Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth (22 page)

Providence, Rhode Island-born Albert Martin, who galloped from the Alamo as a messenger but faithfully returned with the Gonzales Ranging Company to meet a tragic fate with his fellow citizens on March 6, wrote on February 25 how the Alamo garrison “was short of Ammunition when I left” on February 24, the siege’s second day.
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And on March 3, Travis penned how “our supply of ammunition is limited. At least five hundred pounds of cannon powder [and] ten kegs of rifle powder . . . should be sent to this place without delay.” Even bullets were in short supply. The cache of large-caliber Mexican bullets could not be used for rifles because the lead balls were too big. Travis also requested “a supply of lead” for the men to make bullets from molds.
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A persistent Alamo myth is that the defenders’ firepower was greatly enhanced because each man possessed a number of captured muskets by his side. What has been overlooked by many is that there was not enough high-quality black powder on hand to ensure any reliable degree of firepower at the critical moment, even if every defender was at his assigned position. And with the Alamo located nearly 150 miles from the Gulf, ammunition resupply across the long coastal plain would never arrive in time.
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Another critical factor that has been overlooked in regard to the Alamo’s defense may well have been the most important: the garrison’s overall poor health. The fact that the garrison’s declining health by March 6 has been ignored is somewhat ironic, because a sickness or disease had even cut down the fort’s co-commander, Bowie, by the time of the attack. Whatever Bowie had, he was assigned to an isolated room along the southern perimeter to keep it from spreading. In truth, the entire Alamo garrison had fought a long-running battle—one that it lost—with disease throughout the winter of 1835–36, long before Santa Anna’s arrival.

By conducting his campaign in late winter and without staying in one place too long, Santa Anna’s Army of Operations was in relatively good shape, and more healthy than the Alamo garrison, whose indiscipline, static position, and unsanitary ways led to the spread of disease. Like many of his men, especially the Vera Cruz lancers, Santa Anna, after having grown up in that city, was immune to yellow fever—one secret of his past success in campaigning against unacclimated Spanish troops in the lowlands in and around Tampico and Vera Cruz.
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Unfortunately, the Anglo-Celts had decided to make a defensive stand in what was the most unhealthy place in not only San Antonio, but possibly all of Texas. As strange fate would have it, many American settlers had initially poured into Texas from the United States, in part because of a smallpox epidemic. This fatal disease, brought to the New World by Europeans, had spread from the east to finally infect people in the southwest, including Texas, with especially devastating results for native people. For the newly arriving immigrants from the United States, Texas had remained unoccupied, in no small part because of smallpox’s wrath. The disease had purged this land of much of its native population, allowing the opportunity for migrants east of the Sabine to take possession of a vast land with relative ease.
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By 1836 the once thriving Spanish mission in San Antonio represented a classic study of the ravages of disease. First and foremost, the Alamo compound was virtually sitting atop a vast, sprawling graveyard. The first burial sites at the Alamo consisted of Native Americans, who had lived along this stretch of the San Antonio River long before the Spanish arrived. Occupying a relatively small area along the watercourse, the heavy concentration of Indians, who were part of the mission system, made these people more vulnerable to epidemics. From 1736 to 1739, an unmerciful cholera outbreak drastically reduced the Mission Indian population housed at the Alamo compound. More than 1,000 Mission Indians were buried around the outside of the old chapel—the Alamo proper. These unfortunates were not only victims of cholera, but also epidemics of smallpox, pneumonia, and diphtheria.

