¶ … Alamo is a major symbol of Texas history and one of the cultural heritage sites of the nation. It is also the subject of numerous books about its history, many seeking to restate the facts in order to overcome the influence of distorted media presentations of the story or of the many myths that have developed around the story of what occurred in that place. The Alamo by John Myers was published in 1973 and addressed the history of the Alamo in terms of what part the Alamo played in the expansion of territory for Europeans and then as a site where several Great Men came and acted in a certain way that helped create Texas and the nation.
To some degree, then, Myers subscribes to the Great Man theory of history, that certain individuals and their behavior decides issues of great moment and advance history. At the same time, though, he also sees certain movements as taking place in which individuals are caught up so that they contribute but do not determine the outcome so directly. The trend that Myers begins with is the spread of Christianity by means of Franciscan friars who came to Texas and other pats of the Southwest and established missions to preach to the Native American population, becoming in effect an outpost of European civilization in a less civilized land.
Myers points out a limitation of his study at the outset. He has included no footnotes, so any assertions he makes of fact or fiction cannot readily be checked for veracity or traced back to its origin. Myers certainly knows this and knows how difficult it is to trace this information anyway, for he says that information about this fort has been difficult to find. Having taken the effort to find it, though, Myers does not tell the reader where he got it. He does provide a bibliography at the end, but this does not say what information came from what source. The bibliography is a good mix of primary and secondary sources, with primary sources seeming to predominate. If Myers made good use of these materials, he has done the correct thing by seeking the origins of information about the Alamo and not just read the historical record as written by others. Again, though, with footnotes it is impossible to say what source provided him with different facts or even what sources he used the most or gleaned the best material from in his research.
At any rate, in his "Foreword," Myers discusses the nature of the story of the Alamo and why it is difficult to find a coherent story in the various sources. For one thing, it was an event that took place out of the sight of outside observers. The name has become larger than the fort itself, and Myers notes, "Outside of Texas even contemporaries of the siege had little accurate information" (11). Those who did know the story were not writers and were not sought out later by any historian. What they saw was at best recorded in private journals or letters, or perhaps in the notes of someone they spoke to at a later date. Some of those killed managed to send letters first or leave behind journals, and Joe, a black servant to Travis, was spared and was interviewed a few days after the siege. Myers says his words have been ignored, which may be a racial issue, though Myers does not say so. He does say putting Joe's account aside is unwarranted. A number of people left the garrison before the siege began and so also had stories to tell. Mexican officers wrote about the siege, but Myers says they were not too stringent with the facts and were writing as a defeated army (defeated after the Alamo, of course) and so were dispirited in what they wrote.
Another reason why there is so little direct data is that so little attention was paid to what happened by the news media of the day. We live in an age when every actions is chronicled and examined from a myriad of perspectives, but that was not the case in 1836 or for many decades thereafter. This was also the period in which if a reporter did not have the facts, he invented new facts, so a number of the myths and legends about the Alamo and its garrison were created and disseminated then and have persisted.
Myers gives his own history the aura of myth when he opens it with,
Those who doubt the greatness of men can leave this...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now