Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers: The Texas Victory That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade

Author:Brian Kilmeade
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: 19th Century, Biography & Autobiography, History, Military, United States
Publisher: Sentinel
Published: 2019-11-15T03:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Fort Defiance

[Fannin] is an ill-fated man.

—SAM HOUSTON TO THOMAS J. RUSK, MARCH 23, 1836

On Saturday, March 12, James Fannin, commander of Goliad, received General Sam Houston’s order to withdraw. The young colonel had a mixed past, having come to Texas to escape debts and the shame of flunking out of West Point. But he wanted to redeem himself, and after his success with Bowie at Concepción, he had worked hard to get what he called this “post of danger.”1 To Fannin, this reversal of plans came as a surprise.

Only a month before, he’d been instructed to fortify Goliad against the Mexicans and, at first, all had gone well. He and his men shored up the defenses of the old Spanish fort, built on the highest hill in the vicinity. Three-foot-thick stone walls, standing eight to ten feet in height, enclosed some three and a half acres that held a church, a barracks, and a handful of other buildings. They rebuilt the fort’s gate and secured its water supply. The Mexicans had called it La Bahía, but the Texians renamed it Fort Defiance, and here Fannin martialed the men who had marched from all over the United States to fight for Texas, happy to consider himself the main obstacle to the Mexicans.

But things had gone wrong, too. First, there had been the indecision at helping the men trapped in the Alamo. When Travis had called for help (“In this extremity, we hope you will send us all the men you can spare promptly”), Fannin’s immediate instinct had been to go to the rescue of his brothers-in-arms.2 Then the march to San Antonio had ended prematurely, just one day in, with wagon failures and a vote by Fannin’s officers to abandon the mission. They had returned to Fort Defiance in the freezing rain, leaving Travis and his men to prepare to fight their own battle.

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