A Time to Stand by Walter Lord

Author:Walter Lord [Lord, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3844-8
Published: 2012-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Take Care of My Little Boy”

IN THE DIM MOONLIGHT that bathed the Alamo plaza, John W. Smith saddled up once again. It was nearly midnight, Thursday, March 3, and Smith was about to leave on another attempt to rally help for the garrison.

Word soon spread that he was going. Private Willis A. Moore of Raymond, Mississippi, scribbled a few private lines to his family, folded and handed the note to Smith. Others did the same.

In the headquarters room by the west wall, William Barret Travis was also writing messages. First, he put the finishing touches on his latest official report—this time a ringing appeal to the President of the Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He stressed the garrison’s resilience, praised its spirit, spelled out its needs: “at least 500 pounds of cannon powder, 200 rounds of six, nine, twelve, and eighteen-pound balls, ten kegs of rifle powder …”

And once again he urged all possible help, for this could be “the great and decisive ground.” He closed with a few bitter words about the local Mexicans—he charged nearly all had deserted the fort—but on the whole he was game and optimistic.

Now he turned to his own personal messages. First came a little note so secret no outsider ever saw it. Just the cryptic request in the covering letter: “Do me the favor to send the enclosed to its proper destination instantly.” It was hard for anyone then, or more than a hundred years later, not to think of Rebecca Cummings.

Next, a warm, intimate letter to his friend Jesse Grimes. In it he again stressed his good spirits, his determination to die rather than give up the Alamo. But this time—much more eloquently than in his official correspondence—Travis explained why he was making this stand. His reason went far beyond any views on strategy … beyond the bond that now welded the garrison together … even beyond his fierce desire to defend the new homes that dotted the land. More than all these (and they were a lot), he felt the spirit of the times—the conviction that liberty, freedom and independence were in themselves worth fighting for; the belief that a man should be willing to make any sacrifice to hold these prizes. With them, he had everything. Without them, nothing. Explaining his views, Travis minced no words:

Let the Convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day… .

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