No. 130.

The Fall of

the Alamo.

CAPTAIN R. M. POTTER.

The fall of the Alamo and the massacre of its garrison, which in 1836 opened the campaign of Santa Ana in Texas, caused a profound sensation throughout the United States, and is still remembered with deep feeling by all who take an interest in the history of that section; yet the details of the final assault have never been fully and correctly narrated, and wild exaggerations have taken their place in popular legend. The reason will be obvious when it is remembered that not a single combatant of the last struggle from within the fort survived to tell the tale, while the official reports of the enemy were neither circumstantial nor reliable. When horror is intensified by mystery, the sure product is romance. A trustworthy account of the assault could be compiled only by comparing and combining the verbal narratives of such of the assailants as could be relied on for veracity, and adding to this such lights as might be gathered from military documents of that period, from credible local information, and from any source more to be trusted than rumor. As I was a resident at Matamoros when the event occurred, and for several months after the invading army retreated thither, and afterwards resided near the scene of action, I had opportunities for obtaining the kind of information referred to better perhaps than have been possessed by any person now living outside of Mexico. I was often urged to publish what I had gathered on the subject, as thereby an interesting passage of history might be preserved. I consequently gave to the San Antonio Herald in 1860 an imperfect outline of what is contained in this article, and the communication was soon after printed in pamphlet form. Subsequently to its appearance, however, I obtained many additional and interesting details, mostly from Colonel Juan N. Seguin of San Antonio, who had

been an officer of the garrison up to within six days of the assault. His death, of which I have since heard, no doubt took away the last of those who were soldiers of the Alamo when it was first invested. I now offer these sheets as a revision and enlargement of my article of 1860.

Before beginning the narrative, however, I must describe the Alamo and its surroundings as they existed in the spring of 1836. San Antonio, then a town of about 7,000 inhabitants, had a Mexican population, a minority of which was well affected to the cause of Texas, while the rest were inclined to make the easiest terms they could with whichever side might be for the time being dominant. The San Antonio River, which, properly speaking, is a large rivulet, divided the town from the Alamo, the former on the west side and the latter on the east. The Alamo village, a small suburb of San Antonio, was south of the fort, or Mission, as it was originally called, which bore the same name. The latter was an old fabric, built during the first settlement of the vicinity by the Spaniards; and having been originally designed as a place of safety for the colonists and their property in case of Indian hostility, with room sufficient for that purpose, it had neither the strength, compactness, nor dominant points which ought to belong to a regular fortification. The front of the Alamo Chapel bears date of 1757, but the other works must have been built earlier. As the whole area contained between two and three acres, a thousand men would have barely sufficed to man its defenses; and before a regular siege train they would soon have crumbled. Yoakum, in his history of Texas, is not only astray in his details of the assault, but mistaken about the measurement of the place. Had the works covered no more ground than he represents, the result of the assault might have been different.

From recollection of the locality, as I viewed it in 1841, I could in 1860 trace the extent of the outer walls, which had been demolished about thirteen years before the latter period. The dimensions here given are taken from actual measurement then made; and the accompanying diagram gives correct outlines, though without aiming at close exactitude of scale. The figure in the diagram represents the chapel of the fort, 75 feet long, 62 wide, and 22 high, with walls of solid masonry, four feet thick. It was originally of but one story,

walled up when the place was prepared for defense. B locates a platform in the east end of the chapel. C designates its door; and D marks a wall, 50 feet long and about 12 high, connecting the chapel with the long barrack, E E. The latter

was a stone house of two stories, 186 feet long, 18 wide, and 18 high. FF is a low, one-story stone barrack, 114 feet long and 17 wide, having in the centre a porte-cochère, S, which passed through it under the roof. The walls of these two houses were about thirty inches thick, and they had flat terrace roofs of beams and plank, covered with a thick coat

