The Alamo :: essays research papers

Originally named Misin San Antonio de Valero, the Alamo served as home to missionaries and their Indian converts for nearly seventy years. Construction began on the present site in 1724. In 1793, Spanish officials sectioned off San Antonios five missions and distributed their lands to the remaining Indian residents. These men and women continued to farm the fields once the missions but now their own and participated in the growing community of San Antonio. In the early 1800s, the Spanish military stationed a cavalry unit at the former mission. The soldiers referred to the old mission as the Alamo (the Spanish word for "cottonwood") in honor of their hometown Alamo de Parras, Coahuila. The posts commander established the first recorded hospital in Texas in the Long Barrack. The Alamo was home to both Revolutionaries and Royalists during Mexicos ten-year postulate for independence. The military Spanish, Rebel, and then Mexican continued to occupy the Alamo until the Texas Revolution. San Antonio and the Alamo played a critical role in the Texas Revolution. In December 1835, Ben Milam led Texian and Tejano volunteers against Mexican military personnel quartered in the city. After five days of house-to-house fighting, they forced General Marn Perfecto de Cs and his soldiers to surrender. The victorious volunteers then occupied the Alamo already fortified prior to the battle by Cs men and strengthened its defenses. On February 23, 1836, the arrival of General Antonio Lpez de Santa Annas army outside San Antonio nearly caught them by surprise. Undaunted, the Texians and Tejanos prepared to defend the Alamo together. The defenders held out for 13 days against Santa Annas army. William B. Travis, the commander of the Alamo sent forth couriers carrying pleas for help to communities in Texas. On the eighth day of the siege, a gang of 32 volunteers from Gonzales arrived, bringing the number of defenders to nearly two hundred. Legend holds that with the p ossibility of additional help fading, Colonel Travis drew a line on the ground and asked any man willing to stay and fight to step over all except one did. As the defenders saw it, the Alamo was the key to the defense of Texas, and they were ready to devolve their lives rather than surrender their position to General Santa Anna. Among the Alamos garrison were Jim Bowie, renowned knife fighter, and David Crockett, famed frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee.