Alamo Traces

by Thomas Ricks Lindley

  113 “Connel O’Donnel Kelly” account, Day, compiler, The Texas Almanac 1857-1873, 600.

  114 Ibid. The belief that John W. Smith returned to San Antonio by the upper road from Gonzales is based on the fact that if he had used the lower road, his group would have encountered Seguin, Chenoweth, and De Sauque, who were riding to Gonzales. At that point, Smith would have learned the Alamo had fallen.

  115 Tom Turner to Dearest Mother, September 8, 1836, Liberty, Jenkins, ed., Papers, VIII: 415-416.

  116 D. C. Barrett et al. to James W. Robinson, January 31, 1836. The wording of “last extremity” as a term for death was also used by soldiers in General George Washington’s army during the American Revolution.

  117 “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876.

  Chapter Five

  Moses, the Climbing Rose:

  Thorny Problems

  I wish to say something in self-defense and for the truth of history, concerning my published account of the escape of a man whose name was Rose from the Alamo, March 3, 1836. . . . I have not seen any published contradiction of it by any reliable authority; neither do I know of any reliable person who has publicly contradicted it.

  William P. Zuber1

  In the summer of 1990, a new history of the Battle of the Alamo surfaced in bookstores. The narrative was Jeff Long’s Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo. The book, with the Battle of the Alamo and the alleged “warts” of Alamo commanders William B. Travis, James Bowie, and David Crockett forming the narrative’s core, was promoted by the publisher as “a rich, powerful, and comprehensive history that removes the myths from the battle for Texas; we have the true story, as dramatic as any legend, of what led to the Alamo and what followed from it.”2

  Ironically, for a narrative that is supposed to be a myth-buster, Long accepted the biggest Alamo myth of all of them, the story of Travis’s line in the dirt, as the truth.3 The tale alleges that on the afternoon of March 3, Alamo commander William B. Travis, realizing that there was no hope of a Texian victory, called his troops together and informed them of their impending fate. He is supposed to have scratched a line in the dirt with his saber and asked those who would join him in a gallant death to cross over the line. All of the men, except Moses Rose, an old Frenchman from James Bowie’s volunteers, are alleged to have hurried across the line. A short time later Rose escaped over an Alamo wall and humped it to Grimes County. There Rose told his story to Abraham and Mary Ann Zuber, old friends, whose son William P. Zuber published an account of the tale in the 1873 Texas Almanac.4

  Brass rod in the flagstone at the Alamo, symbolic of Travis’s line

  At that time acceptance of the Rose report varied from Texan to Texan. Rufus Grimes, brother of Alamo defender Albert C. Grimes, expressed his strong support with these words: “The account is entitled full credit. . . . Wm. P. Zuber is a man of undoubted veracity and when Rose escaped from the Alamo he made his way to the house of Abram Zuber an old friend and acquaintance then living in Rvans Prairie in this county (Grimes) where he staid [sic] until his feet got well enough to travel again (his feet & legs were full of cactus thorns) traveling in the night.”5

  The artist (painter) H. A. McArdle, however, felt the Rose narrative was pure fiction. McArdle, after presenting a critical analysis of the story to brand it as a fabrication, reflected: “Mr. Zuber feels he has worked in ‘a just and truthful case.’ What? The defense of a craven and dastard – and to cast a reflection on the courage and patriotism of the martyrs of the Alamo, who, according to Rose, required a speech, etc – and after eight days’ siege – to keep them from running away.”6

  Despite Zuber’s promotion and defense of the tale until his death in 1913, the argument remained unsettled.7 The early 1930s brought two academic historians to the subject. Ruby Mixon, in researching a master’s thesis on William B. Travis, did her best to verify the Rose story. She felt the accounts of Travis’s last three days were “a veritable Gordian knot” of legend, fact, and fiction. She concluded that it was probably impossible to determine the truth about Travis’s alleged sword line in the dirt.8

