Crockett, Bowie and Travis, Defenders of the Alamo (Volume 5, Episode 12) Part One

An enduring American legend, hear what actually happened at the Battle of the Alamo

David Crockett

By 1817, after emerging from the military, David situated his family in Lawrence County, Tennessee as one of the area’s first inhabitants.  Making a living as a professional hunter, mostly of wild bears, Crockett also began to involve himself in local politics, serving as a county commissioner and eventually as a state appointed justice of the peace.  He also served several terms in the state legislature and was eventually elected to the US House of Representatives in 1826.  He was re-elected to a second term in 1828 but ran into trouble when he emphatically opposed Andrew Jackson’s plans to relocate native Americans, an especially unpopular stance in Jackson’s home state of Tennessee.  Defeated for re-election in 1830, he was returned to Congress one more time in 1833.  It was during this time period that Crockett co-wrote an autobiography entitled, “A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee,” an attempt to take advantage of popularity generated by an 1831 play entitled, “The Lion of the West,” about a larger than life pioneer named Nimrod Wildfire, but obviously fashioned after Crockett.  It was during his publicity tour promoting this book’s publication that a quote attributed to Crockett discussing his immediate political future appeared in numerous newspapers, “I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.”

Jim Bowie

Bowie became nationally famous after an incident that occurred on September 19, 1827 known as the Sandbar Fight. The conflict, essentially a violent, murderous brawl between two competing business and political entities competing over elected offices and business interests in Central Louisiana resulted after a duel that occurred on a sandbar situated on what was then neutral territory along the Mississippi River, near Natchez, Mississippi.  Initially two men, Samuel Wells and Dr Thomas H. Maddox, fought a formal duel that typically concluded with shots fired but no injuries.  While these two individuals seemed content to bury the hatchet, several other members of each contingent had a history of animosity and violent interaction.  A spontaneous gunfight broke out in which Jim Bowie was first wounded in the leg, sending him to his knees.  Bowie then got up and unsheathed the large hunting knife he always carried for protection and lunged after the individual who shot him, Robert Crain.  Bowie was knocked to the ground again when Crain hit him with the butt of his now empty pistol.  Norris Wright, an individual who had previously tried to shoot Bowie on another occasion, then fired an errant pistol shot and followed that up with a sword cane attempt to stab Bowie in the chest.  The thin blade apparently stuck in Bowie’s sternum, while he then mortally plunged his 9 by 1.5 inch knife into Wright’s mid-section, ripping upward.  Wright bled out quickly while other assailants continued to stab and shoot at Bowie, but he successfully fought off his attackers, suffering two bullet wounds and seven knife wounds, including the sword cane that was impaled in his chest.  In total, two men were killed, four injured, including Bowie who needed months to recuperate.News of this sensational episode spread initially through regional and then national newspapers, with the focus on Bowie, his outsized knife as well as aggrandizing tales of roping alligators o...