by Walter Lord
“I will report the result of my mission to Travis or die in the attempt,” Bonham stubbornly answered. And next morning, March 2, he crossed the Guadalupe ford and headed off toward the Alamo.
It took more than a brave man to make this decision. It called for the chivalry of Scott, the fire of Byron, a love of the beau geste, and a romantic attachment to desperate chances for a noble cause. Qualities of the age, and James Butler Bonham had them all.
Born in 1807 near Red Bank, South Carolina, he came from the best family in the area. On a distinctly lower plane, the Travises lived a few miles away, but they moved to Alabama when Barret Travis was nine and Jim Bonham eleven. It’s doubtful whether the two boys ever knew each other really well.
Bonham grew into a tall, dark boy with black wavy hair and flashing brown eyes. He looked rebellious and was. Entering South Carolina College in 1824, he was always in trouble. Senior year, he battled the authorities over going to class in bad weather, the meals served in commons. But where other college boys might only complain about the food, Bonham dressed in deep mourning, rallied his classmates to the cause, staged a giant demonstration. Not surprisingly he was expelled.
Odd training for a lawyer, but by 1830 Bonham was practicing in Pendleton, South Carolina. Then the Nullification crisis and another stormy interlude. Bonham was, of course, in the thick of it—boy colonel, aide to Governor Hamilton, dashing artilleryman with a flaming red sash and silver epaulets.
The crisis over, he went back to his practice in Pendleton. Then, less than a year later, another storm—this time in the courtroom. His client was a lady in distress … the opposing lawyer insulted her … Bonham caned him. When the judge ordered an apology, Bonham threatened to tweak His Honor’s nose. Ninety days for contempt of court.
Inevitably the ladies of Pendleton filled his cell with flowers, deluged him with delicacies. Finally released, he was the town hero, the dark Galahad who made every fair heart beat faster—except the one he wanted. The last person to take defeat in love lightly, Bonham was crushed. Filled with despair he left Pendleton early in 1834, joined the restless tide to the West. By April he was starting practice all over again in Montgomery, Alabama.
He cut loose the past completely. Out with the sash, the epaulets, all the other trappings of the old days. (“Sell them as well as you can, but sell them, for they are of no use to me.”) Yet the patient, upward struggle had never been for him, and when the Texas storm broke in 1835, Bonham was immediately in the thick of it. His descendants later said he joined at Travis’ urging. Maybe, but the evidence is lacking. The fact is, Bonham being Bonham couldn’t possibly have stayed out.
He went to Mobile, the center of excitement, and led the rally that jammed the Shakespeare Theater on October 17. At a second rally three nights later, the citizens appointed him to take their resolutions direct to Sam Houston. Two more weeks, and he was organizing the Mobile Greys.
The Greys reached San Antonio December 12—just too late to share in the glory of beating Cós. But this didn’t stop Bonham. His life in Texas became a whirlwind of activity. On the 20th he was commissioned lieutenant in the Texas Cavalry … the 26th he was starting a law office in Brazoria … the 30th he was back in the Alamo writing Houston about a good officer. In the middle of January he turned up in Goliad; on the 19th he was back in the Alamo with Bowie; on the 26th he led a political rally for Governor Smith. With a man like Bonham, it didn’t matter that he was only a lieutenant or that he had never heard of Smith six weeks earlier.
All this left little time for renewing any boyhood memories with Travis, but when the Colonel arrived in the Alamo on February 3, the two men took to each other right away. Bonham was a man after Travis’ own heart. He liked Houston and Smith, didn’t like Robinson, Fannin, the Matamoros crowd.
Maybe this made him less than an ideal choice to send to Fannin for help. The commander at Goliad was not only in the other camp, but it was a matter of record that he didn’t like cavalrymen. Still, Travis knew no one more forceful, more trustworthy than Bonham. So off he went to Goliad twice in two weeks—on February 16 and again on the 27th.
