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Travis' letter from the Alamo, 2/24/1836


miguelito

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2 hours ago, miguelito said:

Commandancy of the The Alamo

Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

Fellow Citizens & compatriots-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna - I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man - The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken - I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat.  Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch - The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.  If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis.

Lt. Col.comdt.

P. S.  The Lord is on our side - When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn - We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis

 

 

TravLtr_box.jpg

giphy.gif

 

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Oh, don't worry everybody, this will be reimagined very, very soon.
Travis will be dug up and must attend 50 hours of Sensitivity Training.  Word is Steve Adler and the rest of City Council will be along for the ride
Good times!

You are such a victim.
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3 hours ago, Wally Fairway said:

Dear DJT,

The Alamo has walls and didn't keep the brown skinned people out; and neither will a modern day wall.
Sincerely,
Surly

(I'll give my self a timeout for cloaking up this thread)

Dear Wally,

Because the Alamo had walls, less than 200 brave Texicans, (some by birth, some by choice, but Texicans all), held out for two weeks against a much larger and continuously reinforced and resupplied force some ten times their numbers.

Without those walls, they would not have lasted a day. Sam Houston wouldn't have had those two weeks to evacuate the civilians and collect and train the forces that would  decimate Santa Ana's forces a few weeks later at San Jacinto.

I suspect you're right in your inference that any wall, no matter how well constructed will permanently prevent a determined invasion, but it might buy us some time.

Bet you thought Jussie was hate-crimed too didn't you?

Sincerely,

Also Surly

 

 

 

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If you have never gone down to the Alamo late at night and stood in the Plaza is quiet and sparsely populated.   You should.  You should also try and visualize the whole "fort" outline and realize how insane it was that give or take 187 men held out for as long as they did.  

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1 hour ago, Macanudo said:

If you have never gone down to the Alamo late at night and stood in the Plaza is quiet and sparsely populated.   You should.  You should also try and visualize the whole "fort" outline and realize how insane it was that give or take 187 men held out for as long as they did.  

I don't know how they didn't get distracted by all of the oddities on display at Ripley's Believe it or Not...

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3 hours ago, Shenanigans said:

Oh wow I didn't know that! That is great news.

Yeah, from the proposed designs it looks to be a great restoration project. All of the crap in Alamo Plaza is going to be removed to return it to how it would have originally looked during the revolution.

In the past, I've eaten lunch at the plaza more times than I can remember. I always try to envision what it looked like but with all of the riff raff it is hard to appreciate the setting. I'm glad this is being done.

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13 hours ago, DoobieWah said:

Dear Wally,

Because the Alamo had walls, less than 200 brave Texicans, (some by birth, some by choice, but Texicans all), held out for two weeks against a much larger and continuously reinforced and resupplied force some ten times their numbers.

Without those walls, they would not have lasted a day. Sam Houston wouldn't have had those two weeks to evacuate the civilians and collect and train the forces that would  decimate Santa Ana's forces a few weeks later at San Jacinto.

I suspect you're right in your inference that any wall, no matter how well constructed will permanently prevent a determined invasion, but it might buy us some time.

Bet you thought Jussie was hate-crimed too didn't you?

Sincerely,

Also Surly

 

 

 

Make no mistake, the Alamo could’ve been taken in less than a day with a more competent military commander. Santa Ana was foolishly trying to wait out the iron-willed Alamo defenders, it wasn’t a constant attack for 13 days. The Mexicans breached the walls within minutes of their only all-out assault on the Alamo. Those walls hardly did shit. 

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Oh please.

Santa Ana had several more than competent generals at hand.

A minimal force defended a walled fort and held off the main Mexican Army for almost two weeks. A smarter general would have left a small contingent to contain the Texans inside and merely bypassed San Antonio altogether. But Travis' cannon shot reply to the surrender demand pissed S Ana off mightily and he was not going to let that show of disrespect go unanswered.

