made his rounds in the cold night air, checked his sentries, and finally retired, perhaps, no earlier than 3 A.M.97 In the cold he probably slept in his clothes, as well to be ready in case of an alarm. Perhaps he wondered if the new uniform he ordered before he left San Felipe was there waiting for him now.98 At least it would have comforted him to know that back in San Felipe that day the people were reading his stirring letter of February 24, now published in the Telegraph and Texas Register.99 Maybe he could not expect reinforcements to come in time. But at least Texas and the world would know why he died. How much it would have comforted him this cold night to know that three days earlier, on March 2, the convention at Washington finally decided unanimously for a declaration of independence. And he and his men were among those whose voices were heard in that vote, for Sam Maverick and Jesse Badgett were there to affix their signatures to the document. By rights it should have been his name on the declaration, for no one had done more to bring it about. Yet he had gone far beyond that piece of paper. Out there in the Alamo, in the face of perhaps ten times his numbers, he and his garrison for the last twelve days had made of themselves a living declaration, a human document that Texians could not hold in their hands but must ever clasp in their hearts.