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Post by davidpenrod on Feb 3, 2012 16:53:07 GMT -5
I previously posted to this thread my opinion about the appearance of the south side of the Alamo's convento and convento courtyard walls. In short, I believe that the present-day consensus view of this wall is wrong. I have since prepared a series of computer-based sketches of this structure to illustrate the differences between my views and the current consensus. The first is a depiction of the current consensus view. It portrays the wall's appearance as most modern scholars, researchers and enthusiasts believe it looked in 1835/1836. The next image depicts my view of this structure as I believed it actually appeared in 1836. The last depicts the expanse in 1868 while the Alamo was used by the US Army Quartermaster Corps as a depot. It depicts the modifications made to the structure beginning in 1850. Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Nov 13, 2011 18:36:08 GMT -5
Chuck T, I simply do not understand what you are driving at. Do you have anything constructive to say in this discussion? Or are you just going to attack me without adding anything? Herb, respectfully, your numbers are off. The 20th Maine consisted of 385 men. Your number of 220 may reflect the 20th's strength as of May 19, 1863 before it was reinforced by approximately 150 "3-year" men from the disbanded 2nd Maine Regiment. Every source of information I have reviewed describes the 15th Alabama with a strength of approximately 644 men - some sources have it higher, including Oates, who in his after-action report claimed a total strength of 686. It is probably a good time for us to start citing sources for our numbers and units engaged. Here are some of my online sources: After-Action Report of Col. Chamberlain, 20th Maine (dated July 6, 1863) at: www.civilwarhome.com/chamberl.htm:After-Action Report of Col. Oates, 15th Alabama (dated August 8, 1863) at: thomaslegion.net/fifteenthalabamainfantryregimentbattleofgettysburgreport.htmlAfter-Action Report of BG Robertson, Robertson's Brigade (dated July 17, 1863) at: www.civilwarhome.com/robertsongettysburgor.htm:Other links: www.brotherswar.com/Gettysburg-2e.htmwww.gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/ME/20Me.phpwww.civilwarintheeast.com/USA/ME/20ME.phpwww.civilwarintheeast.com/CSA/AL/15AL.phpwww.civilwar.org/battlefields/gettysburg/maps/gettysburg-devils-den-and.htmlwww.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/getty22.aspxwww.historynet.com/battle-of-gettysburg-fighting-at-little-round-top.htm
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Post by davidpenrod on Nov 12, 2011 21:42:11 GMT -5
Herb,
Well, I naturally and respectfully disagree with your numbers. But first, I want to address your perception of my attitude toward the the actions of the 1st Minnesota:
I did not mean to give the impression that I believe their actions on the 2nd and the 3rd were unimportant or commonplace. They were not. Their sacrifice on the 2nd allowed Hancock to form a defensive line on Cemetery Ridge and repulse the Confederate advance. Also, I did not mean to demean their valor and fighting qualities in comparison to the 20th. My point was that the 20th's fight was decisive while the 1st's was not.
As to Confederate formations and manpower on Little Round Top: the Confederates attacked Little Round Top with 2 Brigades from Hood's Division, Robertson's Texas Brigade of 3 regiments and Law's Alabama Brigade, also of 3 regiments. Law detached 1 regiment, the 48th Alabama, to support the left flank of Robertson's attack across the open ground between Big and Little Round Tops. Robertson's Brigade (+) hit the 83rd Pennsylvania, 44th New York and 16th Michigan Regiments. Law's Brigade (-), consisting of the 15th and 47th Alabama Regiments, advanced through wooded terrain and hit the right flank of the 20th Maine and the left flank of the 83rd Pennsylvania. The 47th struck the center and right of the 20th and the 47th struck the left flank of the 20th and the right flank of the 83rd Pennsylvania.
The Confederate regiments attacking Little Round Top were twice as large as the regiments in Vincent's Brigade. The 15th Alabama alone numbered 644 men, as compared to the 20th Maine's 385. Your calculation of a 1 to 1 parity between attacker and defender is therefore inaccurate.
Chuck T,
I don't know how you concluded that I missed the point of the instruction at IOBC and IOAC. I did not. I think I got the point of all that instruction quite well, thank you. On the other hand, I think you missed my point, which is that the 20th Maine's actions on Little Round Top were decisive whereas the 1st Minnesota's actions, although gallant, were not.
While it is true that IOBC and IOAC courses and discussions about Chamberlain addressed his leadership, you cannot appreciate or even understand his decision making without first understanding the "terrain and situation." Tactical decisions and actions cannot be divorced from the tactical situation in which those decisions are formulated and executed.
