Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,338

This is the purported grave of Davy Crockett, William Travis, and Jim Bowie.

First, I should note that this is probably not the bones of any of these guys and if it they are, it’s mostly by accident. As you all know, all three were killed committing treason in defense of slavery against Mexico at the Alamo in 1836. The Mexicans burned the bodies of all the Alamo dead in a giant pyre. But in 1888, the Mexican supporter of the Texas Revolution Juan Seguín, himself having been kicked out of Texas into Mexico shortly after 1836 for supporting Mexican rights in Texas, claims to have buried parts of the burned remains behind the altar of the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. No one really listened at the time. But in the 1930s, while doing work on that part of the church, some charred remains were found. Was it from one or all of these three leaders? Who knows. Probably Seguín just buried some of the bones he found having no idea who they were or even which side they were on, as Santa Anna had ordered all the dead burned together.

So this is probably bogus, no matter how much San Antonio whites like to say this is legit. But it is still a moment to discuss these three men who were the iconic leaders of a ridiculous revolution to defend and expand slavery.

I’ve always found Crockett the most interesting of these guys. Born in 1786 in Limestone, Tennessee, Crockett grew up on the Texas frontier. He was kind of a wild kid who was often sold out for labor to pay off his father’s debts and his own bad behavior. He got married, had some kids, was a local farmer. When the War of 1812 broke out and the opportunity for some fun genocide came about, he was all in. He joined Andrew Jackson’s forces to fight the Creek. Most of his job was to hunt wild game for the other soldiers. But he went back to Tennessee as a veteran and rose fairly quickly in politics, winning local elected office in 1817 and then an election for lieutenant colonel of the 57th Regiment of the Tennessee militia. Yes, these things were decided by voting. He ran for the state legislature in 1821 and won. He was an advocate for poor farmers with limited proof they actually owned their land. He became part of the state’s political faction opposed to Andrew Jackson, which later led him to be a Whig. He lost a congressional election in 1825 but won in 1828. In Congress, he tried to abolish the Military Academy at West Point, arguing it was publicly funded higher education for the sons of rich men, which was not an illegitimate point. He was also the only member of the Tennessee delegation to vote against the Indian Removal Act of 1830. That cost him in congressional seat, as genocide was the order of the day, even as Crockett had moved away from such positions.

Crockett ended up going to Texas, partly because of disgust with his political and patronage options in a place increasingly dominated by the Democratic Party. Van Buren’s election was the final straw. So he decided to raise troops to “free” Texas from Mexican rule. Basically, he wanted a new start in life. He was fairly well known in the region and had little problem raising a company of about 30 troops to join that war. Worked out great for him, as you can see. Slavery was something less of a driving force for Crockett than his own dashed political career, but he was a slaver and certainly supported stealing half of Mexico to expand it.

As for William Travis, he was born in 1809 in Saluda, South Carolina. He grew up in Alabama, as his family invested heavily in the expanding cotton lands after Jackson and company had subjugated and then kicked out the tribes who lived there. He got a decent education for the time and place and became a teacher himself for a short time. He read for the law, got into a lot of debts (a good southern elite here), and really wanted to be part of elite Alabama society. This wasn’t necessarily that hard in this rough and tumble place, but it did require living the high life. He tried to run a newspaper to make this happen, but was terrible at it. Like, he was so careless that sometimes the advertisements were run upside down. So yeah, didn’t succeed. Travis’ debts were so overwhelming that in 1831, he too decided to start over and move to Texas.

Unlike Crockett’s move, Travis went there when it was clearly under Mexican control. Travis bought land from the colony’s founder Stephen F. Austin, started practicing law there (what he knew about Mexican law could be fit into a thimble, but he basically just ignored the fact he was in Mexico and went along the lines of American common law), and started a militia for independence from that nation. Travis first got in trouble with the Mexicans because slavery was in fact illegal in Mexico. A bunch of escaped slaves had found refuge with a local Mexican officer named Juan Davis Bradburn, himself an American by birth. Bradburn not only refused to give the slaves back but had Travis arrested for violating Mexico’s anti-slavery laws. Travis openly threatened Bradburn’s life. In 1835, he then led a tax revolt that so infuriated Mexico City that the government demanded his arrest and even though Austin was pissed at him over this, the Texans refused to hand Travis over.

