How the Alamo Worked

Legends and lore surround the story of the Alamo. As a result, it can be difficult to separate the fact from fiction. Listen in as our resident historians take a look at the true story of the Alamo in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Dane McGrath. Either
it's a special day because every now and then we

(00:20):
like to take a listener request, and today we have
a request from our friend Crystal Ellergy and she included
a little phonetic pronunciation of her name, and I really
hope I got it right, because how embarrassing with that
they've given my pension from his pronouncing everything when she
included it. Anyway, Crystal is twenty three years old. She
loves listening to the podcast, and she sent a whole

(00:42):
list of things she'd like to know more about, and
we chose number two on that list the Alamo. And
Alamo is mostly known, I guess for the saying remember
the Alamo, which is hard for some people who don't
really know what happened. I can re remember it if
we don't know what happens. And that's the ironic thing,
really is that we're supposed to remember the Alamo, and
yet most historians will come out and tell you that
a lot of the facts surrounding the Alamo story are

(01:04):
just a lure and legend, and you can't believe everything
you hear about the ALBUMO. So I mean really that
picks the question, how do you remember the Alamo? Yeah,
and why is it so mysterious? And we're gonna talk
about all about that. Um, first, let's go back to
when it was first built. It was actually back in
the early eighteenth century, and it wasn't originally built as
a ford. It was actually a Catholic mission, particularly Franciscan mission,

(01:25):
that was built back then, and they later abandoned it,
like before the century was out, it was it was
kind of empty, and by the eighteen one Spanish troops
started coming in and using it on and off as
a ford. Because we should also mention that, like when
you think the Alamo, you probably have a memory of
like the picture of the thought of the church. I
actually didn't know much about the album. I've never been there,

(01:45):
and there's this whole big town back there, so we
should keep that in mind. Yeah, so when we tell
you later how many men and women and children were inside,
you might think, wow, they'll pretty close quarters, but not really,
because there was much more with a mission. Really think
about a mission, and and um, the point of the
Aluma was to convert Meso Americans living in the area
to Catholicism. And I think that even people who weren't

(02:09):
exactly on board with religious conversion could at least get
on board with um the organization of farmlands around the mission.
So a lot of people were attracted the area, a
lot of people were living there. And then there was
a whole hullabaloo with what the heck was going to
happen in Texas because there were a lot of people
who wanted it so all tight. We've got a lot
of issts coming at you, beginning with monarchists who wanted

(02:32):
Texas and Mexico to answer back to Spain to be
part of the monarchy, the Spanish monarchy. And we've said
before in an earlier podcast talking about Spain sort of
losing ground. Spain was losing ground. They didn't have a
lot of control over other colonies anymore, and uh, Texas
and Mexico might have been a last ditch effort to
keep the monarchy widespread. This writtened this comes back to
how Mexico it has gotten its independence in one from Spain,

(02:57):
and after that there was a lot of unrest. Uh
it should leads to the other is that we're going
to talk about. For one, a lot of people wanted
like a centralist government for for Mexico after it broke away,
but other people wanted a more federalist kind, which is
more like we have in the United States today. Did
you guys catch this to s centralists and federalists. And
then there is the United States. The United States at

(03:19):
this point was was going strong, but they could use
a little bit more land, so they wanted Texas to
And then we have another group, no ASTs, but the
people actually living in Texas, the Anglos and the Tahannas
or instead of the Anglos, and people say that the Texians.
They wanted Texas to be independent, and that's a novel
idea that Texas could have just been its own entity,

(03:40):
and it might have worked because rebels like Sam Houston
were on board and he was a really tough guy,
so that almost worked out, but it didn't. That's right,
and we should say that like when we talk about
the United States wanting it, A lot of people um
in Texas. They like to be called Texians at that time,
not just Texans, So I guess we'll use that term
a lot of the Texians wanted to be part of

(04:01):
the United States, and so they were kind of in
the same boat, on the same size of the United States.
That's why the U. S would send in their troops
to help help the Texians win their independence from UH
from Mexico. And at this time, the reason why the
Texians were so um sort of upset and there was
unrest going on was because we should probably say that

(04:21):
a lot of people emigrated from the United States into Texas,
and so there was a mingle of sort of Hispanics
who lived there and Anglos who who had moved in,
and they had moved in the eighteen twenties, and once
the Anglos and the Hispanics were mingling together in their
Mexicans actually banned slavery. And this was a huge deal
for the especially the Anglos who had moved in who

(04:42):
were used to having slaves UH. They considered it essentials
to their economy. And not only the banning of of
UM slavery, but they also Mexico stopped immigration so that
their friends and family couldn't move in with them. They
put a taxes on imports of foreign goods, and UM
Santa Anna was a major general at the time he
would take over and he started moving towards a strong

(05:03):
centralized government. And this is where things really imploded, because
we know that the Spanish eventually gave out parts of
the lane in the missions around the Mesoamerican settlements through
the Indians, so they were still on the site, and
we know that there was some unrest with the Americans
coming in. So by December eighteen thirty five, General sam
Houston was advising everyone around the Aluma to abandon it.

(05:26):
That's right. And Sam Houston is an interesting character if
we go back and look at his life a little
bit and why he was even there in the first place.
He when he was a teenager, he actually ran away
and lived with the Cherokee Indians for a few years.
They adopted him and so like he knew their language
and everything like this, and so that's why the president
at the time, I believe it was Jackson sent him
over to Texas because he was great with relations with

(05:46):
Indians at the time, and so he was he was
working with them in negotiating with them, and he ended
up living there, creating a house in Texas, and he
became very involved in the people in the culture there
and was elected Commander in chief of the Army for
the independence from Mexico. Unfortunately, as why as of Sam
Houston was, no one listened to him. So there were
a lot of tensions bearing inside the Alamo, and there

(06:09):
were a lot of big personalities too. There was Travis,
and there was Bowie, and the Texians and the Tahanos
didn't exactly get along. And another guy who was there
who had a huge personality was Davy Crockett. And he
had told people that you may all go to Hell,
and I will go to Texas, and so we know
he had pretty grandiose notions of what he was going
to get accomplished in the lone Star state. And he

(06:31):
was very very much impassioned by texas struggle for freedom
and he wanted to be a part of this. He
was just as outdoorsy and and bear hunting and you
know chasen as Sam Houston was. He was just wild,
so he wanted part in this brawl too. And um,
after he helped defend the alum of the Crockett legend
just kept growing and growing. So all these personalities inside,

(06:54):
all of these tensions melting, it only gets worse and
worse when they when they get word that Santa Anna
and his troops are advancing, and they know they really
don't have a huge shot. They've got less than two
hundred men inside and their chances are slim against an
army of a couple of thousand, and so legend says
that Travis drew a line in the sand inside the

(07:14):
mission and asked every single person in there who was
willing to give their lives to defend the alum out
across the line, and according to legend, everyone crossed it
but one man. And I think that the one man
who didn't cross that was actually Travis's slave Joe, and
he was the sole man who lived who went on
to give an account of what happened. I think he

(07:35):
didn't cross, otherwise we would have no idea really went.
And it's interesting that, you know, like a couple of
thousand men, and I think it's kind of disputed, at
least the sources that I found. Um Some people say
he has Santa Ana had a little as little as
eight hundred men, some people say as much as six thousand.
Either way, they definitely had way more men than were
in the Alamo, and it's amazing that they would the

(07:57):
people in the Almo were able to hold them all
for so long. It's a good thirteen days that um
the Texians were able to hold the forts. And it
started in February thirty six when Santa Anna arrived, and
for the next thirteen days there was a battle like Canada,
said Travis Steward, line in the dirt and uh and people.
You know. It just goes to show how like people's

(08:18):
spirits were up. They were they were ready to die.
Of course, they knew they probably would die for this.
So by March six, the Mexicans stormed and this happened
about five am, and sadly, it took no more than
an hour, I think are a little over an hour
for the Mexicans to basically come in and slaughter almost
everybody who was there. They really did. They spared the
women and children, but once they were able to break

