THE HEROES OF THE ALAMO.
On a day in the year 1835 the people of Nacogdoches, Texas, were engaged in the pleasant function of giving a public dinner to one of their leading citizens. In the midst of the festivities a person entered the room whose appearance was greeted with a salvo of hearty cheers. There seemed nothing in this person's appearance to call forth such a welcome. He was dressed in a half-Indian, half-hunter's garb, a long-barrelled rifle was slanted over his shoulder, and he seemed a favorable specimen of the "half-horse, half-alligator" type of the early West. But there was a shrewd look on his weather-beaten face and a humorous twinkle in his eyes that betokened a man above the ordinary frontier level, while it was very evident that the guests present looked upon him as no every-day individual.
The visitor was, indeed, a man of fame, for he was no less a personage than the celebrated Davy Crockett, the hunter hero of West Tennessee. His fame was due less to his wonderful skill with the rifle than to his genial humor, his endless stories of adventure, his marvellous power of "drawing the long bow." Davy had once been sent to Congress, but there he found himself in waters too deep for his footing. The frontier was the place made for him, and when he heard that Texas was in revolt against Mexican rule, he shouldered his famous rifle and set out to take a hand in the game of revolution. It was a question in those days with the reckless borderers whether shooting a Mexican or a coon was the better sport.
The Alamo.
The festive citizens of Nacogdoches heard that Davy Crockett had arrived in their town on his way to join the Texan army, and at once sent a committee to invite him to join in their feast. Hearty cheers, as we have said, hailed his entrance, and it was not long before he had his worthy hosts in roars of laughter with his quaint frontier stories. He had come to stay with them as a citizen of Texas, he said, and to help them drive out the yellow-legged greasers, and he wanted, then and there, to take the oath of allegiance to their new republic. If they wanted to know what claim he had to the honor, he would let Old Betsy—his rifle—speak for him. Like George Washington, Betsy never told a lie. The Nacogdochians were not long in making him a citizen, and he soon after set out for the Alamo, the scene of his final exploit and his heroic death.
The Alamo was a stronghold in the town of San Antonio de Bexar, in Western Texas. It had been built for a mission house of the early Spaniards, and though its walls were thick and strong, they were only eight feet high and were destitute of bastion or redoubt. The place had nothing to make it suitable for warlike use, yet it was to win a great name in the history of Texan independence, a name that spread far beyond the borders of the "Lone Star State" and made its story a tradition of American heroism.
Soon after the insurrection began a force of Texans had taken San Antonio, driving out its Mexican garrison. Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, quickly marched north with an army, breathing vengeance against the rebels. This town, which lay well towards the western border, was the first he proposed to take. Under the circumstances the Texans would have been wise to retreat, for they were few in number, they had little ammunition and provisions, and the town was in no condition for defence. But retreat was far from their thoughts, and when, on an afternoon in February, 1836, Santa Anna and his army appeared in the vicinity of San Antonio, the Texans withdrew to the Alamo, the strongest building near the town, prepared to fight to the death.