by Walter Lord
By now these “friends” also included James M. Rose and Micajah Autry, still relishing his new virile life. But there were times when even the most exuberant felt a twinge of sadness, a faint longing for things left behind. Standing guard under the January moon one crystal night, Autry’s mind drifted to home and Martha. “With what pleasure did I contemplate that lovely orb,” he wistfully wrote her, “chiefly because I recollected how often you and I had taken pleasure in standing in the door and contemplating her together. Indeed I imagined that you might be looking at her at the same time… .”
Every man knew these moments of loneliness—and other hardships as well. The banquets and toasts were always remembered longest, but in between were days of toil and drudgery … slogging hundreds of miles through rain, mud and racing streams.
There was sickness too—especially smallpox. It was all very well for Micajah Autry to say he feared the tavern bill more, but he was traveling with Crockett. Hundreds of others weren’t so lucky: lower tavern bills, but miserable days of chill and fever. Falling by the wayside, they had little care except that provided by rough, kindly “doctors,” whose chief medical qualification seemed to be an inventive mind. “A good receipt for a cough alcoholic,” Dr. J. H. Barnard noted in his ledger: “Tincture Cannabis India three ounces; Extract of Calabria Liquorice half pound; salts of tartar one-eighth pound; warm water one gallon.” Under such ministrations, it took a deep love of liberty indeed to march to the rescue of Texas.
Many preferred to come by sea. They had their hardships too—rolling in the coastal swells, thirsty under the hot Gulf sun, bumping over the off-shore sand bars—but at least no fever or mud or aching feet. The New Orleans shipping notices ticked them off—the second company of Greys on the schooner Columbus … 62 men on the steamboat Quachita … 15 more on the schooner Santiago.
The little group that boarded the Santiago on December 7 was typical. Impressed by Captain Lentner’s glowing notice of his “splendid accommodations,” they took passage-strangers from ten different states. Richard W. Ballentine was a 21-year-old country boy, fresh from a big family of brothers and sisters in Marengo County, Alabama; Cleland K. Simmons was a tidewater aristocrat from Charleston, South Carolina.
A couple of days out, they all jammed into the Santiago’s cramped little cabin (they never found the “splendid accommodations”) and put their feelings on record: “We hereby declare that we have left every endearment at our respective places of abode in the United States of America to maintain and defend our brethren, at the peril of our lives, liberties and fortunes.”
Noble words but hard to prove. For as the new arrivals converged on San Antonio, they found little going on. By November 1, Cós was bottled up in town and the nearby Alamo, while the Texans surrounded him in a loose, sprawling circle. No one knew what to do next.
Leadership had all but disappeared. Stephen Austin left to rally support in the United States. General Edward Burleson, who replaced him, seemed to have no heart for fighting. Jim Bowie, although devoted to the cause, showed only flashes of his old fire. In October he led a force that routed the Mexicans at Concepción; on the other hand, he twice tried to resign.
Travis dashed about … scouting, burning grass, capturing Mexican horses. But these weren’t the deeds of a Famous Man, and on November 6, he too tried to resign. He explained vaguely that he could no longer be useful “without complaints being made”—odd excuse for a Byronic hero. He was briefly mollified, but later in the month he did pull out. Riding to San Felipe, he joined the General Consultation that was setting up the Provisional Government of Texas.
The siege dragged on, with little to do. The inactive troops grew restless and quarrelsome. One damp November day a man named Conway killed Sherod Dover of Captain Coleman’s Company. The men hung Conway from a pecan tree, and the incident would have been forgotten—except that Dover’s name was later enshrined in another, mistaken connection.
Then the camp snapped to life on December 2. Two of San Antonio’s American residents, Sam Maverick and John W. Smith, escaped from town; reported that the Mexicans were starving, dispirited, low in ammunition. The newcomers urged immediate attack and offered a plan, backed by maps that Maverick had smuggled out.
For two days Burleson hesitated, still unwilling to fight. Then a leathery plainsman named Ben Milam finally lost patience, emerged from the General’s tent shouting, “Boys, who will come with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?” A roar of approval, and 240 men joined up.
