Review of Sam Houston & the Alamo Avengers by Brian Kilmeade

My fascination with the Alamo may go back to seeing “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” on the television show “The Magical World of Disney” back in the 1950s.  It may come from seeing the 1960 production of “The Alamo” staring the Duke, John Wayne, as the Tennessee frontiersman.  It might even come from my Uncle Theodore whose last name was Crockett.  He claimed that his linage went back to this fallen hero of the Alamo.  Wherever it came, I have always been fascinated by the mystique that surrounds this legendary Texas adobe mission turned fortress.

The Alamo is one of the few public places that I find to be hallowed.  There is a certain reverence about it as you walk through its compound and recall what happened there.  Roughly 182 Texians sacrificed their lives to liberatetheir republic from the dictatorial regime of Mexico.The names of its leaders are seared into historic memory.  I have mentioned Davy Crockett, but there was also the notorious, Jim Bowie, and the hubristic, William Travis.  Most know the story of the Alamo, at least roughly.  But what came before and what followed and the key figure for it all is what Brian Kilmeade offers us in his book, Sam Houston & the Alamo Avengers, as well as his recounting of what took place in San Antonio de Bexar as those 182 stood alone against the very formidable military might of Mexico.

At a time when we witness the legacies of many historic figures from the American sagarepudiated and torn down, rightly or wrongly, it is refreshing to have one lifted-up and celebrated, Sam Houston.Not that he was perfect.   He well deserved his second Cherokee nameOo-tse-teeAr-dee-tah-skee which means, as Kilmeade notes, “the Big Drunk.”  The man liked to imbibe.  Houston himself admitted that he was prone to bury “his sorrows in the flowing bowl.”  And so at times Houston was a pathetic drunk, of little use to himself or anyone.  And yet when times called for it, he was a man of enormous courageas he stood on the precipice of unavoidable defeat.

Kilmeade has a quote attributed to Houston’s mother, Elizabeth, the precedes the book’s contents.  She says, “My son, take this musket and never disgrace it; for remember, I had rather all my sons should fill one honorable grave, than that one of them should turn his back to save his life.  Go, and remember, too, that while the door of my cottage is open to brave men, it is eternally shut against cowards.”

Though some thought Houston a coward in his strategy against Santa Anna, retreating and biding his time until the right circumstance presented itself, his army’s eighteen-minute victory at San Jacintosilenced his political critics who had been calling for his removal and validated his generalship in the face of what appeared to be insurmountable odds.  Winning Texas her independence.

As a person, Sam Houston was anything but a saint.  As a political and military figure, he stood head and shoulders above many of his time in the quality that means the most, courage.  His mother’s cottage door would always be open to him.

Kilmeade’s book adds much to one’s knowledge of the Lone Star state’s struggle for freedom and to the man most responsible for it.

Reviewed by Richard Dick, Library Assistant, O’Kelly Memorial Library