For instance, in 1738 alone, 655 out of a total of 837 Mission Indians, mostly Tlaxcalans, died in an epidemic that resembled a holocaust. Waves of diseases had long ravaged the area along the San Antonio River, and the winter of 1835–36 was no different. By early 1836, the Alamo defenders were literally sleeping and walking atop an unseen cemetery of shallow, Native American graves. These contained hundreds of men, women, and children from tribes such as the Apache, Pasojo, Tucame, Charame, Mesquite, and Jumana, but without markers, of course.
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Some graves of smallpox victims were disturbed when the Alamo’s defenses were strengthened by digging ground to bolster the weak north wall. Such a development would help to spread disease, which might well have been passed on to garrison members from contaminated corpses. Other diseases might well have infected the defenders; for instance, a cholera epidemic swept through not only Mexico but Texas, including San Antonio, between 1832 and 1834.
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A total of six physicians and other medical staff, led by Chief Surgeon Amos Pollard and his assistants, John Thomson, John Purdy Reynolds, Edward Mitchasson, and John Hubbard Forsyth served in the infirmary. Artilleryman Captain Almeron Dickinson also served as an unofficial physician to the garrison. However, the effectiveness of these men was largely negated because Matamoros Expedition members, aside from their other confiscations, had even stolen the post’s supplies of medicine.

The small Alamo hospital could trace a lengthy military lineage, having been established more than three decades earlier. In fact, this little-known medical facility was not only the “First Hospital in Texas,” but also the site of one of Texas’ first dental shops. This “first serious attempt” to establish a general hospital at the Alamo for both the military and civilian populace of San Antonio began in 1805. However, the initial hospital served mostly as a military infirmary with the increase of the Spanish garrison to parry the growing American threat, after the United States acquired Louisiana, eliminating the historic French menace to the borderland. Only near the Spanish period’s end, in 1814, was the Alamo hospital discontinued by the chaos of revolution. The infirmary had meanwhile treated a large number of patients with a variety of diseases and injuries for nearly a decade. Therefore, long before the Anglo-Celts garrisoned the place, the Alamo had served as the largest military hospital in all of Texas, which paradoxically contributed to making it an unhealthy place by the winter of 1835–36.
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In addition, the sizeable Mexican garrison of General Cós had occupied not only the Alamo in 1835 but the infirmary. Nothing spreads disease faster than a large number of soldiers trapped in a confined space for an extended period—one of the horrors of siege warfare, in which disease often killed more of the besieged than the opponent. Unfamiliar micro-organisms, bacteria, and germs from Mexico’s tropical depths had thoroughly infested the Alamo compound, lingering through the winter of 1835–36, making the cramped place extremely unhealthy, both before and during the siege.

But the most deadly disease in Texas by early 1836 was a smallpox epidemic that very likely spread to the Alamo garrison. On his journey to the Alamo from which he would never return, Micajah Autry wrote in a December 13, 1835 letter from Natchitoches, Louisiana, on the Texas border, where zealous volunteers from the U.S. flowed into Texas like a stream: “The smallpox has recently broken out here very bad.”
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Additionally, measles spread through the garrison, sending more soldiers to the infirmary. One such victim was twenty-six-year-old, Ohio-born Tapley Holland. He was a veteran of the 1835 campaign along with two brothers, whose father hailed from Canada. The Hollands were among the original settlers of the Austin Colony. Instead of taking a disability discharge and returning home like so many others, Tapley remained behind to recuperate at the Alamo hospital. A young artilleryman of Captain Carey’s “Invincibles” from Grimes County, Texas, he planned to either eventually return home or remain with the garrison upon recovery.
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Another Alamo garrison member stricken by measles was Lieutenant Sherwood Young Reams. This 24-year-old Tennessean had first fired at a Mexican soldier during the “Lexington of the Texas Revolution” at Gonzales, and he had also participated in San Antonio’s capture. Reams’ leadership skills were recognized, earning him a lieutenant’s rank in Captain Dickinson’s artillery company. However, this seasoned veteran was discharged from the Alamo garrison on December 28 because of measles, and sent off to Gonzales in the hope of preventing the disease’s spread.
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The men from the United States who had never been so far south before had expected the subtropical-like weather of Texas to persist right on through the winter. Few young men, especially those from the Deep South, anticipated the severity of the bitter cold fronts of Arctic air that pushed south down the flat, rolling grasslands of the Great Plains. Quite unexpected to them, they discovered that San Antonio, swept by biting-cold air, sudden rapid drops in temperature, and the harsh winter winds sweeping over the prairies, was as cold as northern states. Such cold fronts were the infamous Texas “norther.”