  Dr. Amelia W. Williams, in her doctoral dissertation, expressed her opinion with a singular footnote: “Historians have been divided in their opinion concerning the story, the most careful students having discredited it. At best they consider it a legend, plausible perhaps, but almost certainly the creation of a vivid imagination.”9

  Thus the certitude of the Rose story remained in doubt until as Walter Lord, author of A Time To Stand (considered by many to be the best book on the Alamo), observed: “Then in 1939 came a thunderbolt.” The “electric” evidence out of the blue was land grant testimony found by R. B. Blake, a Nacogdoches researcher. Blake claimed the documents revealed that in 1838 one Louis Rose of Nacogdoches identified six Alamo defenders in probate court proceedings. Rose allegedly placed himself in the Alamo on March 3 and claimed he had departed the fortress on that date. Blake assumed that Louis Rose had to have been Moses Rose.10

  At that point, J. Frank Dobie, famed folklorist, eminent Texas pundit and raconteur, who was always quick to recognize a Texas tale that had legs, entered the fray with an article titled “The Line That Travis Drew.” He referred to the Louis Rose testimony and a secondhand account of the line story attributed to Susanna Dickinson by Rufus Burleson. Thus Dobie, as only he could, concluded: “The old story, the cherished story, the heroic story of the line that Travis drew seems to me vindicated sufficiently for credence. The mere absence of documentary proof never repudiated it anyhow.”11

  More objective individuals were far from convinced by the 1838 Louis Rose statements. An editorial writer for the Wichita Times wrote: “This new evidence does not give the story absolute confirmation, but it should be comforting to those who want so much to believe. Probably there never will be definitive proof of either the truth or falsity of the story; but those who want to believe have a good basis for believing, and they will greatly outnumber the scholarly doubters.”12

  Claude Elliott, Southwest Texas State Teachers College professor, was one of the scholarly skeptics. He reviewed In the Shadow of History, published by the Texas Folklore Society, which contained the Dobie article and R. B. Blake’s “A Vindication of Rose and His Story,” that showcased the 1838 land grant testimony.13

  Elliott declared with authority:

  Mr. Dobie first gives a history of the Travis story and tacitly admits that it is untrue when he says: “Reading the documented historians you’d think nothing could be so unless it happened,” and then states that he believes the story. In regard to “A Vindication of Rose and His Story” it should be said that it falls short of a real vindication. An analysis of this ingenious and admirable bit of detective work shows that there is very good reason to believe that Rose lived and, aside from going under the names of Louis, Lewis, Moses, and Stephen, was fairly reliable. In spite of all this the fertile imagination of W. P. Zuber, to whom we are solely indebted for the Rose story, must be dealt with.14

  Simply put, the Louis Rose data is not an independent verification of the Rose story because Blake never proved Louis Rose and Moses Rose were the same person. Still, Lord was convinced Louis and Moses were one and the same and the tale was true. He concluded: “So Rose was there. But did he leave under the dramatic circumstances described by Zuber? Freshly uncovered information suggests that he did.” The new evidence Lord discovered was an alleged statement by Susanna (Dickinson) Hannig, allegedly given in 1876 to an agent of the Texas Adjutant General’s office. Lord felt the Hannig document was reliable and independent evidence that verified Travis’s talk to his soldiers and Rose’s escape.15

  Today the “line story” is a historical fact that stands on three legs of evidence. Those limbs being: the original Moses Rose tale as told by William P. Zuber, the 1838 Louis Rose land grant testimony as interpreted by R. B. Blake, and the alleged Susanna Hannig affidavit as interpreted by Walter Lord. A quick read of the evidence, as pr
esented by Blake and Lord, strongly suggests that the “line” yarn stands on a solid foundation. An expanded and critical examination of the data, however, will show that the house of Moses/Louis Rose is constructed on unstable sand.

