THE ALAMO
The Alamo was a Franciscan mission, dating from the eighteenth century. It was strongly built, and inclosed an area of about three acres, upon which stood a roofless church and a few other crumbling buildings. Its garrison consisted of 186 men, under Colonel Travis, and included the famous frontiersmen, James Bowie and David Crockett. Sam Houston, commander of the Texas forces, had ordered that the Alamo be blown up and abandoned; but his orders had been disregarded, and the gallant little garrison was now to pay the terrible price of its disobedience.
Copr. Archer’s Studios
PROPOSED ALAMO HEROES’ MONUMENT
The tower will be 802 feet high, the loftiest in America, and will cost 2,000,000 dollars.
On February 23, 1836, the Alamo was invested by four thousand Mexican soldiers and the final reckoning began. On March 6, after a gallant defense, it was taken by storm, its garrison having been slaughtered to a man. “Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat—the Alamo had none,” so runs the epitaph which stands upon the monument of these heroes of liberty.
But the blood-avenger was at hand. A few weeks later Sam Houston, standing with bared head before his little army of Texas patriots, gathered at San Jacinto, gave the watchword, “Remember the Alamo!” and within twenty minutes the army of Santa Anna was scattered “like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” Texas was free.