The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation

by James Donovan

  About a month later, in late January 1836, eleven men led by Captain William Patton rode up the rough trail from the coast and appeared at the Kent farm. They were on their way to reinforce Colonel James Neill’s worn-out garrison at Béxar. The Kents put them up, fed the men and horses, and saw the company on their way the next morning. Patton filled the Kents in on the latest developments and the sorry state of things in Béxar, as reported by Sam Houston. The group’s stay was a grim reminder of the increasing hostilities and the mounting threat of all-out war.

  Four weeks later, on Sunday, February 21, Andrew Kent rode into Gonzales intending to stay a day or two and return with supplies—his wife needed material to make clothes. After recovering from his wound, Davy, the oldest boy, had followed Patton’s company, and was now with the garrison at Béxar, commanded jointly by William Barret Travis and James Bowie. He would turn nineteen in two days. Davy was a good hand with cattle, so he had been sent out to scour the countryside for beeves.

  The first thing Andrew heard about that Sunday afternoon was the attack on a local family east of town earlier in the day. Comanches had ambushed John Hibbens and his family, who were returning home via the Texas coast after a visit to the States. They had killed Hibbens and his brother-in-law and carried off Sarah Hibbens and her two children, a baby and a six-year-old boy. John Hibbens was the second husband Sarah had lost to Indians. Several men had already galloped off in pursuit.

  More colonists than usual were present in town that day, there to hear the full report of the ambush and decide what to do. On Monday, Byrd Lockhart secured additional recruits for the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers, one of three ranger militia groups along the western frontier called for by the provisional government in San Felipe to guard against Indian depredations. Twenty-three men of DeWitt’s colony had signed up over the previous two weeks, including Andrew Kent, who now added his son Davy’s name and then headed home with several bolts of cloth and news of the Indian attack.

  Townspeople were still talking about the Hibbens tragedy two days later, when a pair of exhausted riders from Béxar arrived in town with even more momentous news.

  BY THE TIME JOHN SMITH and John Sutherland reached Gonzales, about four p.m. on Wednesday, February 24, the doctor was in bad shape. His leg had begun to stiffen soon after departure, and at the Salado River, five miles east of Béxar, he had almost turned back. Smith had encouraged him to continue, pointing out that the enemy had probably surrounded the Alamo by this time. They had filled their water gourds and continued on until darkness, and the doctor’s painful injuries, had persuaded them to stop for the night.

  Now, as townspeople gathered around them, the two men made known their mission, and delivered Travis’s message to alcalde Andrew Ponton. Within two hours he had dispatched several express riders to the neighboring settlements with news of the Mexican army’s arrival and calling for citizens to ride to Gonzales. He also sent messengers to deliver the news throughout DeWitt’s colony.

  Word spread to the farms in the area, and men began making their way into town. Most of the local mounted volunteers had been notified; though they had been organized with the Indian threat in mind, an invasion by the Mexican army trumped that concern. Among those mustering recruits was George Kimble, recently elected lieutenant. Kimble was a large man, over 6 feet 2 inches and broad-shouldered. He and his partner, Almeron Dickinson, owned the hat shop on Water Street near the Guadalupe River. His pregnant wife, Prudence, was doing the weekly wash in a creek by the house, their two-year-old son, Charles, nearby, when Kimble walked down to tell her what he had to do. He might not get back, he told her, but he owed his life to his country.

  More than a dozen other local colonists arrived in town to muster up. Thomas Miller reported for duty. He owned plenty of land in the area, but ever since his much younger wife, Sidney, had divorced him to marry a handsome boy her own age, nineteen-year-old Johnny Kellogg, he had buried himself in business and council work. Miller had just written out his will. Dolphin Floyd, a farmer in town almost four years, rode in with a fine horse and gun. Floyd was a happy-go-lucky fellow who had left his father’s Carolina farm a decade before, telling them he intended marrying a rich old widow. When he wrote them years later from Texas, it was with the news that he had married a widow, but she was neither very old nor very rich. Dolphin and Esther had a small daughter and another child on the way.