And now he was coming back alone. Over the dark, silent prairie … across the Cibolo in the first light of dawn … through the thickets and mesquite trees to the top of Powder House Hill. Here he could look down on the Alamo less than a mile away.
Clearly the fort was still holding out. Around it, on all four sides, were the Mexican camps—the earthworks for Sesma’s guns, the dozens of smoky fires, the troops in their white fatigue suits. The lines were closer than when he left; yet with luck, it was still possible to get through. Bonham was the last man to feel he couldn’t make it.
He pulled off the road to his right, quietly worked his way east through the brush and thickets. At last he reached a point well between the Mexican-held powder house on the Gonzales road and Sesma’s batteries northeast of the Alamo. As near as he could judge, he was safely between the two enemy positions.
Now to run for it. Digging in his spurs, Bonham swiftly gathered speed, flashed into the open, pounded straight for the Alamo gate by the corral. He hunched low on his horse, making himself small against an expected hail of bullets. But the startled Mexicans never fired a shot, and at 11 A.M. on Thursday, March 3, Jim Bonham hurtled safely into the Alamo. He was reporting back—as he had promised—to his commanding officer.
Travis wasn’t discouraged. He had written off Fannin anyhow. He still felt help might come from San Felipe, Brazoria, a dozen other towns. Sooner or later they would see the importance of the Alamo. Meanwhile, he had food for twenty days; he had made the fort much stronger; he had no casualties.
But even if no one came, he was determined to stick it out. He would make the Mexican victory so expensive, it would be worse than a defeat. He could count on his men for that.
Indeed he could. Their spirits were remarkable, considering the danger, the weariness, the frustration of waiting for help that didn’t come. True, there were some glum faces and several more of the local Mexicans had vanished. But Henry Warnell still chattered about horses; Jacob Walker still bragged about his children; David Crockett still could get a laugh. There was little fighting to be done, but Green Jameson kept them busy digging trenches in the big open square, piling up more dirt against the walls to make them stronger.
They were hard at this work after welcoming Bonham, when they suddenly heard the sound of distant cheering. Rushing to the church roof, the gun platforms, the makeshift parapets, they peered into the noonday glare. Could this at last be some reinforcements?
No, the sound came from town. A great celebration was going on. People swarmed in the streets, waving and shouting, “Santa Anna! Santa Anna!” In the bright sunlight the Texans made out a long column of troops—over a thousand soldiers streaming in from the west.
Gaona’s men had at last arrived. Not the whole brigade, to be sure—it was strung out all the way to the Rio Grande —but at least the picked companies. And these were the troops Santa Anna had been demanding.
For picked companies, most of them looked a little seedy. The Toluca men were all activos—a term that belied their status as inexperienced reservists. The Aldama battalion seemed anything but smart in its dusty white rags. But there was nothing wrong with the Zapadores, a crack unit of 185 sappers, who served the brigade as a whole.
Santa Anna now had 2,400 men and ten guns to deploy about the Alamo, and he spent the afternoon galloping around the perimeter planning new batteries, trenches and earthworks. His brother-in-law, General Cós, trailed along behind, while Cós’ adjutant, Captain Sánchez, hovered in the background. They both had arrived the day before—ahead of the reinforcements—and were now being introduced again to the scene of their disgrace last December. Santa Anna rushed about, pointedly showing them the right way to handle troops.
Sánchez was suitably impressed. “It amazes me,” he confided to his diary, “how Santa Anna seeks and dashes to places of danger, while General Ses
ma avoids even those that are safe.”
There was always time for carping in the Mexican Army, but even the most dedicated practitioner forgot his complaints that afternoon. A messenger burst into town with the glorious news of Urrea’s victory at San Patricio. Actually, the Texan losses were unimportant—16 killed and 21 prisoners later shot—but victories are not judged by numbers alone. Ever since the revolution began, the Mexicans had lost one battle after another. Now at last the tide was turning.
