"REMEMBER THE ALAMO"

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

* * *

The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are past;
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
--Theodore O'Hara.

"REMEMBER THE ALAMO"

"Thermopylae had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had
none." These were the words with which a United States senator
referred to one of the most resolute and effective fights ever
waged by brave men against overwhelming odds in the face of
certain death.

Soon after the close of the second war with Great Britain,
parties of American settlers began to press forward into the
rich, sparsely settled territory of Texas, then a portion of
Mexico. At first these immigrants were well received, but the
Mexicans speedily grew jealous of them, and oppressed them in
various ways. In consequence, when the settlers felt themselves
strong enough, they revolted against Mexican rule, and declared
Texas to be an independent republic. Immediately Santa Anna,
the Dictator of Mexico, gathered a large army, and invaded Texas.
The slender forces of the settlers were unable to meet his hosts.
They were pressed back by the Mexicans, and dreadful atrocities
were committed by Santa Anna and his lieutenants. In the United
States there was great enthusiasm for the struggling Texans, and
many bold backwoodsmen and Indian-fighters swarmed to their help.
Among them the two most famous were Sam Houston and David
Crockett. Houston was the younger man, and had already led an
extraordinary and varied career. When a mere lad he had run away
from home and joined the Cherokees, living among them for some
years; then he returned home. He had fought under Andrew Jackson
in his campaigns against the Creeks, and had been severely
wounded at the battle of the Horse-shoe Bend. He had risen to the
highest political honors in his State, becoming governor of
Tennessee; and then suddenly, in a fit of moody longing for the
life of the wilderness, he gave up his governorship, left the
State, and crossed the Mississippi, going to join his old
comrades, the Cherokees, in their new home along the waters of
the Arkansas. Here he dressed, lived, fought, hunted, and drank
precisely like any Indian, becoming one of the chiefs.

David Crockett was born soon after the Revolutionary War. He,
too, had taken part under Jackson in the campaigns against the
Creeks, and had afterward become a man of mark in Tennessee, and
gone to Congress as a Whig; but he had quarreled with Jackson,
and been beaten for Congress, and in his disgust he left the
State and decided to join the Texans. He was the most famous
rifle-shot in all the United States, and the most successful
hunter, so that his skill was a proverb all along the border.

David Crockett journeyed south, by boat and horse, making his way
steadily toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging
their life-and-death fight. Texas was a wild place in those days,
and the old hunter had more than one hairbreadth escape from
Indians, desperadoes, and savage beasts, ere he got to the
neighborhood of San Antonio, and joined another adventurer, a
bee-hunter, bent on the same errand as himself. The two had been
in ignorance of exactly what the situation in Texas was; but they
soon found that the Mexican army was marching toward San Antonio,
whither they were going. Near the town was an old Spanish fort,
the Alamo, in which the hundred and fifty American defenders of
the place had gathered. Santa Anna had four thousand troops with
him. The Alamo was a mere shell, utterly unable to withstand
either a bombardment or a regular assault. It was evident,
therefore, that those within it would be in the utmost jeopardy
if the place were seriously assaulted, but old Crockett and his
companion never wavered. They were fearless and resolute, and
masters of woodcraft, and they managed to slip through the
Mexican lines and join the defenders within the walls. The
bravest, the hardiest, the most reckless men of the border were
there; among them were Colonel Travis, the commander of the fort,
and Bowie, the inventor of the famous bowie-knife. They were a
wild and ill-disciplined band, little used to restraint or
control, but they were men of iron courage and great bodily
powers, skilled in the use of their weapons, and ready to meet
with stern and uncomplaining indifference whatever doom fate
might have in store for them.

Soon Santa Anna approached with his army, took possession of the
town, and besieged the fort. The defenders knew there was
scarcely a chance of rescue, and that it was hopeless to expect
that one hundred and fifty men, behind defenses so weak, could
beat off four thousand trained soldiers, well armed and provided
with heavy artillery; but they had no idea of flinching, and made
a desperate defense. The days went by, and no help came, while
Santa Anna got ready his lines, and began a furious cannonade.
His gunners were unskilled, however, and he had to serve the guns
from a distance; for when they were pushed nearer, the American
riflemen crept forward under cover, and picked off the
artillerymen. Old Crockett thus killed five men at one gun. But,
by degrees, the bombardment told. The walls of the Alamo were
battered and riddled; and when they had been breached so as to
afford no obstacle to the rush of his soldiers, Santa Anna
commanded that they be stormed.

The storm took place on March 6, 1836. The Mexican troops came on
well and steadily, breaking through the outer defenses at every
point, for the lines were too long to be manned by the few
Americans. The frontiersmen then retreated to the inner building,
and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed, the Mexicans
thronging in, shooting the Americans with their muskets, and
thrusting at them with lance and bayonet, while the Americans,
after firing their long rifles, clubbed them, and fought
desperately, one against many; and they also used their
bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect. The fight reeled
to and fro between the shattered walls, each American the center
of a group of foes; but, for all their strength and their wild
fighting courage, the defenders were too few, and the struggle
could have but one end. One by one the tall riflemen succumbed,
after repeated thrusts with bayonet and lance, until but three or
four were left. Colonel Travis, the commander, was among them;
and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting disease,
but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in the
final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with
his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then
these fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy
Crockett. Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his
back to the wall, ringed around by the bodies of the men he had
slain. So desperate was the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who
thronged round about him were beaten back for the moment, and no
one dared to run in upon him. Accordingly, while the lancers held
him where he was, for, weakened by wounds and loss of blood, he
could not break through them, the musketeers loaded their
carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined to give him
mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he was
taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his
fate cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was
left alive. At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over.
Every one of the hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in
death. Yet they died well avenged, for four times their number
fell at their hands in the battle.

Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his
bloody and hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling
Texas plains, going north through the Indian Territory, had told
Houston that the Texans were up and were striving for their
liberty. At once in Houston's mind there kindled a longing to
return to the men of his race at the time of their need. Mounting
his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was hailed by the
Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their forces,
eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto,
he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of
"Remember the Alamo." Almost immediately, the Mexicans were
overthrown with terrible slaughter; Santa Anna himself was
captured, and the freedom of Texas was won at a blow.

****

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