In 1833 there were twenty thousand Americans that wished Texas to have an organization separate from the state of Coahuila. They were not so particular as to what government claimed their state, but they wished to organize and run it for themselves. Meeting a natural opposition from Mexico in this enterprise, in the year 1835 they banded their forces, overturned the Mexican government, and set up a provisional government of their own. Henry Smith was chosen provisional governor and Sam Houston commander-in-chief of this wildest of all American republics.
On December twentieth, 1835, these Texans issued their proclamation of independence, some sixty years after the Declaration of the American Independence. This meant but one thing. Santa Anna, then as much as anybody governor of affairs in Mexico, marched with an army, stated to have numbered seven thousand five hundred men, to besiege the Texans, whose main body was located at San Antonio. No American doubted the ultimate issue. All the South knew that the wild and hardy population of this new region would beat back the weak Latin tenants of the soil. The matter was well discussed and well understood. It was not knight-errantry, therefore, so much as politics, that led Davy Crockett southward into this wild hornets’ nest. Rather should we say that all this movement was part of the mighty, inexplicable, fateful, irresistible Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage across this continent. It was a New World. These new men were those fitted to occupy and hold it.
At this time the historian of Crockett falls on a curious difficulty. There is published what purports to be an autobiography of David Crockett’s life, a linsey-woolsey affair, made up partly of good English and partly of rough backwoods idiom such as we are accustomed to associate with the speech of this singular man. This “autobiography” purports to be continued after Crockett leaves his Tennessee home for far-off Texas. Yet at this point its style and subject matter assume such shape as to lead one inevitably to conclude that Crockett did not write it. There are many contradictions and discrepancies, and much of the detailed story of Crockett’s wanderings in the Southwest is denied by practically the only eye-witness of the time qualified to tell of his experiences—that Jonathan H. Greene (the “Harrington” of Crockett’s correspondence), once gambler and later reformed man, who was with Crockett for a time before the Alamo fight. Greene’s story does not in all points tally with the so-called autobiography of Crockett, nor with many of the popular histories of his life.
In general it may be determined that, with some feeling but without much ado, Crockett said farewell to his wife and family. He had no longer heart for bear hunting. He wished a wider field of life. His journey was down the Mississippi and up the Arkansas River to Little Rock. There he encountered many hail-fellows-well-met, and had several experiences, which are set forth at length in his autobiography. He journeyed then horseback to Fulton, descended the Red River to Natchitoches and thence made his way westward across Texas.
The so-called autobiography of Crockett describes two or three strange characters: the “Bee Hunter,” who might have been the hero of an English melodrama of the time; “Thimblerig,” the sharper whom Crockett reforms and leads on to die a hero’s death; the “Pirate,” who dies in front of the Alamo gate; and so on. There is something strangely unreal in much of this. It does not ring true. Yet we are further told that Crockett crossed the Sabine, that he met the Comanches, that he saw for the first time the tremendous herds of buffalo, that he encountered bands of wild horses, that he saw much wild game, and in a knife fight killed a panther. The feeling is irresistible that many of these pictures are made to order.
At last, however, without much ado and without any adequate explanation of Crockett’s real motives, we find him inside the gates of the San Antonio barracks, one of that little party whose heroic death was to set the whole American nation a-throb, first with vengeful fire, and then with a passionate love and admiration.
The situation was thus: Travis in San Antonio, practically hemmed in at the adobe building known as the Alamo; Fannin at Goliad, with other noble fellows later to fall victims to Mexican treachery; at a distance Sam Houston, apparently irresolute and non-committal. Austin, Fannin, Travis, Rush, James Bowie, the Whartons, Archer of Virginia—what a list of strong names was here, these fighting men, some of whom had come for politics, some for sport, some for sheer love of danger and adventure. Of these, Bowie, Crockett, Fannin and Travis might have been declared opposed to the party of Houston and Austin. Crockett’s authentic letter bitterly accuses Houston, the leader of the Texans. Houston, mysterious, vain, enigmatical, as able as he was erratic, might perhaps, had his followers been less tempestuous and independent, have united them into a harmonious and powerful whole. He could not, or did not. Hence came the Alamo fight.
Of this wild army, half ruffian, half adventurous, most of the men were poor, although they came in many cases from good families. They had behind them an undeniable sentiment in favor of the independence of Texas, and were backed by money raised for that purpose. General Jackson openly and notoriously favored the annexation of Texas, and perhaps even of Mexico, and went so far as to suggest a few practical though unauthorized plans of his own as to how the army might be used to bring about a conflict and later a pax Jacksonii. Thus we find our hero, Davy Crockett, once more falling into the plans of his former chief, his recently victorious antagonist, Old Hickory.
It is possible that Crockett was deceived in his pilgrimage to Texas. There is more than a suspicion that he was used as a cat’s paw in a political movement. He says that “Houston is enjoying the support of the Government, while others are left to do the fighting.” He continues, “Houston has dealt with us in prevarications.” He calls Houston the “agent” and Jackson the “manufacturer.” Yet certainly Crockett was backed by a prevalent and strongly growing sentiment. The records are too vague and insufficient. We shall never fully understand all these complications of early and adventurous politics.
Be all these things as they may, Crockett was one of the devoted little band of a hundred and eighty-three Texans, who in time found themselves besieged by an army of Mexicans from five thousand to eight thousand strong. The peons of Santa Anna’s worthless army came on day after day, the bands playing the Dequelo, which meant “no quarter.” For eleven days the Texans held the Alamo, in that historic fight whose details are so generally and so uncertainly known. These one hundred and eighty-three men killed of the enemy more than one thousand. Worn out by loss of sleep and continuous muscular exertion, their arms simply grew weary from much slaying. Their hands could no longer push down the ladders weighted with the struggling peons goaded forward by the swords of their officers.