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Remember the Alamo the Right Way: Dispelling the Myths About the Famous Battle
The Heroes on Both Side Deserve No Less
As a native Texan, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know about the Alamo; it is a unique part of our identity as Texans. When I was growing up in the 1970s our history teachers hammered three key things into us: we were the only state that was ever its own country, we had the right to secede from the Union if we saw fit, and in late February and early March of 1836 a small yet heroic band of Texans (most originally from Tennessee and South Carolina) faced off against 3,000 Mexican troops at the Alamo for 13 glorious days, killing half of them before all perishing, but in the process buying Sam Houston enough time to ultimately win Texan independence.
If you are a history buff at all, you know that my history teachers needed to stick to their main job, which was coaching football, because they got pretty much all of that wrong. We were not the only state to be its own country; Hawaii was a kingdom for 100 years longer than we were a Republic. We absolutely did not have the right to secede, then or now. As for the Alamo, they at least got the part about buying Sam Houston time right.
The revisionist history surrounding the Battle of the Alamo did not begin with my teachers in the 1970s; it…