Joy erupted once again on Potrero Street. The bells of San Fernando pealed out the tidings. The blood-red flag in the church tower fluttered bright in the breeze. And to the east, someone raised another red banner on Powder House Hill. Here the setting sun would play on it, lighting it up for the hated Texans to see.
Victory was in the air. Colonel Juan Almonte was sure of it. Writing his sister that day, he told her to send his mail to Bexar; within three months the campaign would be over.
Certainly it looked that way on General Urrea’s sector to the east. With Johnson under his belt Urrea next caught Dr. Grant at Agua Dulce Creek. The doctor was returning with fifteen men from a horse-hunting expedition along the Rio Grande, when he fell into a Mexican ambush on March 2. By the time the firing was over his force was annihilated.
Urrea now sent scouts toward Goliad. He moved very cautiously, for this next step should not be easy. Fannin had 400 troops, good guns, and sounded like a man spoiling for a fight. Surprisingly, when the scouts returned to the Mexican lines on March 3, they reported no sign of unusual activity at Goliad.
They were right. By the third, Fannin had shelved all plans for another march to the Alamo’s rescue. Once again, he seemed mesmerized by the thought of the Mexican Army advancing toward him. His bright young aide, Captain Brooks, no longer talked of “marching tomorrow or the next day.” He too spoke only in terms of hanging on. “We are in hourly expectation of an attack,” he wrote his sister, “but we are resolved to die, to a man, under the walls we have thrown up. …”
Not all of the men were satisfied with their leader’s decision. The Goliad group of New Orleans Greys desperately wanted to help their friends in the Alamo. The camp surgeon, Dr. Joseph Henry Barnard, felt the men had lost their confidence in Fannin. A young private, Joseph G. Ferguson, put it bluntly in a letter to his brother: “I am sorry to say that the majority of soldiers don’t like him, for what reason I don’t know, unless it is because they think that he has not the interest of the country at heart, or that he wishes to become great without taking the proper steps to achieve greatness.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Take Care of My Little Boy”
IN THE DIM MOONLIGHT that bathed the Alamo plaza, John W. Smith saddled up once again. It was nearly midnight, Thursday, March 3, and Smith was about to leave on another attempt to rally help for the garrison.
Word soon spread that he was going. Private Willis A. Moore of Raymond, Mississippi, scribbled a few private lines to his family, folded and handed the note to Smith. Others did the same.
In the headquarters room by the west wall, William Barret Travis was also writing messages. First, he put the finishing touches on his latest official report—this time a ringing appeal to the President of the Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He stressed the garrison’s resilience, praised its spirit, spelled out its needs: “at least 500 pounds of cannon powder, 200 rounds of six, nine, twelve, and eighteen-pound balls, ten kegs of rifle powder …”
And once again he urged all possible help, for this could be “the great and decisive ground.” He closed with a few bitter words about the local Mexicans—he charged nearly all had deserted the fort—but on the whole he was game and optimistic.
Now he turned to his own personal messages. First came a little note so secret no outsider ever saw it. Just the cryptic request in the covering letter: “Do me the favor to send the enclosed to its proper destination instantly.” It was hard for anyone then, or more than a hundred years later, not to think of Rebecca Cummings.
Next, a warm, intimate letter to his friend Jesse Grimes. In it he again stressed his good spirits, his determination to die rather than give up the Alamo. But this time—much more eloquently than in his official correspondence—Travis explained why he was making this stand. His reason went far beyond any views on strategy … beyond the bond that now welded the garrison together … even beyond his fierce desire to defend the new homes that dotted the land. More than all these (and they were a lot), he felt the spirit of the times—the conviction that liberty, freedom and independence were in themselves worth fighting for; the belief that a man should be willing to make any sacrifice to hold these prizes. With them, he had everything. Without them, nothing. Explaining his views, Travis minced no words:
Let the Convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day… .