Shortly before dawn on December 5, they advanced on the town. For four days they fought house to house, hand to hand. It was slow, dangerous work—Ben Milam himself was shot by a sniper, fell dead in Sam Maverick’s arms. But the Texans moved steadily forward, and one by one the strong points fell—the Navarro house, the Zambrano row, the priest’s house.
At 6:30 A.M. on December 9 General Cós had enough. Surrender negotiations began, and by 2 o’clock the following morning the terms were set. Cós agreed to retire beyond the Rio Grande under parole; he and his officers would “not in any way oppose the re-establishment of the Federal Constitution of 1824.”
“All has been lost save honor,” bemoaned Captain José Juan Sanchez Navarro, appointed by Cós to sign the surrender document.
“A child’s bargain,” snorted volunteer William R. Carey of Baltimore, mulling over the same agreement. “However, it’s done now and it’s too late to alter until we have another fight, which we expect shortly.”
Most of the Texans preferred Captain Sánchez’ view—Mexico had suffered a crushing defeat. The danger was over. General Burleson went home to his family. Creed Taylor of York’s Company returned to his cabin on the Guadalupe with enough trophies to pass for a Mexican—a sleek new horse, silver-mounted saddle, costly bridle, splendid silk sash, silver spurs. The scene was repeated everywhere as the colonists left the army to rejoin their families, celebrate Christmas and begin farming again.
Many of the American volunteers were equally anxious to leave San Antonio now that the fighting was over. Dr. James Grant, a shrewd Scot, sensed this and proposed an exciting project. Why not carry the war to Mexico itself? The country below the Rio Grande was full of liberals who would rally around. If the volunteers took the port of Matamoros, they would find plenty of friends—and magnificent booty too. Dr. Grant happened to be a large landowner in that area; he stood to gain immensely if his confiscated estates were liberated, but nobody bothered to look for a hidden motive. The idea sounded perfect. The men seethed with excitement; most could hardly wait to get going. Colonel Frank Johnson, now in command, was all for it too. He turned the post over to Colonel James C. Neill and dashed off to get the provisional government’s blessing.
Grant didn’t bother to wait. On December 30 he set out, taking 200 of the men with him. They marched off in a blaze of enthusiasm—their eyes on the loot of Matamoros, their hands on the loot of San Antonio. For they appropriated practically everything in sight—money, clothing, saddles, arms, food, blankets, medical supplies. Behind them they left only picked-over Mexican junk that nobody wanted—30 useless muskets … 2 trumpets, 1 large clarion … I5 carabines, out of order.
“It will be appalling to you to learn and see herewith our alarming weakness,” Colonel Neill wrote the authorities in San Felipe on January 6, 1836. He had only 104 men. There was no food or clothing. Many of the volunteers were down to one shirt and one blanket. “If there has ever been a dollar here, I have no knowledge of it.”
A week later, conditions were even worse. On January 14 the men were to get their October pay, but nothing turned up. Next morning Neill was down to 80 effectives: a few hungry colonists and volunteers, a handful of shivering New Orleans Greys. Clearly he couldn’t hold both the town and the Alamo with a force like this. He ordered the men in Bexar back across the winding little San Antonio River and concentrated his whole strength in the rambling old mission just east of town.
“You can plainly see that the Alamo never was bu
ilt by a military people for a fortress,” Green B. Jameson wrote Sam Houston on January 18. Jameson, the mechanically minded lawyer, had cast aside his San Felipe practice to become the Alamo “engineer.” He had no technical background, but it didn’t require professional training to see the fort’s many weak points.
The old mission, mostly built by 1750, was a large, sprawling compound of buildings taking up over three acres. Heart of this compound was a rough rectangle of bare ground, flatteringly called “the plaza.” It was about the size of a city block and was bordered by various walls and buildings.