(08:41):
through the walls of of the mission, cannon fire could
only hold them off for so long and they got
down to man and man combat. It was all over.
And I think that Travis was one of the first
to die. And this is where it comes in handy
to have knife skills like Bowie and to be really tough,
like Davy Crockett, because at this point you're using fest years,
using nives, you're using like the butts of guns, you're

(09:02):
using bayonets, and it was just an all out brawl.
But also, again, like Dane said, we have to take
these numbers with a grain of salt, but to know
that around uh, six hundred and sixteen hundred Mexicans were
killed when they were only about one seven people inside
the Alamo, that's really impressive odds. And if you look

(09:23):
at the Alamos website, there's a website for them, the
historic Landmark. They said that people worldwide continue to remember
the Alamo as a heroic struggle against impossible odds, a
place where men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. And
really when you look at it that way and sort
of like the classic struggle between David and Goliath, Yeah,

(09:44):
I can totally see that. And that brings me to
a point. I wanted to bring up about Santa Ana,
the general, Mexican general in volt here, because he was
seen as uh, you could say Goliath. He was seen
as incredibly cruel, and I remember reading that he told
his forces to not take any prisoners, I mean, besides
the women and children, no fighting men. We were taken prisoner.
Another source says that any that some were taken prisoner,

(10:07):
but they were um soon actually burned. He uh, no
matter whether they were burned alive or dead. Santa Anna
did order the heroes, at least from the album of
the Texian Heroes to be burned in sort of this
public statement scaring the rest of the rest of the
Texians who were fighting for independence, and it was certainly cruel,
but it did not quell any spirit that drove the

(10:27):
remembered the Alamo um rallying cry. It really did end.
So when Sam Houston's army got the chance to confront
Santa Anna's army, they were really fired up with cries
I remember the Alamo, and they overtook Santa Anna and
his trips. That's right. This was the decisive Battle of
San Jacinto. And it's interesting to note that not only
I mean it's true that the Alamo did fall, and

(10:49):
it was a tragic loss, but it did buy time
for Houston to um to rally his troops, to train
his troops, who were sort of ragtag group of volunteers,
and um he was also able to zig zag around
around Texas in order to hold off Santa Ana until
he was ready to fight. And he was ready, and
this was about six weeks after the Alamo. And it's

(11:09):
made for a pretty short war actually that he was
able to pull this off so quickly. And he took
about men across the plains of San Jacinto and they
all were all rallying Remember the Alamo. Remember the Alamo.
And they won the battle, they captured Santa Ana and
uh made him like relent to independence. And it's funny
today you hear the expression remember the Alamo, and it's

(11:31):
almost uh perfect little encapsulation of American spirit because it
shows how tough and how independent we can be when
we're passionate about the cause of freedom. And so today
when you hear people say remember the Alamo, you know,
maybe sometimes you're just being cheeky, but I think more
often than not they're not really referring to the Franciscan

(11:51):
mission back in um the early eighteenth century. But more
or less they were referring to the American spirits. That's right,
And we should make a note about um what happened
to Texas immediately after the war. They actually they voted
to ask to be admitted into the United States pretty quickly,
and they weren't actually um even though the United States
wanted them. Eventually, there was a lot of problems in

(12:13):
terms of the fact that they wanted to be a
slave state, and this caused problems of what would happen
if they were admitted as a slave state and UM
And there was actually a fear of entering war into
Mexico if they did allow Texas in because Mexico was like,
if you do this, we're gonna caut off ties. And
there was this fear, and so it didn't. It took
another decade for them to be admitted to the Union,

(12:34):
and even then Mexico was still, you know, pretty sore
about it, and they entered it into um a war
with the United States over it. And so that is
the story of the Alamo and a little taste of
Texas and Mexican history too. So for even more about
Texas and the Alamo and leaders like Santa Anna, you
can't check it out on how stuff Works stoff for

(12:56):
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