Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Symbolically, Santa Anna’s Army of Operations soon would march into Texas after crossing the Rio Grande River at the little river town of Guerrero, southwest of San Antonio, where he established headquarters after emerging from the depths of northern Mexico. Amid the deserts of rocky hills, a few mesquite trees, and patches of prickly pears, this quaint little community had been named in honor of the president of part-African blood who had freed Mexico’s slaves in 1829. It was an ominous warning for the people of Texas for more than one reason. 144

  MATTERS OF CLASS

  The Texas Revolution was also very much a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. This was nothing new, and had been largely the case in America since its first struggle for liberty. During the War of 1812, a Scotch-Irishman, Samuel McKee of Kentucky, correctly predicted how it would be the burden of the hardy “yeomanry of the country,” which was largely Scotch-Irish of lower and middle-class origins, to fight “an ignoble war” against Great Britain, and to pay the high cost of an unprepared young nation’s headlong rush into war. 145 Although historians have portrayed the 1835–36 conflict largely as a classless struggle with Texians united as one, class was very much a factor in the Texas Revolution, and played an essential role in the Alamo disaster.

  The Texas Revolution and the struggle with Mexico were also about big business. Sizeable loans from United States banks were contingent upon a declaration of independence in Texas, which would ensure a dramatic rise in land values and hence guarantee repayment of the loans in timely fashion, once victory over Mexico was secured. Average United States volunteers in the Texas Army likewise realized that the promises made to them of hundreds and thousands of Texas acres, “vast amounts of land,” could only become reality with ultimate victory. 146

  Mostly the poor, especially the squatters, migrated to Texas to create a new world for themselves by acquiring large amounts of land. Along with the lower classes, middle class men like Bowie and Travis also aspired to rise higher by fulfilling their Texas dream. 147 James Atkins Shackford perhaps made an appropriate tribute to Crockett, focusing on the key aspect of class without the usual romanticism: “A poor man who had long known the devastating consequences of poverty and who all his life had fought a dedicated life for the right of the dispossessed to a new opportunity, he died defending a poor and insecure people” in Texas. 148 Indeed, the “greatest ambition” that fueled Crockett’s migration to Texas was the desire to do what no one in his family had been able to accomplish since arriving in the New World from Ireland: move up the social ladder to become a large, landholding gentleman. Like no other place on earth, Texas possessed the potential to fulfill such dreams that had eluded generations of lower and middle class citizens across America for so long. 149

  It was largely the poor who fought and died in the Texas Revolution, and especially at the Alamo. The wealthy cotton planters and other members of the upper class remained largely absent from the Texas Army’s diminutive ranks. Commanding United States volunteers, Thomas J. Green was appalled by the inequitable situation that caused so many poor soldiers to die like sacrificial lambs. In disgust that could not be disguised, he wrote how the common soldiers in the field fought and died in the “defense of the poor men, women & children in this country,” while the rich were nowhere to be seen. “In God’s name,” he wrote, “where are the larger land holders? Why are they not fighting for their freedoms? . . . Is our blood to be split defending their immense estates?” 150

  While Alamo defenders risked their lives in the hope of gaining their relatively small piece of the Texas dream, those longer-resident colonists who had already fulfilled that dream—the majority of “Old Texians,” wealthy merchants, large landowners, and politicians—were indeed noticeably absent from the army’s ranks at the time of the Alamo’s fall. 151 The assumption that the Texas Revolution was inspired by the common man of Texas, much like the lower and middle-class Minutemen of Lexington and Concord, has become a staple of the myth of the Alamo. One editor of a major eastern newspaper, the Baltimore Gazette, for example, denounced the Texas Revolution as a vast covert conspiracy by “secret agents,” lamenting that lower class American citizens in Texas fought and died only to “enrich a few land speculators, robbers, and brokers” from Wall Street. 152 Modern scholarship has verified this claim. The historian Will Fowler wrote: “Of the rebels who defended the Alamo, only a handful had been born in Texas. The great majority were settlers of U.S.-European extraction, backed financially by the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company and other land speculators based in New York and New Orleans.” 153

