Remember the Alamo



On February 24, a call for help was sent by a beleaguered man facing forces beyond his anticipation, comprehension or control.  The Battle of the Alamo only lasted 13 days, stretching from February 23, 1836 to the final pre-dawn assault on the walls on March 6.  Everyone knows how this story ends.  Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna overran the poorly fortified mission in San Antonio de Bexar (current day San Antonio).   Santa Anna’s cruelty was legendary and every man in the fortification knew he was going to die by bayonet or bullet.  They did. 
            Fewer people know the aftermath.  The wholesale slaughter of the rebels was repeated at the town of Goliad to the southwest.  At this town, over 400 men were told that if they surrendered they would be pardoned.  Instead they were marched onto the roads in columns of two between lines of Mexican soldiers and killed in a blood bath.  The result of this carnage was a consolidation of fervor on the part of the “Texian” immigrants.  They rallied to Sam Houston who then defeated the Mexican Army and captured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21 of the same year.   
            The Alamo is a symbol of lost causes but it is also a symbol of desperate courage in the face of a frustrating status quo.  It is a symbol of what men can and will do when they see no other opportunity available to them.  But it is also a symbol of misplaced and mistimed ire. There are a series of “what ifs” that accompany the Alamo.  There was debate about whether to arm the Alamo or not, about Houston’s endless retreats and even the popularity of Santa Anna who was twice thrown out of Mexico by the Mexican people and then invited to return when they could find no viable replacement.  What impresses me are the way Travis’s words could be imposed on many different times, many different places, and with many different antagonists.   
William Travis sent this letter exactly 180 years ago:
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:
Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.
            Personally, I do not believe in “Victory or Death.”  I believe in strategic movement.  But I do believe in facing reality and acknowledging danger when you see it.  I believe in asking for concerted action, group commitment and I do know that sometimes there has to be sacrifice for the greater good.  I also believe that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. 
            Remember the Alamo and keep the faith. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more