Initially believing that they had discovered another Spain-like climate in this region, Spanish explorers were stunned by the ferocity of the “norther’s” wrath that descended upon them in the winter of 1528–29. These were the first Europeans to record this unique, climatic phenomena.
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Even though snow was rare in south Texas, the biting cold was nearly as severe. As detailed in his diary during his inspection tour of the untamed frontier of New Spain, including San Antonio, in 1727, Pedro de Rivera described an undeniable reality of a brutal Texas winter that was unrealized by most Alamo soldiers recently from the United States: “The climate of this province is similar to that of Europe, because the cold is quite noticeable during the time of snows.”
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Another factor that ensured the spread of disease was the atrocious state of sanitation among the Alamo garrison. Throughout the winter of 1835–36, sanitation was virtually nonexistent in a command that was more civilian than military. The indiscipline of amateurs at war, many of who were away from home for the first time, translated into poor personal hygiene and sanitation, ensuring a greater chance of spreading germs. By early 1836, the lack of a well at the Alamo further facilitated the contagions of disease. In a January 12, 1836 letter, Captain Carey complained how the garrison was “almost famished for water.” And this serious situation was destined to worsen when Santa Anna’s forces cut off the garrison’s main water source—the irrigation ditch that led to the fresh waters of the San Antonio River.
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Garrison members of this multi-ethnic and multi-cultural command hailed from a wide variety of places and locales, coming from all across the United States—from Massachusetts to nearby Louisiana—and even western and central Europe, including Germany and Denmark. Because such a high percentage of garrison members hailed from rural areas and were mingling with a large group of individuals for the first time, they were more vulnerable to the spread of disease than their better-acclimated, urban peers. Now existing on poor rations in the Alamo’s damp, cramped quarters, the cold winter weather of 1835–36 forced the garrison into even closer living conditions that only continued to serve as a greater breeding ground for illness.

The decision to defend the Alamo was made mainly because of its large number of artillery pieces, since it possessed the guns left behind by General Cós. However, Cós had his men sabotage some of what remained, reducing capabilities. As he wrote in his report to Santa Anna: “Almost none of the part [of artillery supplies] did I leave in the power of the insurgents,” while his men took powder reserves in violation of the surrender and parole terms when they marched out of San Antonio back to Mexico. Most significant, Cós reported that, “The rest of the armaments that I was not able to take was render[ed] useless.”
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Other than the former militia artilleryman, Neill, no one among the garrison was more seduced by the Alamo’s plentiful amount of artillery than Jameson. Beaming confidence, he was convinced that the garrison could literally “whip 10 to 1 with artillery.”
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The best known company of Alamo artillerymen was led by the popular officer Captain Carey, who had long been Neill’s trusted confidant. Near mid-January 1836 and with obvious pride, Captain Carey wrote in a letter how Lt. Colonel Neill “thinks a great deal of my judgment and consults me about a number of the proceedings before he issues an order.”
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Neill and Carey had first formed tight bonds while serving together in the People’s Army of Texas and during San Antonio’s siege. Carey enlisted as a private but soon rose in rank with demonstrated leadership ability. Near the end of October 1835, he gained a second lieutenant’s rank. During their siege of San Antonio, Carey displayed the ability that won him a promotion to first lieutenant from Neill, who commanded the artillery at the siege’s beginning.

During the house-to-house fighting that swirled through San Antonio’s streets, Carey had played a distinguished role. Reminiscent of General Washington’s cannon firing at the Hessians down Trenton’s snowy streets on December 26, 1776, he ordered a gun planted in the middle of one dusty street to suppress Mexican fire, including artillery, from defensive positions at close range. While fellow cannoneers fell around him in this exposed position and a hail of bullets cut through his clothes and hat, and even though blood dripped from a head wound, Lieutenant Carey directed fire that disabled a Mexican cannon. He and his gunners suppressed the incoming fire in a diversion that assisted the successful infantry attack.
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