For thirteen days, a group of about 200 volunteer Texan soldiers withstood the powerful forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s troops at the Battle of the Alamo. It was here that Davy Crockett became one of the most famous American defenders. What really happened on March 6, 1836, the day Crockett died? His death has always been controversial. Did he die fighting to the end like Walt Disney’s movie portrays, or was he violently executed? According to eyewitness Jose Enrique de la Pena’s diary, Santa Anna’s troops “...with swords in hand, fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey,” (104) including Davy Crockett. Many historians have argued about the credibility of this diary, and James Crisp wanted to find out the truth as well. In his book, Sleuthing the Alamo, he goes into deep detail about what he did to try to determine if the diary was a forgery or not, and what he eventually found out. …show more content…
These allowed Crisp to compare parts of the original document to the translated version by Perry, and he found some problems with the translation. This caused him to realize that there may be other translation discrepancies, and he decided that he needed to see J. Sanchez Garza’s edition. In this edition, he found a paragraph that Sanchez Garza wrote that solved the anachronism. It said: “It was not published immediately due to poverty and because Filisola and later Santa Anna used all of there tricks in order to impede it; but, nearly a hundred and twenty years later, we…are retrieving it from the dust of forgetfulness.” (91) As it turns out, the diary had been published originally in 1836 as expected, but it was taken away by authorities and was published years later in 1955 because there was proof that de la Pena had plans to publish it, but was never able