The Alamo

On February 23, 1836, 180 or so Texans, some Anglo-Americans, but including several Tejanos (Mexicans born in Texas) took refuge in an old Spanish mission called the Alamo. They were part of a movement in Texas, a joint Anglo-Tejano rebellion, to defend the loosely-constructed Mexican constitution of 1824 from the centralizing tyranny of Mexico's Napoleon, Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

They held out until March 6, a full 13 days, against a much larger force, nearly 6,000 men strong, supported by heavy artillery and commanded by Santa Anna himself.

On that day, Santa Anna launched a full-scale assault, in which he sustained losses exceeding 600 men (about 1/3 of those involved in the attack), but the Mexican army succeeded in taking the Alamo and killing every defending combatant.

Ever since that day, the Alamo has acquired a mythological status. It has been honored in letters and in film, in poetry and in song.

Each has tried to answer the simple question: why did the men stay in the Alamo when they knew that they would all be put to the sword (Santa Anna had his bugles play "Deguello," meaning "throat slitting" or "beheading)?

To answer this question, modern mythology has reached back to ancient history. In 480 B.C., a small army of a few thousand Greeks, led by the Spartan king, Leonidas faced an army of several hundred thousand Persians under the command of their king Xerxes.

While there were, indeed, only about 300 Spartans, they were not the only Greeks present. However, before the final Persian advance, Leonidas sent the bulk of the Greek forces away in retreat and stayed with his 300 Spartans--and about a thousand other Greeks--hence the myth.

Before his advance, Xerxes offered Leonidas the chance to surrender his men's weapons, to which he replied, "Come and get them."

Leonidas was lucky to be defending in a mountain pass. The narrow ground prevented the Persians from simply overwhelming him, and it is said that he inflicted between 20,000 and 30,000 Persian casualties before being overwhelmed. The Spartans, including Leonidas, were slaughtered, but they had held the Persians at bay for a precious three days--long enough, apparently, for the rest of the Greek forces to escape, link up with others, and eventually defeat the Persians and send Xerxes back to Asia.

And this brings us to our Alamo myth.

To explain why the defenders at the Alamo stayed to die, the story of Leonidas was invoked:

The Texans at the Alamo died in order to give Sam Houston more time to assemble effective resistance.

In a striking parallel to Leonidas, one of the first episodes of the Texan revolution involved a rebel cannon which the Mexicans tried to seize but the Texans replied, "Come and take it"--note the similarity to what Leonidas replied to Xerxes. This cannon was present at the Alamo and captured on March 6.

Since the destruction of the Alamo was soon followed by Houston's absolute victory at San Jacinto, after which Santa Anna was captured--thus securing Texan independence--, the idea that the Texans fought at the Alamo to buy time for Houston seems plausible.

However, General Sam Houston, commander of the Texan forces, had ordered the Alamo razed and San Antonio evacuated. The defense of the Alamo went against his expressed orders. We honestly don't know why Col. Travis, James Bowie, David Crockett, and all of the others defied these orders and stayed. No one wants to think that 180 brave men died for nothing, but that's pretty much what happened.

It seems more honorable to adopt the Thermopylae angle, but it is simply not the case. Yes, it makes for "cooler" history, but if history is really something valuable, something by which we might learn true lessons, then there is no place for such fanciness.

Since Travis sent dozens of messengers with essentially the same message--Send us some help!--it is most likely that he and the others assumed that help would arrive. By the time they figured out that no help was coming, it was too late--so they stayed and fought like brave soldiers until the end. Houston was right to shout, "Remember the Alamo!" at the moment of his assault at San Jacinto, and well we should remember the Alamo. However, in our quest to find meaning in tragedy, we mustn't fudge the facts, cutting and pasting as we see fit until the story gives us the appropriate number of goosebumps.

The men at the Alamo died because they misjudged their friends' ability to support them. In this light, they were foolish to stay, but they could not have known that, so they are blameless. They were heroes, certainly, for they died for a good cause, but there story and their honor is diminished by simply making them up to be the Spartans at Thermopylae. Let the Spartans have Thermopylae, and let the Texans have the Alamo.