  The flow into Texas of both colonists and squatters was largely a product of a convulsive economic event east of the Sabine: the Panic of 1819. With deflation racking the financial markets, fear spread across America. Thousands of common people across the United States lost their land, experiencing soaring debt, defaults, and mortgage foreclosures that resulted from the bursting of a great land bubble, itself based on ever-rising prices, which deeply affected the entire national economy. Additionally, cotton prices plunged to new lows, although previously the ever-increasing price of cotton had been the key catalyst not only for new settlement of the southwest, but also for the spread of the institution of slavery. 154

  The migrant population was clearly in search of both cheaper and better lands; and these existed for the taking in Texas more abundantly than in any other place on the continent. So many squatters illegally flooded across the Sabine’s brown waters that Mexico overlooked the longtime threat the Indians had posed to its existence, and redirected this omnipresent menace toward the increasing numbers of Anglo-Celtic newcomers. Mexico’s leaders now viewed the thousands of newly arriving Americans as the greatest potential threat to Texas’ future, because Anglo-Celts were beginning to dominate the Tejano land. 155

  On March 4, 1836, just two days before the Alamo’s fall, a Mexican government official, Pedro Sánchez, wrote: “There is no question that the rebel colonists of Texas are striving to dismember the Republic of its most rich and fertile part of its territory.” On the same day he also penned: “It is not the Constitution of 1824 which they have hypocritically invoked as their intention to support . . . Their only object is to take those fertile regions of the Mexican territory.” 156 James Clinton Neill, the man who was most responsible for the decision to defend the Alamo, reinforced the opinions of Mexico’s leaders. In a letter written on January 14, 1836, the very day he ordered the San Antonio garrison of only 75 men to take up position inside the Alamo, he almost inadvertently and in nonchalant fashion explained the real reason behind his decision. This was the “wish to preserve those lands she [Texas in 1835] had acquired in the infant stage of her campaign,” which consisted of all of Texas south to the Rio Grande. 157

  THE FORGOTTEN TEXAS REVOLUTIONARIES: THE IRISH

  The widespread participation of the lowly Irish in the Texas Revolution Alamo is perhaps an even better example of how this was essentially a poor man’s fight. Because the Irish, especially those of the lower class, were without land or capital to acquire extensive amounts of acreage in either Ireland or the United States, the lure of Texas was especially strong for them.

  Even before the American Revolution, the Irish were the only major group of immigrants in America to largely avoid urban areas. Their tendency instead was to push ever-farther west where land was cheap. The Irish almost always seemed to instinctively migrate as far away from societal rules, governments, and upper classes as possible in order to live life as they pleased on the remote western frontier. For the Irish, both Protestant and Catholic, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Texas represented only the most recent western frontier as part of a great and (importantly) “armed” migration that primarily had begun in the port of Philadelphia. Pushing across the Appalachian Mountains to what is today east Tennessee, mostly Scotch-Irish settlers, including members of Crockett’s family, established America’s first independent community, the Watuaga Association, in 1774. Here, Dav
id Crockett, the grandfather, and William Crockett, signed the historic Watuaga Association petition of 1776. 158

  The largest numbers of Alamo defenders were of largely ScotchIrish descent, from the states of Tennessee and Virginia, respectively. The Irish presence at the Alamo was the third highest, consisting of at least fifteen Irish-born soldiers, and a good many more Scotch-Irish who could claim Irish roots. Their presence in early 1836 also had a symbolic cast: a Dubliner in the service of Spain, Hugh O’Connor, had established the defensive line of presidios across the northern frontier of New Spain; and visionary Irish-born filibusters Philip Nolan and Augustus Magee led respective expeditions to free Texas of Spanish rule. Hugo O’Connor, as he was known to the Spanish, had first journeyed to San Antonio in the summer 1768, in large part to improve the defense of the town against Comanche raids. Becoming a lieutenant colonel and commandant inspector of presidios along the entire northern frontier, the versatile Irishman played an early role in strengthening the Alamo.

