Foreword By Joseph Milton Nance No event in the early history of Texas is comparable to the heroic
self-sacrifice of those who died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, in
defense of the Mexican Federal Constitution of 1824, whose red,
white, and green flag floated over that bastion of defense. It was
a sacrifice for constitutional government and liberty. The defen-
ders probably would have been more reconciled to their im-
pending fate had they known that representatives of all Texas
assembled at Washington-on-the-Brazos had declared on March
2 the independence of Texas from Mexico, a nation whose
constitution had been trampled underfoot by the military dicta-
torship of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, self-styled
Napoleon of the West. Rendezvous at the Alamo is the story of the meeting at the Alamo
of James Bowie, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis,
whose lives up to then had been full of disappointments and
failures. Only by death in the Alamo did they become preemi-
nent among Texas heroes. Except for Sam Houston and
Stephen F. Austin, they have probably had more written about
them than any other trio in the colonial and republic periods of
Texas history. It was James Bowie who had been sent by Major General Sam
Houston at Goliad on January 17, 1836, to San Antonio with
instructions to Colonel James C. Neill to destroy the Alamo
fortifications and retire toward Gonzales and Goliad. Bowie was a rough and tumble character, knife-fighter, duel-
ist, opportunist, gambler, land speculator (much of it in bogus
money and certificates), poor businessman, 1 rider of mustangs
and alligators, successful slave trader and smuggler, and defier
of law, whether it be United States or Mexican law. He believed
that every man was his own law and never let the law get in his
way when it came to money. He had a ...
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