Alamo why the battle

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Science Coronavirus Coverage U. The Mexican Army searched for a way to cross the river, but while searching were called back by the colonists to discuss the cannon. This time there were approximately men on the other side of the river — outnumbering the Mexican Army force of dragoons mounted infantry. The people of Gonzales once again refused to return the cannon, arguing that they were fighting to uphold the Constitution of That night, the men of Gonzales crossed the river searching for the Mexican Army.

It was foggy and both defensive forces bumped into one another in the night. Both groups fell back to await daybreak. The following day, October 2, , both groups met on the field of battle. The Mexican Army retreated to arrange for a parlay. Discussions did not lead to a resolution, and therefore the fighting continued. The Mexican Army realized they were outnumbered and retreated to Bexar.

After this encounter, the Mexican Army returned to San Antonio without the cannon, which was seen as a victory for the Texan army. Emboldened, Texan forces decided to follow and march to San Antonio as well. By mid-October, the volunteers had amassed to over , with individuals such as James Bowie, James Fannin, and Juan Seguin arriving on the outskirts of town.

These men were under the command of Stephen F. Once again the Mexican Army was defeated, with over 50 casualties and loss of a cannon. With the arrival of winter and an ongoing siege, grass and hay were in short supply and had to brought in for the Mexican Cavalry. The Texans worked to repair the Mexican constructed entrenchments and fortifications, and brought additional cannons to the site.

Some were distributed to other locations in Texas to help prepare for ensuing clashes. The Texans saw it was necessary to maintain it in order to protect the settlements located to the east. Their arrival prompted members of the Texan Army to enter the Alamo, which was by now heavily fortified.

The Alamo had 18 serviceable cannons and approximately men at the start of the siege. As the Mexican Army arrived, a parlay was called by one of the two Alamo Commanders, James Bowie, a famous adventurer and knife fighter. Shortly after the capture of Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, rumors began to circulate that year-old Crockett had not died alongside his men in the final moments of the Alamo.

Conflicting testimony claimed that Crockett and a handful of others—including Lieutenant James Butler Bonham, who rode back into the Alamo on March 3 knowing full well that it was a death trap—survived the siege, only to be destroyed on the orders of an enraged Santa Anna a few minutes later.

True…or not? No one may ever really know. But most people prefer to believe that Crockett died a heroic death inside the Alamo. Davy Crockett was a national folk hero long before the events of the Alamo. Born August 17, , in an East Tennessee wilderness cabin in what is now Greene County, he struck out on his own at the tender age of 12 to help drive a herd of cattle to Virginia.

He apparently did not enjoy fighting Indians and returned home as soon as his day enlistment was up. In , he was elected to the Tennessee Legislature for the first time, representing a district of 11 western counties in the state. He later served two terms in the United States Congress.

Crockett was always one for adventure. When defeated at the polls for a third term in Congress in , he turned in typical Crockett fashion to the cause of Texan freedom as a way to completely cut off one phase of his life and begin another. Before leaving for Texas, however, he gave his constituents one last speech. He concluded …by telling them that I was done with politics for the present, and that they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas.

The old fortress spread over three acres as it surrounded a rough rectangle of bare ground, about the size of a gigantic city block, called the plaza. On the south side of this plaza and detached from the church by a distance of some 10 feet was a long one-story building called the low barracks. Adobe huts spread along the west side, which was protected by a foot-high stone wall. A similar wall ran across the north side. Crockett and his men defended a low wooden palisade erected to breach the gap between the church and the low barracks of the south wall.

The position of the low barracks was in front of, and perpendicular to, the right side of the church—an area that is now covered in flagstone.

This palisade consisted of two rows of pointed wooden stakes with rocks and earth between the rows. All combatants considered the position to be the most vulnerable and hardest to defend area of the fortress. But Crockett and the other Tennesseans were expert marksmen, the best the small Texan army had. They most likely held their position until death. Then again…maybe not. Minutes after the fighting ceased, Santa Anna instructed Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to identify the bodies of the dead Texans, especially those of the leaders.

According to the alcalde, Toward the west and in a small fort opposite the city, we found the body of Colonel Crockett…and we may infer that he either commanded that point or was stationed there as a sharpshooter. The only logical explanation is that the small courtyard bounded by the palisade on the south, the church on the east and the hospital on the north, where Crockett and the Tennesseans were stationed, was considered a small fort all its own.

George Patrick that Davy Crockett had survived the battle. When the Mexican soldiers discovered him, Crockett explained that he was on a visit and had accidentally got caught in the Alamo after it was too late to escape. In , writer Josephus Conn Guild offered a similar version in which Crockett and five others survived the siege.

Colonel Crockett fell with a dozen swords sheathed in his breast. Actually, much of the same story had appeared as far back as , when the diary of Lt. When the diary was finally published in English in the s, it stirred up those Americans who felt the heroic Crockett never would have surrendered.

Another account, from Mexican Sergeant Felix Nunez, related details of the death of a Texan on the palisade: He was a tall American of rather dark complexion and had a long buckskin coat and a round cap without any bill, made of fox skin with the long tail hanging down his back.

This man apparently had a charmed life. Of the many soldiers who took deliberate aim at him and fired, not one ever hit him. On the contrary, he never missed a shot. He may not have been describing Davy Crockett, but who else dressed in that fashion? Susanna Dickinson sometimes spelled Dickerson , one of the noncombatant survivors of the battle, stated in her memoirs that she saw Crockett and a handful of others lying mangled and mutilated between the church and the two-story barrack building, and even remembered seeing his peculiar cap laying by his side, as she was led from the scene by a Mexican officer.

Perhaps she had seen Crockett after his execution, which supposedly occurred near the front of the church. And perhaps Reuben Marmaduke Potter had it right all along when he wrote, David Crockett never surrendered to bear or tiger, Indian or Mexican. That story, which has never been proved one way or the other, says that Bowie was the last to die in the fighting at the Alamo. Jim Bowie, whose exploits made his name familiar in almost every American home during his lifetime, was born about in either Tennessee, Kentucky, or Georgia—sources vary.

It was his involvement with the pirate Jean Lafitte in the slave trade, though, that earned him a measure of notoriety. In September , he killed a man with his huge knife during a brawl on a Mississippi sandbar just above Natchez. It was the Vidalia sandbar fight that firmly established him as a legendary fighter throughout the South. Bowie also became a Mexican citizen and married into the Mexican aristocracy, which, more than anything else, gained him the friendship, confidence and support of the Mexican population.

By , he was fluent in Spanish. Since he had been a colonel in a Texas Ranger company in , he carried this title and authority when he answered the call for Texan volunteers. The year-old frontiersman and Indian fighter was described as a normally calm, mild man until his temper was aroused.

Absolutely fearless, he gave orders to the volunteers at the Alamo while year-old Colonel Travis, a disciplinarian, took charge of the regulars and cavalry. The difference in their personalities, coupled with the difference in their ages, resulted in the two men sharing a somewhat antagonistic competition for command of the entire garrison. On one point they did agree: The Alamo was the most important stronghold of Texas. Sometime around February 21, , Bowie decided to help construct a lookout post or gun garrison along one of the walls.

Although there are conflicting opinions on what actually happened, most accounts think that he lost his balance on the scaffold and fell 8 feet to the ground, breaking either his hip or his leg. This incident has also been called hogwash by other historians, who claim that Bowie never suffered any accident while at the Alamo.

Whether or not he also suffered from tuberculosis, diphtheria, or the dreaded typhoid pneumonia is also a matter of conjecture. Most accounts agree that Bowie was found dead on his cot, but since his nurse, Madame Candelaria, never told the exact same story twice about the sequence of events, who really knows what happened that day?

Bowie probably participated in the battle, dying in the fall of the Alamo with the other defenders. But was he the last to fall? As the Mexican soldiers stormed over the walls of the compound, the defenders raced to the long barracks, where there was no exit, and to the church. None of them ferried a sick man on a cot.

Still, the Mexican soldiers could have taken pity on Bowie when they saw him more dead than alive, prostrate on his cot in his room in the low barracks.