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Reviled as a Man - Revered as a Monster
.... � 2000 Jeffrey Dane
He precipitated the creation of a kind of historical petri dish in which a culture for a desire for justice grew and flourished in the United States.During his life he was alternately hated and revered, even by his own countrymen: worshipped as a national hero by some, by others considered an abomination. He erected statues of himself in his own country, but not one remains today.
Despite losing his left leg below the knee, he remained a strutting egoist with a Napoleonic power complex, prompting some to refer to him disparagingly as "The Immortal Three-Fourths." He was vain enough to have his disembodied leg placed in a crystal reliquary and interred in a gilded monument, that it might be worshipped by others. At times cowardly, at others almost recklessly brave, he reinforced his courage with opium.
A scoundrel, gambler, womanizer and lecher, conceited, ruthless, shrewd and conniving, he was also unprincipled and an opportunist. Within weeks after his wife died (he was nearly 50), he married a 15-year-old girl. Different sources give conflicting data about the year of his birth.
A man of contradictions, complexities and paradoxes, in keeping with the magnitude of his most infamous deed, he could also be compassionate and magnanimous. Like us, he had a full set of human weaknesses, which make him more, not less, of a human being. Nearly six feet tall, he could make an imposing appearance, and he had that elusive quality of charisma, a trait impossible to really define, extremely difficult to explain, and hopeless to imitate - but very easy to recognize.
The earliest known
photographic image of the
subject, ca.1840s-1850s.With little formal education (he bragged he'd read only one book), he still eventually arrived, before he was 40, at the pinnacle he sought. His route was bestrewn with treachery and betrayal of friends and causes for his own advancement. Beneath the vanity and egotism, there was an underlying desire to serve his people.
An eyewitness described him in his 40s: "�a melancholy appearance, decidedly the best-looking and most interesting figure in the group�of sallow complexion, fine dark eyes, soft and penetrating, an interesting expression of face�Knowing nothing of his past history, one would have thought him a philosopher, living in dignified retirement�a veritable riddle in character�How frequently this look of philosophic resignation, of placid sadness, is seen on the countenances of the most cunning, ambitious, designing and most dangerous men�quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, yet here sat he, with this air de philosoph�, perhaps one of the worst men in the world: ambitious of power, greedy of money, and unprincipled, having feathered his nest at the expense of others�"
In the era of quills and inkwells, before the railroad, the revolver, the Industrial Revolution, and arts, sciences and entities we now take for granted, his personal traveling accouterments included silver teapots and cream pitchers, monogrammed china, crystal glasses and decanters with gold stoppers, silk sheets and undergarments, and costly diamond studs. One of his coats weighed nearly 20 pounds, laden with enough silver for a set of spoons. Today some of his personal effects are displayed in a museum fittingly devoted to the memory of those he destroyed.
Washington was not yet our nation's capitol; France was in its Reign of Terror; Beethoven was making his mark in Vienna; Bach was decades dead and Brahms was decades ahead. This was the age into which this man was born. Unfortunately, the conduct of his own life and career reflects his participation in the darkest sides of the Age of Enlightenment.
Some, from heads of state to heads of companies, are drawn more to evil than to good. "Power corrupts" is a concept which manifests itself as an unfortunate feature of many in positions of authority and influence. In him, it found its most worthy model. In his youth, his worship of his mentor reinforced the savage methods of the worst traits in his own character. Karl Marx admired him. Some of us experiment with questionable practice at some point in our lives, usually in youth, and then outgrow it. Not this man. He made it a feature of his life. Paradoxically, his namesake is a significant saint, and his grandson, named after him, became a Jesuit priest and lived into the sixth decade of the 20th century.
The subject's artificial leg, one of two purchased by him for the then-astronomical sum of $1,300 each. Made of cork and covered in leather, they were crafted by Charles Bartlett, a former New York City cabinet maker. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers." Brahms' "Lullaby." Dante's "Inferno." Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." Michelangelo's "Moses." Tolstoy's "War and Peace," etc., ad infinitum. Mention now this man's name, and what invariably comes to mind is one infamous episode with which his name has become fused.
He became anathema to Americans after a now-historic incident in which he was responsible for the death of scores of people, who were then living in his own country. Some of them were actually famous, and all of them became martyrs.
His name has become indelibly linked with that occurrence, which was arguably the greatest single traumatic event in our country's early culture until the first presidential assassination. We tend to invest martyrs with heroism and heroes with martyrdom: those who left life prematurely, at whatever age, prompt the most intriguing conjectures.
To call it an event would be understatement epitomized. One of the most significant and tragic of any era, the incident soon reached iconic status in the annals of American history, and has since literally become, in a word, legendary. So complete is his identification with that tragedy that he has become almost synonymous with it (with the appropriate negative connotation), and the very mention of his name even today calls to mind that occasion and its sweeping and extensive aftermath. We remember him more for that one incident than for anything else, bad or good, in which he was involved during his lifetime.
