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

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

Naturally, as young men, some Alamo defenders were motivated by simple lust or more calculating ambitions relating to the opposite sex. The more dashing Anglo-Celtics, especially the ladies’ men, desired to emulate Bowie’s social and financial success in marrying a teenage, blonde-haired beauty from one of San Antonio’s leading Tejano families distinguished by elegance, wealth, and aristocratic tastes. Bowie’s father-in-law, Don Juan Martin de Veramendi, was the tax collector and mayor of Béxar. He also served as the governor of the combined state of Coahuila-Texas in 1832. Fluent in Spanish, enamored with Tejano culture, and fully accepted by the leading Tejano families, Bowie married the young Ursula in April 1831. He had easily adjusted to Tejano life in San Antonio, little realizing that he had little time to live, fated to die in the town he loved so much. 53

  One Alamo defender who came to Texas with the hopes of marrying a woman of wealth was Dolphin Ward Floyd of Gonzales. As revealed in a letter, ever since leaving his North Carolina home in November 1825, Floyd had always “intended Marrying some old Rich widow that she might Die directly & then he would be independent” for the rest of his days. However, the ambitions of this young North “Carolina farm boy” would be unfulfilled because, even though he had succeeded in marrying a Gonzales widow, Ester Berry House, who he married in Gonzales in late April 1832, Floyd himself met a premature end at the Alamo. 54

  But a garrison member could also have a “young Mexican girl” as a mistress without marriage. Instead of busily preparing for war, life in San Antonio for the garrison was little more than one big party for funloving, hard-drinking young men like Irishman William Malone, a rowdy teenager, and Henry Warnell, red-haired and freckle-faced (an unusual, appealing look to some Tejanos), who were both artillery privates of Captain Carey’s “Invincibles.” Week after week during the late winter of 1836, beautiful Tejano women took away—easily surrendered of course—the energies, focus, and priorities of these young men, who were lonely when far from their native homelands and families. Relaxed social interaction and romance was much more fun than strengthening an old Spanish mission, especially if Santa Anna marched up the Gulf coast and bypassed San Antonio. Along with much alcohol, mescal, and tequila, the music-filled fandangos—fiestas and dances with their historic cultural roots in peasant festivals of medieval Spain—brought out lingering inhibitions among the American boys far from home.

  One young officer smitten by the abundant charms of the local Tejano women was thirty-year-old Captain Carey. With little concern about class, cultural, or racial distinctions, he fell in love with his Tejano housekeeper. Following Bowie’s example, the captain from Baltimore wanted to marry her without question, but ran into unexpected resistance that caught him by surprise. Carey wrote in a letter, in regard to Tejano women, how “in time of peace the ladies would gladly embrace the offer or accept the hand of an officer, but in these war times they would too soon become a widow.” 55

  Already knowing that a large Mexican Army was about to march on San Antonio with the intention of killing every Anglo-Celtic soldier present, these Tejano ladies naturally knew it would be unwise to marry a garrison member. Harsh reprisals would almost certainly be forthcoming when Santa Anna arrived. In addition, bachelor Americans making love to Tejano daughters and sisters was an unsettling prospect to their devoutly religious fathers, mothers, and brothers, who embraced traditional Catholic family values. Young Protestant soldiers of fortune, especially those who were worldly, on the make, or with relatively little means, were not a Tejano father’s fondest desire for his daughters, especially if young and innocent.

  Therefore, the escalating social and sexual activity became an increasing source of tension between the Anglo-Celtic soldiers and Tejano males of San Antonio, from whom the Alamo defenders expected assistance when Santa Anna struck. Many Tejano males, such as Francisco Esparza, and especially those among the lower classes without economic ties to the Anglo-Celtic community, worried about the corruption of traditional Tejano values. Expressing traces of xenophobia that flourished like a cancer in Texas, seemingly among everyone, they believed in the cultural-racial-nationalist creed that was gaining popularity in Texas by early 1836: “Mexico for the Mexicans.” 56