So, to make it clear to everyone, we did not study Napoleanic tactics at IOBC or IOAC. More importantly, the Army does not use close-order linear formations when in contact with the enemy, our cavalry is not mounted on war horses, our infantry is not equiped with single-shot muzzle loaders or swords, and we do not communicate using signal flags, bugles and smoke. The Army has advanced much since 1863.
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Post by davidpenrod on Nov 12, 2011 1:42:49 GMT -5
Herb, first of all, it was not the 2nd Minnesota Infantry, it was the 1st Minnesota. And while nobody doubts their outstanding and truly mind-boggling courage, they just happened to be nearby when Hancock needed a unit to hit an advancing confederate brigade to delay its advance long enough for Union forces to concentrate on Cemetery Ridge. And that's what they did - they charged, got slaughtered but succeeded in delaying the enemy's advance. While they were dying, other Union regiments formed up behind them on Cemetery Ridge. The 1st Minn. did not stop the Confederate advance, just delayed it.
On the other hand, the 20th Maine beat back a Confederate brigade's assault on the rear of the Union line on Little Round Top. Like the 1st Minn, they launched a bayonet charge against the advancing Confederates - but only after their ammo ran out. The 20th flung the Confederates, who outnumbered them 4 to 1, down into the valley between Big and Little Round Tops. But they didn't stop there. Pivoting on their center and then their right flank, they proceeded to hit a second confederate brigade and sent them flying back to Devil's Den. Afterwards, the 20th assaulted Big Round Top and seized it from the remnants of the 1st Confederate brigade.
At the rifle platoon leader and company commander courses of the U.S. Army Infantry Officer's School in Fort Benning, GA, we did not study the charge of the 1st Minnesota on July 2, 1863 at Gettysburg. We studied the actions of LTC Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on Little Round Top because that was the decisive action of July 2. Chamberlain saved the Union Army. If the 20th had withdrawn after running out of ammo, Law's Alabama Brigade would have swept over the peak of Little Round Top and charged down its western slope into the rear of the Union line. They could have mounted 1 or 2 batteries of artillery on its northern side and enfiladed the entire Union left on Cemetery Ridge. The troops who had assembled there during the charge of the 1st Minn. would have been slaughtered.
Chamberlain's leadership and tactical handling of his regiment during the fight for Little Round Top was so outstanding that he is still the subject of intense study at the Infantry Officer's School.
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Post by davidpenrod on Nov 9, 2011 20:15:34 GMT -5
The Texan's attitude toward and feelings about the Alamo were not unusual. They didnt gaze upon the facade of the church and feel a lump in the throat; they only saw a ruined warehouse overgrown with weeds and surrounded by heaps of stones. There was nothing iconoclastic about the place until well after our Civil War.
Our nation has a long history of ignoring historic battlefields until it is too late. If you want to see a real heart-breaker, just go to Boston and try to find Bunker Hill (i.e. Breed's Hill). Also, go down to Yorktown - the place Washington and our French allies won the Revolutionary War. There is no battlefield there. Its all gone. Natural erosion of the bluffs has literally dumped that place in its entirety into the Chesapeake.
In fact, until 1863, our nation did nothing to preserve battlefields. Gettysburg was the first, but only its cemetery, Soldiers' National Cemetery. After the war, however, when folks realized that the war was something extraordinary and had been won (or lost, if you are a Southerner) at Gettysburg, veterans groups from various states started raising monuments all over the place. If you've ever been there, Seminary Ridge, Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge look more like classical sculpture gardens than battlefields. On the other hand, the southeastern spur of Little Round Top, where Col Chamberlain and the 20th Maine saved the Union left - and thereby the entire Army of the Potomac - still looks as it did on July 2, 1863, except for tree growth.
Although we recognized the significance of the place to our history and our future, the Gettysburg National Military Park was not created until 1895 - which is about the same time the DRT started clamoring for the preservation of the Alamo. They didn't achieve that until 1905, when it was purchased from Hugo & Schmeltzer and turned into a battlefield park. And even then, the DRT failed to preserve the place as it had looked in 1836. They knocked down and carted off the 2nd story walls of the Convento's west side (the east side of the Convento as well as the entire Cloister had been demolished by Honore Grenet in 1880 - he died soon thereafter, no doubt as punishment) and thereby eliminated a sizable percentage of the Alamo's remaining original building material.
