Endless Siege.(Review)

A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson (Free Press, 356 pp., $26)

For good reason, this story is the stuff of legends. On February 23, 1836, amid fierce winds, hail, and frigid temperatures, the siege of the Alamo began. Inside, the defenders-a motley crew that included Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Col. William Barrett Travis-were known as "Texians," "Texans," or "Tejanos," but to Santa Anna-the commanding general of all the Mexican armies, the Napoleon of the West, the Benemerito de la Patria ("Hero of the Fatherland")-they were mere rabble. "These Texans," Santa Anna sneered, "are the least advanced in civilization, ignorant of war, incapable of discipline." And he meant to teach them a lesson. "I shall send four to six thousand men to Texas with the purpose of punishing those turbulent, insolent North Americans," he bellowed, "and I shall convert Texas into a desert."

Actually, Santa Anna intended more than that. He expected to sweep across Texas, across North America (much as Napoleon had cut a swath through Europe), and march his legion into Washington, D.C., where he would fly the Mexican flag over the Capitol. Standing in his way were 187 men, woefully armed, inadequately fed, and holed up in a dilapidated mission never designed to do more than repulse minor Indian attacks.

Col. Travis knew the situation was dire, and he pleaded to the provisional Texas government, "Give me help, oh my country!" But none was forthcoming. In turn, he sent an open letter to Texas and the world: "I shall never surrender or retreat . . . VICTORY or DEATH." Maneuvering his gargantuan forces into position, Santa Anna meant to oblige the latter. He ominously raised a blood red flag, adorned with a skull, a mere thousand yards from the Alamo. Its unmistakable meaning: death to all who opposed him.

In the predawn darkness on Day 13 of the siege, Santa Anna's all-out attack began. Some 90 minutes later, the battle was over. As the sun rose, it revealed a slaughter-field: 800 corpses, on both sides; all the Texans dead. And they would not even be given a decent burial; by midday, they would be ablaze on a funeral pyre.

Yet remarkably, for the Alamo, this was just the beginning. Weeks later, when Gen. Sam Houston and his forces routed Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto in a mere 18 minutes-it was a stunning surprise attack-their rallying cry was "Remember the Alamo!" From then on, the Alamo would become an indelible part of the American lexicon. But as historians Randy Roberts and James S. Olson remind us in A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, for more than 160 years disputes have raged over exactly what happened at the Alamo, why, and how it should be remembered. Thus, the authors write, the battle over the Alamo's memory has become "as vibrant in its own way as the real battle."

For starters, who were these legendary Texans? Many were land-hungry settlers, joined together in an improbable mix of army regulars and volunteers. We are told they were uncouth and unruly, reckless and argumentative, often more interested in drinking than in working (or fighting). But whatever their eccentricities, they believed deeply in freedom, and saw the American Founding Fathers as demigods. And they were colorful ("Some were for independence," observed one Texan at the time, "and some were for anything, just as long as it was a row"). But were they unmitigated racists, as so much recent Alamo scholarship paints them? Yes, say Roberts and Olson, but no less so than the Mexicans. (Indeed, "the Texas revolution," write the authors, "constituted a struggle for power between two groups of equally prejudiced people.")