William B. Travis

William Barret Travis
William B. Travis. This sketch by Wiley Martin is the only surviving likeness drawn during Travis's lifetime, although its accuracy has been questioned.
Nickname(s)	Buck
Born	(1809-08-01)August 1, 1809 Saluda County, South Carolina
Died	March 6, 1836(1836-03-06) (aged 26) The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas
Allegiance	United States Republic of Texas
Service / branch	Texas Army
Years of service	1835–1836
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Commands	The Alamo
Battles / wars	Texas Revolution Siege of Bexar Battle of the Alamo Signature of William B. Travis

William Barret Travis (August 1, 1809 – March 6, 1836) was a 19th-century American lawyer and soldier. At the age of 26, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army. He died at the Battle of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution.

Family life

Travis, an American of English descent, was born in August,1,1809 in Saluda County, South Carolina, to Mark and Jemima Travis. Records differ as to whether his date of birth was the first or ninth of August, but his youngest brother James C. Travis, who was in possession of the Travis family Bible at the time of his statement, indicated that he was born on the first. When he was nine, his uncle Alexander Travis, a prominent Baptist preacher, called on his family to move to the town of Sparta in Conecuh County, Alabama, where he received much of his education. He later enrolled in a school in nearby Claiborne, where he eventually worked as an assistant teacher.

Travis then became an attorney and, at age 19, married one of his former students, 16-year-old Rosanna Cato (1812–1848), on October 26, 1828. The couple stayed in Claiborne and had a son, Charles Edward, in 1829. Travis began publication of a newspaper that same year, the Claiborne Herald. He became a Mason, joining the Alabama Lodge No.3 – Free and Accepted Masons, and later joined the Alabama militia as adjutant of the Twenty-sixth Regiment, Eighth Brigade, and Fourth Division.grrr im monster that wants to eat your cookies so stay away or give me cookies.

His marriage soon failed for unknown reasons. Some historians have speculated that he was recruited by the United States government as a Spy and Filibuster agent, and was sent to Texas in order to organize and prepare the province for revolution. Thus, a break-up of the marriage and business was necessitated. Regardless, Travis fled Alabama in early 1831 to start over in Texas, leaving behind his wife, son, and unborn daughter. Their son was placed with Travis's friend, David Ayres, so that he would be closer to his father. Intriguingly, Travis never remarried in Texas nor did his wife divorce Travis for another five years. In the meantime, Travis regularly visited Alabama, met with his wife and son in New Orleans, Louisiana and made a trip to Washington D.C.. However, with war approaching in Texas, Travis and Rosanna were officially divorced by the Marion County courts on January 9, 1836, by Act no. 115. A single letter was received to Rosanna from Travis in February in which Travis encouraged Rosanna to re-marry, expressing his belief that he would not survive the upcoming conflict. Rosanna married Samuel G. Cloud in Monroeville, Alabama, on February 14, 1836. However, they both died of Yellow Fever during an epidemic which afflicted the state in 1848.

Texas

File:William Travis birthdeathplaque.jpg

Birth/Death dates plaque at Alamo

In May 1831, upon his arrival in Mexican Texas, a part of northern Mexico at the time, Travis purchased land from Stephen F. Austin and began a law practice in Anahuac. In keeping with his suspected role as a spy for the US, he played a role in the growing friction between American settlers and the Mexican government, agitating not only for the protection of their rights as Mexicans, but increasingly and openely discussing the possibility of secession as a means of defending their liberty. Thus, he was quickly recognized as one of the leaders of the War Party, a group of militants opposed to Mexican rule. He became a pivotal figure in the Anahuac Disturbances, during which Mexico City's increasingly arbitrary and authortarian rule led to a series of assemblies by Texans, subsequent civil disturbences and outbreaks of violence, preciptating the war.

Whilst, the assemblies began debating how best to defend their Mexican rights, a similar series of outbreaks of demonstrations, assemblies, and civil strife throughout Mexico led to a massive crackdown throughout the country by a new military junta led by Antonio López de Santa Anna. Several Mexican states in the south declared independence in response. Santa Ana immediately declared a state of martial law and ordered the execution of anyone involved in the uprising. In reply, a number of Texas militia units surrounded various arsenals and armories into which Mexican central authorities had confiscated the local militia's weapons.

