I posted Adams’ account because up until recently, when I’d think of the Alamo, I’d only think of the rightful heroism of those brave Texans who chose to stay in that crumbling mission to face certain death against Santa Anna.
Most stories I heard about the Alamo gave short shrift to the background and focused on the heroism. This was reinforced for me the the 1960 “Alamo” film with John Wayne, which shows Mexican cannon artillery blasting the Alamo at the same time as the Mexican infantry charged. (i haven’t seen the 2004 movie version yet, so I don’t know about that one.)
Adams’ account was the first time I read that, in reality, there probably wasn’t any Mexican cannon at the time of the attack, and that it was just a brutal infantry charge on behalf of the Mexicans.
The Mexican army diary which Adams bases his account on also claimed, on hearsay, that Davy Crockett was one of the seven survivors captured at the end and that he went to his cold blooded execution by the Mexicans with no groveling like the brave man he was. It’s a matter of choosing which eyewitness to believe in matters like this, and I choose to believe the one cited earlier who said that Crockett died in hot blood fighting the Mexicans and his coonskin cap was at his side. Davy Crockett doesn’t come across as someone who would be among those captured seven men.
There certainly could have been some “I’m Spartacus!” confusion at the end in an attempt to spare Crockett’s body from humiliation, or, equally, some other Texan hoping to be spared by claiming to be someone important.