Alva Review-Courier -

In early 1836 former Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee went to Texas to help the Americans there win their revolution against the Mexican government. The troops fighting that war were led by another former Tennessee politician, Sam Houston.

And whereas Houston survived the war and went on to have a stellar political career in Texas, Crockett died just two months after arriving there.

The scene was the Alamo, a Catholic mission in San Antonio. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (a former and future president of Mexico) trapped 189 Americans and sympathetic Mexicans inside the religious edifice.

For 13 days in late February and early March, the Mexican general conducted a siege of the Alamo, hoping to force the people inside to surrender. When that didn’t happen, Santa Anna stormed the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

Most of the defenders of the Alamo died in the battle. A few others surrendered and – in an action that violated the unwritten rules of war – Santa Anna had the survivors summarily executed.

Whether Crockett was one of those who died in the battle or was among the executed survivors has been a matter of historical dispute ever since the day the battle occurred. We will likely never know the definitive answer.

Additionally, we will never know if Crockett, like Houston, could have fashioned a second political career for himself in Texas. He indicated before his death that he wanted to be actively involved in creating a new government for Texas once the revolution was successful.

It certainly seems likely that the desire for elective office would have remained strong within him. But regardless of whether he would have had a political future, he was definitely interested in becoming a prosperous farmer.

Crockett’s shocking death also had an effect on politics back in Tennessee. In November 1836, eight months after Crockett’s death, the man who had unseated him from Congress in 1835 was himself defeated when he ran for a second term.

The new Congressman from Tennessee was John Wesley Crockett, David Crockett’s son.