Exodus from the Alamo

The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth

Phillip Thomas Tucker

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781935149521
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The award-winning historian provides a provocative new analysis of the Battle of the Alamo—including new information on the fate of Davy Crockett. Contrary to legend, we now know that the defenders of the Alamo during the Texan Revolution died in a merciless predawn attack by Mexican soldiers. With extensive research into recently discovered Mexican accounts, as well as forensic evidence, historian Phillip Tucker sheds new light on the famous battle, contending that the traditional myth is even more off-base than we thought. In a startling revelation, Tucker uncovers that the primary fights took place on the plain outside the fort. While a number of the Alamo's defenders hung on inside, most died while attempting to escape. Capt. Dickinson, with cannon atop the chapel, fired repeatedly into the throng of enemy cavalry until he was finally cut down. The controversy surrounding Davy Crockett still remains, though the recently authenticated diary of the Mexican Col. José Enrique de la Peña offers evidence that he surrendered. Notoriously, Mexican Pres. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna burned the bodies of the Texans who had dared stand against him. As this book proves in thorough detail, the funeral pyres were well outside the fort—that is, where the two separate groups of escapees fell on the plain, rather than in the Alamo itself.

FOOTNOTES

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Notes

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Chapter I: THE GREAT PRIZES: LAND AND SLAVES
^1. Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 1–3.
^2. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, p. 3; Connecticut Herald, New Haven, Connecticut, September 22, 1829.
^3. Paul Horgan, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), p. 485; Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 130–131.
^4. Horgan, Great River, p. 485.
^5. Horgan, Great River, p. 486.
^6. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, p. 25; Editors of Time-Life Books, The Texans (Alexandria, Texas: Time-Life Books, 1975), p. 225.
^7. Robert H. Thonhoff, The Texas Connection with the American Revolution (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1981), p. 7; Jack Jackson, Imaginary Kingdom: Texas as Seen by the Rivera and Rubi Military Expeditions, 1727 and 1767 (Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association, 1995), pp. 20–22, 25; Connecticut Herald, September 22, 1829.
^8. Donald E. Chipman, Spanish Texas, 1519–1821 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1992), pp. 200, 206–207, 250.
^9. Cecil Robinson, editor and translator, The View from Chapultepec, Mexican Writers on the Mexican-American War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), pp. 36–37, 44.
^10. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, pp. 2–4, 48.
^11. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery; John Frances Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821 ( New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 206–231.
^12. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, p. 18; Time-Life Editors, The Texans, p. 16.
^13. Eugene Barker and Amelia W. Williams, editors, The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863 (8 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938), vol. 1, p. 304; James Webb, Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), pp. 9–184; Jeff Long, Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo (New York: William Morrow, 1990). p. 12.
^14. Susanne Starling, Land, Is the Cry! (Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association, 1998), pp. 42–44, 52.
^15. Stephen B. Oates, ed., Rip Ford’s Texas (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998), p. 9.
^16. John A. Garraty, The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877 (New York: Harper Collins, 1971), pp. 327–329; Fayette Copeland, Kendall of the Picayune (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 17; Long, Duel of Eagles, pp. 12–84.
^17. Copeland, Kendall of the Picayune, pp. 17, 29, 31, 36–37.
^18. Barker and Williams, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, vol. 1, pp. 302, 304.
^19. New York Herald, New York, June 18, 1836.
^20. New York Herald, New York, March 21, 1836.
^21. Glenn Tucker, Poltroons and Patriots: A Popular Account of the War of 1812 (New York: BobbsMerrill Company, Inc., 1954), p. 68; Walter Lord, A Time to Stand: A Chronicle of the Valiant Battle at the Alamo (New York: Bonanza Books, 1987), p. 86.
^22. New York Herald, March 21, 1836; September 10, 1836.
^23. Phillip Thomas Tucker, “Motivations of United States Volunteers During the Texas Revolution,” East Texas Historical Journal, vol. 29, no. 1 (1991), p. 29.
^24. New York Herald, June 20, 1836.
^25. Todd Hansen, ed., The Alamo Reader: A Study in History (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2003), p. 113.
^26. New York Times, New York, December 15, 1907; Richard Boyd Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 28–29, 36–48; Buddy Levy, American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (New York: Berkley Books, 2005), pp. 56, 235; Kim Robertson, Buffalo Bill’s Bridge, “Woman born in Arnold captured Cody’s heart,” ArnoldImperial Leader, Arnold, Missouri, August 17, 2006.
^27. New York Times, December 15, 1907; Levy, American Legend, p. 241.
^28. New York Times, December 15, 1907; Hauck, David Crockett, p. 39; Levy, American Legend, pp. 233–235, 141; James Atkins Shackford: David Crockett, The Man and the Legend, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 211.
^29. Levy, American Legend, p. 244.
^30. John H. Jenkins, ed., Papers of the Texas Revolution (10 vols., Austin: Presidial Press, 1973), vol. 3, p. 453; Levy,American Legend, p. 247.
^31. Jenkins, ed., Papers of the Texas Revolution, vol. 3, p. 453; Hauck, Davy Crockett, p. 50.
^32. Ron Jackson, Alamo Legacy: Alamo Descendants Remember the Alamo (Austin: Eakin Press,
1997), pp. 34–35; Lord, A Time to Stand, p. 46; Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders, A Genealogy: The People and Their Words (Austin: Eakin Press, 1990), p. 30.
^33. Oates, ed., Rip Ford’s Texas, p. 16.
^34. Jackson, Alamo Legacy, p. 36.
^35. Jackson, Alamo Legacy, p. 80; Marshall De Bruhl, A Life of Sam Houston (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 173.
^36. Copeland, Kendall of the Picayune, p. 55.
^37. Connecticut Herald, September 22, 1829.
^38. Ibid., pp. 17–21; Bob Priddy, Across Our Wide Missouri, (3 vols., Jefferson City: Bob Priddy,
1984), vol. 1, p. 143; Lord, A Time to Stand, p. 24; Groneman, Alamo Defender...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction: From Fact to Fantasy
• Golden Prizes: Land and Slaves
• Napoleonic Influences
• The Ultimate Folly: Defense of the Alamo
• Lull Before the Storm: Fatal Overconfidence
• An Ineffective Siege
• Images from the Alamo
• The Predawn Assault
• Flight Rather than Fight
• The Alamo’s Most Bitter Legacies
• Flames Rising High
• Notes
• Bibliography