The Alamo

[S n o w b a l l]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL62m5umP4g&feature=related

In the southern part of Texas, in the town of San Antone,
There's a fortress all in ruin that the weeds have overgrown.
You may look in vain for crosses and you'll never see a one,
But sometime between the setting and the rising of the sun,
You can hear a ghostly bugle as the men go marching by;
You can hear them as they answer to that roll call in the sky:
Colonel Travis, Davy Crockett and a hundred eighty more;
Captain Dickenson, Jim Bowie, present and accounted for.

Back in 1836, Houston said to Travis:
"Get some volunteers and go fortify the Alamo."
Well, the men came from Texas and from old Tennessee,
And they joined up with Travis just to fight for the right to be free.

Indian scouts with squirrel guns, men with muzzle loaders,
Stood together heel and toe to defend the Alamo.
"You may never see your loved ones," Travis told them that day.
"Those that want to can leave now, those who'll fight to the death, let 'em stay."

In the sand he drew a line with his army sabre,
Out of a hundred eighty five, not a soldier crossed the line.
With his banners a-dancin' in the dawn's golden light,
Santa Anna came prancin' on a horse that was black as the night.

He sent an officer to tell Travis to surrender.
Travis answered with a shell and a rousin' rebel yell.
Santa Anna turned scarlet: "Play Degüello," he roared.
"I will show them no quarter, everyone will be put to the sword."

One hundred and eighty five holdin' back five thousand.
Five days, six days, eight days, ten; Travis held and held again.
Then he sent for replacements for his wounded and lame,
But the troops that were comin' never came, never came, never came.

Twice he charged, then blew recall. On the fatal third time,
Santa Anna breached the wall and he killed them one and all.
Now the bugles are silent and there's rust on each sword,
And the small band of soldiers lie asleep in the arms of The Lord.

In the southern part of Texas, near the town of San Antone,
Like a statue on his Pinto rides a cowboy all alone.
And he sees the cattle grazin' where a century before,
Santa Anna's guns were blazin' and the cannons used to roar.
And his eyes turn sort of misty, and his heart begins to glow,
And he takes his hat off slowly to the men of Alamo.
To the thirteen days of glory at the seige of Alamo.

[Aristus]

1. I was born and raised in San Antonio, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned

that the legend of the Alamo glorifies men who were fighting to expand slavery into Mexico, which had abolished slavery twenty years before.

Crockett, Travis, and Bowie no longer seem so heroic...

[S n o w b a l l]

2. Typical, isn't it?

The long history of America's propagandizing of war and it's war heroes.

I love Marty Robbins though.

[Lethe]

3. you are right, and Thoreau wrote about it

in Civil Disobedience.

Everything he wrote in that essay is applicable to our last two wars, and also the current fight for health care reform.

"Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may."

"I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico; — see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made."

[EndersDame]

4. Santa Anna turned Mexico into a military dictatorship

he wasn't exactly a nice dude. Ultimately though the Tejanos got screwed by both parties

[Aristus]

6. International conflicts aren't always between "good guys and bad guys".

Sometimes they're between "bad guys and bad guys."

Santa Anna was a creep, a buffoon, and a miserably incompetent general. But those facts don't ennoble the squalid slavemongers squatting in the Alamo.

[EndersDame]

7. I agree but there were Tejanos who wanted their freedom fighting side by side

only to get screwed later on so not everyone fought for slavery. The Tejanos get left out of the stories which is bullshit .Sam Houston also refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy (although he did not fight at the Alamo

[NJmaverick]

5. Thanks for posting

I always enjoyed that song:hi: