At dawn on March 6, 1836, cannon fire and gunshots shattered the silence over San Antonio, Texas. Davy Crockett and the defenders on the southwestern corner of the Alamo fired volley after volley into Mexican soldiers scrambling up wooden ladders propped against the mission walls. Men fell to his left and right. Below, hordes of attackers swarmed toward the small mission.
The defenders were vastly outnumbered, and they knew this was a fight to the death. Cannonballs crashed into the thick adobe walls, bludgeoning larger and larger holes. The men had hardly slept for weeks. Many had labored through the night piling stones and soil to fortify weak points.
Most had spent the final hours restlessly turning under their blankets. Now the fight was here. Shrieks of the wounded joined the din of battle. Crockett fired and reloaded as fast as he could.
Soon the first attackers poured over the walls, and the defenders met them with knives, pistols, and anything else they could find. A ferocious close-quarters struggle took place just inside the parapet. Most of the men were American citizens who had moved to Texas seeking a better life and had chosen to fight for Texas’s right to secede from Mexico. But contrary to popular belief, many were immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Denmark, along with native-born Mexicans who sided with the Texian cause, known as Tejanos.
Yet no man at the Alamo was as well known as Davy Crockett. By 1836, Crockett was a national celebrity, famed as a hunter, frontiersman, master storyteller, and backwoods statesman. In the previous decade he had met presidents and foreign dignitaries, attended high-society parties in New York and Washington, served in Congress, and been the subject of a Broadway play. Now it seemed his story would end on the hard, dusty ground of Texas.
But this was not where his story began. Crockett was born in 1786 in Greene County, then part of the state of Franklin, which would become Tennessee. He was the fourth of five boys and the seventh of nine children born to John and Rebecca Crockett. He grew up on the frontier, tracking, hunting, and fishing, and was turned out by his father as labor to pay off family debts.
He served in the War of 1812 under Andrew Jackson, mostly as a scout and hunter. He married Polly Finley in 1806, and they had three children. Polly died in 1815, likely from complications related to childbirth. Crockett remarried later that year to Elizabeth Patton, a widow with three children of her own, and together they had three more children.
His political career advanced through his ability to captivate audiences with his plain but enthralling storytelling. In 1817 he was elected justice of the peace of Lawrence County, then lieutenant colonel of the local militia, and in 1821 a state legislator in the Tennessee House. Moving westward with thousands of other Tennessee migrants, he gained popularity as a trustworthy, plain-spoken representative. In 1827 he was elected to Congress, where he broke ranks with his former commander, now President Andrew Jackson, vehemently opposing the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
Cherokee Chief John Ross sent him a letter of gratitude in January 1831. But opposing Jackson cost him support at home, and he lost reelection to William Fitzgerald. In 1831, the play The Lion of the West, loosely based on his life, became a smash hit in New York. Crockett attended a performance and received a standing ovation.
He regained his seat in 1833, but lost again in 1835 to Adam Huntsman. Frustrated, he reportedly declared to his fellow Tennesseans, “They may all go to hell. I’m going to Texas. ”
In 1835, Texas was a tinderbox.
The Mexican government had long permitted American settlement as a buffer between northern Mexico and the Comanche, the region’s dominant power. But the law of April 6, 1830, severely restricted further Anglo immigration and levied special taxes on Texans, stoking resentment. Tejanos, who had endured decades of native attacks while being ignored by Mexico City, shared the growing indignation. Tensions rose further when General Santa Anna ordered Mexican troops to occupy towns including Anahuac, Velasco, and San Antonio, then known as Béxar.
One major point of contention between Anglo settlers and Tejanos was slavery, which Mexico had abolished in 1829 but many settlers continued to practice. Still, most Tejanos chose to overlook the disagreement in the interest of gaining independence from a government that had failed them. By October 1835, tensions erupted at the Battle of Gonzales. Mexican officials demanded the town surrender a pair of cannons loaned for defense against the Comanche.
The Texans refused, hid the cannons, and on October 2 faced the Mexican army on the Guadalupe River under a flag reading “Come and take it. ” After a brief skirmish, the Mexicans retreated. On October 9, the Texans seized Presidio La Bahia at Goliad, cutting off Mexican supplies to San Antonio. They won again at the Battle of La Concepción on October 28 and in December at the Siege of Béxar, wresting San Antonio from Santa Anna’s army.
Sensing victory was within reach, roughly 200 Texans fortified the old mission known as the Alamo in anticipation of Santa Anna’s inevitable return. By the time Crockett and a band of about thirty volunteers arrived on February 8, 1836, command had changed hands several times. James Clinton Neill had resigned due to family illness, leaving joint command to William B. Travis, a 26-year-old Alabama lawyer who had fled debt and left his wife and children, and Jim Bowie, a 42-year-old frontiersman and entrepreneur.
Bowie had gained regional fame after a knife fight on the Mississippi River in 1827, in which he used a massive knife given to him by his brother to eviscerate his opponent. He gave his name to one of the Old West’s most famous weapons. But he was now gravely ill, most likely with typhoid pneumonia, and visibly wasting away. Victory seemed at hand when Crockett arrived.
But Santa Anna, fuming over the loss of San Antonio, was already marching north from Mexico City with thousands of troops, determined to avoid the shame of defeat. On February 23, only two weeks after Crockett’s arrival, sentries spotted Mexican cavalry in the hills. Roughly 1,500 to 1,800 Mexican troops surrounded the roughly 180 defenders. The rebels were caught off guard.
Santa Anna’s army took control of the city and trapped the defenders inside the Alamo. Several defenders had their wives and children with them. For thirteen days, the Mexican army laid siege, pounding the walls with artillery. Santa Anna sent several envoys demanding surrender.
All were refused. On February 24, Travis wrote a letter delivered by Captain Albert Martin, who slipped out at night and rode 75 miles to Gonzales. The letter read in part: “I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna, and I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you, in the name of liberty, of patriotism, and of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid.
Victory or death. ” Captain Martin and 31 men from Gonzales did reach the Alamo, but they were far fewer than Travis had hoped. On the same day, Santa Anna raised the black flag of no quarter, signaling that none would be spared without surrender. Whatever the truth of the famous line drawn in the sand, every man inside knew surrender was the only alternative to death.
All but one, Louis Rose, chose to stay. In the predawn attack on March 6, the Mexican assault poured over the walls. Within minutes, Travis was shot dead on the north side. Bowie, bedridden and unable to stand, was killed by Mexican soldiers who burst into his room and ran him through with bayonets.
Crockett fought to the end. When his ammunition ran out, he used his rifle as a club and fought with his hunting knife. His exact death remains unclear. Some accounts say he was shot in the final stages of the battle.
Others claim he and a few surviving defenders were captured and executed under Santa Anna’s orders. The ultimate fate of all the defenders was the same. Their bodies were stacked in piles and burned, denied both funerals and proper graves. Santa Anna expected his victory to break the Texans’ will.
Instead, it produced the opposite result. The example of the Alamo renewed the rebels’ fury. Cries of “Remember the Alamo! ” resounded across battlefields.
Santa Anna was decisively defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836 and forced to surrender. Texas gained its independence. Without the sacrifice of the men at the Alamo, that victory may never have occurred.
The names of Bowie, Travis, and above all Davy Crockett became lasting symbols of devotion to a cause, even at the cost of one’s own life.