The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

A few years ago one would have said that San Antonio was enjoying a boom. But you cannot use that expression now, for the Western men have heard that a boom, no matter how quickly it rises, often comes down just as quickly, and so forcibly that it makes a hole in the ground where castles in the air had formerly stood. So if you wish to please a Western man by speaking well of his city (and you cannot please him more in any other way), you must say that it is enjoying a “steady, healthy growth.” San Antonio is enjoying a steady, healthy growth.

It is quite as impossible to write comprehensively of south-western Texas in one article as it is to write such an article and say nothing of the Alamo. And the Alamo, in the event of any hasty reader’s possible objection, is not ancient history. It is no more ancient history than love is an old story, for nothing is ancient and nothing is old which every new day teaches something that is fine and beautiful and brave. The Alamo is to the South-west what Independence Hall is to the United States, and Bunker Hill to the East; but the pride of it belongs to every American, whether he lives in Texas or in Maine. The battle of the Alamo was the event of greatest moment in the war between Mexico and the Texans, when Santa Anna was President, and the Texans were fighting for their independence. And the stone building to which the Mexicans laid siege, and in which the battle was fought, stands to-day facing a plaza in the centre of San Antonio.

There are hideous wooden structures around it, and others not so hideous—modern hotels and the new Post-office, on which the mortar is hardly yet dry. But in spite of these the grace and dignity which the monks gave it in 1774, raise it above these modern efforts that tower above it, and dwarf them. They are collecting somewhat slowly a fund to pay for the erection of a monument to the heroes of the Alamo. As though they needed a monument, with these battered walls still standing and the marks of the bullets on the casements! No architect can build better than that. No architect can introduce that feature. The architects of the Alamo were building the independence of a State as wide in its boundaries as the German Empire.

The story of the Alamo is a more than thrice-told one, and Sidney Lanier has told it so well that whoever would write of it must draw on him for much of their material, and must accept his point of view. But it cannot be told too often, even though it is spoiled in the telling.

On the 23d of February, 1836, General Santa Anna himself, with four thousand Mexican soldiers, marched into the town of San Antonio. In the old mission of the Alamo were the town’s only defenders, one hundred and forty-five men, under Captain Travis, a young man twenty-eight years old. With him were Davy Crockett, who had crossed over from his own State to help those who were freeing theirs, and Colonel Bowie (who gave his name to a knife, which name our government gave later to a fort), who was wounded and lying on a cot.

“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!”

Their fortress and quarters and magazine was the mission, their artillery fourteen mounted pieces, but there was little ammunition. Santa Anna demanded unconditional surrender, and the answer was ten days of dogged defence, and skirmishes by day and sorties for food and water by night. The Mexicans lost heavily during the first days of the siege, but not one inside of the Alamo was killed. Early in the week Travis had despatched couriers for help, and the defenders of the mission were living in the hope of re-enforcements; but four days passed, and neither couriers returned nor re-enforcements came. On the fourth day Colonel Fannin with three hundred men and four pieces of artillery started forth from Goliad, but put back again for want of food and lack of teams. The garrison of the Alamo never knew of this. On the 1st of March Captain John W. Smith, who has found teams, and who has found rations, brings an offering of thirty-two men from Gonzales, and leads them safely into the fort. They have come with forced marches to their own graves; but they do not know that, and the garrison, now one hundred and seventy-two strong, against four thousand Mexicans, continues its desperate sorties and its desperate defence.

On the 3d of March, 1836, there is a cessation in the bombardment, and Captain Travis draws his men up into single rank and takes his place in front of them.

He tells them that he has deceived them with hopes of re-enforcements—false hopes based on false promises of help from the outside—but he does not blame those who failed him; he makes excuses for them; they have tried to reach him, no doubt, but have been killed on the way. Sidney Lanier quotes this excusing of those who had deserted him at the very threshold of death as best showing the fineness of Travis, and the poet who has judged the soldier so truly has touched here one of the strongest points of this story of great heroism.