Is now online at The War on Guns.  Unfortunately, I haven't contributed anything in a while.  I do have something really silly in mind, and I guess if they'll put up a picture Herr Schiklegruber, they'll put up a picture of anything.

Technorati Tags: gun control, global arms control, million moon march

One hundred seventy years ago today, the sun rose over a scene of carnage and death outside the small Texas town of San Antonio de Bexar.


I've already been through so many disputes with so many different wanna-be historial revisionists that--if one of you happens across this post--don't even bother to leave a snide comment.  The fact is that a constitution was signed that both Mexico and Texans agreed with, and then General Santa Ana took over the government, assumed dictatorial powers, and wiped his ass with the constitution--an act of toiletry not entirely unlike some of the actions by our own politicians these days.

Things were bound to get ugly fairly quickly after that.

The above graphic is a painting by Henry McArdle, created in 1905.  No doubt it is not historically accurate, yet it remains one of my favorite illustrations of the battle.  This tiny version does not do it justice; the full-sized painting is almost overwhelming in its detail and intensity.

I would like to refer you to Fall of the Alamo - 1836 by Captain R. M. Potter, who "lived near the Alamo at the time it fell, and was in a good position to learn many of the details of what happened there. He wrote the first draft of this narrative for the San Antonio Herald in 1860, and later revised it, after communications with Colonel Juan Seguin, USA, who was an officer of the Alamo garrison up to within six days of the assault. Due to great interest in the subject of the Alamo, this document was circulated extensively in pamphlet form."

Captain Potter begins:

The fall of the Alamo and the massacre of its garrison, which in 1836 opened the campaign of Santa Ana in Texas, caused a profound sensation throughout the United States, and is still remembered with deep feeling by all who take an interest in the history of that section; yet the details of the final assault have never been fully and correctly narrated, and wild exaggerations have taken their place in popular legend. The reason will be obvious when it is remembered that not a single combatant of the last struggle from within the fort survived to tell the tale, while the official reports of the enemy were neither circumstantial nor reliable. When horror is intensified by mystery, the sure product is romance.

A trustworthy account of the assault could be compiled only by comparing and combining the verbal narratives of such of the assailants as could be relied on for veracity, and adding to this such lights as might be gathered from military documents of that period, from credible local information, and from any source more to be trusted than rumor. As I was a resident at Matamoros when the event occurred, and for several months after the invading army retreated thither, and afterwards resided near the scene of action, I had opportunities for obtaining the kind of information referred to better perhaps than have been possessed by any person now living outside of Mexico. . . .

This is one of the earliest accounts of the battle and is less likely to be exaggerated than some later accounts. I have nothing of my own to add that could be any more eloquent or moving.  I'll just close with a quote from the linked article.

Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat: the Alamo had none.

Technorati Tags: Alamo, Texas