  Late on February 25, a rider made it down to the Kent homestead and others on the Lavaca with the news that the Alamo was under siege, and that the Gonzales rangers had been activated. If Santa Anna was not stopped at Béxar, DeWitt’s colony was next, and he would surely come down hard on the town that had started it all.

  Kent would have gone anyway, since his boy was working out of Béxar, along with several other DeWitt colonists who were his friends and neighbors. Besides, the men of Gonzales owed a debt they would now repay: many of the Alamo defenders had come to their aid in October, when a hundred soldados had arrived on their doorstep and demanded their cannon.

  Early the next morning two neighbors, Isaac Millsaps and William Summers, rode up the river and stopped at the Kent place. Summers was a young bachelor, but forty-one-year-old Millsaps, who had fought in the War of 1812 as a teenager, had a blind wife and six children. Andrew Kent said good-bye to Elizabeth and his children and mounted his horse. He turned to the other two men. “This time you may see some blood,” he said as they rode away.

  They arrived in Gonzales that afternoon to find the streets and stores full, and blacksmith Andrew Sowell busy fixing rifles and pistols. Several members of the Béxar garrison who had been discharged or furloughed in the last week or two were preparing to return—Captain Robert White of the Béxar Guards infantry company had only spent a week at his Gonzales home. Another furloughed volunteer, William Irwin, was doing a brisk business buying up army service chits for ready cash, a rare commodity thereabouts.

  Captain Albert Martin had just arrived from Béxar with another express from William Barret Travis. This message gave many more details, and painted a grim picture. Martin told them he had heard a heavy cannonade throughout the day before as he rode to Gonzales—probably an attack on the fort. Despite entreaties from his father, who believed he would be riding to certain death, Martin immediately began preparing to return: he had promised Travis he would bring help. Lancelot Smither had also arrived from Béxar. He took the Travis letter and loped out of town east toward San Felipe, eighty miles away.

  Davy Kent was there, too. He had been sent to one of the Tejano farms down the river to drive some cattle into the Alamo, but upon returning to Béxar he found the town teeming with Mexican soldiers. He had hung around in the hills a day or two until he realized he had no choice but to ride to Gonzales.

  Andrew Kent was glad to see Davy, but he had sharp words for him when his son said he wanted to ride back to Béxar with the Gonzales ranging company. Between marauding Indians, renegade volunteers, and wandering Mexican soldiers, an isolated farm a day’s ride from safety was no place for Elizabeth Kent and her children, especially without a man on the premises. Kent told his son to bring them into Gonzales to stay with Elizabeth’s cousin “Red Adam” Zumwalt, who owned a store, a kitchen, and a grog shop in town in addition to a house. After some argument, Davy finally gave in. He would stay. His father would go.

  Another volunteer company was being raised, this one solely for the relief of the Alamo. Its elected leader, Irishman Thomas Jackson of Gonzales, was busy mustering in men. His brother-in-law Wash Cottle, the fiddler at the long-ago party at Miller’s inn, signed up, along with a few others. Major Robert Williamson had arrived from Bastrop and was busy helping to organize the two companies. Men continued to ride into town from homesteads in the area. Jacob Darst, one of the Old Eighteen, who had started the revolution by refusing to give up their cannon, signed on. Years before he had fought Indians with the Virginia militia; now he was a freighter whose young son David had recently begu
n to accompany him on his hauls. He would not allow the fifteen-year-old to ride to Béxar, but a couple of other teenage boys insisted on coming along and had no fathers to prevent them. Sixteen-year-old Galba Fuqua’s mother had died when he was eight, and his father two years before. His friend, seventeen-year-old Johnny Gaston, whose mother was a widow, was also determined to go. So was his stepfather, George Washington Davis, and forty-six-year-old John King, the patriarch of the large King family up on the mill road, northwest of town. And Johnny Kellogg had decided to go, despite the fact that his wife, Sidney, was pregnant.

  The next day, February 27, as a cold north wind blew through the streets of Gonzales, the men made final preparations. George Kimble bought fifty-two pounds of coffee from Stephen Smith’s store—if an army at war needed anything, it was coffee, and the Alamo garrison was low on that staple. Every man carried as many extra supplies as possible. Between them the two companies comprised about twenty-five volunteers, most of them DeWitt colonists.

