An Altar for Their Sons

Summary

An Altar For Their Sons: The Alamo and the Texas Revolution in Contemporary Newspaper Accounts is a collection of rare documentary materials, the great majority of them not seen or referenced since their dates of original publication. This book has been designed to serve several audiences, among them the scholar, serious student, casual buff, and general reader, all of whom will find much that is "new" here in terms of the history of the Alamo siege and battle, of the Texas Revolution in general, and of the lives of the people involved, not to mention the events that both preceded and followed that conflict. Aside from the book's primary focus, the battle of the Alamo, this collection includes on-the-spot accounts of most of the other engagements, skirmishes and massacres, descriptions of the forts, towns, and geography, and information concerning the armies, weapons and clothing involved. There are also word sketches of the appearances of such important figures as David Crockett, James Bowie, and Santa Anna that have apparently eluded modern biographers. Included, too, are many anecdotes of their lives, both in and out of Texas, and descriptions of pieces of their personal property handed down in the postwar years. Newspaper accounts from later decades present interviews with survivors, or their obituaries, and descriptions of the Alamo itself as it evolved from a weed-choked ruin into an iconic shrine. The book contains several dozen original illustrations by the author, each one explained in-depth with a footnoted, essay-long "caption". There is also a newly created pictorial representation of the entire Alamo compound as it looked in February and March 1836, accompanied by a lengthy analysis of the fortifications based on a re-examination of the old evidence and a dissection of newly found information. Included photographs of selected Alamo- and Texas Revolution-related relics from the extraordinary collection of singer Phil Collins.

Supplemental Materials

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Excerpts

For the majority of Americans in 1836 the annihilation of the Alamo garrison was viewed not as the bloody suppression of rebellious expatriates in a foreign land, but as genocide committed upon fellow citizens by an “unprincipled and blood-thirsty tyrant,” in the words of theNew York Evening Star.Reports that the Mexican army had mutilated the slain defenders only sharpened the country’s thirst for vengeance. When news came of the systematic liquidation of the surrendered “Texian” garrison at Goliad, three weeks after the Alamo’s fall, there was no longer any doubt of the enemy’s barbarousness. “Under the form of a legitimate war, Santa Anna has perpetrated deeds more atrocious than those of the pirate on the high seas—of the wandering, houseless Arab of the desert,” read theNew York Herald.“Is it possible to hold terms at all with such a race of miscreants as these Mexicans have proved themselves to be? . . . let the Mexican embassy be drummed out of the country. They only represent a band of savages worse than the Seminoles.”

TheWashington Globeagreed with this analogy: “The Indians were never known to butcheralltheir prisoners. They decimate their victims and satisfy their revenge, by putting a few to death. Santa Anna has introduced a new code of national law on this continent.” Apparently even noncombatants were not exempt from this “new code”: one letter from Texas claimed that the Mexican leader was “committing the most horrid cruelties, putting to death every one he meets, without regard to sex, age, or condition. The females are usually given up to the brutal passions of the soldiers, and afterwards butchered.” Mrs. Dickinson, wife of one of the slain Alamo lieutenants, was said to have “suffered from the Mexican officers the most odious pollution that ever disgraced humanity.” Such frightful accounts could not be bettered as emotional calls-to-arms, and they worked: fired-up volunteers did begin flocking to Texas from every corner of the nation.