It was late in the evening now—Smith must be leaving soon —but Travis had one last message on his mind. It would be for David Ayers, who was boarding little Charles at the Ayers home near Washington-on-the-Brazos. No one in the world-even Rebecca—meant as much to Travis as Charles. A river of memories must have flowed through his mind: persuading Rosanna to leave the boy in Texas … saying good-by on his way to the Alamo … the way Charles wangled fifty cents from him to buy a bottle of molasses. Enough. Maybe he would see him again someday, but there was always the other possibility. He jotted a quick, simple note on a sheet of torn yellow wrapping paper:
Take care of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; 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.
Walking out into the plaza, Travis handed his packet of messages to Smith, then remembered something he forgot to say in the official dispatch: tell the reinforcements to bring ten days’ rations with them. Next, another afterthought: he would fire the 18-pounder three times a day—morning, noon and night—as long as the Alamo stood. When they heard that, they would know he was still fighting.
The northern postern once again swung open. A party of Texans slipped outside, worked their way north toward the sugar mill, and began firing at random. The Mexican guns erupted in reply, and Santa Anna’s patrols rushed to the scene of the trouble. The way cleared, Smith whipped through the Alamo gate, turned east, and vanished into the dark.
It was just about midnight—the end of a long, hard day. But legend to the contrary, it was not a day of giving up hope. There’s a great deal of hope in any commander who orders two hundred cannon balls. The best clue to Travis’ real feelings lay at the start of his letter to Jesse Grimes: “I am still here in fine spirits and well to do.”
Dawn, March 4. The new Mexican battery north of the Alamo crashed into action, searing the early morning quiet. The guns were within rifle range—perhaps 250 yards away—and every shot smashed the fort’s north wall, showering the plaza with earth and stones. Jameson frantically worked to shore up the defenses—piling up still more dirt against the wall, hammering extra bracing into place. The sound of the shovels and mallets drifted to the Mexican lines, and the rumor spread that the Texans were mining the walls, planning to blow everyone up together.
Certainly it was clear that the Alamo couldn’t take this kind of punishment much longer. Yesterday Travis had been optimistic: “The walls are generally proof against cannon balls.” Today his defenses seemed like a sieve.
The men never felt more trapped. Besides the new battery to the north, the Mexican ring seemed tighter than ever. The two long 9-pounders just across the river continued to pound the west wall, while Sesma’s howitzers made life especially miserable by lobbing bombs into the innermost areas. Enemy entrenchments
were now on all sides; to use Travis’ own estimates, “in Bexar, four hundred yards west; in La Villita, three hundred yards south; at the powder house, one thousand yards east of south; on the ditch, eight hundred yards northeast, and at the old mill, eight hundred yards north.”
Even Crockett now felt the strain. Echoing the sentiments of Henry Warnell in an earlier moment of discouragement, the Colonel announced, “I think we had better march out and die in the open air. I don’t like to be hemmed up.”
Jim Bowie, failing badly, was brought out more than once to rally the men. He weakly begged them to carry on, to stand by Travis whatever happened. Loyal Bowie men like Captain William Baker of the Volunteers took heart, but it was hard to be hopeful when they could clearly see new Mexican reinforcements streaming into town; when there in plain sight were Mexican work details fitting together scaling ladders.
The local Mexicans remaining in the Alamo were especially discouraged. All had good friends in the occupied town, some even relatives in Santa Anna’s militia. Others merely wanted to be on the winning side, and it began to look as if they might have guessed wrong.
Still others had even deeper misgivings. They found themselves more and more uncomfortable in what had clearly turned into a collision between Mexicans and Anglo-Americans. After all, they were Mexicans. It was all very well when the struggle had been more of a family fight—which Mexican leaders; which Mexican constitution—but it was no longer that, and these Mexicans had a growing fear that they wouldn’t do very well under any government dominated by “Anglos.” Names like Flores, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Silvero, and Garza faded from sight.
On the evening of the 4th, still another Mexican disappeared—this time one of the women in the Alamo. Slipping through La Villita, then across the river, she made her way to His Excellency’s headquarters. It turned out that she brought extremely interesting news: the defenses were crumbling … the men were weak … the ammunition low … the place could easily be taken.