Why We Must Always Remember The Alamo

I hope to be there for the 200th anniversary in 2036.

By guest contributor T.J. Martinell.

Like any other man who was first enamored with The Alamo as a kid, I can’t recall the precise time the famous battle initially drew my interest, but I do know what inspired it. As a youngster watching Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier starring Fess Parker, it was hard not to get worked up during the climactic finale in The Alamo as the final shot of Davy Crockett cuts away before he joins his fallen brothers in arms.

All I know is that from that time on I was obsessed. I recreated The Alamo battle repeatedly with Playmobil until a relative got me BMG’s Alamo plastic toy soldier set for Christmas. I still have a copy of my fourth-grade report on The Alamo — I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that it got an A+. And of course, I ran around my backyard wearing a coonskin cap and firing off my cap-gun at invisible attackers trying to overrun the sandbox that passed as The Alamo, at least well enough for the imaginations of a red-blooded American boy.

Around that time, I discovered John Wayne’s 1960 film The Alamo (to be honest, as a kid I initially found it boring), and to this day I have a very rare VHS copy of the uncut version that features additional scenes cut from the standard editions. I also have in a display case a copy of the brochure for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary Celebration in 1986; I hope to be there for the 200th anniversary in 2036.

Yes, you could say I have an interest.

The fact that it’s not yet even been 200 years since the battle should give us pause to reflect not only on how little time has passed, but also on how much things have changed. The battle site has gone from neglected and forgotten to restored and venerated, and now to… it’s complicated.

Who knows whether the 200th anniversary will even occur? After all, there was hardly any national celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ 1620 landing, or the 400th anniversary of their first Thanksgiving. Contrast that with 1992, when the country celebrated the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival. The country’s attitude towards its own history has degraded in the decades since.

Regardless of what happens between now and 2036, it’s more important than ever that Americans in whatever section or region of the country remember The Alamo and what took place there in 1836.

In many ways, the Texas War of Independence mirrored the American Revolution. The Texan rebels faced insurmountable odds from the get-go, and despite a string of early victories, the situation looked grim when Santa Anna came marching up from Mexico with an army of thousands. The Texan army fled to avoid its own destruction, and only through a combination of arrogance on the part of Santa Anna and some brilliant foresight by General Sam Houston was independence achieved following the Battle of San Jacinto. It was one of the greatest underdog success tales in military history.

Like with the American Revolution as well as the War Between the States, there is a sense of epic poetry to the story. It’s no wonder that one Alamo historian titled his book the Texian Iliad. Part of that is because the event has taken on a mythological narrative that often contrasts with historical reality.

The revisionist side tries to paint the war as an effort by racist, slave-owning Anglos to steal land from Mexico and add it to America. The jingoistic view envisions it as a classic American struggle for freedom against a malicious tyrant, The Alamo as a glorious last stand of martyrs, and the revolution’s success as a sign of God’s blessing on Manifest Destiny.

The truth lay somewhere between the two. The Alamo’s defenders were not selfless men fighting for the right of all men everywhere to be free. They were ordinary in that they had personal desires, ambitions, and dreams that they were willing to fight for. Many of them, like Davy Crockett, were relatively new to Texas and saw it as a place to get a fresh start in life. Many of its leaders had significant moral failings that are difficult even for patriotic Americans to overlook fully. Perhaps the most tragic fact I learned only recently was that Davy Crockett joined with Travis at The Alamo because he was part of the anti-Jacksonian faction amongst the Texas rebels, while Sam Houston had been a protégé of Jackson’s. Though a legend in his own time, Davy Crockett’s antagonistic feelings toward the president likely cost him his life.

Yet, a character flaw these men did not possess was cowardice. Films have speculated whether Travis drew a line in the sand and offered men the chance to leave, or whether men simply stayed because they feared the harm to their reputation. Regardless, the men who pioneered, settled, and fought for Texas had not only bravery but belief in their cause.

It was also not an ethnic-based dispute, as the Hispanic Texans, known as Tejanos, fought alongside the Anglos under Juan Sequin, and many of them perished at The Alamo. Ironically, it was the Tejanos who entered the Battle of San Jacinto carrying cards in their sombreros that read Recuerda El Alamo, which was the battle cry of the morning.

Further, the Texas rebellion was just one of many that Santa Anna had been dealing with after he abolished the Constitution of 1824, which he had previously sworn to uphold, and declared himself dictator. It was a war between decentralization versus authoritarianism. Texas was simply the one place where the rebels prevailed.

Of course, none of these facts matter within Woke ideology, which cannot countenance celebration of the victorious, even the victorious dead, and especially victorious dead white men. We can’t be surprised if we see the same fate befall The Alamo’s monuments as we’ve seen first with Confederates and now our Founding Fathers.

Our current struggle over our own nation’s future is exactly why we must remember The Alamo — not just that it happened, but what happened and what it means for us.

The most important is that we as Americans have reaped the blessings of the Texas War of Independence, but the men brutally slain under Santa Anna’s no-quarter policy within that Spanish adobe church never did, nor did they live to see whether their sacrifice was in vain. Modern Americans struggle to accept this harsh truth, that a cause worth fighting for may well be a cause whose fruition you may not live to see. It’s easy to honor The Alamo’s martyrs, but it’s another matter to be subject to a similar fate not knowing whether it will amount to anything.

Another is that victory was never certain, and when objectively examined it is remarkable that it was won. One myth is that the Battle of Jacinto secured Texas’s independence, when in fact even after shattering the Mexican forces there in a mere 18 minutes, the Texas army was still heavily outnumbered by other remaining elements of Santa Anna’s army. The war ended because Santa Anna signed away Texas in exchange for his life.

Consider this: Santa Anna was not willing to die for his own cause, and that is what ultimately led to his defeat. When given the choice, he chose to save his own skin and relinquish a part of Mexico his army had sacrificed and died for. Had he possessed the same courage as the Texans he held in contempt, the outcome could have been very different.

The last is that they resisted. As the 1960 film begins: “They now faced the decision that all men in all times must face… the eternal choice of men… to endure oppression or to resist.”

The state of America is dire. Even the most cheerful person cannot look at the country’s current condition without alarm. While we can hope for things to improve, it is both possible and likely that we are entering what will be a generation-long struggle before the situation turns around. Like The Alamo’s defenders, we may die not knowing whether the America for which we fight will survive.

But still we must resist, because we Remember The Alamo.