On the south side of the plaza was a long, one-story building called the “low barracks”; it was pierced by the Alamo’s main entrance. Along the west side—which faced the town about 400 yards away—ran a haphazard line of adobe huts, linked and protected by a strong stone wall about twelve feet high. Across the north end ran a similar wall. The east side was banked by the so-called “long barracks.” This two-story building was extremely strong and got extra protection from walls bordering a corral that lay in the rear. But the “long barracks” stopped considerably short of the southern side of the plaza, leaving the rectangle incomplete. The gap, however, was partly filled by the most eye-catching building of all—the Alamo church.
Through years of neglect, the church was now a ruin, but it still was the sturdiest building in the compound. Its walls were four feet thick, and although most of the roof was gone, the sacristy and several small rooms along one side were arched and well covered. The center was filled with debris-due mainly to Cós, who had ineffectually tried to fortify the place before surrendering in December. He built a platform at the eastern end, reached by a ramp of earth and timber that ran almost the whole length of the nave.
Although strong and durable, the church was set back so far that it still didn’t meet the south side of the compound. There remained a diagonal gap of about fifty yards in the southeast corner. This gap was the Alamo’s most glaring weakness, but there were other problems almost as big. Although the walls were wonderfully thick—usually two to three feet— they had no embrasures or barbettes. They were mostly twelve feet high, yet there were no parapets. An acequia or ditch provided water, but it could be blocked.
Worst of all, the place was so big. How could 80 men hope to do any good? Or even double that number? Colonel Neill had every right to feel depressed when the garrison assembled to discuss its situation the day after the Matamoros group left. And he had every right to feel surprised when the men passed the solemn resolution: “We consider it highly essential that the existing army remain at Bexar.”
With what? They had no food, no clothes, no money. To make any kind of stand, it would take a miracle—not just supplies, but new men, new leaders, even new spirit. And yet, these things do happen, and within a few weeks the Alamo would undergo changes that Neill, a conscientious but unimaginative man, couldn’t hope to see. At the moment, however, there was nothing but a piece of paper expressing the belief of a few hungry, ill-clad men that San Antonio was a very important place to hold.
Chapter Four
“The Supreme Government Is Supremely Indignant”
EIGHT HUNDRED MILES SOUTH of the Alamo, a well-knit, middle-aged Mexican buckled on his $7,000 sword, mounted a saddle heavy with gold-plated trim, and turned his horse north toward the Rio Grande. General Antonio López de Santa Anna also felt that San Antonio was an important place to hold; and he planned to do something about it.
To Santa Anna, the Texans’ seizure of the town was more than a strategic problem. It was a national outrage, a humiliating blow to his personal pride. It not only called for a remedy; it demanded revenge. “Don Santa Anna,” reported the Tamaulipas Gazette, “feeling as every true Mexican ought, the disgrace thus sustained by the Republic, is making every preparation to wipe out the stain in the blood of those perfidious foreigners.”
That was what hurt the most—”those perfidious foreigners.” It was bad enough being beaten, but to Santa Anna, being beaten by Americans was the greatest indignity of all. He recalled so well his first brush with them in 1813. Then he had come to Texas as a young lieutenant in the Royal Spanish Army to help throttle an early uprising against the Hapsburg regime. At the Battle of Medina he saw the rebels crushed by a clever ambush—and some American hangers-on sent flying. Clearly, the undisciplined “Anglo” frontiersmen could never stand up to an army drilled in the European tradition.
Santa Anna had come a long way since Medina—mostly on the theory that if a man was nimble enough, he could end up on top. True, it didn’t always work; there was that time in 1813 when he was caught forging his commander’s name on a draft to cover some gambling debts. But he wriggled out of that, and since then it had certainly paid to be opportunistic. One March morning in 1821 the Spanish promoted him from captain to lieutenant colonel for beating some rebels; that afternoon he changed sides and got his full colonelcy. In 1822, now fighting for the Mexicans under Augustin Iturbi, he proved a dashing 28-year-old suitor for the hand of Iturbi’s 60-year-old sister … and soon became brigadier general. Later in the year, when Iturbi became Emperor Augustin I, Santa Anna solemnly swore, “I am and will be throughout life and till death your loyal Defender and Subject.” That December he launched a successful rebellion for a republic.
