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Post by dimbo33 on Mar 4, 2008 1:01:23 GMT -5
What do you all think of the following statement from the San Luis Btn. log. It seems to me that this would be one of the least biased documents from the period as it was not being sent to the government or meant for publication. It seems to give some credence that Crockett may have been out of the Alamo on the night of the 3rd and the numbers seem so show some source of other Texans. It is interesting that TRL could have used this document to support his theory of a second reinforcement but he was convinced that it was a forgery. I am very convinced that it is not.
At 10 in the morning the troops began a parade through Bexar and immediately after they began to go to gather the dead and wounded, numbering 230 on the enemy of the first type (dead?) and among those the ring leaders, Bowie, commander of the Alamo, Travis , second in command, and Crocket, who had entered the ranks three nights before, no wounded or prisoners.
I remember Tom believed that Susanna Dickinson reported at one time that Crockett had led in a group of reinforcements.
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Post by stuart on Mar 4, 2008 3:28:30 GMT -5
This is, I think, tied up with the whole Crockett execution business.
In her pre-1874 interview she speaks of three Texans coming in "a few days" before the assault, without identifying any of them, and then goes on to make that very positive statement about seeing Crockett and his cap lying outside the church.(Hansen:46)
In the 1876 interview she again refers to the three coming in 3 days before, and this time (Hansen:48) does identify Crockett as one but then confuses the matter entirely by saying "He was killed, she believes"
We've been over this ground before in relation to Crockett's death and I've argued and still believe that the 1876 interviewer was mistaken and interpreted a reference to "the colonel" as being Crockett when she actually meant Bonham, who did indeed come in three days before.
Now aside from the fact that Bonham obviously had two unknown companions - but no second reinforcement - what's interesting about this is that it suggests the Mexicans (understandably enough in the circumstances) also mistook Bonham for Crockett.
This in turn raises two issues. Firstly and most obviously if the Mexicans though Bonham was Crockett it makes it all the more unlikely that they knowing executed the "real" Crockett.
Secondly in her pre-1874 interview SD stated that "Travis and Bonham were killed while working the cannon, the body of the former lay on top of the church". The second half of the sentence makes no real sense in that (a) we know Travis actually died on top of the north wall, and (b) its unlikely - though not impossible - she would have seen his or Bonham's bodies on top of the church.
However, going back to this mistaken identity business we have the Ruiz account of Crockett's body being being found in that "fort" to the west of Travis, and Potter's account derived from the same source of his being on a "high platform". This, I've argued before puts him on the north-west gun position; but Ruiz, as Glenn successfully argues elsewhere did not see the body himself but was faithfully reporting "common knowledge", which directly contradicts the Dickinson account.
All of this resolves itself if we look at the San Luis log; the Mexicans mistook Bonham for Crockett. It was Bonham who came in three days before, not Crockett, and Bonham who died by a gun on that high platform to the west of Travis, not Crockett
Whether Crockett was lying dead beside the church because be had been put up against its wall and shot there is a different question altogether
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Post by Herb on Mar 4, 2008 10:43:15 GMT -5
I don't know if it's that simple. In the same letter (Hansen, 518) that Houston wrote that 187 Americans were murdered at the Alamo, right before he wrote that he said that The conduct of the General Council and their agent (Grant?) had cost them 230 men. While it would seem that he may be combining the losses for San Patricio, Aqua Dulce, and the Alamo - the fact that the number matches the San Luis Journal seems too coincidental.
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Post by stuart on Mar 4, 2008 15:11:11 GMT -5
I think those numbers are just co-incidental; remember Houston referred to white men (ie; not Mexicans). Add the Americans killed at San Patricio and Agua Dulce to the very precise 187, 230 is about right; although there were certainly considerably more killed and captured there if Mexican Federalistas are included. The context of the letter certainly implies he is talking about the total number of Americans killed in all three actions rather than at the Alamo alone.
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