It took him two weeks to answer it.

Make no fucking mistake about it - it took him two weeks.

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59 minutes ago, DoobieWah said:

Oh please.

Santa Ana had several more than competent generals at hand.

A minimal force defended a walled fort and held off the main Mexican Army for almost two weeks. A smarter general would have left a small contingent to contain the Texans inside and merely bypassed San Antonio altogether. But Travis' cannon shot reply to the surrender demand pissed S Ana off mightily and he was not going to let that show of disrespect go unanswered.

It took him two weeks to answer it.

Make no fucking mistake about it - it took him two weeks.

I simply don’t agree. Santa Ana frequently ignored his intelligent generals, which is why they resented him.  I always viewed it as a case of horrible battle strategy instead of some great example of heroic fortitude. The siege ended when Santa Ana decided it should and almost everyone inside was massacred. Never understood why it overshadowed what Houston was able to do at San Jacinto, which was 10x more impressive & significant than anything that happened at the Alamo.

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7 hours ago, Helobious said:

Make no mistake, the Alamo could’ve been taken in less than a day with a more competent military commander. Santa Ana was foolishly trying to wait out the iron-willed Alamo defenders, it wasn’t a constant attack for 13 days. The Mexicans breached the walls within minutes of their only all-out assault on the Alamo. Those walls hardly did shit. 

 

7 hours ago, DoobieWah said:

Oh please.

Santa Ana had several more than competent generals at hand.

A minimal force defended a walled fort and held off the main Mexican Army for almost two weeks. A smarter general would have left a small contingent to contain the Texans inside and merely bypassed San Antonio altogether. But Travis' cannon shot reply to the surrender demand pissed S Ana off mightily and he was not going to let that show of disrespect go unanswered.

It took him two weeks to answer it.

Make no fucking mistake about it - it took him two weeks.

Urrea split and took a smaller force more along the coast - and absolutely fucking destroyed any resistance.  He was by far the best general Mexico had, and by good fortune, fate, luck, whatever you call it - he was the #3 commander of the entire Mexican army - under Santa Anna, who was about as shitty a general as ever lived (and under Filisola, which was again unfortunate for the Mexicans).

Had Urrea gotten his way, 1) he would have been the main expeditionary force and completely, utterly wiped out the Texian uprising.  He was tons better at tactics and understanding the nature of what was needed for battles.  In every aspect he was by far the superior Mexican commander.  2) after Santa Anna was captured at San Jacinto, Urrea begged him to let his 2,500 Mexicans finish off the Texians.  But a vain Santa Anna, who was jealous of him and his successes (and headlines), ordered everyone back to Mexico, sparing the Texians and granting them essentially their new republic.  Santa Anna told Filisola to stand down, and despite Urrea pleading with Filisola to continue the fight, he was too afraid to lose more men and material and said to go back home.  Even after that, Urrea a few months later garnered some 6,000 Mexicans and was ready to re-do the entire business and would easily have crushed the colonists - again - but again he was ordered to stand down and tend to minor border skirmishes.  So that inevitable 2nd invasion never happened.

Due to Santa Anna's vanity and jealousy (and Filisola's hesitancy to put a final blow into the Texians after San Jacinto), Texas was born.  It would absolutely not have been had José de Urrea been allowed to do what he could have done.  He would have completely destroyed the revolution.  He never lost a single battle of any size, even a skirmish, during the Revolution.

One more thing, although it was Urrea's troops that ultimately massacred the Goliad surrenderers, Urrea himself wasn't there, and even before that, he spent considerable time negotiating favorable terms for the revolutionaries.  The orders to massacre came from - you guessed it - Santa Anna.

Thank God that Santa Anna and Urrea were in their positions, else this would absolutely have been Mexico - again - for who knows how long.

Urrea was the Magnificent General Who Wasn't Allowed To Be Magnificent.

Edited by phdhorn
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