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Post by davidpenrod on Oct 16, 2011 10:55:42 GMT -5
Recently, through this forum's Links page, I found a complete copy of Edward Everett's account of his experiences during the Mexican War. This account includes a description of the "improvements" he and others made to the Convento of the Alamo. Everett described religious and decorative features in the walls of the Alamo compound this way: "There was no pretentious to ornamental architecture except in the facade of the church, and portions of its interior."Clearly, Everett did not observe any architectural masonry above the arched gate of the church-convento connecting wall - as depicted by Gentilz and thereafter duplicated faithfully by Lemon, Zaboly, Harris, Nelson and others. I think Everett's statement conclusive. Gentilz's ornamental features only existed in his imagination - he may have seen a "pattern" of stone spalling protruding beyond the general surface of the wall that suggested to him the broken remnants of previously extant stonework decorations. There is actually an architectural term for this type of masonry feature, bossage, which is one or more rough, uncut stones projecting outward from a wall to be carved or sculpted. I have attached Everett's full quote below. Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Oct 14, 2011 15:51:36 GMT -5
Lou, I'm not sure the Texans and their Tejano allies were bound together by a common view of Santa Anna's intentions. As you know, a central command authority didn’t really exist in the Texas “Army.” Houston was the Drunkard in Chief but nobody paid attention to him (how could you respect a man perpetually discombobulated by whiskey-laced eggnog? If you’re gonna drink whiskey, man, drink whiskey and not some syrupy concoction served at office Christmas parties!).
Competing Texas war factions held and actively pursued competing military agendas. Clearly, Travis viewed Bexar as Santa Anna's principal vacation travel destination (the waters there were known for their revitalizing and recuperative qualities) while those geniuses Smith, Johnson, Grant and Fannin held other “ideas” – invading Mexico, for example.
However, the reason Urrea was in Goliad and Fannin and his men were massacred there is actually quite complex, kind of like the cowlick in Santa Anna’s hair. It can all be boiled down, like really good beef gravy, to just one word: Comanche.
The fact is, if not for those genocidal heathens from Wyoming, none of it would have happened - not the Alamo, not Goliad or San Jacinto, not even Tom Landry. When Santa Anna arrived in Bexar in February 1836, neither Travis nor Fannin had given or gave any thought to the possibility of a separate armed column covering Santa Anna’s exposed flank – a sound military assumption on their part but arrived at without benefit of sound military reasoning.
Believing the perfidious foreigners and pirates in Texas incapable of fielding an effective military force and therefore of defending themselves – all evidence being to the contrary (Cos’s experience in Bexar, for example) – Generalissimo Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón (as he was called by his closest amigos and confidants; otherwise known to everybody else as El Gabong), decided to ignore Von Clausewitz and his admonition to concentrate instead of dispersing your forces before the enemy. Santa Anna also decided to surpass the great feats and derring-do of his mentor and all around fun guy, General José Joaquín de Arredondo of the Spanish Colonial Army. Arredondo was Alexander the Great to Santa Anna’s Julius Caesar. The Texans, of course, were the Gauls and the Alamo was Alesia.
Santa Anna had been trained as a professional turncoat and semi-professional soldier by the Spanish. The prejudices and presumptions he brought to Texas in 1836 had been planted in him in 1813 during an expedition against Tejano insurgents and Anglo-American filibusterers. As a lieutenant in Arredondo’s army, Santa Anna had fought courageously at the Battle of Medina against the morons and dopes of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition. Following the decisive Spanish victory at Medina, Arredondo had summarily executed hundreds of Tejano and American prisoners. He subsequently marched on the rebel’s lair, San Antonio de Bexar. He assembled in the plazas the wives, children, extended families and friends of the massacred insurgents and magnanimously executed them all, their corpses and body parts festooning the trees and shrubs of the Rio San Antonio like Christmas ornaments.
To finish off the campaign, Arredondo decided to split his small force into several smaller forces and fan out across eastern Texas from Bexar in a genocidal sweep to the Louisiana border. He murdered hundreds of Tejanos along the way and herded approximately 15,000 Tejano and Anglo-American settlers into Louisiana, including Jose Francisco Ruiz and Jose Antonio Navarro, future signers of the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence.
Arredondo’s ethnic cleansing of Texas had set an example for Santa Anna, who had participated in it all, but he had also planted the first seeds of the Texas Revolution and Santa Anna's humiliating defeat. Arredondo had turned Tejanos like Ruiz and Navarro against central authority and, worse yet, left behind a population vacuum in Texas that was happily and rapidly filled by a bunch of pesky, horse-mobile Comanches. These wily devils, with their Bison-horn headdresses and uppity attitudes, were mounted on Spanish mustangs acquired while they had been encamped on the Wind River in northwestern Wyoming. That’s about 2,000 miles from Texas.
