Battle of the Alamo

For thirteen days in early 1836, roughly 180-200 Texian and Tejano defenders held the Alamo compound against General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's Mexican army. The pre-dawn final assault on March 6 overwhelmed the defenses and killed nearly all of the combatants in the garrison, including James Bowie, William B. Travis, and Davy Crockett. Mexican losses are disputed: Santa Anna's official report listed 70 killed and 300 wounded, while later accounts often claimed higher totals. 'Remember the Alamo!' became a rallying cry for the Texian army, which defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto the following month.

The Alamo is a foundational case of contested memory: the 'line in the sand' story appeared decades later from a single dubious source, Crockett's death - fighting to the last or executed after capture - remains genuinely disputed between the legend and the De la Pena diary account, and the defenders' motives are read differently across the border, since Texian independence was entangled with preserving slavery, which Mexico had abolished. Tejano defenders like Juan Seguin were long minimized in the Anglo telling and have been restored by modern scholarship. The building itself - a mission, not a fort - became a shrine whose custodianship and interpretation Texans have fought over in courtrooms and legislatures for more than a century, down to the present-day battles over redesigning Alamo Plaza.