  Unlike the United States volunteers, the Irish hailed from an almost feudal society that had been dominated for centuries by England. Most Irish immigrants had been landless peasants of Catholic faith who were discriminated against by the English and Anglo-Irish who ruled Ireland with an iron hand, partly because they were not members of the Anglican Church. For such landless Irish, the lure of hundreds and even thousands of acres in Texas was made even stronger by the fact that it predominantly was a Catholic land. At the beginning of the Texas Revolution, some Irish Catholics were initially even more in favor of the pro-1824 Constitution than were the largely Protestant volunteers from the United States. But in the end, the majority of Irish allied themselves against Mexico. These included the more militant, independent-minded Refugio Irish, who wholeheartedly supported the revolution, as well as the residents of San Patricio, or St. Patrick, an Irish colony named for Ireland’s patron saint, which consisted mostly of settlers who had migrated from County Wexford in 1834.

  The Emerald Islanders from Refugio, especially Irish-born Nicholas Fagan, were among the earliest and most fiery Texas revolutionaries. These forgotten Irish (who were mostly Scotch-Irish) played leading roles in raising the first flag of Texas independence at Goliad in late 1835, declaring independence months before the official declaration of independence by the Texas government in early March 1836. That these Irish were considered “foreigners” and Catholics, like the Mexican people, ensured that historians and the people of Texas would forget the role they played, once the Texas Revolution had been won.

  Precisely because of their Catholicism, the San Patricio Irish had been granted south Texas lands by the Mexican government in the hope that their presence would negate the more radical Protestantism of the colonists. On the broad gulf coastal plain of flowing grasslands southeast of San Antonio, the sons of Erin, including some indentured servants from Ireland, made their dreams come true after a six-week, 4,000-mile journey across the Atlantic. Advancing from poverty to independence by acquiring more than 4,428 acres, these Emerald Isle immigrants created a largely Irish community in a Tejano land. 159

  The Irish, however, had been present in Texas even before the settlements of Refugio and San Patricio were established as part of Mexico’s colonization schemes. For instance, Ireland-born John J. Linn, who early migrated to what he called this “terrestrial paradise,” signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and served in the Texas Revolution. Another early Irishman who settled in Texas was Edward Gallaher. Born in Belfast, Ireland, the adventurous young man had run away from home at fourteen, and then cast his fortunes with Austin’s Second Colony. 160 An Irishman from Brazoria County, Walter Lambert, age thirty-four, served in the 1835 campaign. Thirty-nine-year-old John Forbes, who had migrated from Ireland in 1817, came to Nacogdoches in 1835 and served as a reliable aide-de-camp to General Houston during the San Jacinto campaign. 161

  In total, fifteen confirmed Irishmen fought and died at the Alamo, including the following: Samuel E. Burns (age 26); Andrew Duvalt (17, from Gonzales); Robert Evans (36); Joseph Mark Hawkins (37); Burke Trammel (26); William Daniel Jackson (29, a former sailor); William B. Ward (30); Stephen Dennison (24, who had left Galway for New Orleans); Thomas Jackson (from Gonzales); James McGee; Robert McKinney; John Mormon; Jackson J. Rusk; John Spratt and Edward McCafferty (ages unknown). Hawkins spoke for the entire group when he described the Texas revolutionaries as “the sons of Washington and St. Patrick.” With typical Celtic-Gaelic pride, he called himself a true “son of Erin and a friend to Texan independence.” 162

  From the urban squalor of New York City by way of New Orleans, Major Evans, in charge of ordnance, was the highest-ranking Irish-born soldier at the Alamo. Cheerful and optimistic, Evans was also known for his high Gaelic-Celtic spirits and dedication to duty, which made him an inspirational leader at the Alamo. The Irishman, dark-haired and blue-eyed, was an imposing physical presence—large, muscular, and standing nearly six-feet tall. His responsibilities included the care and maintenance of the Alamo’s artillery arsenal, a critical chore. Embodying typical Celtic-Gaelic ways, Evans was “always merry,” seeing the bright side of life. 163