After moving into eastern Texas, the Comanche launched a series of devastating, bloody raids against Bexar and other Mexican towns as far south as Coahuila across the Rio Grande. The gringo Filibusterers had been a nuisance but they were pinky-raised tea drinkers compared to these scalp and gut carvin’ Comanches. The Spanish and their successors were unable to beat ‘em – comparatively speaking, Arredondo was a limp-wristed, tutu wearing funny boy.
In fact, Spanish-Mexican civilization actually retreated before the Comanche and things were looking very bleak indeed until an American lead miner and failed banker from Potosi, Missouri offered to establish and settle colonies of American frontier-types in the depopulated regions of Texas. The central government in Mexico City saw a good thing when they saw it and this Ozark hill-billy’s offer to form a human shield between those horse-borne troublemakers and metropolitan Mexico was just too good to pass up.
Fifteen years after the first American settlers from the Ozarks arrived in Texas (that’s right, folks, Texans are hill-billys), and 23 years after the rampage of Arredondo that had led to their arrival, Santa Anna decided to follow a counter-insurgency policy similar to Arredondo – an innate humanitarianism and sense of fair play, however, would prevent Santa Anna from shooting and bayoneting the wives and children of the dead rebels – but unlike Arredondo, whose little force never exceeded 1,800 men, Santa Anna had an actual army at his disposal and it numbered between 5,000 and 7,000 men.
So instead of fanning out from San Antonio in separate self-supporting columns as Arredondo had done, Santa Anna decided to fan out from the Rio Grande in separate self-supporting columns. The key phrase here is "self supporting" and not "mutually supporting" because Urrea's column could not support Santa Anna's and vice-versa if either one got into trouble - like at San Jacinto. And that’s why Fannin and his men were massacred.
Because of the Comanche.
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Post by davidpenrod on Oct 12, 2011 18:55:24 GMT -5
The question is a good one and one I've pondered for many years.
I think there are two general answers:
1) If the Alamo was defended by the type of men all ready inside - that is to say a heterogeneous but scrappy band of individuals untrained and inexperienced in the art and science of war - then I think 1,000 of them would have had a hard time holding it against Santa Anna's Army.
2) If the Alamo had been commanded by a trained and experienced Infantry officer, then I think even the tiny garrison all ready there cold have held out for months and inflicted terrible casualties upon the Mexicans.
The plain fact is that Travis was not such a man. He was a great leader of men. The Alamo garrison would have fallen apart if not for Travis' innate ability to inspire and direct men (Lawrence Harvey's arrogant and condescending Travis was just one of many disgusting fictions in Wayne's movie). Unfortunately, this great leader didnt know even even the most rudimentary military defensive concepts and principals - the most important of which is:
"He who defends everything, defends nothing."
Travis violated this principal and the Mexicans, in spite of utterly inept leadership and tactics - carried the walls because of it.
To Tom Sylvain: Tom, I also served in West Berlin, in the 5th Battalion of the 502d Infantry, from May 1983 to July 1986. You're wrong about the Russians attacking Berlin - they had every intention of doing it and for d**n good reason: West Berlin was a gigantic, integrated NSA/ASA electronic listening post in the middle of the Group of Soviet Forces in East Germany. The whole place - all 600 square kilometers of it - was wired up, from Checkpoint Charlie to Checkpoint Bravo. The East Bloc could not have made a move on the West without Berlin knowing about it weeks in advance. Encircling us would have been a waste of time - we were all ready encircled - and every Soviet move would have been "seen" before the could had execute them. They had to in there and eliminate those capabilities. By the way, the Soviets had quite wisely tasked the poor Polish Army, which was deployed just a few kilometers to our east, with the job of clearing West Berlin.
Of course, the Alamo didn't have high-tech commo - at least I don't think it did. The occasional cannon shot doesn't count and there was nothing high tech about Bonham. But there was one similarity between the Alamo and West Berlin: we were in it and the bad guys didn't want us there. The very idea of leaving an unconquered enemy behind their lines was anathema to both Santa Anna and the Soviets. Santa Anna didnt have to take the Alamo - but he couldnt help himself. The propaganda value of an easy victory was too alluring. Same thing for the Soviets. They didn't have to take Berlin at the end of the Great Patriotic War in '45- but they did. It served no military purpose. But for the Soviets, the propaganda value was far greater the 100,000 lives wasted there.
