"February 24, 1836.
"Fellow Citizens and Compatriots,—I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Ana. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy have demanded a surrender at discretion; otherwise the garrison is to be put to the sword if the fort is taken. I have answered the summons with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then I call on you in the name of liberty, patriotism, and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all despatch. The enemy are receiving reinforcements daily, and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. Though this call may be neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible, and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honour and that of his country. Victory or death!
"(Signed)
"W. Barrett Travis,
"Lieut.-Col. Com't."
Houston, to whom Travis addressed an urgent call for reinforcements, could do nothing. On the 3rd of March, with death staring the little garrison in the face, Travis sent a despatch to the Revolutionary committee, calmly stating his position, reiterating his determination never to surrender, and dwelling with almost impersonal interest on the beneficial effect to follow such determined resistance as he and his men were making. "I will do the best I can under the circumstances," he says, "and I feel confident that the determined valour and desperate courage heretofore evinced by my men will not fail them in the last struggle; and although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear that it will be worse for him than a defeat."
Day by day the toils were drawn closer around the doomed walls. Day by day the little garrison was thinned by wounds and sickness. Vainly they gazed northward across the plain for the invoked aid. The hungry eye beheld only a long train of Mexican recruits hastening like vultures to the feast of blood. Once they were gladdened by the sight of a little band of countrymen spurring towards the walls. But they were no forerunners of a relieving army. Thirty-two gallant Texans threw themselves into the fort, cutting their way through the besiegers, simply and solely that they might fight with their comrades; that they might be found, living or dead, by the side of David Crockett and Barrett Travis. Each morning a dwindling garrison answered to the roll-call, and the thin ranks were stretched a little wider apart along the crumbling ramparts which it had needed thrice their numbers to defend. They husbanded their scanty stores. They never wasted a shot. During that long and terrible fortnight it is said that nearly ten victims fell to each American rifle. With a thousand of his men shot down, and trembling in baffled wrath, Santa Ana on the fourteenth day, ordered another general assault. His officers drove their men to the breach at the sword's point.
When the smoke of battle had rolled away there was silence in the Alamo. The dead and dying strewed the ground. Santa Ana entered the fort. On the rampart, dead at his post, lay the commander, Travis, shot through the head. Beside him was the body of a Mexican officer, pierced to the heart by the sword still clutched in the dead hero's hand. They found Bowie in his own room. He was sick in bed when they broke into it, but his trusty rifle was with him, and four Mexicans died before he was reached. A fifth fell across his dead body, pierced through and through by the terrible knife. At the door of the magazine they shot Evans, ere he could touch a match and wreak a Samson vengeance on the foe.
Santa Ana stepped into the court-yard. There were six prisoners. His orders were that none should be taken. Nevertheless, David Crockett and five others had stoutly resisted, until his clubbed rifle broken in his sinewy hands, the dauntless backwoodsman listened to the promise of quarter. Santa Ana paused a moment before his unmoved captives. It was but for a moment. The next his hand sought the hilt of his sword. Crockett, divining his purpose, sprang at the traitor, but he was too late; a dozen blades had flashed at the sign and the hapless prisoners fell dead, the last of all the garrison.
These men of the Alamo were volunteers, simple citizens, bound by no tie save that of fealty to cause and comrades. Unsung of poet, all but unnamed in history, the brave men of the Alamo went to their certain death, with a sublime fortitude, beside which the obedient immolation of Balaklava's Six Hundred is but the triumph of disciplined machines. A monument raised to their memory bears the magnificent inscription:—
"Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none."