So not surprisingly, Travis was at the forefront of committing treason to defend slavery from Mexico. He and Jim Bowie started arguing over who was the real commander, though because Bowie’s health was bad, Travis was the functional head. Didn’t matter. Mexican forces captured Travis and killed him.

This leads us to Jim Bowie, who was a really terrible person.

Born in 1796 in Logan County, Kentucky, Bowie grew up in a slaveholding family. His father was a wounded Revolutionary War veteran who had done well since and had a sizable farm with 8 slaves. They soon moved to Missouri and then to Louisiana, always looking for more land, more slaves, an even bigger economic opportunity. He was an aggressive American nationalist who, after a brief stint in the War of 1812 where he did not see action and then a few years working various jobs, got involved in a clownshow 1819 effort to “liberate” Texas from Spain.

Bowie’s father died in 1820 and he left a bunch of slaves and land to Bowie and his brother. They had a plantation in Louisiana. But they wanted to get even wealthier. There was one good way to do that–slave smuggling. The Constitution had ended the slave trade at the end of 1807, but there was an active illegal slave trade in distant areas such as Louisiana. Usually these slaves were coming up from the Caribbean, not straight from Africa. Anyway, Bowie made a deal with the pirate Jean Lafitte to start an illegal slave smuggling operation. Lafitte would land the slaves over the border in Texas, sell them to Bowie, who would then march them into Louisiana, say they were not imported, and he would sell them at great profit. Within just a few years, Bowie and his brother cleared $65,000 as slave smugglers which they used to work with another brother to buy a large plantation as well as more slaves and build a sugar mill. Bowie then sold out and moved to Arkansas and bought a new plantation.

Bowie also embodied the murderous violence of the southern elite. This is where the obsession with the Bowie knife comes from. Bowie was a stone killer, an absolute scumbag of the worst order. During a duel, where Bowie was the second, both sides missed. They felt their disagreement settled. But the seconds and other supporters hated each other so a huge brawl broke out. Bowie had developed a knife with a 9 inch blade. He used it to kill a guy during the brawl. The local newspapers, who loved this kind of thing–after all, violence was an outright good in this society–made Bowie and his knife fighting legendary through a bunch of lies and myths about it. Bowie loved it though. He wanted that reputation as a murderer.

Bowie was pretty beat up after that murderous fight. It took him a good bit of time to recover. When he did, he bought land in Texas in 1828 and moved there in 1830 after his fiance died two weeks before their marriage. He helped organize the Texas Rangers, which in later years would be a murderous force killing Mexicans with impunity, just Bowie’s legacy. He actually tried to live up to Mexican law at first, converting to Catholicism and building textile mills he promised in return for land. He built a home near San Antonio and married a daughter of a leading Mexican official in the area. He started getting involved in mining speculation, thinking there was some city of silver nearby; this was not a smart man. His party trying to find it was nearly wiped out by the combined forces of the Caddo, Tawakoni, and Waco peoples and he nearly died. Too bad. But he would die soon enough.

Bowie fully supported treason to defend slavery in Texas. So he died doing that too. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Of course Bowie had brought his slaves with him to The Alamo. Completely erased from traditional histories, the Mexicans did not kill the slaves. They set them free.

Davy Crockett, William Travis, and Sam Bowie are theoretically buried in San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas.

If you would like this series to visit other agents of American conquest and expansion, you can donate to cover the required expenses. Zebulon Pike is in Sacketts Harbor, New York and Sam Houston is in Huntsville, Texas. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.