A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo

  A frenzy of “Texas meetings” swept the land. Philadelphia mobs burned Santa Anna in effigy. Bostonians jammed the Concert Hall to hear Major General John S. Tyler pour his wrath on Mexican tyrants. In Mobile crowds packed the courthouse on October 20, demanding Texas independence. They set up a Committee of Twenty to organize help, and in the parliamentary fashion of the day, they ordered that a “copy of the proceedings” be taken to Texas by one of their leaders—a dark, dashing South Carolina aristocrat named James Butler Bonham. Passionately for the cause, filled with a glowing sense of noblesse oblige, Bonham was a man not likely to let them down.

  Money poured out. At Mobile’s Shakespeare Theater, a rally quickly produced $1,500. … The citizens of Macon, Georgia, collected $3,150. … Henry Hill of Nashville gave $5,000. … Natchez theatergoers raised $396.50 at a symbolically appropriate benefit performance of Damon & Pythias.

  New York outdid itself. First a big meeting at Stoneall’s Tavern. Next, a benefit performance of The Tragedy of Venice Preserved. Then, on November 12 a rally at Tammany Hall, where over two thousand people roared their “loyalty” to Texas. Soon it was necessary to set up a receiving station at McDonald & Arnold’s warehouse on Front Street for the avalanche of stores and contributions that rolled in.

  “Texas, Texas,” sighed the Philadelphia Courier’s New York correspondent. “Crowded meetings, and gun-powder speeches, calling down vengeance upon the oppressors of the Texonians, is the order of the day.

  “This going abroad patrioting is bad business,” the writer added mysteriously. “I speak with some experience.”

  He must have been a Whig. For, apart from a handful of Abolitionists, only the Whig press remained cool. “Their quarrel is altogether a private affair,” insisted the Baltimore Chronicle. “We have a right to sympathize, but more than that we cannot do,” warned the New York Commercial Advertiser, pointing to the U.S. treaty of friendship with Mexico.

  The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin had the answer to that: “Let the government of our country bow to the supremacy of law. As individuals, we do not, or cannot feel ourselves bound by cold and heartless rules; and when the cry of the oppressed reaches our shores, we long to buckle on our armour, and shoulder to shoulder, contend with freemen against their cruel oppressors.”

  All New Orleans agreed. The whole place was in an uproar. Excited groups swirled about the lobby of Richardson’s Hotel, planning great things for Texas. On the waterfront, gangs of slaves sweated in the hot autumn sun, loading cannon and kegs of powder on the schooner Columbus. Cheering crowds jammed the rally at Banks Arcade. Another throng at the Arcadia Coffee House pledged $10,000 within minutes. At this point Adolphus Sterne, a visiting Texas leader from Nacogdoches, shouted that the cause needed not only dollars but men. He had just bought fifty rifles—the first fifty volunteers could have them.

  Hundreds of men surged forward … clawing, wrestling, stampeding for the guns. Ready-made gray uniforms appeared from nowhere, and almost magically, the New Orleans “Greys” were born. In fact, it turned out there were two separate sets of “Greys,” for in the confusion, two different men assumed command and signed up volunteers. Little matter, Texas could use both groups.

  The appeals, the rallies, the spirit in the air did their work. All over the country men swarmed toward Texas, usually carrying the prescribed “good rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition.”

  David Cummings of Lewistown, Pennsylvania, did even better than that. His father, a prosperous Harrisburg canal man who proudly claimed friendship with Sam Houston, bought a box of rifles from the state arsenal and sent them along with the boy.

  In their enthusiasm, men simply jettisoned whatever they had been planning to do. William Irvine Lewis, a 23-year-old Philadelphian, was visiting a friend in North Carolina when he heard the call. He abandoned all thoughts of returning home, joined the march for the Sabine. Robert Musselman of Ohio had just finished a hitch against the Seminoles in Florida. His father had died, and certainly he should be getting home. Not at all; he too headed for Texas.

  Some traveled alone, riding along the rocky trails that led over the Blue Ridge and down into the Mississippi Valley-like James M. Rose, the hot-tempered, sandy-haired nephew of Ex-President Madison. Others came in twos and threes-like John Purdy Reynolds and his friend William McDowell of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. They had always done things together: first, the move to help found a new Mifflin in Tennessee; now this, the most exciting dream of all.

