Forgetting the Alamo

  I LOVE DAVY CROCKETT, the real one, not the legendary one. The real one always called himself and crudely signed  his name "David". He didn't like being called "Davy". I love him for many reasons. He taught himself to read, turned a dirt poor upbringing into a life of achievement and success, was a real sweetheart of a guy, and when an attempt to ridicule him turned into fame for him instead, he embraced it, and had fun with it, thereby turning the condescending ridicule back onto the haughty Easterners who initiated it. A recently published monograph "Forget the Alamo", by three eminently forgettable historians, tries to assert that since the truth about what happened at the Alamo in March of 1836, and the motivations of the people involved, were in fact considerably different from the Hollywood version, in which brave martyrs died valiantly defending liberty against tyranny, the iconic historical event is best devalued. So, the Fess parker and John Wayne version are phony. So what? Isn't much that is revered in history? What they actually died for was a Texas independent of Mexico rule, where slavery was illegal, a version of Texas in which slavery would be the basis basis of a southern style plantation agrarian economy. They didn't die fighting heroically.  Half the Alamo's defenders fled when the odds became overwhelming, preferring to take their chances on the open prairie. They were hunted down and killed by Mexican cavalry. They could have and should have either abandoned and fled the old mission, which they had been ordered to do by General Sam Houston while he was building up his army's strength to the east, or surrendered it to the huge advancing Mexican army, which they knew well in advance was on its way. that they did neither, but instead chose to stay and fight is a testament to unbridled human optimism, and peer pressure, personified. Billy bob Thornton is the best, most accurate Davy Crockett in film yet.  Crockett wanted  to leave before the Mexicans arrived, and said so, but was trapped by his reputation for frontiersman bravery, his desire for wealth and political power in the emerging new nation of Texas, and, peer pressure. Rather than being the last man standing and fighting to the death, surrounded by a pile of dead Mexican soldiers, Crockett was most likely captured by brute force as he was about to surrender, and executed. This more accurate, less fantastic version proves only that the Alamo was defended by human beings, not cartoon characters. "Forget the Alamo" is a book which, by shedding light, dispelling myth, and telling truth, actually, if accidentally  gives us cause to remember and continue to venerate the Alamo and the people who died there,  by turning them back into the real people they were. David Crockett really was a hero. He opposed slavery, believed in justice, and fought in congress, albeit unsuccessfully, for the rights of poor people in a country ruled by and for the wealthy. ("It is my firm belief that Congress ought to at least occasionally legislate for the poor"). After David died at the Alamo, his existing fame as a frontiersman bear hunting rough hewn politician blossomed into full fledged national sainthood, deservedly so, in the final analysis. His oldest son John Wesley Crockett ran for and was elected to his father's old seat in congress, and, in his father's honor, was able to get passed the squatters rights land bill his father had fought so hard to pass.  David Crockett,, and everything in which he was involved, including the Alamo, is well worth remembering.