  First, let us “deal” with the “fertile imagination of W. P. Zuber.” His account first appeared in 1873. Twenty-two years later he furnished an expanded version for Mrs. Anna M. J. Pennybacker’s A New History of Texas for Schools, 1895. Alamo Traces presents a combination of the 1873 report and the 1895 version because few Alamo researchers have seen the entire account. The parts in brackets are the elements that were not included in the 1873 version.16

  An Escape From The Alamo

  Prairie Plains, Grimes County, Texas May 7th, 1873

  Editor, Texas Almanac:

  I regard the following account worthy of preservation, as it enhances a report of the last scene in the Alamo that has ever been made known to the survivors of those who fell in that fortress.

  Moses Rose, a native of France, was an early immigrant to Texas, and resided in Nacogdoches, where my father, Mr. Abraham Zuber, made his acquaintance in 1827. I believe that he never married. My father regarded and treated him as a friend, and I have often heard him say that he believed Rose to be a man of strict veracity. In 1830, I saw him several times at my father’s residence, in what is now San Augustine County. He was then about forty-five years old, and spoke very broken English. [He had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army in the invasion of Russia and the retreat from Moscow. He was one of the early settlers at Nacogdoches, Texas, and that was his home, as long as he lived. Mr. Frost Thorn, of Nacogdoches, employed him as a messenger between that town and Natchitoches, Louisiana. Said Thorn generally kept four wagons running between the two towns, carrying cotton and other produce to Natchitoches and returning with goods from Nacogdoches. He arranged with settlers on the road to repair his wagons and supply his teamsters with provender and provisions, on short credit. Rose’s duty was to bear the money and pay the debts thus contracted. At the same time, he carried the mail between the two towns on private contract, there being no government mail on this route. My father visited Texas in 1827, and became acquainted with Rose at Nacogdoches. He also knew him later, and believed him to be an honest, truthful man. I also knew him in what is now San Augustine County, in 1830. He was a close observer and had a retentive memory.]17

  Rose was a warm friend of Col. James Bowie, and accompanied or followed him to the Alamo in the fall of 1835, and continued with him till within three days of the fall of the fort.

  During the last five days and nights of his stay, the enemy bombarded the fort almost incessantly, and several times advanced to the walls, and the men within were so constantly engaged that they ate and slept only at short intervals, while one body of the enemy was retiring to be relieved by another, yet they had not sustained a single loss.

  The following is the substance of Rose’s account of his escape and the circumstances connected therewith, as he related them to my parents and they related them to me:

  About two hours before sunset, on the third day of March, 1836, the bombardment suddenly ceased, and the enemy withdrew an unusual distance. Taking advantage of that opportunity, Col. Travis paraded all of his effective men in a single file; and, taking his position in front of center, he stood for some moments apparently speechless from emotion. Then, nerving himself for the occasion, he addressed them substantially as follows:

  MY BRAVE COMPANIONS – Stern necessity compels me to employ the few moments afforded by this probably brief cessation of conflict in making known to you the most interesting, yet the most solemn, melancholy, and unwelcome fact that perishing humanity can realize. But how shall I find language to prepare you for its reception? I cannot do so. All that I can say to this purpose is, be prepared for the worst. I must come to the point. Our fate is sealed. Within a very few days – perhaps a very few hours – we must all be in eternity. This is our destiny, and we cannot avoid it. This is our certain doom.

  I have deceived you long by the promise of help. But crave your pardon, hoping that after hearing my explanation, you will not only regard my conduct as pardonable, but heartily sympathize with me in my extreme necessity. In deceiving you, I also deceived myself, having been first deceived by others.

  I have continually received the strongest assurances of help from home. Every letter from the Council and every one that I have seen from individuals at home, has teemed with assurances that our people were ready, willing, and anxious to come to our relief; and that within a very short time we might confidently expect recruits enough to repel any force that would be brought against us. These assurances I received as facts. They inspired me with the greatest confidence that our little band would be made the nucleus of an army of sufficient magnitude to repel our foes, and to enforce peace on our terms. In the honest and simple confidence of my heart, I have transmitted to you these promises of help, and my confident hopes of success. – But the promised help has not come and our hopes are not to be realized.