  But more and more they came in whole battalions—sometimes garishly dressed, usually boisterous, always with stars in their eyes. Major Ward’s Georgia battalion … Captain Duval’s Kentucky Mustangs … Captain Shackleford’s Red Rovers of Alabama … Captain Burke’s Mobile Greys, largely organized by James Bonham.

  The North was active too. Around the end of November, a large company of Germans piled aboard a Pittsburgh steamboat and set off down the Ohio. In Boston, Lieutenant Wheelock herded his “Dragoons” aboard the steamer for New York, where they transferred to the ship for Texas.

  They were not all perfect. As the brig Matawamkeag headed south with 210 volunteers from New York, their commander Colonel E. H. Stanley had a bright idea. Taking seventeen of his men in a long boat, he raided a Bahama plantation, was caught in the act by the English brig Serpent. Months would pass before these patriots escaped from the toils of British justice.

  No such pitfall awaited Captain Breece’s “first” company of New Orleans Greys. Leaving the other contingent of Greys still waiting for a ship, Breece’s men marched for the border. Legend later turned them into aristocrats—the flower of local society. Actually they were anything but that; few had even been in Louisiana longer than six months. Spirited and restless, they perfectly reflected the shifting currents that made their city the most cosmopolitan center in America.

  These New Orleans volunteers were English, German, Scottish, Irish, Americans from north and south. Men like Henry Courtman, a lively young German … John J. Baugh, an idealistic if somewhat officious Virginian … or Stephen Denison, an amiable Irishman who had roamed from Galway to Louisiana, trying his hand at glazing, painting, anything. By now a number of those traveling to Texas alone had been swept up in this congenial company, and they happily mixed with the rest—William Linn of Boston … Robert Musselman of Ohio … Robert B. Moore, a 55-year-old private from Virginia who was easily the senior member of the group.

  Emotionally, some threw themselves on the ground and kissed the sacred soil when they crossed the Sabine into Texas. A pretty girl greeted them with a handsome banner. It was fittingly romantic: azure blue, fringed with gold. Bold black letters proclaimed “FIRST COMPANY OF TEXAN VOLUNTEERS! FROM NEW-ORLEANS.” And in the center a flying eagle bore the proud legend “GOD & LIBERTY.”

  Giddy with joy the Greys marched on to St. Augustine, where a crowd of colonists noisily greeted them. The town’s drummer thumped out a salute, but it was much too mild for these carefree men. Showing him how to do it, the Greys’ own drummer broke into the furious beat of “Beer in the Mug.” Henry Courtman, Stephen Denison, all the rest yelled with joy.

  At Nacogdoches Adolphus Sterne happily welcomed them. He was the one who had started everything by offering the fifty rifles; he was ready with hospitality now. And when he heard that there were German boys in the company, he came up with something extra. “Bob,” he called to his Negro, “four of the long slender ones out of the stand in the corner. Do you understand?”

  The bare thought of Rhine wine was too much for Henry Courtman. He shouted that he would give his last drop of blood for the new republic.

  “Halt, my countrymen,” cried Sterne, introducing the Greys to their first taste of Texas politics. “Do you want to stir up the whole of Mexico against us—even the Liberal party? No, another time.”

  There was good reason for caution. The Texans were still split on whether to seek complete independence or simply their true rights under the 1824 Mexican Constitution. At the moment,
they only knew they would have to fight, whatever their choice.

  The Greys stood firm, arguing hotly against halfway measures. They hadn’t come this far to fight under any flag of Mexico. Sterne mildly protested, but the men noticed that he joined the rest when the wine appeared and they roared a toast, “To the Republic of Texas!”

  It was the same with all who came. Men who had never given a thought to Texas three months earlier suddenly found themselves the most violent patriots. “I am over the Rubicon and my fate is now inseparably united with that of Texas,” wrote young John Sowers Brooks only three days after he arrived from Virginia. “I have resolved to stand by her to the last, and in a word, to sink or swim with her.”

