Book Report: Forget the Alamo

Why a book report? Why not?

Forget the Alamo is a new work by Bryan Burrough, a onetime Wall Street Journal reporter who now writes at times for Vanity Fair. He has several well-received books, including Barbarians at the Gates (about the takeover of RJR Nabisco) and Public Enemies (about the birth of the FBI). This work takes on the legendary siege at the Mision San Antonio de Valera, a staple of Texas history (where he grew up). His co-authors are Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford. I will refer to them collectively as Burrough.

Burrough admits early on, and repeats in summary, that this is not strictly speaking a work of history. He calls it historiography, or a history of the history of how various groups have used the events of the siege to their own ends. Needless to say (based on the title), he believes most of those who cherish the legend are wrong, either in what they believe (the defenders were heroic, they were fighting for freedom, they died to-a-man while fighting) or what they believe in (Anglo superiority, anti-Mexican hate, general hatred of immigrants, macho sexism, or simple racism).

Burrough writes with a clean style and has ample footnotes to work by historians. I find his attempts at humor, introducing today’s jargon for example, as off-putting, but some may enjoy them. His storytelling skills remain strong, and while you never doubt where his sympathies lie, he keeps the narration interesting.

The main challenge this book presents is Burrough’s contention that we should reject the dominant narrative–and he readily admits this narrative is dominant–of heroic Alamo fighters dying in defense of freedom. His bases this claim on a number of supporting points. First, the Anglo settlers in Mexican Tejas were mainly interested in cotton-growing and slavery, and that was the purpose of the secession movement from Mexico. Second, the defense of the Alamo was a colossal military blunder by Colonel Bowie and Sam Houston, so the siege never should have happened. Third, it is uncertain whether the defenders died heroically: some may have been captured, others may have been cut down running away outside the walls. Fourth, General Santa Ana and the Mexican Army have become the bogeymen of the drama. Finally, various groups (e.g., the KKK, Confederates, bigots and racists) have used the Alamo legend to their own unfortunate ends. Let’s deal with each in turn, from last to first.

Obviously, the fact that some malign groups misuse the Alamo legend is no reason to forget what happened there. The most powerful piece of evidence Burrough presents is testimony by many Texas Latinos who grew up feeling as American as apple pie until they took the school-sponsored, mandatory, seventh-grade field trip to the Alamo, where they saw themselves portrayed as the enemy. No one should doubt their stories, and there is ample reason to tell the entire Alamo story, not just the part with heroic white guys dying at the hands of evil brown guys. Yet Burrough must know, in fact he even explains, why this happened. The two groups of settlers in Mexican Tejas were long-standing Tejanos (of Spanish/Mexican descent) and Anglo newcomers called either Texians or Texicans. The Tejanos wanted Tejas to provoke a change in the Mexican federal government toward greater federalism, while the Anglos wanted independence from Mexico. The Texians ended up winning, and the Tejanos were relegated to a side-story in the history of what became American Texas. Their story deserves to be told; some Tejanos died at the Alamo. As Churchill reportedly said however, “History is written by the victors.”

As to General Antonio López de Santa Anna, little needs to be done to confirm his role as a very bad person. He was a slippery leader who moved seamlessly from side to side in the Mexican War of Independence and had a preternatural ability to recover from battlefield losses. He fought against the American government, sought their assistance, sold territory to them, and ceded all of California, New Mexico and Arizona after losing the 1848 war. His behavior on the battlefield in the Tejas campaign was both pitiful and dreadful (more on this later). As a braggart and a vicious bully, he is practically typecast. Even Mexicans consider him “one who failed the nation.”

Another argument Burrough presents is based on more recent evidence that the Anglo defenders did not all die where they stood: some were captured, others apparently sortied (leaving the fort) and were run down by Mexican cavalry. The new accounts come from Mexican military sources, which could present a bias, but let’s accept them at face value. Burrough’s analysis of these sources evinces a lack of military experience. Burrough cites evidence of Davy Crockett (and a few others) being summarily executed after the battle (at the command of Santa Ana) as proof they did not die heroically. A soldier may still be captured without surrendering. Ammunition spent, surrounded by a mass of enemy soldiers, you can swing your rifle and still be subdued. It has no bearing upon your heroism. Likewise, Burrough assumes the men who sortied were running away. With the fort overrun and again out of ammunition, it is natural to strike out away from the enemy. People jumped from the top of the World Trade Center when presented with no other choice; it was not a matter of dying without honor.

