The Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1837-1845, 1840-12-08

iterated his orders to slay and directed some Of
the concluding operations.
have heard different statements as TO where
and when Travis was killed; but that most TO
be relied on is, that he was found dead at the
breech OF gun, near where the right column
entered.
About half an hour after the fire had ceased,
three men of the garrison were found in one Of
the rooms concealed under some mattresses.
They were spared by the soldiers who found
them; and the officer to whom the discovery
was reported duplicated Santa Anna for their
lives; but the miscreant Immediately ordered
them to be butchered. The command was full
filled; but in doing il struggle ensued, in which
Mexican was also shot inadvertently by the
executioners. This concluded the tragedy OF
the Alamo.
The two surviving individuals Of all the in
mates of the fortress, before alluded TO, were
Mrs Dickinson, the wife of the officer whose
death, and that Of his child, have just been re-
lated; and slave of Col Travis. They were
spared, and were soon after liberated to be the
bearers of proclamation.
The number of troops employed in the assault,
II estimatedfrom the average force Of their regi-
ments, before stated emitting the cavalry, would
be 2 500; aud am convinced il could not have
greatly varied from that amount There is much
diversity and yagueness in the confessions of the
Mexcans respecting their loss and till better
proof can be obtained, we can only infer its pro-
babe amount from various circumstances. Judg
ing from the diminution which certain regiments
are known TO have suffered in the campaign,
only small part of which can be accounted for
elsewhere than at the Alamo and from other
data which il would be tedious to detail, think
they probably had about three hundred killed,
and four or five hundred wounded. This num-
Der is excessive, considering the size of their
force and the time II was engaged, which was
but half an hour for by this computation one
assailant must have been slain or stricken, on
an average, nearly every two seconds If, not
outstanding this rapid slaughter they carried
the fortress without giving way to more than
brief and partial checks, as they must to succeed
in that brief space, il is sufficient proof that in
this assault there was none of that lack of deter
mination which they showed on other occasions.
The supposition Of there having been thou
sand or more Mexicans killed, on the ground, is
absurd and it is not the less so from its having
been admitted by some sycophantish captive;
though have never heard such admission even
from that source. Most accounts agree in
making the number of wounded larger than that
of the killed but if moderate proportion be
added to that extravagant estimate of the slain,
it would amount to loss which would have
rendered the capture Of the fortress impossible.
The conduct of the garrison, as have OBJ
served, appears sufficiently heroic when related
without any violation of known truth or real pro-
liability. handful of exhausted men had to
maintain weak fortress of scattered, untenable
positions, against an active and determined as
sault made by fifteen times their own number,
Of well-drilled and well-apponted troops, and in
this charge well commanders Under these cir
cumstances, they must inevitably be crushed !;
but il they resisted till the last was felled, and
destroyed or disabled four or FIVE times their
number, it was defeat whose renown most vic
tors might envy; and, had they repealed mere
cowardly horde OF ten thousand, it would have
redounded less to their honoe.
They sealed the charter Of our liberties with
their blood; for though their stern resistance
failed 10 repel the foe in the of his first and
fe-ccst onset the memory of it chilled his en-
ergies in the succeeding combat, where the name
of alamo" became the battle cry Of the most
fatal field that ever invader entered.
However long our poverty may leave unmark-
ed the spot where rest the ashes of that self-de-
voted band, trust that at some future day a
monument will there arise, whose inscription,
like that on the Mausoleum of Thermopyla, will
say 10 the passer-by: /" Go, stranger, and declare
to the Texans that we died in defence of their
sacred rights.