  In addition to the many Scotch-Irish and Irish-born soldiers, other Alamo defenders possessed distinct Irish roots. For instance, 22-year-old Christopher Adams Parker was a proud descendant of the Sparrow family, which had been persecuted for their religious beliefs as Quaker dissenters and fled England, migrating to Ireland. During Robert Emmet’s abortive 1803 revolt, Samuel Sparrow followed the revolutionary flag of green and nationalist visions of an independent Ireland. With the crushing of yet another Irish insurrection, he was forced to depart the Green Isle forever. He fled for America, another historic haven for Irish rebels and political exiles who hated England’s imperialism with a Celtic-Gaelic passion. Although his grandfather had served in Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolution, Parker was more proud of his father’s role under General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans in early January 1815. 164

  James Clinton Neill, the Alamo’s first commander after the departure of the Matamoros Expedition, was also of Scotch-Irish descent, and raised on the tales of a family history filled with rebels and revolutionaries who fought against the British in both Ireland and America. 165 That Irish contributions to the Texas Revolution came so early stemmed in part from this lengthy tradition of revolutionary struggles, though in vain, against the British. Even the legendary “Come and Take It” flag that flew in the warm breeze sweeping off the Guadalupe River during the battle of Gonzales—the Lexington of the Texas Revolution—was sown from the white satin wedding dress of a young Irish bride. 166

  Typical among the early Irish colonists in Texas were Robert Henry and his wife, Elizabeth, who departed northern Ireland in 1820 and settled in South Carolina where they raised cotton in the Scotch-Irish community known as the Waxhaws in the Piedmont, where Andrew Jackson grew up as a young man on the frontier. They then moved across the Sabine to Brazos County, Texas, in 1829. Four years later, more industrious Scotch-Irish immigrants of the Presbyterian faith from northern Ireland joined them to create a distinctively Scotch-Irish community known as “Little Ulster.” 167

  In contrast to these Presbyterian Irish, the Catholic Irish settled primarily along the gulf coastal plain of Texas. This is where the previously mentioned, mostly Irish colonies of the empresarios James Power and James Hewetson were established at Refugio and at San Patricio under John McMullen and James McGloin. In addition, Irishman John J. Linn became a respected leader of the Martin De Leon colony, even though this was primarily a Mexican colony. A Green Isle immigrant, Linn was nevertheless imbued with the spirit of Manifest Destiny; he wrote with considerable pride that the “Americans had gained a footing on Texan soil which they were destined never more to relinquish.” 168

  Some Texas Irishmen had escaped the Irish ghettoes of major Atlantic port cities in the northeast like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, where large numbers of immi
grant Irish had landed since the colonial period. Other Alamo Irish hailed from New Orleans, where the immigrants found many other Celtic-Gaelic people in the largest, busiest city on the Mississippi. New Orleans became the home of the largest Irish community in the South, in part because it was the port to which fares from Ireland were the cheapest. 169

  A number of Alamo Irishmen were members of the New Orleans Greys. These men remained behind in San Antonio and at the Alamo after most of their comrades proceeded south on the Matamoros Expedition at the end of December 1835. One such Irish-born soldier was Thomas William Ward. A devout Catholic, who embraced his Irish heritage as much as his newfound love of Texas, he had migrated to New Orleans from the French city of Quebec, Canada, desiring to remain close to Catholicism and the blessings of a parish priest. At the Crescent City curving along the Mississippi’s banks, this young Irish intellectual devoted himself to the study of engineering and the art of writing.

  Privates James McGee, John Mormon, and John Spratt were likewise members of the crack New Orleans Greys, who “had in [their] imaginations already conquered Mexico” before departing from New Orleans for what they believed would be a great adventure. Instead, a tragic reality awaited these naive New Orleans Irish, who were destined to meet untimely deaths on March 6, 1836. On a bloody Palm Sunday of that gruesome year in Texas, other New Orleans Greys Irishmen were executed, under Santa Anna’s express orders, at Goliad, including Privates James Noland, Dennis Mahoney, and William Harpen. 170