From History and Legends of the Alamo: And Other Missions in and Around San Antonio By Adina de Zavala 1917
It is a well known fact that the papers of San Antonio, years ago, from time to time, chronicled marvelous tales of ghosts appearing at the Alamo. That the Alamo was guarded by ghosts was one of the current folk-tales of the country. When General Andrade, the Mexican general sought to destroy the Alamo, after the battle of San Jacinto, in 1836, it is said that his men were everywhere met by spirits with flaming swords who barred their progress and soon frightened them off; that almost as fast as new relays of men were sent with orders to destroy the walls, they were overcome by fright; nor could threats or punishment induce them to return. They were permitted by the ghosts for a space to disarm the batteries, but the moment the walls of the buildings were threatened, there was the flaming sword in ghostly hands. It is a matter of history that the Alamo buildings were not destroyed, and not much injured by Andrade. The Alamo was dismantled of its works, guns, etc., "the fosse filled up, and the pickets torn up and burned," but only the single outer walls of the mission-square were injured. The reason it was not destroyed, say the current tales of the day, was because of fear, of the threats and prophecy of "the spirits with the flaming swords" whom the Mexican soldiers feared more than they feared their officers.
These spirits ordered them to desist in hollow tones which struck terror to their hearts, "Depart, touch not these walls! He who desecrates these walls shall meet a horrible Fate! Multiplied afflictions shall seize upon him and a horrible and agonizing and avenging torture shall be his death!"
Was this prophecy fulfilled? Those who know the old folk-tale say, "It was, and will ever be:" And among other things you will hear if you doubt, is: "Search into the miserable lives and deaths of those responsible for the tearing down of part of the Alamo!" and, "Is it not, at least, a strange coincidence that the man who, more than any other one person, was deliberately responsible for the destruction of the upper story of the old Alamo Portress met such a horrible, agonizing fate? —entombed alive and consumed by flames—that his worst enemy could not fail to be moved with pity."
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GHOSTS OF THE ALAMO.
There's the tramp of a ghost on the low winds tonight,
And echo that drifts like a dream on its way;
There's the blur of the specter that leaves for the fight,
Grave-risen at last from a long vanished day;
There's the shout and the call of grim soul unto soul
As they rise one by one, out of death's shadowed glen
To follow the bugle—the drum's muffled roll,
Where the Ghosts of the Alamo gather again.
I hear Crockett's voice as he leaps from the dust
And waits at the call for an answering hail;
And Bowie caresses a blade red with rust
As deep in the shadows he turns to the trail;
Still lost in the darkness that covers their sleep
Their bodies may rest in a sand-mounded den,
But their spirits have come from the red, starry steep
Where Ghosts of the Alamo gather again.
You think they've forgotten—because they have slept—
The day Santa Anna charged in with his slaves;
Where five thousand men 'gainst a few hundred swept
And stormed the last rampart that stood for their graves?
You think they've forgotten; but faint, from afar,
Brave Travis is calling the roll of his men
And a voice answers "Here!" Through the shadows that bar
Where Ghosts of the Alamo gather again.
There's a flash on a blade—and you thought it a star?
There's a light on the plain—and you thought it the moon?
You thought the wind echoed that anthem of war?
Not knowing the lilt of an old border tune;
Gray shade after shade, stirred again unto breath;
Gray phantom by phantom they charge down the glen,
Where souls hold a hate that is greater than death,
"Where Ghosts of the Alamo gather again.
—Grantland Rice, in New York Tribune.
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