BATTLE OF THE ALAMO | An unreliable report of the Battle of the Alamo, printed more than month after the massacre, demonstrating the limits of communication in the nineteenth century

BATTLE OF THE ALAMO

FRONT-PAGE "NEWS FROM TEXAS" DESCRIBING THE SIEGE AT THE ALAMO MISSION IN SAN ANTONIO IN THE WESTERN SUN AND GENERAL ADVERTISER, VOL. XXVII, NO. 12. VINCENNES, IOWA: ELIHU STOUT, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1836

4-page newspaper (20 5/8 x 13 1/4 in.; 522 x 338 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, text in five columns; a bit wrinkled and foxed, disbound with some loss to blank margins at central fold. 

After a thirteen-day siege, Mexican troops led by Santa Anna and Martín Perfecto de Cos overran the Republic of Texas irregulars holding the Alamo Mission on 6 March 1836, leaving no survivors. More than a month later, with early reports of the battle just reach the Midwest, the Vincennes Western Sun provides a prematurely optimistic report, albeit one that even its editor admits, "is too good news to be true, but there is no doubt of a conflict having taken place between the Texian and Mexican forces at San Antonio. …"

Most of the reports printed in the Western Sun originated from New Orleans: "From a passenger in the schooner W. A. Turner, from Matagorda, we learn that 75 Texians and 25 Mexicans, who had resorted to the Alamo or Fort at San Antonia, were attacked by a Mexican force of 4,000 men, with General Cos at their head, who raised the black fag of extermination and demanded a surrender. The demand was answered from the mouths of the cannon of the Texians, on which the Mexicans attempted to take the place by storm, but they were defeated with the loss of 500 men slain on the field, and the balance made a precipitate retreat in great disorder. This account was received at Matagorda by express from col. Travers [i.e., William Travis], who commanded the Texian force on this occasion. The express called for all the militia to rally to the field, and they were obeying the call."