The argument over whether the Alamo battle was a blunder is also misguided. True, Sam Houston sent Colonel Jim Bowie to the site to reconnoiter and if necessary, destroy the fort. Bowie recognized it was perhaps the only defensible site between where Santa Ana was marshaling his forces and the Brazos river, where Houston planned to marshal his. The Alamo was not much of a fort; Travis had only two hundred troops, and he would have needed more like one thousand to adequately defend it. However, having made the decision to stay, he counted on being reinforced by the 400 men in Goliad and more from Sam Houston. Neither arrived. Sam Houston thought Bowie was being hysterical, and Colonel James Fannin at Goliad dithered, only to later surrender to Santa Ana and have all his men massacred. In the end, Travis only got thirty volunteers from nearby Gonzales. They arrived after the siege began, demonstrating that the Alamo defenders could have still withdrawn after Santa Ana arrived and laid siege; that they didn’t stands as testament in their favor. Travis probably did not count on causing 600 Mexican casualties and slowing Santa Ana’s advance by two weeks; those were accidents of battle. But there is no way to consider the choice of battle site as a colossal mistake.

Finally, Burrough makes much of the seedy personal stories of men like Crockett and Travis and Bowie, and the reliance of the Anglo settlers on slavery. Crockett was a slimy politician, Bowie a drunk and a slave trader, Travis a deadbeat. Little is made of this in histories of the battle, since it has little to do with what happened inside the walls. These men were emblematic of Texicans in general: men looking for a second chance after failing elsewhere.

Burrough believes his most damning accusation is the Texican’s embrace of slavery. He treats this as a revelation, as if anyone even minimally aware of the history of Texas hadn’t heard it was a slave state that later fought with the Confederacy. Burrough admits the Anglos were invited to settle in Tejas, and slavery permitted, in a series of political compromises with the Mexican state and federal governments. The peace-loving Commanches had nearly depopulated the northern part of Tejas, and the government in Mexico City felt a wave of Anglo settlers might forestall more attacks and perhaps even rile the American government to eliminate the Commanches. It was only after Santa Ana reneged on these deals that the Tejanos supported a revolt (for greater state’s rights, of all things) and the Texicans did so too, to retain their cotton plantations and slaves. As Burrough’s footnotes point out, cotton prices went on a boom during this period, and Tejas had the land to support massive cotton production if slavery was permitted. It wasn’t that Texicans were dedicated slavers as much as they were a collection of desperate men trying out their luck in a situation that can only be described as “the wild west.” If beef or oil had been the hot commodity at that time, it would have been the cause of the revolt.

Perhaps the best work by Burroughs is when he describes the various machinations by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), a lineal group who eventually came to own and mismanage the site. Theirs is a story right out of a sorority house, filled with infighting, cliques, and fierce resistance to any change. That they fatally mismanaged the site is proven by a simple visit. Like most visitors, I was stunned at the tawdry ring of wax museums and tourist kitsch surrounding the Alamo. Even the inside locations lacked adequate signage of what happened. Eventually, the Texas State Land Commission withdrew the DRT claim to manage the site, and a renovation has fallen to none other than George P. Bush (eldest son of Jeb). Good luck with that!

This book belongs to a genre that uses anachronistic arguments to attack various ‘sacred cows’ of American history. No one firing on the advancing Mexican army from behind the walls of the Alamo shouted “give me slavery or give me death!” Most of those killed there did not own slaves, yet slavery was a sticking point in the larger argument over Texas independence. The Alamo plays the role it does in Texas (and indeed, American) history for what happened during those thirteen days in February and March, 1836, not for slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights, or Black Lives Matter.

Burrough et al try too hard to forget the Alamo. I hope their work leads to increased interest in the full story, and a much better job at preservation by San Antonio and Texas.