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Summary:

• 1. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he was taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his fate cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was left alive.

  2. Hero Tales From American History: Chapter 16 "REMEMBER THE ALAMO" The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few.

  3. On fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead. * * * The neighing troop, the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are past; Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that never more may feel The rapture of the fight. -- Theodore O'Hara.

  4. The walls of the Alamo were battered and riddled; and when they had been breached so as to afford no obstacle to the rush of his soldiers, Santa Anna commanded that they be stormed.

  5. He, too, had taken part under Jackson in the campaigns against the Creeks, and had afterward become a man of mark in Tennessee, and gone to Congress as a Whig; but he had quarreled with Jackson, and been beaten for Congress, and in his disgust he left the State and decided to join the Texans.

  6. One by one the tall riflemen Hero Tales From American History: Chapter 16 succumbed, after repeated thrusts with bayonet and lance, until but three or four were left.

  7. The defenders knew there was scarcely a chance of rescue, and that it was hopeless to expect that one hundred and fifty men, behind defenses so weak, could beat off four thousand trained soldiers, well armed and provided with heavy artillery; but they had no idea of flinching, and made a desperate defense.

  8. The fight reeled to and fro between the shattered walls, each American the center of a group of foes; but, for all their strength and their wild fighting courage, the defenders were too few, and the struggle could have but one end.

  9. The days went by, and no help came, while Santa Anna got ready his lines, and began a furious cannonade.

  10. Immediately Santa Anna, the Dictator of Mexico, gathered a large army, and invaded Texas.

  11. He took command of their forces, eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto, he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of "Remember the Alamo".

  12. The frontiersmen then retreated to the inner building, and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed, the Mexicans thronging in, shooting the Americans with their muskets, and thrusting at them with lance and bayonet, while the Americans, after firing their long rifles, clubbed them, and fought desperately, one against many; and they also used their bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect.

  13. He was the most famous rifle-shot in all the United States, and the most successful Hero Tales From American History: Chapter 16 hunter, so that his skill was a proverb all along the border.

  14. Near the town was an old Spanish fort, the Alamo, in which the hundred and fifty American defenders of the place had gathered.

  15. He had risen to the highest political honors in his State, becoming governor of Tennessee; and then suddenly, in a fit of moody longing for the life of the wilderness, he gave up his governorship, left the State, and crossed the Mississippi, going to join his old comrades, the Cherokees, in their new home along the waters of the Arkansas.

  16. Soon after the close of the second war with Great Britain, parties of American settlers began to press forward into the rich, sparsely settled territory of Texas, then a portion. of Mexico.

  17. Soon Santa Anna approached with his army, took possession of the town, and besieged the fort.

  18. Texas was a wild place in those days, and the old hunter had more than one hairbreadth escape from Indians, desperadoes, and savage beasts, ere he got to the neighborhood of San Antonio, and joined another adventurer, a bee-hunter, bent on the same errand as himself.

  19. David Crockett journeyed south, by boat and horse, making his way steadily toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging their life-and-death fight.

  20. Colonel Travis, the commander, was among them; and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting disease, but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in the final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name.

  21. Already a rider from the rolling Texas plains, going north through the Indian Territory, had told Houston that the Texans were up and were striving for their liberty.

  22. They were pressed back by the Mexicans, and dreadful atrocities were committed by Santa Anna and his lieutenants.

  23. They were a wild and ill-disciplined band, little used to restraint or control, but they were men of iron courage and great bodily powers, skilled in the use of their weapons, and ready to meet with stern and uncomplaining indifference whatever doom fate might have in store for them.