The Alamo after March 6, 1836
The TSHA Southwestern Historical Quarterly, recently published an article, “The U. S. Army and the Alamo, 1846-1877,” by historian Thomas “Ty” Smith, revealing a post Alamo history that is little known with the U. S. Army reportedly “saving” the Alamo.
Several times since the Alamo was first built as a mission chapel in 1744, but never truly completed. Over time it was abandoned. In 1827, the Mexican government attempted to raise money by ordering its demolition and sold stone by stone. The Mexican general in charge ignored the order claiming it a military necessity as barracks.
By 1835-36, the Texas Revolutionary forces captured the compound leading to the event of the historic fateful loss on March 6. Even after the Mexican Army defeat and the following late April capture of Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, Mexican forces remained at the Alamo. They continued destroying even more of the compound to where it no longer could be used as a “defensive measure,” Smith writes.
Again, in 1840, with the Alamo grounds became overgrown with “weeds, moss, and even shrubs growing out of cracks in its walls,” the San Antonio City Council “approved a measure to sell the Alamo stones for fifty cents a cart load.”
Smith relates the following year in January 1841, the Republic of Texas returned ownership of the Alamo in its overgrown condition to the Catholic Church.
Smith explains that following the Republic of Texas becoming a State in 1845, the United States unilaterally “inherited its border and frontier security problems as well as a boundary dispute with Mexico.”
The author continues that “as a precaution, or perhaps a provocation,” then President John Tyler ordered General Zachary Taylor to the Louisiana – Texas border in 1844. Newly elected President James Polk, in 1846, ordered Taylor’s army to Corpus Christi and the Nueces River.
With the need to organize a military operation in Texas, Army Quartermaster Major Charles Thomas, and with San Antonio a natural spot to organize, looked at the Alamo. He found it in the same dilapidated condition but reached out to Galveston’s Bishop Jean M. Odin about using the Alamo.
Bishop Odin replied that it would be best for the U. S. Army to occupy it “until it might be wanted for use of the church.”
Major Thomas quickly reported to Quartermaster General Thomas Jessup in Washington. By Sept. 26, 1846, Wool’s Army marched out of the Alamo grounds toward the Rio Grande with a train of 350 wagons.
A young Englishman, Sergeant Edward Everett, an injured company clerk of Company A, First Illinois Infantry, could not deploy with Wool’s Army. He remained at San Antonio as an assistant to the quartermaster. Everett, skilled at drawing and organization, led the conversion of the Alamo ground ruins into a serviceable quartermaster facility within a few months at a minimal cost.
During the Civil War, the Texas Confederates captured the Alamo grounds using it similarly. During that time a fire destroyed the roof of the Church, to be replaced. The Confederates paid rent for the use of the grounds but mostly in worthless Confederate script. The Alamo came back into Union hands in August 1865.
The Alamo facility served the U. S. Army until 1877 when a railroad terminus had been created at San Antonio. The City then donated land on Government Hill for an expanded facility that today is known as Fort Houston.
At all times of the U. S. occupancy, the Alamo Chapel was treated as a historic legacy. Following the exit of the Army, the Catholic Church sold the Alamo to Honor’e Grenet for a store until his death in 1882. In 1883, the State appropriated $20,000 to purchase the Alamo giving custody to the City of San Antonio. Three years later the Hugo-Schmeltzer Company acquired the property. It would be over a decade before Clara Driscoll in the name of the newly formed Daughters of the Republic of Texas purchased the historic grounds in 1903.
Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation. org for more info and membership.