Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire UN Claws on the Alamo

We went to the Museum of the Confederacy and Confederate White House on our big field trip. I need to go back.

Santa Ana was preserving his union, right?

I think he was trying to free black slaves in Tejas.

It's all good.

That is a complex issue.

The Second Texas Revolution started when, in 1835 the party of Santa Anna discarded the Constitution of 1824, revolts immediately broke out all over Mexico, Texas being one. If you were for Santa Anna and a dictatorial government you were a Centralista, for the Constitution you were a Federalista.

Naturally, given their American roots, most naturalized Mexican citizens in Texas were Federalistas. Most of the Tejanos, given the dreadful massacres that had been visited upon them the last time a bunch of Americans showed up in San Antonio talking rebellion twenty-three years earlier, remained neutral. A few took the Federal/Texian side, others took the Centralist side. The only immigrant group supporting the Centralist side in any numbers were some of the Irish around Goliad, primarily on the basis of religion (they were Catholics).

The first shots in Texas were fired in October of '35 when Santa Anna's brother-in-law one General Cos, was dispatched to San Antonio to fortify the Alamo compound (which had, for the previous fifty years, been used as a base and warehouse for military endeavors). The occasion was an attempt to retrieve a government cannon on loan to the now-Federalist settlers at Gonzales.

Two months later in December of '35, these same Texians, mostly Mexican citizens, under Jim Bowie and Stephen F. Austin, forcibly ejected General Cos from San Antonio after a gruelling five-day battle. Cos was allowed to go back to Mexico proper bearing his colors and some arms. At that point the Texians were fighting under the 1824 Mexican flag for the restoration of the Constitution, although an Independence convention would soon be called up at Washington on the Brazos.

What made Texas different than the other Mexican states was the close proximity to the United States. Thousands of mostly young, footloose Americans, primarily from the South, sensing opportunity, poured in to fight. This was not an unmixed blessing; Susannah Dickinson, the famed white woman at the Alamo, was brought there for her own safety by her husband after she had been physically attacked by a party of Americans looting her home at Gonzales.

Most Texians, ie. prior White residents of Texas who were Mexican citizens, took no part in the actual fighting. Cowardice likely had little to do with it, unlike the Americans pouring in they did have property to protect, and the events after Santa Anna arrived proceeded with bewildering speed. This whole thing was over in just two months.

In January of '36, less than two months before the arrival of Santa Anna, a party of some 200 American adventurers had stripped the Alamo compound of most of its military supplies and, flying the 1824 Mexican flag, set out to invade Mexico, ostensibly on the Federalist side.

When Santa Anna arrived the following month, he was coming from his brutal suppression of the Federalist uprising in Zacatecas. Upon arrival here, he found the Alamo mostly to be full of foreign citizens, primarily Americans, most of whom like Davy Crockett had only just got here and who had taken up arms against the government of Mexico. He called them all criminals and pirates and refused to make any deals with them.

At that time the motives of the Alamo defenders were threefold. A few, mostly those who had been here for some time, were citizens, and held their property here under Mexican law, were fighting for the restoration of the 1824 constitution.

Most, including almost all of the recently arrived Americans, were probably fighting to separate Texas as an independent nation from Mexico, although independence had not yet been declared before the siege began.

A small but significant faction, also mostly Americans, were fighting to separate both Texas and the Mexican State of Coahuila from Mexico. Indeed it was the two-star "Coahuila y Texas" Mexican flag that most likely flew over the Alamo during the siege, most likely because it was the only flag at hand (although famously captured at the Alamo by Santa Anna who used it as evidence of piracy, there is no evidence that the banner of the New Orleans Greys privately-financed militia company was actually flown over the Alamo at any time during the battle).

Few entering the Alamo intended or expected to necessarily die there. This was one of those hindsight deals where the number and organization of the forces brung in by Santa Anna were a surprise to everyone. Also, most everyone everywhere, inside and outside the Alamo, expected sufficient reinforcements to arrive to save the day.

As late as March 5th, the day before the fall, the journal of a Mexican officer present indicates that a query was quietly sent out with a local Tejana married to an American defender to the effect that would Santa Anna permit the Alamo defenders to withdraw, bearing colors and arms, as General Cos had been allowed to do three months earlier.