  And trying on their new patriotism, men felt an exhilaration, a tingling satisfaction that many had never known before. Micajah Autry—aesthete, poet, violinist, business failure—wrote his wife Martha from Nacogdoches, “I have become one of the most thorough-going men you ever heard of.” He closed his letter with a piece of exciting news: “P.S. Colonel Crockett has just joined our company.”

  If the postscript was meant to impress her, it must have succeeded. There could be no stronger reference for a reformed poet than Colonel David Crockett, lately Congressman from Tennessee. His syntax jolted people even in an era that cared little about spelling and grammar. His coonskin cap, buckskin shirt and Indian moccasins made a virtue of backwoods ignorance. His rifle was his substitute for learning—it had brought him political success, national fame. He was the man who shot forty-seven bears in one month … who killed six bucks in one day … who rode alligators for exercise … who grinned a bear into retreat … who once aimed up a tree, only to have the coon come down and surrender.

  Typical Crockett humor. Unfortunately, most of his jokes were just a façade. A brave front for a simple man who had swum far out over his head. For warm, kindly David Crockett was as naive as they came. Born with all the right instincts, he had little depth and was too lazy or restless to acquire it. He loved politics, but it was so much easier to get by with a joke, or the backwoods role he so carefully cultivated.

  “When a man can grin and fight, flag a steamboat, or whip his weight in wildcats, what is the use of reading and writing?” he liked to say. Actually, he could do both perfectly well; but here too there was an easier way, and he gradually relied more and more on ghost writers.

  The formula worked all right at first. Uneducated, gregarious, articulate, a marvelous hunter, Crockett was a political natural on the frontier. Appointed a magistrate in western Tennessee in 1817, he was fair, honest, and it took no great depth to referee bounty payments for wolf scalps. He was soon elected colonel of the local militia.

  Advancing to the Tennessee Legislature in 1820, he found that warmth and color were still enough. He had the frontiersman’s love of rough-and-tumble antics, the heavy practical joke. He once delighted his constituents by using his opponent’s speech word for word during a joint stumping tour in the 1823 campaign.

  He moved on to Congress in 1827 and for a while the old magic worked even in Washington. The capital quickly took to this friendly man with the tall stories and coonskin trappings. For his part, Crockett showed little interest in affairs—only a distaste for authority (particularly West Point) and a single-tracked desire to see that the people of the frontier could keep the open land they were squatting on.

  The state and federal governments had other ideas. They hoped to raise revenue by selling the land. Bitterly righting this policy, Crockett narrowly lost a bid for re-election in 1831, squeaked in again two years later. Through it all, he never could adjust or compromise. In the Colonel’s uncomplicated mind, every issue took the form of selfish interests against the honest poor. Andrew Jackson and the Democrats who opposed free land were clearly grasping villains. Anybody who supported his own position was automatically public-spirited. There was no need to look for deeper motives.

  The Whigs found this very convenient. They were getting much too big a reputation as the party of affluence, of Nicholas Biddle and his powerful United States Bank. They badly needed a little backwoods respectability. Who better than David Crockett? And who easier to reach—with his love of the limelight, his gullibility, his weakness for the easy way?

  They wined him and dined him … laughed at his jokes … sponsored his meetings. The great Daniel Webster shook his hand. The United States Bank lent him money. The Young Whigs of Philadelphia gave him a rifle, and Mr. du Pont came through with some powder. Whig clubs packed his rallies; Whig papers pushed his books; Whig ghosts wrote his speeches. By 1834, David Crockett—who liked to boast that he would never wear a collar marked “My Dog, Andrew Jackson”—was actually the best-trained dog in Washington. In one canned speech full of references that must have mystified him, he labeled Jackson “a greater tyrant than Cromwell, Caesar or Bonaparte.”

  At this point Old Hickory had enough. In the 1835 Congressional campaign, he tore into “Crockett and Co.,” as he contemptuously called the Colonel. David fought back, told his constituents that he had done his best for them; if they didn’t re-elect him, they could go to hell—he would go to Texas.

  It was no use. Crockett lost the election by 230 votes. He was already unwelcome in the Democratic camp; now the Whigs, having no use for a loser, quickly abandoned him too.