  As the two small companies prepared to leave that afternoon, every man, woman, and child in the town gathered to see the men off. Many of their loved ones, especially the mothers and wives, wept. John W. Smith volunteered to guide them into the Alamo—he knew the area well, and now that he had found his family safe in Gonzales, he felt able to go. They came up with a plan to bypass the regiment of lancers stationed to the east of the compound. To avoid the Mexican mounted patrols, the volunteers would take the mill road, which led up to Joseph Martin’s cotton gin and mill and then veered west to Béxar. It was not as well marked or well traveled as Byrd Lockhart’s lower road, but it approached Béxar above the town, near the river, which was the least-patrolled area when Albert Martin had left. With any luck, they could sneak down the river to the Alamo.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, they rode out of Gonzales, crossed the San Marcos River, and followed the Guadalupe River west past Green DeWitt’s land and the old mill that had been abandoned after Indian trouble a few years back. When they reached the King homestead, a dozen or so miles out of town, sixteen-year-old William King was there to meet them. He persuaded Lieutenant Kimble to let him take his father’s place so John King could look after his wife and eight other children, a few of whom were ill. The elder King objected at first, but finally gave in. John and his wife, Parmelia, watched as their son and his comrades disappeared from sight.

  ON FEBRUARY 27, as the Gonzales party was making its way to Béxar, Mexican reinforcements were struggling to reach the same destination. Two days after leaving Béxar, His Excellency’s courier found General Gaona’s First Infantry Brigade 120 miles down El Camino Real, at Peña Creek—“no more than a big puddle of water,” remembered one officer. When the courier delivered the orders, and Gaona revealed which units were to force-march to Béxar, “many of the officers in the Aldama, Toluca, and the Zapadores battalions were filled with joy and congratulated each other when they were ordered to hasten their march, for they knew that they were about to engage in combat,” wrote de la Peña, attached to the Zapadores. The bulk of the army might have been less than overjoyed at the grueling expedition into Texas, but the elite troops of the Zapadores were eager to fight the ungrateful colonists.

  De la Peña’s own enthusiasm had been severely tempered by the sorry state of the column. It was in poor shape as a marching unit when he arrived, and over the next few days things got even worse. Almost all the civilian mule drivers had disappeared, their places taken by untrained soldiers. De la Peña was saddened to see how badly they were treating the oxen pulling the carts. The animals received almost no water during the day, and were not pastured properly at night. Like the soldiers in the other brigades, the impatient drivers would stab them with their bayonets or sabers—that is, those oxen that had not drowned crossing the Rio Grande on February 25, and whose carts had to be abandoned. On the twenty-sixth, the powder stores of the Aldama battalion caught fire. The day after that, February 27, they lost more oxen, and the last of the drivers deserted. The brigade looked close to grinding to an ignominious halt. So later that day, when the courier rode into camp with His Excellency’s orders, de la Peña and his fellow officers were elated.

  Colonel Francisco Duque was put in command of the column, and the selected battalions immediately prepared to march. They would not take supply carts, only pack mules. All told, almost twelve hundred men moved out by two in the afternoon. The three battalions were veteran units commanded by experienced officers: Duque led the Toluca Activo battalion; Lieutenant Colonel Gregorio Uruñuela, a twenty-five-year veteran, helmed the Aldama Permanente battalion; and Colonel Agustín Amat—at fifty-five the oldest battalion commander, with forty years in the army—commanded the Zapadores.

  Gaona would continue as best he could with the rest of the brigade. Despite his irritable and haughty character, he had been doing all he could to speed up the slow-moving column, even driving an oxcart. Before the three battalions left, Lieutenant de la Peña suggested bringing the two twelve-pounders along, pulled by good mule teams. Gaona rejected the idea; if Santa Anna had wanted them he would have said so. At San Luis Potosí, Gaona and Santa Anna had engaged in an argument so serious that another general had found it necessary to mediate. Gaona would take no chances this time that he would anger His Excellency further.