Santa Anna as always refused anything but unconditional surrender, a thing the defenders would not accept. And they were right in their decision: Later that same month more than three hundred recently-arrived American citizens stationed at Goliad DID surrender, out of concern for the welfare of their wounded. Almost all were subsequently executed without trial on grounds of piracy at Goliad. The few that escaped that fate mostly did so as a result of the intervention of local Tejanos on their behalf.

Ultimately the Alamo came down to this; a refusal to submit to a lone dictator in the person of Santa Anna, beyond that, it gets complicated.

THAT is the story I believe most of us regulars want to be told, as close to the truth as possible.

Birdwatcher

I appreciate the dissertation (and I'll re-read it later over beer), but the smack you should have felt was irony.

Where have I deviated from the facts, anywhere?

Chances are highly probable that if you were an Anglo in Texas in the 1820's/early 30's it wasn't because you wanted to be. It was a matter of self preservation.

You really don't get it?

You are afraid that the UN will rewrite or taint Alamo history.

Is this no different than me concerned that those who write the books may have rewritten, or tainted or redacted the facts of the Civil War? Leaving the "facts" for you not to deviate from.

Let me know if I am being too subtle.

..and I'll throw out a book recommendation...

Stephen Hardin's Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution, 1835-1836 ...

http://www.amazon.com/Texian-Iliad-Military-Revolution-1835-1836/dp/0292731027

About as unvarnished and concise an account of the events of those months as can be had anywhere.

Birdwatcher

What books exactly do you presume I have or have not read? I was a strange kid, a voracious and compulsive reader, ain't changed much in that respect over the last 50 years.

Actually, well before all that, my FIRST exposure to the War Between the States was back in the '60's in England; "Civil War Bubblegum Cards".....

http://www.oldbubblegumcards.com/1960s/Civil-War-News/index.html

Heck, we even had the checklist

Birdwatcher

Oh, is it now? So, the Second Texas Revolution is a complex issue and the Mexicans (trying to preserve their Union) were wrong there whilst fighting against slave owning secessionists?

Hmmm...



Santa Ana, abrogating the Mexican Constitution was a dictator, whilst others abrogating other Constitutions were "liberators" and "defenders of the Union"?

Hmmm...



Yet, Texas was a slave state populated by a very large contingent of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky stock (all slave states); the same people that would themselves secede for self-determination just a few years later.

Hmmm...



So, shots were fired by secessionists and federales over the use of a military storage site...

Hmmm....



So, the secessionists kicked the Federals out and raised their own, secessionist flag over the fort....

Hmmmm....



You mean, those slavers and those that supported slavery, right? A practice that was legal and Constitutional in the United States under the U.S. Federal government, right?

Hmmm...



So, you had citizens/residents of Texas (secessionist Texas) that had property to protect and chose not to fight at all; thus, they couldn't be associated with the Federales or the secessionists?

Hmmm...



"American adventurers"? Isn't that a cute term for secessionists, especially those that supported slavery?

Hmmm...



So, the man fighting to preserve his Union by crushing secessionists (who were seeking self-determination and self-governance - oh, and where slavery was legal) was guilty of brutal suppression of the uprising and declared all the secessionists to be criminals and pirates and instead of negotiating to allow them their right of self-determination and self-governance, he met them with military force?

Hmmm...



So, the secessionists weren't unified in their goals to drive out the Federales, and yet whilst slavery was legal there, it wasn't the main issue even though the Federales did not want to allow it?

Hmmm...



So, the Federales only offered to accept unconditional surrender in order to preserve the Union and the secessionists would not accept living under that yoke and being denied their rights of self-determination and self-governance?

Hmmm...



Yes, I can see that. You want that version of history to be told, as you believe it to be the truth - and have factual evidence to back it up (at least to whatever degree you choose to accept), about such a short lived, yet complicated issue as Texas secession from Mexico; one involving merely thousands of people on either side in just one Mexican state and lasting just a few months. It certainly seems far more complicated than any such similar situation involving millions of people across more than a dozen states and lasting for more than four years.

Yet, the Mexican Federales did not permit slavery, were fighting to preserve their Union against secessionists who did support slavery, and I'm sure they firmly believed that they (the Federales) were doing it for the children and future children of the Mexican Union.

I can see how that makes sense. Can you?

Yes good book!!! Known Steve for years!! Awesome guy!

I will also interject for the sake of argument, at the same time, the entire yucatan peninsula was in revolt too. Sans american adventurers!

Please continue.

When Dr Hardin comes to speak at the Alamo Symposium at the Menger Hotel right next door, during the annual Fall of the Alamo reenactment out on the Alamo plaza, we always have a problem rounding up enough reenactors portraying either side for the two o'clock battle, so many of us having deserted the field of battle to go hear him speak

Birdwatcher

Just about everyone in the Alamo was from a slave state anyway and the Confederate national flag is displayed prominently inside. They may as well bulldoze it as leave it up. After all, the only reason people have ever been opposed to central authority was because they were for slavery.

Slavery was made conditionally illegal in the Mexican Constitution of 1821. It was completely abolished in Mexico in 1829 with Texas given until 1830 to get on board. Of course it was a major bone of contention between Anglo-Texians and their Spanish/Mexican governors, perhaps THE BIGGEST. Texians continued to illegally bring slaves into Texas and own them in contravention to the laws of the land. And of course, many schemes were tried with slave owners forcing illiterate slaves to sign contracts of indentured servitude for life.

But, of course, the Texas Constitution of 1835 legalized slavery forever. It further made it illegal for a slave owner to free his slaves without permission of Congress. And it specifically excluded Africans and Indians from the classes of persons with protected rights under the Texas Constitution. And of course, Congress did not have the power to enact a general emancipation of slaves in Texas.

The Texas Constitution was a document that enlarged and protected slavery forever in Texas. It further, forever denied the rights of citizenship or even basic human rights to Africans and Indians. It was, on its face manifestly unjust.

On the other hand, Santa Anna promised freedom to all slaves that fell under his control. There were several slave uprisings with one of around a hundred slaves on the Brazos. It was defeated by the Texians and dealt with very harshly with numerous executions. Of course, Santa Anna's army contained many men of African descent, including some escaped slaves and was otherwise made up almost entirely of Native Americans, some of whom did not even speak Spanish but rather their own native tongues.

It is pretty clear to see that Texas Independence made slavery possible in Texas and created misery for thousands of Africans and virtually insured the legal eradication of native Americans in the state, most of whom were not the Commanches and Kiowas of legend but peaceful Cherokees and Caddo living in villages in North and Northeast Texas.

Any right thinking man of the day would surely have sided with Santa Anna in his attempt to subdue rebellious slavers who EXPRESSLY protected and enlarged that odious institution. It really sickens me that there are people out there today who celebrate this stuff and try to honor it. Tear the whole damned thing down I say. It is nothing but a sick monument to oppression.

Seen him several occasions in passing. But the one that sticks out was a little even at Round Top. Several of us displaced Creeks showed up at their event. And he was there in the tavern. Seems the argument du Jour and the tavern crowd were divided into two camps. The Houstonians. And the Lamaristas! LOL!!

That was the weekend the space shuttle came apart over East Texas.

Borderline brilliant, Sean.

Mason-Dixon line brilliant.....

I'd say Birdwatcher is pretty consistent. The problem is he's usually confused and ignorant.

I saw a two page post and I knew it was you

Well, at least you have learned something about Texas.

...and that History is complicated....

Some have tried to paint the Second Texas Revolution as a race war, including being "about slavery", and indeed at the time about one third of the American immigrants were Black slaves, reflecting the South as a whole.

How this was rather neatly contravened was that upon presumption of Mexican Citizenship by their owners, the slaves would be officially classed as "indentured servants" under impossibly long terms of service (100 years being a common one IIRC). Hence there was no significant abolitionist outcry from Mexico, after all probably most of the population of Mexico at the time was bound under similar de-facto permanent economic bondage, called "peonage" IIRC.

You can make a somewhat better case that the revolution was also a race war. Most on the Texian side were White, and if they were from anywhere in America especially, most of them had but little regard for anyone who wasn't.