of cement. GHIK were flat-roofed, stone-walled rooms built against the inside of the west barrier. L L L L L denote barrier walls, enclosing an area, 154 yards long and 54 wide, with the long barrack on the east and the low barrack on the south of it. These walls were 234 feet thick, and from 9 to 12 high, except the strip which fronted the chapel, that being only four feet in height. This low piece of wall was covered by an oblique intrenchment, marked R, and yet to be described, which ran from the southwest angle of the chapel to the east end of the low barrack. M marks the place of a palisade gate at the west end of the intrenchment. The small letters (n) locate the doors of the several rooms which opened upon the large area. Most of those doors had within a semicircular parapet for the use of marksmen, composed of a double curtain of hides, upheld by stakes and filled in with rammed earth. Some of the rooms were also loopholed. O O mark barrier walls, from 5 to 6 feet high and 234 thick, which enclosed a smaller area north of the chapel and east of the long barrack. P designates a cattle yard east of the barrack and south of the small area; it was enclosed by a picket fence. locality of a battered breach in the north wall.

Q shows the

The above-described fort, if it merited that name, was, when the siege commenced, in the condition for defense in which it had been left by the Mexican general, Cos, when he capitulated in the fall of 1835. The chapel, except the west end and north projection, had been unroofed, the east end being occupied by the platform of earth B, 12 feet high, with a slope for ascension to the west. On its level were mounted three pieces of cannon. One (1), a 12-pounder, pointed east through an embrasure roughly notched in the wall; another (2) was aimed north through a sim.'ar notch; and another (3) fired over the wall to the south. High scaffolds of wood enabled marksmen to use the top of the roofless wall as a parapet. The intrenchment (R) consisted of a ditch and breastwork, the latter of earth packed between two rows of palisades, the outer row being higher than the earthwork. Behind it and near the gate was a battery of four guns (4 5 6 7), all 4-pounders, pointing south. The porte-cochère through the low barrack was covered on the outside by a lunette of stockades and earth, mounted with two guns (89). In the southwest angle of the large area was an 18-pounder (10), in the centre of the west wall a twelvepound carronade (11), and in the northwest corner of the same

area an 8-pounder (12), and east of this, within the north wall, two more guns of the same calibre (13 14). All the guns of this area were mounted on high platforms of stockades and earth, and fired over the walls. The several barriers were covered on the outside with a ditch, except where such guard was afforded by the irrigating canal, which flowed on the east and west sides of the fort and served to fill the fosse with water.

Thus the works were mounted with fourteen guns, which agrees with Yoakum's account of their number, though Santa Ana in his report exaggerates it to twenty-one. The number, however, has little bearing on the merits of the final defense, with which cannon had very little to do. These guns were in the hands of men unskilled in their use, and owing to the construction of the works most of them had little width of range. Of the buildings above described, the chapel and the two barracks are probably still standing. They were repaired and newly roofed during the Mexican war for the use of the United States Quartermaster's department.

In the winter of 1835-6 Colonel Neill, of Texas, was in command of San Antonio, with two companies of volunteers, among whom was a remnant of New Orleans Greys, who had taken an efficient part in the siege and capture of the town about a year before. At this time the Provisional Government of Texas, which, though in revolt, had not yet declared a final separation from Mexico, had broken into a conflicting duality. The Governor and Council repudiated each other, and each claimed the obedience which was generally not given to either. Invasion was impending, and there seemed to be little more than anarchy to meet it. During this state of affairs Lieutenant-Colonel Wm. B. Travis, who had commanded the scouting service of the late campaign, and had since been commissioned with the aforesaid rank as an officer of regular cavalry, was assigned by the Governor to relieve Colonel Neill of the command of his post. The volunteers, who cared little for either of the two governments, wished to choose their own leader, and were willing to accept Travis only as second in command. They were, therefore, clamorous that Neill should issue an order for the election of a Colonel. To get over the matter without interfering with Travis' right, he prepared an order for the election of a Lieutenant-Colonel, and was about to depart, when his men, finding out what he had done, mobbed him, and threatened his life unless he should comply with their wishes.