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From: "Sally Rolls Pavia" <>
Subject: The Fall Of The Alamo
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 06:52:06 -0700

by Captain R. M. Potter


Date of Event: 1836


Written in 1860, Subsequently Revised by Author
Captain R.M. Potter 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.






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.
. . .
Before beginning the narrative, however, I must describe the Alamo and its
surroundings as they existed in the spring of 1836. San Antonio, then a town
of about 7,000 inhabitants, had a Mexican population, a minority of which
was well affected to the cause of Texas, while the rest were inclined to
make the easiest terms they could with whichever side might be for the time
being dominant. The San Antonio River, which, properly speaking, is a large
rivulet, divided the town from the Alamo, the former on the west side and
the latter on the east. The Alamo village, a small suburb of San Antonio,
was south of the fort, or Mission, as it was originally called, which bore
the same name. The latter was an old fabric, built during the first
settlement of the vicinity by the Spaniards; and having been originally
designed as a place of safety for the colonists and their property in case
of Indian hostility, with room sufficient for that purpose, it had neither
the strength, compactness, nor dominant points which ought to belong to a
regular fortification. The front of the Alamo Chapel bears date of 1757, but
the other works must have been built earlier. As the whole area contained
between two and three acres, a thousand men would have barely sufficed to
man its defenses; and before a regular siege train they would soon have
crumbled. Yoakum, in his history of Texas, is not only astray in his details
of the assault, but mistaken about the measurement of the place. Had the
works covered no more ground than he represents, the result of the assault
might have been different.
For the remainder of the article:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/Alamo.html

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• The Fall Of The Alamo by "Sally Rolls Pavia" <>