Some of the local Hispanics fighting on the Texian side however and/or who signed the Declaration of Texas Independence were shortly thereafter elevated to high office within the Republic by that same White majority, and Juan Seguin even had a town named after him.

The tragedy is that, in the subsequent pouring-in of outsiders in the decades after after the shooting stopped, most Tejanos regardless of prior sympathies or record were pretty much ruthlessly dispossessed.

John Webber, who partnered with Smithwick in the founding of Webber's Prairie, south of Bastrop was an unusual figure, and well illustrates the declining standards of racial tolerance after Texas Independence.

Webber was from Connecticut, had had actually bought the freedom of a slave woman who had become pregnant with his child, so as to legitimize his child and ensure that child's own freedom. After taking that radical and courageous step, he was able to find acceptance of a sort on the then remote Texas Frontier.

As the country filled up however, he was obliged to pull up stakes and relocate just across the Mexican Border, where slavery was illegal and Black folk and miscegenation in general being far better tolerated.

Here is Smithwick on the topic...

http://www.lsjunction.com/olbooks/smithwic/otd17.htm

In the latter part of 1839 I took unto myself a helpmeet and established a home on a farm in the lower end of Webber's prairie, whither had preceded me my old time partner, "Dr." John F. Webber. He having retired from the practice of medicine, built the first house, a fort in the prairie, which bears his name....

Webber having become entangled in a low amour, the result of which was an offspring, which, though his own flesh and blood, was the property of another, without whose consent he could not provide for nor protect it, he faced the consequences like a man. Too conscientious to abandon his yellow offspring and its sable mother to a life of slavery, he purchased them from their owner, who, cognizant of the situation, took advantage of it to drive a sharp bargain.

Building himself a fort in the then unsettled prairie, Webber took his family home and acknowledged them before the world. There were others I wot of that were not so brave. The Webber family of course could not mingle with the white people, and, owing to the strong prejudice against free negroes, they were not allowed to mix with the slaves, even had they so desired: so they were constrained to keep to themselves.

Still there wasn't a white woman in the vicinity but knew and liked Puss, as Webber's dusky helpmeet was called, and in truth they had cause to like her, for, if there was need of help, Puss was ever ready to render assistance, without money and without price, as we old timers know. Webber's house was always open to any one who close to avail himself of its hospitality, and no human being ever went away from its doors hungry if the family knew it.

The destitute and afflicted many times found an asylum there. One notable instance was that of a poor orphan girl who had gone astray and had been turned out of doors by her kindred. Having nowhere to lay her head, she sought refuge with the Webbers. Too true a woman to turn the despairing sinner away, Puss took her in, comforting and caring for her in her time of sorest trial. Beneath that sable bosom beat as true a heart as ever warmed a human body. At another time they took in a poor friendless fellow who was crippled up with rheumatism and kept him for years.

By such generous acts as these, joined to the good sense they displayed in conforming their outward lives to the hard lines which the peculiar situation imposed on them, Webber and his wife merited and enjoyed the good will, and, to a certain extent the respect, of the early settlers. The ladies visited Puss sometimes, not as an equal, but because they appreciated her kindness. At such times she flew around and set out the best meal which her larder afforded; but, neither herself nor her children offered to sit down and eat with her guests, and when she returned the visit she was set down in the kitchen to eat alone.

After the Indians had been driven back, so that there was comparative safety on Webber's prairie, a new lot of people came - "the better sort," as Colonel Knight styled them - and they at once set to work to drive Webber out.

His children could not attend school, so he hired an Englishman to come to his house and teach them, upon which his persecutors raised a hue and cry about the effect it would have on the slave negroes, and even went so far as to threaten to mob the tutor. The cruel injustice of the thing angered me, and I told some of them that Webber went there before any of them dared to, and I, for one, proposed to stand by him.

I abhorred the situation, but I honored the man for standing by his children whatever their complexion. But the bitter prejudice, coupled with a desire to get Webber's land and improvements, became so threatening that I at length counseled him to sell out and take his family to Mexico, where there was no distinction of color. He took my advice, and I never afterward saw or heard of him.

Birdwatcher