  Week after week, a host of illusions continued to linger over the muddled thinking of the men stationed at San Antonio. Ironically, the Alamo garrison, including Travis, continued to be overconfident because they believed that the Tejano people of San Antonio would fully rally to their support. Thoroughly deluded, Jameson wrote in a letter on January 18: “We can rely on aid from the citizens of this town in the case of a siege.” But on March 3 on the siege’s tenth day, Travis would reveal the bitter truth of the untapped manpower source that was heavily counted upon to ensure the garrison’s survival: “The citizens of this municipality are all our enemies except those who have joined us.” 57

  Yet Colonel Neill had believed that the garrison could depend upon hundreds of Tejano fighting men from San Antonio, even though at this time the town only had a population of around 2,000. Bowie was also guilty of overestimating possible Tejano assistance, seeing more supporters than potential enemies or neutrals. Revealing that he was out of touch with reality, Neill expected that the garrison could count on the timely assistance of fully 80 percent of the Tejano male population. Ironically, not only was Neill completely wrong about future Tejano support, but he would be long gone from San Antonio by the time Santa Anna struck, almost as if having suddenly realized how his miscalculations spelled the end of the Alamo garrison’s existence.

  Ample evidence that some Tejanos had assisted General Cós in the Alamo’s defense by firing on the attacking Americans, even killing Ben Milam it was thought by some Texans, was conveniently overlooked. Ironically, the Anglo-Celts naively placed their lives in the faith of two distinct people—both the settlers of east Texas and the Tejanos, both of whom were destined to fail them in the end. However, the Tejanos would remain mostly neutral because they were caught between opposing factions in a civil war. The only exceptions were the handful who either served in the Alamo garrison and those who provided intelligence to Santa Anna. 58

  One key indication of which way the majority of Tejanos would go was early evident in the anti-Anglo-Celtic sentiment of their priest, Manuel Menchaca. In the tradition of Father Hidalgo, he was a warriorpriest who had led foraging raids on the ranches of pro-American Tejanos, including Juan Sequín. This nationalist priest might have been troubled by Protestants expressing disdain toward Catholicism, and certainly by the corruption of the good Catholic Tejano girls, who may have become pregnant, of his flock. 59

  By the early weeks of 1836, a good many Alamo garrison members had not only been seduced by the expansive beauty of this land that could make them a quick fortune, but also by the alluring Tejano women, the comforting promise of Tejano male assistance, and a vibrant, fun-loving Tejano culture. Like Bowie, many single Alamo garrison members were thoroughly charmed, not only by the ladies but by the richness of Tejano culture. As never before, the young Anglo-Celtic men and boys basked in the greater openness, friendlessness, and courtesies of Tejano life. Already smitten, Virginia-born John William Smith had married pretty María de Jesús Curbelo, and had long made San Antonio his home.

  Month after month, Alamo garrison members spent their time drinking, dancing at fandangos, courting, and attempting to romance both the aristocratic Tejano women dressed in the latest styles of New Orleans (and, hence, Paris) styles, and lower class Tejano girls in peasant garb, while enjoying exotic Tejano dishes of corn tamales and enchiladas filled with beans, spices, and corn. Older Tejano women, including the mother of Gregorio and Enrique Esparza, “sold many tamales and beans” to garrison members. The men also basked in the relatively warm winter weather, with plenty of bright sunshine. Such developments played a role in reducing the overall vigilance, while fueling complacency that steadily eroded what little morale remained among largely inexperience men in arms. 60

  Not surprisingly, discipline
among the Anglo-Celtic garrison in San Antonio had broken down by early 1836. No longer were soldiers drilling or training, sharpening their skills to meet the enemy. A frustrated Jameson could only lament in a January letter: “The officers of every department do more work than the men and also stand guard, and act as patrol every night.” And with a classic understatement, a diplomatic Jameson, as if not to blemish the reputations of his fellow officers, merely commented with sullen resignation: “We have had loose discipline.” 61

  Meantime, if the garrison were relying on the strength of the Alamo as a fort, they were mistaken. Santa Anna’s second in command, aristocratic General Don Vicente Filisola, openly mocked the concept that the Alamo fit the definition as a “fortress.” Santa Anna’s personal secretary, Cuba-born Ramón Martínez Caro, who would be captured at San Jacinto, also ridiculed the place, referring to “the so-called fortress of the Alamo.” Not long after the Alamo’s fall, he criticized General Urrea for even referring to the Alamo as a fortress: “Does he call the battered and crumbling walls of the mission of Refugio, the fort of Goliad, and the defenses [sic] of the Alamo fortresses?” 62

  General Filisola, a seasoned veteran with more than thirty years of military service, including in the Napoleonic wars, easily ascertained the extensive weaknesses and liabilities of the Alamo as a defensive structure. A well-educated Italian who had joined the Spanish army as a teenager, Filisola migrated to Mexico in 1811. Possessing considerable tactical and strategic insight, he was Santa Anna’s most trusted lieutenant during the 1836 campaign. In no uncertain terms, he all but laughed at the Alamo’s lack of strength, realizing that defensively the antiquated structure was utterly “useless at all times and under any circumstances.” 63

  Of course, no one in the Army of Operations was more aware of the Alamo’s considerable defensive liabilities than General Cós. After all, he had been overwhelmed by the Texians at the Alamo in December 1835. Indeed, the Alamo’s feeble defenses had sealed the doom of his own force, compelling him to surrender only a few months before. Despite extensive preparations made by his engineers and troops to enhance the Alamo’s defensive capabilities, General Cós, who lamented the “circumstances in which I found myself [which were] extreme,” and his Mexican soldiers had learned the hard way that the Alamo compound simply could not be adequately defended. Therefore, throughout the siege, educated Mexican leaders viewed the Alamo as little more than a large cattle pen. Along with General Juan José Andrade, one of these men was Santa Anna’s respected, well-educated personal secretary, Ramón Martínez Caro. He described the Alamo as a “mere corral and nothing more.”

  Indeed, and contrary to the mighty “fortress” of myth, this was a common Mexican view of the Alamo. In defensive terms, they realized that the Alamo was already compromised by its large interior space and lengthy perimeter, before the 1836 campaign’s first shot was fired in anger. For such reasons, all of Santa Anna’s senior officers believed that Goliad was not only far more strategically important than San Antonio, but also more defensible. Indeed, the Alamo’s interior space of nearly three acres was so extensive that it had served as a corral for cattle or horses in the past. Here, deep in the heart of Tejano cattle country, such old Spanish missions, now obsolete reminders of Spain’s imperial past greatness, were often utilized as corrals. For instance, Mission Concepcion, located just south of the Alamo, was used as a horse and cattle corral for the vast ranchos that bordered both sides of the river that flowed southeast between San Antonio and Goliad. 64

  In time, the old Spanish mission that had begun as little more than a church grew so large that new buildings were constructed to form a defensive perimeter. Mission Indians lived in the rows of buildings that now formed the lengthy, rectangular perimeter: the Alamo’s walls. While the presidios were created by military men for defensive purposes, the mission enclosures, like the Alamo, were not created with defense against a conventional opponent in mind. Instead, they were built deliberately large so that large numbers of cattle, sheep, goats, and horses could graze in the interior’s vastness for protection, even as local people took shelter from slashing Indian raids. The walls, such as they existed, were suitable against arrows or musketry, and also limited the mounted tactics of marauding Indians, but they had not been constructed to withstand artillery and a conventional army. 65

  Therefore, in a strange paradox that doomed the garrison, the Alamo presented an inviting illusion to the Alamo’s leaders that simply could not be resisted, especially by inexperienced commanders. Bowie and Neill failed to appreciate that this massive complex had not been built by military men or trained engineers. The Alamo garrison could not defend its hundreds of yards of perimeter spanning nearly a quarter of a mile, regardless of the number of artillery pieces. Instead the young men and boys of the Alamo were themselves corralled.

  Even the thick-walled Alamo chapel was compromised as a defensive bastion because of its proximity to the weakest point in the compound—a low, wooden palisade. Here, at the southeast corner of the Alamo chapel, the Spanish missionaries, thinking more of God than sound defensive arrangements, had not thought of erecting a protective wall. In addition, a small spring that released a trickle of water to make wet, soft ground precluded the erection of a sturdy wall at this point. Consequently, by early 1836, the wooden palisade erected by Cós’ troops was the weakest defensive point along the perimeter.