This led in in October 1835 to the Battle of Gonzales in which Texas militia engaged Mexican army regulars quartered in the town and guarding the arsenal. In November, Travis played a small role in the Siege of Bexar, during which several militia units from across the state surrounded the main Mexican position at the Alamo, forced the Mexican army to leave, and secured large numbers of weapons, ammunition and supplies. Subsequently, on December 19, Travis was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel of the Legion of Cavalry and became the chief recruiting officer for a new regular Texan army. His command was to consist of 384 men and officers, divided into six companies. Despite his rank, Travis had to recruit the men who were to serve under his command, but he had difficulty in finding willing colonists to enlist in the regulars, as the majority wished to remain in their local militia units. "Volunteers can no longer be had or relied upon", he wrote to acting governor Henry Smith.

Alamo command

William B. Travis, painted by H. A. McArdle, years after Travis's death, using a stand-in as a model.

Smith ordered Travis to raise a company of professional soldiers to reinforce the Texans at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. Travis considered disobeying his orders, writing to Smith: "I am willing, nay anxious, to go to the defense of Bexar, but sir, I am unwilling to risk my reputation ... by going off into the enemy's country with such little means, so few men, and with them so badly equipped."

On February 3 Travis arrived in San Antonio with eighteen regulars as reinforcements. On February 12, as the next highest ranking officer, Travis became the official commander of the Alamo garrison. He took command of the regular soldiers from Col. James C. Neill, of the Texan army. Neill had to leave to care for his ill family, but he promised to be back in twenty days. Meanwhile, the surrounding militia units were asked to volunteer to serve under the regulars. In turn, James Bowie (1795–1836), a noted frontiersmen, soldier, duelist, and notable of the community would command the volunteers as Travis commanded the regulars.

As the Texans organized their militia, large elements of volunteers from elsewhere in the United States, were activated in preparation for the rebellion and secession. Most of these units came from Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, all states from which leading men of the liberty movement, and secret Fillibuster program originated. The most notable of these were led by former Congressmen and noted pioneer Davy Crocket, who arrived with a platoon of battle hardened scouts and frontiersmen at the Alamo.

Meanwhile, the Mexican army, under dictator/General Antonio López de Santa Anna, had begun its rapid descent on the Mexican demonstrators, destroying most of the liberty movement in Mexico City and Puebla, Mexico, before moving onto the secessionists in other states. His word that all resistors would be executed was carried out methodically as tens of thousands of resisting Mexican state militia were executed upon defeat and capture. However, he delivered various letters northward expressing his particular hatred toward the Americans in Texas, whom he promised would be genocided as his mentor General José Joaquín de Arredondo had done decades earlier. His movement northward was swift and caught the Texans unaware in early February. By the second week of February, Mexican regulars were scouting the Alamo and by February 22 began investing the small fort.

The Mexicans began their attack on the mission on February 23, 1836. In a brief letter to the alcade of Gonzales, Andrew Ponton, Travis wrote:

"The enemy in large force is in sight... We want men and provisions ... Send them to us. We have 150 men & are determined to defend the Alamo to the last."

This initial assault was quickly turned back by the well aimed fire of the small garrison. Armed with deadly rifles, and backed by hundreds of rifles and large amounts of ammunition, 2 out of three men each had at least eight rifles from which to fire, while another man rapidly reloaded the rifles. Additionally, the Texas position was supported by a number of artillery guns which lay waste with shot to the advancing Mexican column and silenced at long range a number of the Mexican artillery. As the Mexicans advanced, the Texans fired in volleys wiping out entire columns of the Mexicans and dealing the expeditionary army its first set back since Puebla. Reeling from this defeat, the Mexican army turned to surrounding and laying siege to the fort, as it grew in size with the arrival of main van of the army.

