Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Remembering the Alamo

Twice in the past week I’ve been asked – “Is there a book I can read – about the fall of the Alamo?”

Yes- there are many of them. I’m happy to recommend two.

A Time to Stand, by Walter Lord, is a touchstone for Texas historians. Lord was a storyteller who wrote nonfiction in the style of a novelist. There’s no better book about the Alamo battle and its repercussions. Find the book on Amazon, or on your favorite on-line bookstore used or new. Come to think of it – my 1963 copy is pretty beat up. I need one myself.

Walter Lord is also the author of A Time to Remember, the story of the Titanic disaster. Which became the movie, remember? Others of his books include A Day of Infamy about Pearl Harbor and Incredible Victory – the battle of Midway. “Must reads,” for those of us of a certain age.

And the second Alamo book? A more recent one – Texian Iliad, by Stephen L. Hardin. A very readable history with the kind of personal details that bring a story to life. Plus, the illustrations (by Gary S. Zaboly) are worth the price of admission alone. They show accurate details of dress and armament, a feast to puzzle over.

These two books help to penetrate the myths that have followed the Alamo story. There are still questions to ponder, of course. The death of Davy Crockett is fodder for revisionists. Was there, indeed, a line drawn in the sand? Is the de la Peña diary a clever forgery?

My favorite version of the Alamo story? The one told by my mother, with fire in her eyes and arms waving. Mythical, yes, but the kind a little boy will never forget.

Dac Crossley
March 21, 2013

“Don’t compromise yourself. You’re all you got.” – Janice Joplin.

The Lesson of Corpus Christi

It began in 1839 when Henry Kinney from Pennsylvania moved onto the old Indian trading grounds at the mouth of the Nueces river and set up his own trading post. He dealt with Mexicans, Indians, Texans, in goods that could be smuggled into Mexico to avoid tariffs. His post on a high bluff overlooking the bay eventually became the village of Corpus Christi. But not right away.

After 1836 Texas declaimed the Rio Grande to be its border. Mexico claimed it was the Nueces. Neither nation could enforce its claim. Mexico was in revolution, Centralists versus Federalists. Texas was broke, the treasury empty. Nevertheless Mexican armies invaded south Texas, taking San Antonio twice, but soon retreated back across the Rio Grande. Texans were enraged at the invasions but could not afford to field an army.

So Kinney operated in a no-man’s land. He traded with the Mexican Federalist troopers and with renegade Texans. Friends in Matamoros protected him. Invading Mexican troops respected his person and property. In 1845, US Army Colonel Hitchcock reported that Corpus Christi was a small village whose “inhabitants were smugglers and lawless persons to whom war was prosperity. --- Kenney seems to have a government of his own here, and to be alternately friend and foe of Mexicans, Texans, Americans, and Indians, sometimes defying them and meeting them with force and sometimes bribing and wheedling them. He lives by smuggling goods across the line.”

Everything evolved when General Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready, moved in with his army, on the way to fight Mexico on the Rio Grande.

But I think there is a lesson here than we might ponder. Trader Kenney made the best of both worlds, ignoring boundaries and borders too vast to protect or conquer. Would he respect our borders today? Of course, Kenney did not have to deal with drug traffic or drug lords. Nothing is ever as simple as I try to make it. Or is it?

A final question – who named the General “Old Rough and Ready?” Was it Mrs. Taylor?

Smile. Laugh. Think Springtime.

Dac Crossley
March 14, 2013

“A good half of the art of living is resilience.” – Alain de Botton.

Fall of the Alamo

March 6, 1836 – San Antonio, Texas, and the Alamo fort. The Mexican army under El Presidente Santa Anna overwhelms the Texan defenders and slaughters them all. And histories are written, some good and some bad, some factual, some biased. A Texas child of a certain age would hear the tale at his/her mother’s knee. What do today's children hear of the Alamo?

Santa Anna called it “a small affair.” But it entered the realm of legend in the United States, if not in much of the civilized world. The Texans matched that slaughter when they attacked Santa Anna the following month at San Jacinto. Their battle cry - "Remember the Alamo."

And today some view the Alamo battle, and the victory at San Jacinto, as the beginning of the ever-present enmity, today’s love-hate bond that exists between anglo and latino, Mexico and Texas. Now we find that antagonism extended to the national level. Our two countries should be bonding, not building virtual fences.

The Alamo story is constantly rewritten. The discovery of the diaries of the Mexican officers tell a story different from that of the legend. The “line in the said?” Who says? The death of Davy Crockett? The Alamo is a symbol of racism? Slavery? Do the Daughters of the Republic of Texas actually own the Alamo Chapel?

Please, just for today,let me remember my mother’s version of history, told with fire in her eyes. "Remember the Alamo."

The Alamo today is a major tourist site, and San Antonio should be grateful to have it.

Dac Crossley
March 6, 2013.
Happy birthday, Paige.

“Be sure you are right and then go ahead.” – David Crockett.

Texas Declares Independence from Mexico

My mother, Eugenia Baird Crossley, would launch into one of her dramatic orations on March 2, the day that Texas declared its independence. The convention of 1836 was in session at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Delegates from all quarters of Texas debated their future – what to do about the despot Santa Anna, who had suspended Mexico’s constitution and become its military dictator – El Presidente. Mother made it more of a show than it probably was. On March 1, George C. Childress was appointed chairman of a committee to draw up a declaration of independence. The next day, March 2, Childress presented the declaration to the Convention.

George probably had that document prepared when he arrived. Despite the dramatic debates (thanks, Mom), declaring for independence was a foregone conclusion.

Sam Houston bought the drinks, as was his habit. After all, March 2 was his birthday, too. He took only a minor role in the Convention itself. He would be appointed general of the (nonexistent) Army of Texas and become Texas’s foremost statesman.

The historian Marquis James proposed that Houston’s real objective was to wrest Texas from Mexico and lay it at the feet of his hero, President Andrew Jackson. Indeed, old Sam was always loyal to the US. In 1860 he refused to take the oath of secession, and was removed from his office of Governor of Texas. Two years later, he died quietly.

Some of my troubled friends back in Texas are muttering about another secession, this time from the United States. Where would they find another Sam Houston?

Dac Crossley
March 2, 2013. Happy Birthday, Sam.

“I hold that the man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.” – Henrik Ibsen.