How do you remember The Alamo?
So as part of our upcoming road trip through the south I was looking into what the whole Alamo thing was all about. Not growing up through the American education system my knowledge was limited. I'd learned the Davy Crocket song in French as a kid in Canada (Davy, Davy Crocket, l'homme qui n'a jamais eu peur) and I had the general sense that it was the story of American civilians trying to seize land from Mexico and getting roundly defeated.
There was of course a lot more to it. I read up a bunch about the Texas Revolution and the Battle of the Alamo on Wikipedia last night and there were a few things that stuck out.
First of all, the American settlers had been there for quite a while. They'd set up ranches and considered themselves to be native. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain there were a couple of changes that they made. First, they banned slavery in 1829, then they tried to centralize control from what had been a bunch of Spanish colonies into a single state. Neither of these sat well well with the Texians. The Alamo should fit nicely into the rest of our civil rights themed tour of the South.
Secondly the treatment of Americans who had come to fight on the side of the revolutionaries was harsh. They were considered under Mexican law as pirates. When captured they were treated as criminals not as prisoners of war. Today we would have called them illegal enemy combatants.
Remember the Alamo?
There was of course a lot more to it. I read up a bunch about the Texas Revolution and the Battle of the Alamo on Wikipedia last night and there were a few things that stuck out.
First of all, the American settlers had been there for quite a while. They'd set up ranches and considered themselves to be native. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain there were a couple of changes that they made. First, they banned slavery in 1829, then they tried to centralize control from what had been a bunch of Spanish colonies into a single state. Neither of these sat well well with the Texians. The Alamo should fit nicely into the rest of our civil rights themed tour of the South.
Secondly the treatment of Americans who had come to fight on the side of the revolutionaries was harsh. They were considered under Mexican law as pirates. When captured they were treated as criminals not as prisoners of war. Today we would have called them illegal enemy combatants.
Remember the Alamo?