Woodward: The Alamo, Part I

My wife (a native Texan) and I (not) have been waiting until the youngest of our children, twin boys now 9, were old enough to appreciate it before embarking on the preeminently obligatory Texas family trip -- a visit (make that a pilgrimage) to the Alamo. Last weekend, a brief vacation with some old friends in the hill country of central Texas made such a trip easily do-able, and so down to San Antonio we went.

Perhaps this registers on me more than it does on my wife, for whom it is simply an accepted fact of life, but I have never lived in another state that inspires as much patriotic fervor in the hearts of its citizens as Texas does. I realize that such fervor fits perfectly with the rest of the country's stereotyped view of the loud and boastful Texan, but it is a reality nonetheless, and it works in a more wholesome and admirable way than most people who never come here would ever be able to see. Texans are proud of everything about Texas, but there is nothing they're prouder of than the Alamo and the chapter in Texan and American history of which it is the emblem. People refer down here to the Battle of the Alamo as "America's Thermopylae" and, in doing so, they mean to pay Thermopylae a compliment.

After watching the slightly romanticized but roughly accurate IMAX movie, the Woodwards moved on to the shrine itself -- and yes, that's right, the Alamo is officially a shrine -- where the younger members of the family dutifully listened to Dad's exhaustive running commentary on the historical and cultural significance of what they were looking at. Rent those touristy headphones with the pre-recorded guided tour? Please. Not when Dad is around....

If one knows in any detail what happened at the Alamo, it is impossible to stand within its walls and not feel something. The first time I was ever in San Antonio, it was to attend a professional conference. I befriended an attendee from Connecticut, who was absolutely as far west and as far south as he had ever been in his life. One free afternoon, we ran into each other by chance at the Alamo. With a funny look on his face and a note of urgency in his voice, he grabbed me by the sleeve and said, "Come here and look at this." He literally pulled me across the room to a plaque on the wall on which were inscribed the words of William Barret Travis's "Letter from the Alamo" -- the one that ends with these words:

"The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken -- I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls -- I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch -- The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country -- Victory or Death."

"Isn't that something?" my friend asked. Yes, I said; it was, indeed, something.

Heroism is more common in this world than is often thought. There are lives of quiet heroism being lived all around us every day -- the heroism of accepting the terms that life offers us and performing our obligations -- often onerous ones -- willingly, happily, and without complaint. But there are, just occasionally, acts of exceptional heroism, the heroism of doing more than simply accepting the terms life offers us -- the heroism of taking upon ourselves the terms life has imposed on someone else, and of making those terms voluntarily our own. That's what the heroes of the Alamo did. They did what others would not do and what they themselves need not have done. They died -- "a death they freely accepted," to paraphrase one eloquent description of heroism in its most absolute example -- for an abstraction. In a materialist age that mistrusts and usually ridicules abstractions (truth, liberty, virtue), their example is all the more to be revered.