An intrepid movie magazine reporter once asked Hollywood cowboy star, Freemason, and director of The Alamo, John Wayne: ‘Was that really the way it was?’ . John Wayne replied, ‘Hell No, but that’s the way it ought to have been!’ And so it was that legend became firmly entwined with history.
     The defence of the Alamo mission at San Antonio in Texas in 1836 was a defining moment in the history of the United States. It all stemmed from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Mexican Revolution of 1821. Tensions had arisen as settlers flooded into the territory that had previously been Mexican. The attraction to Americans was obvious; land, and plenty of it.
     The early settlers did make efforts to assimilate. One was Freemason Stephen Austin, the undisputed Father of Texas. Land and a paternal vision had been left to Stephen and by the age of twenty seven he had established a colony of 300 families in the territory.
     Austin joined Louisiana Lodge No.109, at St Genevieve, Missouri. From 1822 he had directed the Texas settlers’ affairs and he encouraged immigration from the now adjacent United States. He attempted to start a lodge in the territory in 1826 and again in 1828, when he petitioned the Grand Lodge of Mexico. Each time the paperwork was lost by the Mexicans.
     Slighted, he moved to a position of urging outright statehood for Texas and separation from Mexico. In September 1835, when the Mexican Army crossed the Rio Grande, he was the natural choice to command the volunteer Texas army.
     Settler restlessness came to a head in December 1835, when Freemason Ben Milam, leading a group of three hundred Texans, forced Mexican soldiers to surrender at San Antonio de Bexar. Their expulsion to south of the Rio Grande was seen as an affront by Mexico; the calculated insult would not be ignored.

The Gathering of Volunteers

General Santa Anna marched with an army of three thousand men and besieged The Alamo on 18th February 1836. The defence lasted eighteen days – vital time for Freemason General Sam Houston to mobilise his volunteer army to defeat the Mexicans in the final battle two months later. The Mexicans had reckoned without the determination of other masons: Travis, Bowie and the recently arrived Davy Crockett.
     Freemason William Barret Travis was placed in charge of the Alamo mission, a position he shared with Jim Bowie who already held the rank of Colonel in the Citizen Rangers.
     Travis had arrived in February with 30 volunteers. Born in Alabama he joined Claiborne Lodge, No.3 in 1829. A lawyer with a sense of adventure he went to Texas in 1832. He was a natural leader and an early member of the War Party faction. His appeals for help to defend the Alamo fell largely on deaf ears, though a party of thirty two men did arrive from the town of Gonzalez. On 24th February 1836 he penned his stirring letter: ‘If necessary I shall die like a soldier – give me Victory, or Death!’
     Freemason Jim Bowie had joined L’Humble Chaumiere, Lodge No.19, Opelousa, Louisiana. He later moved into Texas and settled in San Antonio in 1830 and bought significant land holdings there. His Texas toothpick, the legendary Bowie knife, was actually a honed butcher’s knife that one of his brothers had given him for protection.
     The inspirational leader of the defenders was another mason, Davy Crockett whose masonic credentials are proved by a masonic apron made for him by a Mrs Massie of Washington, DC. He responded to the call with fifteen volunteers from Tennessee.
     Another defender was a close friend of Travis, the lawyer and mason, Jim Burnham. It was Burnham who had ridden rousing the reinforcements from Gonzalez. He then sped to Goliad, but without success there; he rode back to San Antonio, well knowing he was going to his own death.

The Battle of the Alamo

It was early on the morning of 6th March 1836 that the Mexicans attacked and quelled the Alamo. On the first day of the siege, during a lull in the early bombardments, Travis drew a line in the sand and called on all those who wished to remain and fight, to cross to his side of the line. All but one of the defenders did so.
     Alongside Travis, a total of 187 defenders died; amongst them twenty nine British volunteers. One of the handfull of survivors was Suzanna, wife of Freemason Almaron Dickenson. When she left the ruined mission she draped her husband’s masonic apron over herself and her child, as a symbol of protection; Santa Anna offered to assist them, but she rebuffed his effort.
     There were six survivors, including Crockett and Bowie; Travis having fallen earlier in the battle. Santa Anna was so incensed by the Americans’ fierce resistance that he ordered they be hacked to pieces. If Santa Anna was a Freemason - and there are grounds to believe he was - he was a particularly peculiar one.
     General Santa Anna’s forces then marched on the settlers’ town of Goliad. Against the overwhelming odds, the town surrendered on 20th March 1836. Seven days later Santa Anna ordered the slaughter of his 407 prisoners there – and this after they had been given assurances of no molestation and a safe passage back to the United States!

The End of Santa Anna’s Army

So enraged were Americans at this blatant treachery that they flocked to fight alongside General Sam Houston. Virginia–born Houston, at the age of fifteen, had gone to live with Cherokee Indians. Later he joined Cumberland Lodge, No.8, in Nashville, Tennessee in 1817. Then in 1832 he drifted to Texas and shortly after his arrival was elected General of the settlers’ militia. It was a case of being the right man, with instinctive battle skills, in the right place, at the right time.
     Within a month Santa Anna was cornered at San Jacinto, where Houston’s determined force of eight hundred men defeated a Mexican Army of twice their size. The battle lasted only twenty minutes. All over the battlefield could be heard the yells of ‘Remember the Alamo’ and ‘Remember Goliad’. Cries that struck fear into the hearts of the Mexicans.
     Initially, Santa Anna escaped, dressed as a peasant, but was captured the following day. His life was spared as an act of magnanimity. One of his captors, Freemason James Sylvester claimed that Santa Anna had given the masonic sign of grief and distress directly to him and then later to Sam Houston. This story is also related by another mason. John Stiles, a soldier from Red River, who was also guarding Santa Anna. Allegedly, Santa Anna later presented his masonic apron to Stiles in gratitude for interceding on his behalf.
     Santa Anna lived on to repeat his treacherous behaviour, but for the United States an indelible chapter had now been written. Those who died were heroes; Texas had gained its freedom. In this, Freemasons played their full part – before, during and after the event.