  WHEN DARKNESS FELL ON FEBRUARY 27, the men from Gonzales bivouacked for the night a few hours’ ride west of town. Early the next morning they continued to follow the crude trail on the north side of the Guadalupe, riding at an easy pace across the gently rolling prairie land and through occasional woods. Early flowers, such as the pink prairie primrose and the yellow huisache daisy, poked out here and there along the path. About forty miles from Gonzales, near the border of DeWitt’s colony, the river made a hard turn north. The men crossed and continued westward. By Monday, the twenty-ninth, they had reached the Cibolo, several miles above the place where Byrd Lockhart’s well-marked lower road crossed the creek. There they found seven more men who joined the group.

  At sunset John Smith led them the last twenty miles to Béxar. By eleven p.m. the moon, almost full, was high above them. An hour after midnight found them in the low hills east of town, where they hid until almost three a.m.

  A scout sent ahead came back with good news. The regiment of cavalry that had been bivouacked on the main Gonzales road near the old watchtower was no longer there; Santa Anna had sent it south just a few hours before. But their way was not entirely clear—an infantry battalion was camped to the east of the Alamo, just north of the road. Smith gave the signal and the men mounted their horses and pulled up their collars against the blustery wind. He guided them around the battalion and through the Mexican sentinels over to Powder House Hill. From there they could see the Alamo, and Béxar beyond. They carefully walked their mounts down toward the fort.

  Out of the darkness a man on horseback rode up to them and asked in English, “Do you wish to go into the fort, gentlemen?”

  “Yes,” someone said.

  “Then follow me,” the rider said, then turned his horse and took the lead of the company.

  John Smith sensed something wrong. “Boys, it’s time to be after shooting that fellow,” he said, but the man put spurs to his mount and galloped into a thicket and out of sight before anyone could train a gun on him. Smith sent a scout ahead, and the band proceeded silently, in single file, toward the old mission.

  IN THE THREE DAYS SINCE THURSDAY, February 25, when Travis had dispatched his last two couriers to Gonzales and Goliad, a curious monotony had set in. There were no further attacks on the scale of Thursday’s, though at dawn on Friday the Mexicans had made a charge on the east side of the fort, where the corral walls were low; fine sharpshooting and a blast of grapeshot repelled them without further problem. Over the next few days there was only the near-constant, but not particularly destructive, bombardment by the Mexican artillery—complemented by the occasional nocturnal serenade by the battalion bands, no doubt to prevent a good
night’s sleep for the defenders—or a musket volley accompanied by enough shouting to simulate an attack. Travis ordered his gunners to respond to the enemy’s shelling only occasionally, to save ammunition. Every day he sent out parties in search of wood, though without much success—the Mexicans also had sharpshooters, and the parties dared not venture far from the Alamo walls.

  The nights were cold, around forty degrees, and the strong wind made it worse. Green Jameson kept his crews working hard day and night on repairs to the walls, particularly the weak area on the north, and on the well in the main courtyard. There were not enough defenders to man the walls in shifts, so most of them slept at their stations, their guns by their sides, though between the Mexican serenading and the intermittent feints against the fort, their slumber was fitful and shallow.

  Though the weather, the lack of sleep, the unrelieved diet of beef and cornbread, and the constant exhaustion were taking their toll, the men’s spirits were still high. They expected reinforcements any day, from Fannin and his four hundred men in Goliad or the Texian army that was surely gathering in Gonzales. Morale was surprisingly strong, and two natural leaders boosted it even further.

  When Bowie had realized the extent of his illness, he insisted that he be moved away from the Alsbury sisters and the rest of the garrison before it spread to them. A couple of his men carried him to a room in the building adjacent to the main gate. As he left, he reassured Juana: “Sister, do not be afraid. I leave you with Colonel Travis, Colonel Crockett, and other friends. They are gentlemen, and will treat you kindly.” Anna Esparza and some of the other women staying in the church took over his care. Though Bowie was still in the throes of his sickness, he was occasionally lucid, and during those times he would have some of his men carry him to the long barracks, where he would talk to the people there and remind them that Travis was now their commander.