_The tower will be 802 feet high, the loftiest in America, and will
cost 2,000,000 dollars._]
On February 23, 1836, the Alamo was invested by four thousand Mexican
soldiers and the final reckoning began. On March 6, after a gallant
defense, it was taken by storm, its garrison having been slaughtered to
a man. “Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat--the Alamo had none,”
so runs the epitaph which stands upon the monument of these heroes of
liberty.
But the blood-avenger was at hand. A few weeks later Sam Houston,
standing with bared head before his little army of Texas patriots,
gathered at San Jacinto, gave the watchword, “Remember the Alamo!” and
within twenty minutes the army of Santa Anna was scattered “like the
chaff which the wind driveth away.” Texas was free.