Posted on 03/06/2006 8:54:11 AM PST by MplsSteve
Admin Moderator: I wasn't sure whether to place this in News/Activism or Chat. Pleas feel free to move it where you see fit.
Today is the 170th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, an epic battle that almost everyone has heard of.
Though I'm not a Texan, I'm reminded of their sacrifice every year. Today, take a moment and think how the defenders of the Alamo stood up to foreign tyranny and said "Enough!"
Click on the source URL for great information regarding the battle and events being held in San Antonio regarding the anniversary/commemoration.
God Bless Texas!!!!
Many thanks to those brave souls from Tennessee!
We owe them more than what we're becoming.
Ok I am about to open a huge can of worms esp among the Texans but here I go. First the actions of the people at the Alamo were beyond heroic truey inspiring. I guess the words "foreign" tyranny got me thinking. I am not an expect on Texas history but I pick up stuff here and there. I sometimes wonder about the supposed tyranny of Mexico. It appears MExico worst sin at times was not seeing the true value of Texas. I mean if a Country(mexico) invites you in to place to settle it how is that foreign tyranny. I want even go into the false Catholic conversion issue which is an interesting side note.
JUst curious to what Texans think about the issue. I myself see a more valid reason for this as Manifold Destiny and as a natural consequence of what nations did at the time.
Beat me to it.
An excellent site discussing the events leading up to the siege of the Alamo, the siege itself, and the eventual fall of the mission, plus a bit of history afterwards is: http://hotx.com/alamo/intro.html
The smartest thing Santa Anna ever did was to order a halt to the cannonade at night, allowing the garrison to fall asleep. There is a great book on the Alamo by Davis, called "Three Roads to Texas," which follows the lives of Bowie, Crockett and Travis.
Manifold Destiny...or Manifest Desitiny?
There were many events and decisions that led up to the rebellion. The site I linked in the post above has a pretty decent overview of it, IIRC.
First, it was not foreign tyranny, but domestic tyranny that the Texians were resisting. Most of them had signed up under the 1824 (?) Mexican Constitution, which had been replaced by Santa Anna and his dictatorship of Mexico. He styled himself "The Napoleon Of The West," which should tell you most of what you need to know. I don't think anyone here has said that it was "foreign" tyranny.
Second, the event that touched off the rebellion proper was when the Mexican government came to confiscate the cannons they had given the settlers for defense against raiding Commanche Indians (among other arms). Much like Lexington and Concord, the confiscatees were distinctly uninterested in giving up any arms in such a climate.
I stand corrected.
I do think of Santa Anna as a foreign leader - but at the time he was President of Mexico and Texians were considered residents of Mexico.
Yeah, but that was about the last smart decision he made.
Santa Anna seems to have lost interest in the whole campaign shortly after the final assault on the Alamo. I wonder if the 4-10:1 kill ratio had anything to do with that. If true, the anecdotal evidence of Davey Crockett sniping at Santa Anna on a daily basis and knocking off Santa Anna's hat at least once in the attempts to kill him would also have had something to do with him losing interest.
We owe lots of folks more than what we are becoming, but you don't hear much about "duty" these days. Nevertheless, we owe a significant duty to many of our predecessors (or ancestors, if you prefer) and to future generations.
lol sorry my mind is still reeling from not having the proper amount of coffee--- manifest destiny
Well, to my mind, NO historian has really explained what the hell he was doing at San Jacinto, with the Texians right out in the open, advancing on his camp, with two cannons clearly in the open, without really calling his troops to arms.
When I am travelling between Louisiana and Houston on I_10 there is a huge monument to the the south of the Interstate relating to Texas. I am thinking for some reason that this is where the last battle occured and the Texans might have achieved their Independence. Is that San Jacintio? I am always passing by the the area after 5 pm it seems so have never been.
He didn't get the alert until it was far too late. Everyone in the Mexican camp was dead tired from the weeks of force-marching.
The other thing that you should consider is that the previous day, he'd force-marched his troops all day, set up camp for the night, discovered that the Texians weren't far away, and had his troops erect hasty fortifications and stand-to to repel a night attack.
The night attack never came, his troops were exhausted, they had to rest. He posted additional sentries, figured that a "peasant rabble" could never successfully attack his force during the day, and took a nap.
And Sam Houston, the failure of failures, who had been accused of running away from everything and everyone, brought his outnumbered but enraged troops in and crushed Santa Anna's army in 18 minutes.
http://www.sanjacinto-museum.org/
The famous battleship U.S.S. Texas is moored nearby. 
"I sometimes wonder about the supposed tyranny of Mexico. It appears MExico worst sin at times was not seeing the true value of Texas."
Well, that view discounts the Tejano support for the Texas Revolution. Nearly 10% of the Alamo garrison was Tejano, as was the only survivor of the garrison (Brigado Guerrro, I believe -- he is mentioned in Walter Lord's "A Time to Stand").
The proximate cause of the Texas Revolution was Santa Anna usurpation of rights granted in the 1824 Mexican Constitution, especially Santa Anna's willingness to disregard both property rights and previous agreements made by the Mexican government. Texas was not the first province to revolt against the central government (it was the second), nor would it be the last (both Del Norte and the Yuccatan revolted twice after Texas succeeded in leaving Mexico).
Nor am I referring to the Mexican laws against slavery in my argument that the Texas War of Independence, and the other rebellions in Mexican provinces was about property rights. The Centralists would grant and then recind land titles with a rapidity that was neither predictable nor rational. Often, recision of title would occur after the title holder had improved the land, increasing its value from often nothing.
The basic difference between Mexico and the United States for the first centruy of each country's existence was each nation's approach to law. For the most part, United States leaders were constrained by that nation's constitution. For the most part, the Mexican constitution was constrained by its leaders. The law was what the Mexican President said it was. Santa Anna was one of the major contributors to that attitude.
Had Mexico retained the liberal, federalist government it established in 1824, and particularly if they respected property rights and allowed elected representatives from the Mexican state of Tejas, I doubt that there would have been sufficient energy from the anglo population to have triggered a rebellion, much less the successful popular revolution that resulted. And you would not have had deep Tejano support for the revolution.
"Sittin' on the line/ Tryin' to change her mind/ Red light, yellow light, green light time./ You're standing on it buddy/ But she's chilly as a Tastee Freeze/ Ease it over, son/ I'll show you how she runs/ Screamin' like a demon/ When the quarter mile comes/ Crankcase cookin', that's her manifold destiny/ Now she might run cold for you/ She runs hot for me./
She's got a fire in her veins/ That's high octane/ When her heart starts pumpin'/ Her cylinders are jumpin'/ Then I give it to her slow And she gives me back the low ET's/ Burnin' down the line/ Ten seconds time/ Half an hour later/ I can still accelerate her 'till we're out of Hardin County/ And in another Galaxy---/ Now she might run cold for you/ She runs hot for me"
She Runs Hot For Me -- Little Village
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