1836

In 1836, during the Texas Revolution, the Mexican army commanded by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed and captured the Alamo, killing all of its defenders. Among the dead was the famous frontiersman and former U.S. Congressman Davy Crockett. Exactly how Crockett died that day continues to be the subject of debate, often spirited.

Crockett grew up on the Tennessee frontier and served in the militia during the Creek War and the War of 1812. He tried several business ventures, with mixed success, and made his living primarily as a bear hunter. A champion and advocate of poor settlers, he served in the Tennessee legislature before being elected to the first of three nonconsecutive terms in Congress. In part because of his strenuous opposition to the Indian Removal Act during his second term (he was the only Tennessee representative to vote against it), Crockett lost his bid for re-election. Two years later, he ran again and regained his seat. But he was defeated for re-election in 1835. At that point Crockett famously reported that he told his constituents, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”

When 49-year-old Crockett arrived in Texas and took the oath of allegiance to the new republic (wearing his coonskin cap and dressed in buckskin), he was already a famous man, thanks mostly to his 1834 autobiography and a wildly popular 1831 play based loosely on his life. In early February 1836, he joined the garrison at the Alamo in San Antonio de Bexar. There he and all his comrades lost their lives on March 6.

But how exactly did Davy Crockett die? Deeply embedded in the popular memory are images of him using his rifle as a club, fighting off Mexican soldiers until he was finally cut down. One of the earliest accounts comes from a former slave named Ben, who was working as a cook for one of Santa Anna’s officers. According to Ben’s account, Davy Crockett’s body was found surrounded by the bodies of at least 16 Mexican soldiers he had killed before he fell. But according to other early accounts, Crockett and six others were taken prisoner after the battle—the garrison’s only survivors—and were subsequently murdered on the orders of Santa Anna. In subsequent years there was little controversy, however, as the account of Davy Crockett fighting to the death carried the day, and the surrender/execution version (along with other less credible accounts) faded from memory.

That began to change when the diary of Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña was published in 1955, and particularly after the diary was published in English in 1975. De la Peña was present at the Alamo and according to his diary, “some seven men had survived the general carnage and, under the protection of General Castrillón, they were brought before Santa Anna. Among them … was the naturalist David Crockett, well known in North America for his unusual adventures … Santa Anna answered Castrillón’s intervention in Crockett’s behalf with a gesture of indignation and, addressing himself to … the troops closest to him, ordered his execution. The commanders and officers were outraged at this action and did not support the order … but several officers who were around the president and who, perhaps, had not been present during the moment of danger … thrust themselves forward … and with swords in hand, fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey. Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers.” The diary has been denounced as a forgery by some and declared authentic and reliable by others. The debate is ongoing.

Whether Davy Crockett went down swinging inside the Alamo, or whether he died bravely after being captured and tortured (or whether he died in one of the many other ways described in the dozens of accounts of his death), he died on this day in 1836, at age 49, and is remembered as one of the heroes of the Texas War for Independence.

Of course there is much else to be said about the siege of the Alamo and the men who fought and died there—subjects for future Doses.

The painting “The Fall of the Alamo” by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1903) depicts Davy Crockett using his rifle as a club, fighting to the death.