Despite this initial victory, the Texan position was dire. But, rather than quickly abandon his post, Travis saw the Alamo as a key fort in the initial defense policy delineated in his orders. As part of three large forts, the others being at Goliad and Gonzales, Travis considered his position vital to delaying the Mexican army, thereby allowing the Texan civilian population to escape, and for more militia further east to organize and be reinforced by American and European volunteers. Thus, despite the large Mexican army, rather than abandon his post, Travis saw the Alamo as a key fort in the initial defense policy delineated in his orders. Consequently, for the remaining several days, various small assaults, quick counter-strikes by the Texans, and several attempts to bring in small reinforcements, marked the siege.

However, the size of Santa Ana's army and its rapid advance northward, had caught the overall Texan position throughout the state unprepared. Worse, unbeknownst to Travis, the Goliad fort, arguably much better designed and fortified, had been abandoned and its garrison cut to pieces on the open ground because of faulty command and communications. Thus, rather than attempting to break out, and given the Fog of war, Travis decided to wait out the siege and pin down the Mexican army until relieved. Indeed, the force at Goliad was ten times that of the Alamo, however, most of it had been captured and subsequently executed. Consequently, Travis had a doomed command and did not know why reinforcements were not arriving.

Indeed in a letter to the Texas Convention on March 3 Travis wrote: "...yet I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect."

As the Mexican army continued to grow in size, Travis began to admit his situation was grave. Thus, in Travis' last letter out of the Alamo, which reached the convention the same day on March 3 to David Ayres:

"Take care of my little boy. If the country should be saved, I may make him a splendid fortune; but if the country should be lost, and I should perish, he will have nothing but the proud recollection that he is the son of a man who died for his country."

With at least over five thousand crack Mexican soldiers surrounding the Alamo, all commanded by Generalissimo Santa Ana and flying a red flag whilst playing the El Degüello bugle call, Santa Anna signaled that no quarter would be given to the defenders. Recognizing the near impossibility of surviving the final assault, there is a legend that, one to three days before the final Mexican assault, Travis gathered all of the Alamo's defenders in the main plaza of the fort. Announcing that reinforcements would not be coming, Travis unsheathed his sword and drew a line in the dirt. He then told those men who were willing to stay and die with him to cross the line; those who wanted to leave could do so without shame. Most of the Alamo's defenders subsequently crossed the line, leaving only two men behind. One soldier, Bowie, was confined to a cot with typhoid, but asked to be carried across the line. The other was a French veteran of the Napoleonic Wars named Moses Rose. Rose, who later declared, "By God, I wasn't ready to die," scaled a wall that night and escaped, thus preserving the story of Travis's line in the sand. This account was told by Rose to numerous people later in his life.

On March 6, 1836, following a thirteen-day siege, his army well prepared, and supported by heavy artillery and veteran combat engineers, Santa Ana ordered the largest assault yet on the Alamo at the predawn hours. Despite punishing fire, both from the well aimed rifle fire of the Alamo defenders and its superb but smaller artillery, the Mexicans slowly invested the forts walls, used ladders to climb over the wall’s tops and after desperate close quarter combat broke down the fort's outer defenses. After heavy fighting, which spread throughout the fort and into individual building and lasted into the early morning, Travis, Bowie, and most of the defenders were dead at the end of Battle of the Alamo. It is believed that David Crockett and James Bonham as well as at least ten others, mostly the Tennessee and Kentucky frontiersmen, had been severely wounded and subdued but survived. According to Mexican soldiers, these survivors were tortured and eventually executed. A total of around 188–250 Texans and unknown number of Mexicans, estimated in the thousands, were killed in the battle.

There are reports that Travis died early in the assault, of a single gunshot wound to the forehead while defending the north wall. Joe, a freed former slave to Travis, who was present during the final assault as a noncombatant, stated afterward that he saw Travis stand on the wall and fire into the attackers. He saw Travis shoot and kill a Mexican soldier climbing over the wall from a ladder, with Travis falling immediately afterward. This is the only dependable account of Travis' death.

When Santa Anna came into the fort he asked the alcalde of San Antonio, Francisco A. Ruiz, to identify the bodies of the rebel leaders to him. Ruiz later said that the body of Travis was found on a gun carriage on the north wall. Within a few hours of the final gunshots being fired, Santa Anna ordered a company of soldiers to gather wood and burn all the Texans' bodies. By five o'clock that evening, the bodies of Travis, Crockett, Bowie and Bonham, were burned along with the other rebels.

