Famous 'Travis Letter' bound for Alamo

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The Texas Land Commissioner has a warning for anyone who might even consider messing with one of the state’s most precious historic documents during its upcoming journey to the Alamo in San Antonio:

“If some idiot goes in there and tries to push it over and crash it to the ground,” Patterson said, “which will be the last act and the last breath he ever breathes, I have to tell you, we’ll have two armed guards present 24/7.”

If that seems a bit harsh, it only goes to reflect the passion the commissioner feels when he thinks about Lt. Col. William Barret Travis .

The letter

Travis, as any Texan worth his bluebonnets already knows, was the commander of a rambunctious bunch of 150 irregular soldiers surrounded in the makeshift Alamo mission fort in February of 1836.

With thousands of Mexican troops under President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna starting to mass around the mission chapel, Travis could see the proverbial writing on the wall.

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His letter , sent by a courier on horseback, urged “The People of Texas & all Americans in the world,” to come to the aid of the besieged Texican troops. Of course, even though 32 reinforcements did finally arrive from Gonzales, it was not enough and the Mexican army overran the Texican defenses and killed all the rebel fighters.

At the ensuing battle of San Jacinto , Texicans under the command of General Sam Houston , roused Santa Anna’s troops with a “Remember the Alamo” battle cry, defeated them, captured their president and paved the way for the Republic of Texas and its eventual entry in the United States.

“Texas is where it is today,” said Patterson, “which is in pretty good shape, in no small part because of folks like Travis, who set us up on the road to freedom and independence.

“It was the start of the legacy and the success and the prosperity that we enjoy. (It) started at the time that letter was written by a guy who knew in all probability that he was going to be dead in a few short days.”

The siege

Of course, the events at the Alamo are shrouded in myth and contemporary scholarship contradicts some of the wilder tales.

“We watched Fess Parker on the Walt Disney Show,” Patterson recalled, “and we watched John Wayne .

“And, of course, now we know that some of these fictitious depictions were not all accurate. We don't really know whether Travis put a line in the sand with a sword? There's a fair amount of evidence that says he didn't.

“But we do know, even without that line in the sand, assuming it didn't occur, that those men had an opportunity to leave on more than one occasion.

“On more than one occasion was it brought to their attention that this is probably the last gig and you're probably going to die here. And we know that they chose to stay.

“And it makes an even better story,” Patterson argued, “when you think about the flawed men that were there. I mean (Davy) Crockett was running from a bad political career that resulted in a defeat. He said, 'You all can go to hell; I'll go to Texas.'

“Travis was running from bad debts, bad business, and had actually abandoned his wife and child in Alabama.

“ (Jim) Bowie was a guy whose business practices in the land business were less than sterling, shall we say, and he had been a slave trader. But they all came to the Alamo.

“And if what they did at that time and at that place is not redemption, I don't know what is.”

Travis’s letter, widely copied and paraphrased, made its way not only throughout Texas but to the far away American power cities of New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. By that time, of course, the Alamo was vanquished, but her defenders were memorialized and their names became pillars in Texas history.

The idea

“Folks look back on the letter,” said the land commissioner, “and recognize that Travis was not just writing for that moment; he apparently was clearly writing for posterity, as well.

“So my communications staff came up with the idea, 'Why don't we take it back to the Alamo?'  It's not been back. It left under cover of darkness, you know, surreptitiously under cover of darkness, out by horseback courier through the Mexican lines. It's never been back.

“It's been 177 years. So we're going to take it back under dramatically different circumstances than what it was when it left.”

That, however, will not be a walk in the park. When Patterson first proposed the San Antonio exhibit, conservators at the State Library and Archives Commission were dubious.

“We're very concerned with the temperature, with the relative humidity and with light exposure,” said conservator Sarah Norris, “because those three things together come together to really impact the life span of documents.

“Over time, those things all add up to whether a document will be with us for generations or whether it won't. And we want to be sure that things will be around for many, many generations of Texans in the future.”

Indeed, without proper care, the Travis