  “I am on the eve of Starting to the Texas,” he wrote his brother-in-law on October 31. “On tomorrow morning myself, Abner Burgin and Lindsy K. Tinkle & our nephew William Patton from the Lower Country—this will make our Company. We will go through Arkinsaw and I want to explore the Texas well before I return.” Nothing about righting for liberty; the Texas revolution was going full blast, but it was not for him. Crockett wanted only the tonic of exploring new places once again … the thrill of staking out a new claim on a new frontier … the fun of hunting, riding, joking and laughing with good companions … a chance to rinse out the bitter taste of Washington.

  It was nothing new. He had always shoved on when things went against him. He did it as a 12-year-old, when he ran away after four days of school. Again, after the flash flood wrecked his little mill in 1817. Other times too. Nor was family a problem to this most casual of men. As he later explained to a shocked lady in Big Prairie, “I have set them free—set them free—they must shift for themselves.”

  It was all the more important, for time was running out. Crockett was nearly fifty now. His face was flushed; his 190 pounds were no longer distributed the way they used to be. This might be his last chance—his last great opportunity-nothing must interfere.

  Starting down the Mississippi on November 1, Crockett felt truly content for probably the first time in years. By his side, significantly, was “Betsey”—the rifle he used in the old days—not “pretty Betsey,” the fancy gun he got from the Whigs. Around him were long-time friends—none of those scheming Washington lackeys.

  They caroused all night in Memphis—Crockett delivering his “go-to-hell” speech at the Union Hotel bar, again on a flatboat just below the Gayoso Hotel. More drinking and parties at every place the steamboat touched along the Mississippi. Then west on the Arkansas River, arriving finally at Little Rock on November 12. By now the group had increased to eight or ten; Crockett always seemed to pick up new companions on a trip like this.

  When a committee of Little Rock citizens waited upon Crockett, they found him skinning a deer in the back yard of the City Hotel. They suggested a shooting match and Crockett was delighted—legend says he gaily put an extra bullet in the hole made by his first shot, to insure himself a second bull’s-eye. Then to the banquet table, and past disappointments must have seemed far away indeed as the fife and drum burst into “Hail, the Conquering Hero Comes.”

  On through the thickets to the Red River country. At Fulton he accumulated still more followers. At Clarksville, Mrs. Isabelle Clark, a magnificent pioneer woman, galloped after the party, shouting a timely warning of hostile Indians. At Lost Prairie, Crockett found himself running
out of money, worked out a swap with Isaac Jones. In exchange for Jones’ silver watch and thirty dollars, Crockett handed over the magnificent gold watch given him by the Whigs in Philadelphia—to hell with that too.

  Now south, across the Sabine, and Texas at last. The good news had gone ahead, and when Crockett reached Nacogdoches on January 5, the town’s cannon banged out a salute. More cheers, more limelight. Another banquet, another chance to describe how he told them back home to go to hell. Another standing ovation.

  Crockett was walking on air. Only a few months ago he felt crushed by political defeat; now “I had rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life.” Last autumn he never expected to run again for anything; now “I have but little doubt of being elected a member to form a constitution for this province.” In November, he wasn’t remotely interested in Texas revolutions; now he was about to enroll as a volunteer and plunge into the fighting.

  Liberty? He outdid them all. When Judge John Forbes administered the oath of allegiance, Crockett dramatically stopped the proceedings. He noticed that he was required to uphold “any future government” that might be established. That could mean a dictatorship. He refused to sign until the wording was changed to “any future republican government.” The judge obligingly inserted the change and the ceremony continued.

  The volunteers drifting around Nacogdoches were enchanted. The idealist Daniel Cloud and his lawyer friends yearned to join this magnetic man. John Purdy Reynolds, the crusading Pennsylvania doctor, and his old friend William McDowell couldn’t wait either. Crockett told them to come along—there was always room for a good companion. The “Tennessee Company of Mounted Volunteers” was born and immediately prepared to head for San Antonio.

  But first, a brief diversion. A quick trip to St. Augustine for another big welcome. More saluting cannon … a gala ball … then back to Nacogdoches for the long ride to the army. Just before leaving St. Augustine, Crockett found time for one of his rare letters to his children. It was a happy letter, bursting with enthusiasm and closed with the assuring words: “Do not be uneasy about me. I am among friends.”