  I have evidently confided too much in the promises of our friends. But let us not be in haste to censure them. The enemy has invaded our territory much earlier than we anticipated; and their present approach is matter of surprise. Our friends were evidently not informed of our perilous condition in time to save us. Doubtless they would have been here by the time they expected any considerable force of the enemy. When they find a Mexican army in their midst, I hope they will show themselves true to their cause.

  My calls to Col. Fannin remain unanswered, and my messengers have not returned. The probabilities are that his whole command has fallen into the hands of the enemy, or been cut to pieces, and that our couriers have been cut off.18

  I trust that I have now explained my conduct to your satisfaction and that you do not censure me for my course.

  I must again refer to the assurances of help from home. They are what deceived me, and they caused me to deceive you. Relying upon those assurances, I determined to remain within these walls until the promised help should arrive, stoutly resisting all assaults from without. Upon the same reliance, I retained you here, regarding the increasing force of our assailants with contempt, till they outnumbered us more than twenty to one, and escape became impossible. For the same reason, I scorned their demand of a surrender at discretion and defied their threat to put every one of us to the sword, if the fort should be taken by storm.

  I must now speak of our present situation. Here we are, surrounded by an army that could almost eat us for breakfast, from whose arms our lives are, for the present, protected by these stone walls. We have no hope for help, for no force that we could ever reasonably have expected, could cut its way through the strong ranks of these Mexicans. We dare not surrender; for, should we do so, that black flag, now waving in our sight, as well as the merciless character of our enemies, admonishes us of what would be our doom. We cannot cut our way out through the enemy’s ranks; for, in attempting that, we should all be slain in less than ten minutes. Nothing remains then, but to stay within this fort, and fight to the last moment. In this case, we must, sooner or later, all be slain; for I am sure that Santa Anna is determined to storm the fort and take it, even at the greatest cost of the lives of his own men.

  Then we must die! Our speedy dissolution is a fixed and inevitable fact. – Our business is, not to make a fruitless effort to save our lives, but to choose the manner of our death. But three modes are presented to us. Let us choose that by which we may best serve our country. Shall we surrender, and be deliberately shot, without taking the life of a single enemy? Shall we try to cut our way out through the Mexican ranks, and be butchered before we can kill twenty of our adversaries? I am opposed to either method; for in either case, we could not but lose our lives, without benefiting our friends at home – our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our wives and little ones. The Mexican army is strong enough to march through the country, and exterminate its inhabitants, and our cou
ntrymen are not able to oppose them in open field. My choice, then, is to remain in this fort, to resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible.

  Then let us band together as brothers, and vow to die together. Let us resolve to withstand our adversaries to the last; and, at each advance, to kill as many of them as possible. And when, at last, they shall storm our fortress, let us kill them as they come! Kill them as they scale our walls! Kill them as they leap within! Kill them as they kill our companions! And continue to kill them as long as one of us shall remain alive!

  By this policy, I trust that we shall so weaken our enemies that our countrymen at home can meet them on fair terms, cut them up, expel them from the country, and thus establish their own independence, and secure prosperity and happiness to our families and our country. And, be assured, our memory will be gratefully cherished by posterity, till all history shall be erased, and all noble deeds shall be forgotten.

  But I leave every man to his own choice. Should any man prefer to surrender, and be tied and shot; or to attempt an escape through the Mexican ranks, and be killed before he can run a hundred yards, he is at liberty to do so.

  My own choice is to stay in this fort, and die for my country, fighting as long as breath shall remain in my body. This I will do, even if you leave me alone. Do as you think best – but no man can die with me without affording me comfort in the moment of death.

  Colonel Travis then drew his sword and with its point traced a line upon the ground extending from the right to the left of the file. Then, resuming his position in front of the center, he said, “I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line. Who will be the first? March!”