Bill Groneman

Groneman collects all the written accounts of the Alamo battle and presents them in the order they were revealed to the world. Thus, Santa Anna's account is 1836, the Dolson letter too, slave Joe's retelling too, etc.; then written accounts that cropped up in 1837; then accounts through the rest of the 1800s, often in books or newspapers; finally, accounts from the 1900s, most in newspapers, but some found archival material like Jose Enrique de la Peña's account found in the 1950s. Seen in this format, you can see how actual witnesses, false "witnesses," and second- and third-hand accounts of stories, sometimes built off of each other. Thus Susanna Dickinson's accounts change when people like Zuber add the "line in the sand," in fact, her account changes several times. Thus Madam Candelaria's accounts all differ from each other. Groneman only lightly editorializes on these accounts, except when it comes to his pet theory that Davy Crockett did not die at the Alamo by execution, but went down fighting. Lots of great primary sources, but the ultimate conclusion you make from the text is that nobody really knows what happened at the battle and in its immediate aftermath. And we will never really know. How did Davy die? Who knows?! And, it shows the utter fragility of eyewitness accounts, which should be obvious from our legal system, and must be obvious for historians.… (más)