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 11:02:43 GMT -5
And finally, a complete rendering of the Alamo. Every red line is mine. Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 11:01:32 GMT -5
In this version I have filled in missing walls using bright red. I've extended the connecting wall to close the Schmeltzer Gap. Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 10:57:16 GMT -5
Here is Site Rendering 1 with only the ground level bands - in other words, this is the foundation of the Alamo. You'll notice some greens and yellow. That means that the wall is vertical so green is directly over yellow which is directly over orange. Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 10:53:10 GMT -5
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 10:46:56 GMT -5
Here is a cleaned up version of Site Rendering 1: Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 10:45:21 GMT -5
Here is Site Rendering 1: Attachments:
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Post by davidpenrod on Sept 16, 2011 10:42:58 GMT -5
I have found two “new” sets of digital renderings of the Alamo. I say “new” because I have not seen these images discussed or described on this or any other Alamo forum. They are several years old. The first is a series of high-definition digital laser scans of the exterior walls of the Alamo Church, Courtyard wall and extreme southern end of the Long Barracks. You can the images at: www.smartmm.com/portal/DRT/index.html. There are 9 images total on this site, two of which are digital videos. The rest are digital renderings in JPG format of the laser scans. Two of these images, identified as Site Maps, contain active content. I have attached 2 of the images in the next post for discussion. The second set of images are in a report in PDF format from the Center for Cultural Sustainability at the University of Texas, San Antonio. This report contains a series of digital infra-red photographs of the interior walls of the Church. You can find the report at: utsa.edu/ccs/pdf/AlamoInfraredReport.pdf. I want to start out by discussing two of the images on the DRT Portal of Smart MultiMedia website. While all 9 images on this site are fascinating (and fun), two of them are more interesting than the others, from the point of view of Alamo enthusiasts. These two files are “Site Rendering 1” and “Site Map of Panoramic Photography Locations”. The “Site Map” is a three dimensional color-coded key for understanding “Site Rendering 1”. The site map uses variations in color to designate wall elevation. The highest elevations are green, which are basically the parapets of the Church. As the elevation decreases green changes to yellow. Mid-level elevation is pure yellow. The lowest level, which is ground level, is pure orange. Those stretches of any wall that are below the default “ground level” are color coded brown. The Site Map contains active content but you must go to the webpage above and have Apple’s QuickTime movie player to utilize it. There are 7 scan locations identified on the Site Map. Go to the webpage, click on the Site Map and open it. You’ll see the 7 scan locations. Click on one. A new tab in your browser will open. It appears to be a photograph. It’s not. It’s actually a 360 degree panoramic view of the Alamo grounds from the scan site. Just place your curser on the image, click once and move your curser – left, right, up or down. Site Rendering 1 appears to be an overhead view of the Church, Courtyard Wall and the extreme southern end of the Long Barracks. It’s not. It’s a visual depiction of all the digital data from the 7 laser scans. What you are looking at is a stack of horizontal, color-coded bands created by the scanning process. Each band is very narrow, approximately 6 cm, and is a single circuit of all the wall surfaces found at the same elevation. By stacking the bands one upon the other, Smart MultiMedia was able to produce a “3-dimensional” view of the vertical surfaces of the exterior walls. The first thing you’ll notice is the variation in colors along each wall, from green to yellow to orange and in some cases to brown. These colors represent the elevations found in the Site Map key. Anything green is the highest elevation of that stretch of wall. Yellow is mid-level and orange is ground level. The next thing you’ll notice is that the walls seem to vary in “thickness” and that a range of different hues exist within that “thickness.” What you are looking at is a wall that is not vertical but is instead inclined – tilting outward from the foundation. The most eye-catching of these wall defects and warps is the north wall of the Sacristy and MBR as well as the only remaining upper-level portion of the connecting wall, which is attached to the NW corner of the MBR. The parapet of this stretch of wall leans over the foundation about 1 foot! Site Rendering 1 gives us an exact representation of the Alamo’s exterior walls and their relative position and angle to each other. You’ll notice right away that no two walls are actually parallel and that no corner is a true right angle, including those of the church. But the most interesting aspect of the Alamo in this depiction is the Courtyard wall connecting the Church with the Long Barracks. That wall varies in thickness from east to west and is almost serpentine. I will discuss this feature below with adaptions of the laser scan images. Here is the Site Map: Attachments:
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