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Enjoy, next Friday tho I'll be on the plaza 5am for the dawn volley.... with a leather bucket on my head......

I've been fortunate to have visited many battlefields world-wide. For Americans there are three that really touch my soul:
Gettysburg
The Alamo
Pearl Harbor

Every American should visit all three, but there are more, so many more, most I have not visited...

The John Wayne version of the Alamo was a highly cherry-picked and in place fictional account, pieced together forty years after the actual battle. First off, few on our side survived to tell about it, and others who did were mostly ignored (Travis' slave Joe and a couple of Tejanos for example). The main sources for the familiar story in the 1870's were Susanna Dickinson and some guy named William Zuber.

Susanna's husband Captain Almeron Dickinson was in charge of the artillery during the siege. At best, Texas was an unsettled place in those years and Almeron had brought his young wife and child to the Alamo after a roving band of American criminals had, in his absence, thrown her out of their house in course of taking anything of value.

Susanna was inside the church during the fighting. The only woman we know of who died in the fighting was an fugitive slave woman named Sarah from New Orleans. Speculation is that Sarah was a possibly a mixed-blood prostitute. Such women were noted for their beauty and often sold to brothels. Whoever she was she had been stolen from captivity by a young Alamo defender, a White man, who died on the walls manning a cannon (I should know his name but I forget).

Life was hard for many years for Susanna Dickinson after the revolution, for periods of time she was residing in a brothel tho we cannot say she was ever a prostitute. The same cannot be said of the babe of the Alamo, Susanna's infant daughter Angelina. Angelina left her husband at 19 years of age to pursue a wild and rebellious existence, she eventually died a drug-addicted prostitute of a uterus infection at age 45 on Galveston Island. Twenty years later, Susanna found security and a measure of respectability in a marriage to an older German merchant.

It should be understood that the Republic of Texas was a nation of immigrants. Even in 1836 only about 2,000 of the 30,000 Anglo residents of Texas (ie. Texians) had taken any active part in the fighting, and the great majority of these only after the Fall of the Alamo and the later Massacre at Goliad when the Mexican forces were approaching where they lived. Forty years later, by the 1870's the population of Texas had swelled to 700,000, few of whom were even related to anyone who had taken an active. Still, by the 1870's there were enough people who had been born here that Texas was forging a popular ethos and identity.

Forty years after the fact, one gets the impression that Susanna mostly told people what they wanted to hear, including Davy Crockett being surrounded by a pile of dead Mexicans.

William Zuber, reckoned an authority at the time, was ten years old at the time of the battle, living 100 miles to the northeast in Bastrop TX. From him we get the saga of Moses Rose, in legend the only man to hop the wall at the Alamo rather than face certain, albeit glorious death. If he existed, Moses was an older French guy in his 50's at the time, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. IIRC we are reasonably certain a Moses Rose did exist and was living in Bastrop for a period of time after the revolution. William Zuber quoted Moses Rose as his primary source, even quoting Travis's purported speeches word for word.

FWIW the part about Travis drawing a line in the sand was probably true. This was common practice at the time and had been done before the siege and probably after. Strictly speaking, Texian officers did not "command" anybody, their men were not soldiers and might simply ignore an order they didn't agree with or even leave (in the two weeks prior to San Jacinto, Sam Houston lost about 700 of his men this way). However, if you gave them a voice and allowed them to vote on the course of action they were far more likely to stay. Furthermore it was understood that taking part in a vote at all was tantamount to giving your word you were bound by the outcome, and stepping to either side of a line meant you couldn't deny your vote later. Coulda happened, but 200+ random guys who had never expected to be stuck inside the Alamo voting almost unanimously to die fighting seems a bit of a stretch. Possibly the vote was about something else.

More reasonable is the evidence that the defenders were planning a mass breakout within the next couple of days, do or die, in which at least some might escape. But Santa Anna probably took the Alamo when he did in response to his rival Urrea's victories against the Americans at Goliad.

my ancestor was in dickinson's unit.

From Gonzales?

Darn. Too bad you didnt PM Birdy before you went down, BC. It would have been nice getting a personalized tour.

yes

👍

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/onl...8Gz5xsQPUOEXz3WISz0lEP56M5Dmg8LXtTE0WnIA


TUMLINSON, GEORGE W.
Bill Groneman

TUMLINSON, GEORGE W. (1814–1836). George W. Tumlinson, Alamo defender, son of Elizabeth and James Tumlinson, Jr., was born in Missouri in 1814. He moved to Texas and settled in Gonzales. Tumlinson entered the Texan Artillery under Almeron Dickinson on September 23, 1835. He took part in the siege of Bexar and was discharged afterward. He reenlisted on December 14 for six months of service in Capt. William R. Carey's artillery company. Sometime before the siege of the Alamo began, Tumlinson may have left for his home in Gonzales, returning to the Alamo on March 1, 1836, with the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers. Tumlinson died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

Thats something else.

One of the Immortal 32!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_32

Q. - Why did Santa Anna bring 20,000 Mexicans to the Alamo?

A. - Because he only had 3 pick up trucks and a station wagon to haul them in.

Wow.


He weren't very old. 22 years.

I throw Normandy on that list too.

I still need to do Pearl.

+1 on Gettysburg.

I became a believer in "restless spirits" at Gettysburg. I have never felt anything like it anywhere else.

From the ramparts of the Alamo while viewing the thousands of Mexicans gathered below Jim Bowie turns to Davy Crockett and asks, "What's this? We pouring concrete today?"

I've got that book along with A Line in the Sand and The Gates of the Alamo. I bought it at...The Alamo.

The Battle of Mine Creek was the second largest Cavalry battle of the WBTS, behind only Brandy Station. Mine Creek is about forty miles from my house and I have occasion to go by there quite a bit. Many times it's at night. I never look too close and stay focused on the road.