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Historical Hour With Hilary: 1x05

Missed an installment? Want to read up on where the team has been before? Just bored? Catch up with previous Historical Hours here. Otherwise, come along and discover that you probably don’t actually remember the Alamo, on March 6, 1836, as our heroes find themselves trapped in the legendary mission on the eve of battle.

If there is one thing that American Southern folk mythology really enjoys, it’s a romantic “Lost Cause” about a small group of brave patriots fighting to the end against a much larger and morally bankrupt foe: their bodies may be broken, but their spirit prevails. I could be talking about the Civil War, the end of which the team visited in 1865 a few episodes ago, but I could also be talking about the Alamo and its context within the Texas Revolution, which began just thirty years previously. It was a very short war, lasting only from October 1835 to April 1836, and it resulted in Texas’ independence from Mexico and official entry into the United States, which... may or may not count as winning, but never mind. The causes of the conflict are complex, but I’ll try to summarize quickly. In 1821, Mexico had achieved freedom from Spain and recognition as its own sovereign country, with the Mexican War of Independence, and the territory of Texas became a formal Mexican state, Tejas. Eight years later, in 1829, Mexico banned slavery, which um. Did not go down well:

The aversion toward the Mexican government felt by most American Texans (who objected to learning Spanish, abiding by Mexican law, becoming Roman Catholics, etc ) was further exacerbated by the 1829 abolition of slavery. [...] The overthrow of federalism in 1835 finally prompted the Texans to revolt, given that a centralist state would tighten the Mexicans' grip over the distant and increasingly U.S.-populated secessionist province with uniform laws and taxes. However, the fact that the imposition of a centralist state would result in the abolition of slavery in Texas remains one of the main, yet often downplayed, reasons why the Texans rose up in arms. (p. 162-63).

“Often downplayed.” Wow, who could have possibly seen that coming? In case it wasn’t clear, the Mexican government objected to so many Americans moving to Mexico, as the Americans then made no effort to integrate and behaved (shock, surprise) like they owned the place. For another tidbit to annoy your racist uncle on Facebook, how about this:

The Law of April 6, 1830, said to be the same type of stimulus to the Texas Revolution that the Stamp Act was to the American Revolution, was initiated by Lucas Alamán y Escalada, Mexican minister of foreign relations, and was designed to stop the flood of immigration from the United States to Texas.

This was an entirely symbolic law, given as it was completely impossible to enforce with 1830s-level bureaucracy and communication over vast stretches of the Southwest, but it reflected Mexico’s attempt to impose control over an unruly and secessionist state (I’m not gonna say anything here, I’m not gonna say anything) and cut immigration levels from troublesome Americans, spreading moral disorder and presumably stealing jobs. If you’re interested, you can read in more detail about Texas-Mexican politics and the influences on the revolution here (you will need an institutional login to access full text). Otherwise, you can probably see that by the time the uprising actually started in 1835, the causes of the Texians’ (as the Anglo-Texas settlers were called) discontent were, well, something less than noble.

Mind you, they weren’t entirely unjustified, as Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, or “Damn, Son, Leave Some Names For the Rest of Us”, Mexico’s eleven-time president, general, and towering statesman of the period, made even his contemporaries uneasy. His cruelties and excesses during the Texas campaigns, including the slaughter at the Alamo and the Goliad massacre of March 27, 1836 (or the “Other Alamo”, which killed at least 350 men, nearly double the Alamo’s death toll of 182, and which Santa Anna ordered against the wishes of his subordinate, General José de Urrea), got him into hot political water upon his return home. Part of Mexico’s political reforms had been in an attempt to avoid a post-revolution Santa Anna dictatorship, which he certainly possessed the talent and temperament to try. However, as noted before Flynn mucks things up, he did not indiscriminately butcher the women, children, and slaves inside the Alamo. Instead, they were given a blanket, safe passage, and two dollars apiece (see page 39). Only the defenders were killed.

As the team encounter, these defenders included some of the most colorful figures of later American folklore, including Davy Crockett and James Bowie, and William Barret Travis’ famous letter, which Lucy ends up having to write, is commonly cited as an enduring legacy of patriotism and “victory or death.” (It’s now a standard part of the history curriculum for Texas schoolchildren, which does not surprise me.) Of course, the participation of actual Tejanos in the events has been obscured and understudied, and almost immediately after the battle, it began to be memorialized in sentimental (and racist) novels. The supposed villainy and racial inferiority of the Mexicans was highlighted and made a key part of remembrance of the Alamo, especially as it was easy to take that view from the winning side. On April 21, 1836, General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto, which lasted just eighteen minutes, and won the war (and independence) for Texas. As mid-19th-century Southern generals go, Houston is actually not that bad: he was very close with the Cherokee Indians, including being an honorary citizen and having an Indian wife at one point. He also fiercely opposed slavery and secessionism (or: Texas, having joined America, immediately wanted to leave it again) in the run-up to the Civil War, and was the only governor of a Southern state to refuse an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, which caused him to be removed from office. Davy Crockett also hated the daylights out of President Andrew Jackson and his heinous Indian Removal Act, so hey. They’ve got that going for them.

Overall, I feel as if this is one episode where Timeless could have pushed a little harder at this history in places, but hey, that’s what I am here for. I therefore have to make the point explicit that yes, of course it was about race and slavery in the American South just a few decades before the Civil War, and yes, Texas has always been like that. It also flips our modern ideas about “illegal immigration” on their heads, and invites us to think more cautiously and critically about our fondness for “Lost Cause” patriotic mythology, because frankly, the Alamo wasn’t a Lost Cause. Yes, the soldiers died, but Texas won its independence less than two months later, which allowed the story of the Alamo to serve exceptionally well as a tragic tale and propagandist memory, and which was deliberately constructed as an important event in a way that far outstripped its actual historical significance. The Goliad massacre was arguably more significant in terms of the number of soldiers killed and the point of “no return” for the rebel cause, but nobody particularly remembers that today, which demonstrates the way in which the mythologizing of the Alamo stretches beyond its real impact. The Texas Revolutions’ origins were also less about a valorous desire for liberation from Mexican tyranny, and more about the Texians wanting to do things their way, especially if it involved their right to go on holding slaves and ignoring the laws, language, and customs of the country they had moved to. So yes, Wyatt, every kid in Texas might know the story, but I’m not sure how much anyone -- individually or collectively -- actually cares to remember.

Next week: An insane president, scandal in the White House, the threat of domestic terrorism and nuclear war, plane hijackings, and more? Are we staying in 2017? Nope. It’s 1972.

#nbc timeless #timeless #timeless rewatch #timeless meta #historical hour with hilary #1x05

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