The main battle of the Alamo was in
defense of the outer walls. After the Mexicans scaled them, the fiercest
fighting was at the long barracks. The final stand of the defenders was
in the chapel, the roofless walls of which stood 22 feet high and four
feet thick. The debris of the fallen roof had been mounded up to serve
as a platform for three twelve-pounder cannons. Fifteen to 18 other
cannons were mounted at strategic positions along the outer walls. The
flag did not float from the church but from a kind of tower room at the
southwest corner of the “long barracks.”
Everybody knew that Santa Anna was
coming, but reports of his coming had been arriving for such a long time
that every morning everybody considered that it would be another day,
maybe weeks, before he arrived. In February, Mexican families began
leaving town for the country. It was not the season for Comanche raids
and threats that kept Mexican settlers huddled together most of the
year.
On February 22, Americans saw carts carrying Mexican goods
and families out of town in all directions. Travis was very uneasy. He
kept a lookout in the tower of San Fernando Church.
On the morning of February 23 the lookout
rang the bell violently. He said that he had seen cavalrymen to the
west, the sun glinting on their spears and that when he rang they
disappeared into the brush. He could not show anybody what he said he
had seen, and was discredited by men who did not want to believe facts.
Dr. John Sutherland and John W. Smith, who had horses in a corral
attached to the barracks, got permission from Travis to ride out on a
scout. When they reached the crest of a hill about a mile and a half
from the church, they beheld on prairie land beyond 1,200 or 1,500
cavalrymen, according to their estimate, forming in line of battle,
their commander riding up and down in front of them waving his sword.
They wheeled their horses and broke in a run for town. The sentry in the
bell tower understood and began ringing furiously.
While all was movement within the fortification, Crockett
stepped up to Travis and said, “Colonel, assign me to some place, and I
and my Tennessee boys will hold it.” Travis assigned him a picket
stockade running from the southwest corner of the old church to the rock
wall.
By three o’clock that afternoon Santa Anna was flying a
red flag from the main plaza and had some of his batteries planted.
Contrary to common belief, the Texans did not fly a Lone Star, but the
tri-colored (red, white and green) Mexican flag with “1824” stitched
across the white stripe.
At the sight of the red flag, Travis
ordered a discharge of artillery toward it out of range. About the same
time, Bowie received a report that the Mexicans had sounded a parley. He
sent out a note by a messenger bearing a white flag to inquire if a
parley was desired. The answer, signed by Santa Anna’s aide-de-camp, was
that the only recourse for rebellious foreigners wishing to save their
lives was to surrender unconditionally. This was probably Bowie’s last
official act. The next day he was helpless.
As soon as Travis could get his men
together, behind the walls of the Alamo after the arrival of Santa
Anna’s forces, he made them a no-surrender oration. He sent Dr. John
Sutherland and John V. Smith to Gonzales to plead for men and
provisions. “We have 150 men,” the hasty note reads, “and are determined
to defend the Alamo to the Last.”
That night and the next, Texans demolished jacales (cabins) within reach along the acequias (irrigation ditches) and dragged in wood for fuel. They had been dependent upon an acequia for water.
On February 24, Travis sent out the most heroic message in
the annals of North American war. One imagines that he spent hours of
the cannon-shaken night composing it; it was not addressed to the futile
political authorities who had so often been besought, but—
“To the People of Texas and All Americans
in the World-Fellow Citizens and Compatriots: I am besieged with a
thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a
continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a
man. The enemy has demanded or [sic] surrender at discretion, otherwise,
the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have
answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly
from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call upon
you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the
American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is
receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or
four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am
determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier
who never forgets what is due his own honor and that of his country.
VICTORY OR DEATH!”
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