Growing up in San Antonio, I took Texas history in seventh grade, which has been required of all public-school students in the Lone Star State since 1946. Although we covered the entirety of the state’s past, what I recall most vividly was the unit on the Texas Revolution. From our bee-hived teacher my classmates and I learned that the conflict between the rebellious Texans and the Mexican government in 1835-36 could be viewed in much the same way as the American Revolution: patriots resisting oppression by a haughty foreign power. She told us that the “Big Three” who perished in the Battle of the Alamo—Jim Bowie, William B. Travis and Davy Crockett—were martyrs for the cause of freedom, and that Santa Anna, the Mexican general who led the army that sacked the garrison and slaughtered all of its defenders, was evil incarnate.
According to the writers Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford—all Texans—I was taught what they dub the “Heroic Anglo Narrative” of the Lone Star State. In “Forget the Alamo,” their engrossing new book about the history and memory of the Texas Revolution and especially its pivotal act, the 13-day siege of the Misión San Antonio de Valero, the authors seek to ascertain how, in the time since it fell on March 6, 1836, the Alamo has become “the state’s secular Western Wall, its secular Mecca.” Skeptics who might question the depth of this reverence need only ponder the text of a bill currently under consideration by the state legislature (H.B.2497) that would establish the Texas 1836 Project, an initiative “to ensure patriotic education is provided to the public” at key sites connected to the “Texas War for Independence,” no doubt including the granddaddy of them all in downtown San Antonio.
Forget the Alamo
By Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford
Penguin Press, 386 pages, $32
The first half of “Forget the Alamo” is a brisk, potted history of the Texas Revolution. Though much of this material will be familiar to some readers, the authors move the story along in a chatty and amusing style, befitting their intent to take “a serious look at the Alamo and its legend, but . . . not to take ourselves too seriously.” Likewise, they are generous in acknowledging their debts to scholars, chief among them Andrew J. Torget, whose 2015 book “Seeds of Empire” proved the centrality of slavery to the Anglo perspective. Messrs. Burrough, Tomlinson and Stanford build on this work, arguing that, “at its roots, the Texas Revolt was about money, how Texans made it, and why the Mexican government objected.” That economic system was based on cotton grown by slaves.
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While this assertion will raise the blood pressure of traditionalists who cling to the Heroic Anglo Narrative, the authors’ take on the Battle of the Alamo and its Holy Trinity may cause arterial rupture. Bowie, they write, “was a seasoned swindler, always on the make, a man who fled to Texas rather than face the consequences of a series of land frauds he had attempted in Arkansas and Louisiana.” Lt. Col. Travis—who took command of all the troops, including the volunteers, when Bowie fell ill—was vain, louche and probably syphilitic. And Crockett, “a fleshy forty-nine years old,” was “more suited to politics than soldiering.” As for the fight itself, the authors insist that—contrary to the popular belief that the defense of the Alamo bought time for Sam Houston to assemble the army that won the day at San Jacinto six weeks later—the delay was but a minor inconvenience to Santa Anna. Thus, they argue, “the Alamo’s trapped defenders died for pretty much nothing.”
An 1830 map of Texas.
Photo: Texas General Land OfficeIn what may come as a pleasant surprise to their academic audience, the authors think of their work less as a history than a historiography, which they properly describe as “a history of the history.” This is the focus of the book’s second half, where Messrs. Burrough, Tomlinson and Stanford investigate the mythology that hangs like a shroud over the Alamo. Although it took root slowly, the core features of the legend—including Travis’s line in the sand (those willing to stay and fight were asked to cross it)—had settled into place by Reconstruction, enshrined by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (a lineal organization that assumed custodianship of the facility in 1905) and burnished by some of the state’s leading historians. The myth reached its apotheosis in the mid-20th century, marked by a Disney television series starring Fess Parker as Davy Crockett followed by “The Alamo,” John Wayne’s cinematic paean to “that brave band,” among whom, in Wayne’s words, “there were no namby-pamby pussy-foots, malingerers or skedaddle.”
But for there to be heroes there must also be villains, a role long assigned by Anglo partisans to all Mexicans, even though many Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) joined the Texas Revolution. The authors quote several Mexican-Americans who recall the opprobrium of their white classmates after visiting the Alamo as middle-schoolers. One of them, art historian Ruben Cordova, puts it memorably: “Davy Crockett’s [death], it’s sort of like a Chicano version of the Jewish Christ killers. If you’re looking at the Alamo as a kind of state religion, this is the original sin.” And Latinos are not the only group wanting a fuller say in the Alamo narrative. A planned $450 million renovation worries members of the Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation, whose ancestors are buried beneath Alamo Plaza, as well as local African-Americans, who fear the razing of a nearby former Woolworth’s, whose onetime lunch counter was among the city’s first integrated dining spots.
In perhaps the book’s best chapter, the authors explain that the renovation is due in large part to Phil Collins—yes, the British rock drummer and vocalist. As a boy growing up on the outskirts of London, Collins got caught up in the Davy Crockett craze, and in middle age began assembling what is now among the world’s largest collection of Alamo artifacts (some of dubious provenance). In 2014 Collins agreed to donate his artifacts to the Texas General Land Office, which had recently acquired management responsibility for the building, provided that the items could be housed together in a new museum. The plan has been controversial from the start, especially the idea (since abandoned) of relocating the Cenotaph, a 60-foot monument dedicated to the fallen that was commissioned in the 1930s for the Texas Centennial. None have taken more heat for the tumult than GLO Commissioner George P. Bush, nephew of the 43rd president.
After I left Texas for college in 1990 I learned a more balanced account of the Alamo story, which is now widely available thanks to the work of revisionist scholars. Alas, despite their findings—among them historian James Crisp’s discovery that, rather than swinging Ol’ Betsy to the bitter end, Crockett was almost surely captured and then executed— thanks to a further measure before the state legislature, Texas seventh-graders of today are likely to hear mostly the same Heroic Anglo Narrative fed to me and my classmates nearly four decades ago. Texas H.B.3979 is designed to limit how public-school teachers engage with current events and address topics like racism. Clearly, the bill’s sponsors worry that Texans might take the titular admonition of Messrs. Burrough, Tomlinson and Stanford too dearly to heart. On this I agree. But unfortunately, “Contextualize the Alamo” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
—Mr. Graybill is a professor of history and director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
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The Link LonkJune 05, 2021 at 01:05AM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-the-alamo-review-legends-of-the-fall-11622821618
‘Forget the Alamo’ Review: Legends of the Fall - The Wall Street Journal
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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