  Extending around 100 feet in length and standing about seven feet high, this wooden palisade—compared to sections of the adobe and limestone walls as high as twelve feet—consisted of two rows of upright cedar logs separated by about six feet and filled with earth. An outside ditch—not as deep as it should have been to impede attackers—and a relatively slight network of abates—cut and sharpened, interlacing tree limbs that pointed toward assaulting force—bolstered the position. Dwarfed by the church’s towering south side to its left and the buildings of the low barracks along the southern perimeter on its right, this wooden palisade extended from the Alamo’s southeast corner to the east end of the south wall. 66

  Not surprisingly, the educated, military-trained Mexican officers, especially the elite engineers, looked upon the Alamo quite differently from not only the opposing leadership, but also modern historians. Indeed, the various earthen defensive emplacements, or “forts,”—such as the small lunette protecting the Alamo’s main gate on the south side—were created by General Cós’ engineers to better protect the north, west, and south sides of the Alamo. The Mexicans saw the Alamo as not a single fortress but merely a series of fortified bastions of earth positioned along the perimeter. Because they knew that the Alamo had been a Spanish mission and used extensively as a corral, the lunettes on both the west and south side of the Alamo were seen as the true forts, each getting a distinctive name after being constructed by Mexico’s highly trained engineers.

  The creation of these distinct “mini-forts” along the Alamo’s perimeter on the south and west side were necessary in tactical terms, because the Alamo’s greatest liability was that its walls could not be adequately defended by infantrymen, or even artillerymen to a lesser degree, regardless of their numbers. General Filisola concluded after a close examination of the Alamo, and after witnessing the feeble defense, wrote how “our losses should have been greater than they were if the [artillery] pieces of the enemy had [sic] could have been placed in the wall or enclosure. But the rooms of the latter of the inner part would not permit it, and those that were in the right location could fire only to the front.” 67

  It has been estimated that at least a thousand men, perhaps more, were necessary to defend the mission-turned-fort. But in fact, a thousand defenders would have made little difference because of the Alamo’s seemingly endless defensive liabilities and vulnerabilities. As it stood, the Alamo’s total defensive perimeter of nearly 450 yards, or the length of more than four football fields, was to be protected by less than 200 defenders—a recipe not only for a weak defense but for certain disaster. 68<
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  For such sound reasons, Houston had been against making a defensive stand at the Alamo. Nevertheless, he left the final decision to Bowie, who was convinced by Neill, almost as if washing his hands of the matter. Houston was certain that “Our forces must not be shut up in forts, where they can neither be supplied with men or provisions. Long aware of this fact I directed, on the 16th of January last, that the artillery should be removed, and the Alamo blown up; but this was prevented by the expedition upon Matamoros.” 69

  So with memories of Horseshoe Bend yet strong, Houston had wanted to abandon the Alamo in preference for the establishment of a defensive line farther east and closer to the Gulf ports, which received supplies and volunteers from the United States. But compared to the expansive prairie lands around San Antonio, and from where threats would come, the old Spanish mission, almost having a hypnotic affect, seemed to beckon the Anglo-Celtic soldiers. The walls and the church itself offered an unwarranted sense of security. The Alamo seemed to offer a warm, sheltering womb that could keep these young men and boys from harm, or so it seemed to these innocents in the art of war.

  At first glance and to the untrained eye, the Alamo appeared to be strong, even formidable. This was not only a mirage but also a fatal illusion. General Cós’ engineers had improved the Alamo’s defensive qualities, but only to a limited degree. Defensive enhancements were principally only in regard to the Alamo’s greatest strength, its plentiful amount of artillery. This heavy arsenal resulted in construction—by Mexican soldiers—of artillery platforms, especially along the north wall, the lunette on the southern perimeter, and at the southwestern corner, where the 18-pounder stood. These defensive improvements by the Mexicans also included “planting cannon on the top of the church, cutting down trees” to form an abatis, as revealed in theMaryland Gazette of November 26, 1835.

  Cós and his men had focused on maximizing the Alamo’s greatest strength—artillery, in the Napoleonic tradition—at the expense of the Mexican rifleman. Consequently, the engineers had failed to create firing platforms or catwalks for riflemen atop the walls. Additionally, no rifle slots or portholes were cut into the walls for firing. John Sutherland lamented about “There being no portholes in the [north] wall.” Even the Red Stick Creeks at Horseshoe Bend had cut both lower and upper ranges of portholes for rifles in their wooden breastwork. And no parapet was built to protect soldiers firing from near the top of the walls.