Sometimes on the winning side—sometimes not—Santa Anna was mixed up in one revolution after another over the next few years. Finally, he himself emerged on top in 1832: an apparently unwilling Cincinnatus whose liberal policies would end the chaos. “My whole ambition is restricted to beating my sword into a plowshare,” he wistfully announced from his country estate, where he liked to retire at dramatic moments. “I swear to you that I oppose all efforts aimed at destruction of the Constitution and that I would die before accepting any other power than that designated by it,” he scolded the clergy and the military men, who were against the liberal reforms he promised.
But all the time he was secretly dickering with these same conservative groups. And when finally convinced that he would remain in the saddle, he dramatically shifted his ground in 1834. Sure at last of all the power in his own hands, Santa Anna scrapped his liberal program, jettisoned the Constitution of 1824 with its emphasis on states’ rights, and revamped the government along “centralist” lines … meaning a government run by himself direct from Mexico City.
It was at this point that Stephen Austin—languishing in the capital under arrest—despaired of ever getting freedom for Texas under Mexican rule. And he was right too; for Santa Anna quickly forgot that he only wanted to beat his sword into a plowshare. Soon he was dashing about the country, ruthlessly suppressing every attempt by the individual states to preserve their constitutional rights.
Prancing ahead of the troops with his escort of thirty dragoons, Santa Anna cut quite a figure. He was a master showman with a great sense of timing. He knew just when to brood at his hacienda until the people begged him to come forward; or plunge into danger till they begged him to hold back.
He was also a mountain of vanity. He affected a gold snuffbox. His epaulets and frogging dripped so heavily with silver that later they were easily made into a set of spoons. He collected Napoleonic bric-a-brac and felt there was an obvious comparison between the Emperor and himself. “He would listen to nothing which was not in accord with his ideas,” noted his top subordinate, General Vicente Filisola, who got to know him well.
Yet it would be so dangerous to underrate him. His boldness and energy revived a drooping army. His strength, his marvelous voice gave new hope to a nation weary of chaos. Even his appearance—he was much taller than the average Mexican—suggested an infinitely more promising leader than the shoddy collection of petty figures who had been wasting away the country’s resources. His shrewd sense of timing made him not only a great politician, but often a skillful, imaginative general. And above all he was great at organization, and this more than anything was needed when Santa Anna once more emerged from “retirement” to d
evelop the Texas campaign in the fall of 1835. At first he planned to invade next spring, but the capture of San Antonio changed everything. Now he would go at once.
The first problem was money. The Mexican Army was an appalling sieve. It had already consumed a back-breaking amount of money for a poor country worn out by civil war. And now more was needed. Undiscouraged, Santa Anna plunged into the task. He gave his personal security for a quick loan of 10,000 pesos. He hit the church for contributions—1,000 pesos from the Monterey Cathedral. He got rations on credit … but at double the usual price. He went to the loan sharks: Messrs. Rubio & Errazu supplied 400,000 pesos at an interest rate amounting to 48 per cent a year. Nor was that all. To make sure they got their money back, these gentlemen required the government to sign away the entire proceeds of a forced loan on four Mexican departments, plus various customs house duties, plus the right to bring in certain military supplies duty-free. Outrageous terms, Santa Anna agreed, but the money had to be raised.
Generals were much easier to find. Santa Anna’s growing assortment included Vicente Filisola, second-in-command and perhaps the stuffiest Italian in history … Adrian Woll, a tough French soldier of fortune … Juan José Andrade of the cavalry, with his delicate golden cigar tongs. They were every kind, sharing only their jealousy and suspicion of each other.
Graft and intrigue swirled around headquarters. Through the always obliging firm of Rubio & Errazu, General Castrillón secretly managed to lend the army some of his own money at 4 per cent a month. General Gaona cornered supplies along the route and sold them back at 100 per cent profit. Colonel Ricardo Dromundo, master purveyor and another brother-in-law of Santa Anna, never even tried to account for the money given him for provisions.