Travis's famous letter from the Alamo

File:William Travis famousletterplaque.jpg

Plaque in front of the Alamo

On February 24, 1836, during Santa Anna's siege of the Alamo, Travis wrote a letter addressed "To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World":

Fellow citizens and compatriots;

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual Bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country. Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis

Lt. Col. Comdt.

P.S. The Lord is on our side. When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn. We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis

He gave this letter to courier John William Smith to deliver. The envelope that contained the letter was labeled "Victory or Death". The letter, while unable to bring aid to the garrison at the Alamo, did much to motivate the Texan army and helped to rally support in America for the cause of Texan independence. It also cemented Travis's status as a hero of the Texas Revolution.

Chance for help

As late as March 3, Travis had every bit of optimism of reinforcements with the arrival of messenger James Bonham. He carried a letter from Robert M. "Three-Legged Willie" Williamson, which stated that help was coming in the form of 60 volunteers from San Felipe, 300 volunteers (and four cannons) from James Fannin, and another contingent of 300 volunteers by March 1. ( ...For God's sake hold out until we can assist you...")

The "line in the sand"

What is not disputed about the Battle of the Alamo is that by March 3, 1836, Travis understood the situation his garrison faced, and it was more than bleak; in fact, the situation was hopeless. It is alleged that he called the troops of his garrison together either on that day or on March 4, 1836, and told them, "We must die. Our business is not to make a fruitless effort to save our lives, but to choose the manner of our death." With that, taking example from "the 13 of the Fame" act done by Francisco Pizarro a couple of centuries before, it is alleged he made a sweep with his sword and drew a line in the sand, asking all who would stay to cross it and those not willing not to cross it. Only Louis Rose, a French-born former soldier in Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée, did not cross. Rose has since been known as the Coward of the Alamo.

Rose, by his own later accounts, was the only soldier who departed, he did so by sneaking through Mexican lines in the late-night hours of March 5, 1836. Rose may have been the first to say that Travis drew the line. Susannah Dickinson, widow of Alamo defender Capt. Almaron Dickinson, was present during the siege and battle and confirmed that this did happen. But no reliable written accounts support this. Whether Travis actually did draw the line in the sand is still disputed. However, what is known, by Rose's own accounts, is that Travis did give the members of the garrison a choice of staying or going, and by Rose's own accounts only Rose chose the latter.

Travis' children

Charles Edward Travis (1829–1860) was raised by his mother and her second husband. He eventually joined volunteers to serve in the Mexican-American War. However, his parents died when he was nineteen and he moved to Texas, eventually winning a seat in the Texas legislature in 1853. In 1855, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a captain in a cavalry regiment (which was later renamed the 5th Cavalry Regiment (United States) commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston) but was discharged in May 1856 for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" following an allegation that he had cheated at cards.

He appealed the decision to no avail and then turned to studying law, earning a degree from Baylor University in 1859. He died of consumption (tuberculosis) within a year and is buried beside his sister.

Susan Isabella Travis was born in 1831, after Travis had departed for Texas. Although her paternity has been questioned, Travis did name her as his daughter in his will. In 1850 she married a planter from Chapell Hill, and they had one daughter.

Cenotaph of the Alamo defenders, Travis and Crockett

See also

• Timeline of the Texas Revolution

References

• Davis, Robert E. (1966). "The Diary of William Barret Travis" (Document). Waco, Tx: Texian Press. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |asin= ignored (help)
• Hardin, Stephen L. (1994). "Texian Iliad" (Document). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |isbn= ignored (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Brief biography of Travis at Lone Star Junction
• Detailed biography from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Timeline of the life of William Barret Travis
• First Hand Alamo Accounts

Further reading

• Lord, Walter; A Time To Stand; University of Nebraska Press; ISBN 0-8032-7902-7
• Davis, William C. Three Roads to the Alamo; HarperCollins Publishers; ISBN 0-06-017334-3
• McDonald, Archie P.; William Barret Travis; Eakin Press; ISBN 0-89015-656-5

External links

• William Barret Travis from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Travis "Victory or Death" Letter at Texas Heritage Society
•  Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1889). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)