Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford

Abstract

Reviewed by: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford Walter L. Buenger Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. By Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford. (New York: Penguin Press, 2021. Pp. 386. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Forget the Alamo? How many times over the last forty years or so have serious historians, exasperated by the debilitating hyper-focus on the Texas Revolution and the clap-trap that went with it, uttered that plaintive cry? Yet the myths, legends, and added-after-the-fact stories outlive their best efforts. In fairness, Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, the journalist authors of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, really do not seem to hope anyone can or should forget the Alamo or that the myth has fallen. As they say in their aptly named closing, “We are What we Remember,” their goal is to change “the story we tell about the Alamo” (340). The book divides into two parts. In the first part the authors strip away almost two hundred years of propaganda, ideologically driven media mania, and self-glorifying myth-making to emphasize “the truth about Bowie, Travis, and Crockett” (340), the importance of slavery in all that happened between 1821 and 1836, and the reality that, although the Alamo was psychologically important to victory at San Jacinto in many ways, death at the Alamo could have and perhaps should have been avoided. In the second part the authors trace the accrual of Alamo propaganda, media mania, and myth, and they describe how since the 1970s historians and activists primarily from Latino, Tejano, and Native American communities have sought an honest past and to escape the heavy hand of the “Heroic Anglo Narrative” (xxv). Veteran historians of the Southwest will find the book’s messages familiar and a bit breathless. The flaws and foibles of James Bowie, William Barrett Travis, and David Crockett, judged by the standards of their time or ours, have long been known, as have such details as Crockett’s probable surrender and execution after the Battle of the Alamo. Stephen F. Austin’s many attempts to preserve the right of Anglos to bring slaves to Texas and to keep them in bondage have long been clear, and those familiar with [End Page 223] founding documents know that Section 9 of the 1836 Constitution of the Republic of Texas made slavery and White supremacy the law of the land. Many scholars have felt or observed the sting of vitriolic attacks by defenders of the Heroic Anglo Narrative. They have known at least since the publication of Richard R. Flores, Remembering the Alamo: Memory, Modernity, and Master Symbol (University of Texas Press, 2002) of the ridicule and bias heaped on Tejanos, and how they have been lumped with the treacherous enemy because of the symbolism of the Alamo and Texas Creation Myth. Two things about this book, however, will be especially valuable for historians. It lays out the time line of the myth, and it connects that myth’s evolution to the needs and purposes of each era. The phrase “Remember the Alamo” emerged as what we would now call wartime propaganda in the lead up to the Battle of San Jacinto and helped inspire Texans to take revenge on Santa Anna and his army. It stiffened the spine and will of warriors, but then the myth receded in importance for half a century only to emerge again to reassure Anglos of their place atop the racial and ethnic hierarchy. By 1936, the story had passed into the national and international sphere as a symbol of the advancement across the continent of what was called the Anglo-Saxon race. Curiously, Davy Crockett was a minor character in all this, but in the 1950s Walt Disney and John Wayne turned Crockett into a potent symbol of struggle against an alien foe. Crockett became a key to Cold War propaganda and for many remains atop the pantheon of Alamo heroes. He had to die swinging “Old Betsy,” surrounded by foreign corpses, because that is what true American...