"The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn." Thus spoke Chief Justice Earl Warren at the time of JFK's assassination. His remark has an application to what had transpired over a century earlier. The man responsible for that catastrophe and the ultimate martyrdom of those people committed a blunder which in its stupidity rivals that of the Stamp Act years before. He's now remembered, and was even admired by some, for his despicability.
Wheels turn. Within weeks he was bested by a man after whom a large Western city was later named. The tyrant might not have been outdone had he not been "otherwise engaged" with a young servant girl, about whom a popular song was later written. Even today a hotel named for her is located literally across the street from the site where that historic tragedy occurred.
The man toward the end of his life. Though he lived well into the photography era, he outlived most of his counterparts and all those he vanquished in that notorious tragedy. They, however, were never photographed: They all perished literally a few years before the advent of the camera. Americans saw the event as a massacre. He called it a victory, saying, "It was but a small affair." Replied a colleague, "Another such 'victory' and we are ruined."
On his first visit to America he spent six days in Washington, DC, conferring with our seventh president. His second American stay, in exile 30 years later, began in New Jersey when "Abraham Baez conducted me to his house in Elizabeth Port," he wrote in his autobiography. That his ship docked there may have prompted later contradictions about whether he actually lived in the state, and other factors compounded the confusion.
In his native country he had befriended a Hungarian who in New York invited him to spend some time on Staten Island, where "�I had Baez rent me a furnished house in New York." He's said to have operated a grocery and general store for a time, living first on St.Mark's Place and later at West New Brighton on Manor Road, both on Staten Island. One source claims he had a penchant for cock-fights and three-card monte, in keeping with his gambling proclivities. About his Hungarian friend, he later wrote, "He, with some other businessmen, deceived and robbed me" - a very determined accusation, considering what he himself had done to others throughout his life.
According to tradition he was instrumental in introducing to the American public a popular habit, to the ultimate delight of youngsters and to the consternation of parents and teachers. He had brought with him a tropical substance, chicle, which produced a whitish fluid. He told a group of businessmen, "When you cure this liquid, it hardens and assumes a chewy character," adding that mixing it with sugar and mint gave it a sensational taste.
He had meanwhile hired a secretary and interpreter named James Adams, who lived in Elizabeth Port. Adams saw how his employer enjoyed chewing the stuff and asked him about it. When the old man, now in his 70s, left for his native land, he gave Adams what remained of the supply.
Adams soon experimented and eventually founded his own firm. Even today the confection has its own modern counterpart: the popular chewing gum Chiclets, for decades made by The Adams Chewing Gum Co., takes its name from the substance the old man had brought with him. Interestingly, the product distributed today in the USA is now manufactured in his native country.
Legend has it that he ultimately escaped from New York concealed in a piano case.
In and out of favor during the last three decades of his life, he spent his literally declining years in failing health, approaching senility and almost blind. His compulsion to address the masses never left him, and what's come down to us is the pathetic scene of his wife paying the indigent to listen to him speak, and then pretend to cheer.He lived into his 80s, dying infirm, in poverty and virtually unnoticed in Mexico City on June 21, 1876. Buried at Tepeyac Cemetery, near Guadalupe Hidalgo, he survived by four decades those he had destroyed at dawn on Sunday, March 6, 1836 at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.
The obvious, by its very nature, can easily escape our attention, so it may be worth noting that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna y Per�z de Lebr�n was as alive then as we are today.
Two conceptual renderings of the Alamo as it appeared during the 1836 siege. Both are based on actual early sketches, and on the 1849 Daguerreotype of the mission's church (see http://www.flash.net/~alamo3/valero/images/image231.htm). The earliest datable photographic image made in Texas, it's the only known photo showing the Alamo church before its unique campanulate roof was added ca.1850, fourteen years after the battle.
The Author's Biography Jeffrey Dane is an historian, researcher and author whose work is published in the USA and abroad in several languages. Though most of his work has a musical focus, as a relaxing diversion from the norm of routine he researches and writes articles, book reviews and essays about other historical subjects as well, ranging from Goethe to George Washington, from antiques to the Alamo. His article, "James Bowie: A Historical Perspective" is awaiting publication. He was asked to write the Foreward for a soon-to-be-published book, "The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts" by historian J.R. Edmondson (Wordware Publishing / Republic of Texas Press, Plano, TX). If he could personally experience only one event in the entire recent history of the United States, it would be the siege and fall of the Alamo - "�but only as an 'observer,' not as a participant."
(CREDITS): - Photo of the artificial leg: Illinois State Military Museum.
- Photo (black & white) of the conjectural rendering of the Alamo: Courtesy of artist Rod Timanus.
- Photo (color) of the conjectural rendering of the Alamo:
"Conceptual Drawing of San Antonio de Valero, ca. 1836" by Randell Tar�n. Courtesy of the Alamo de Parras web site. http://www.flash.net/~alamo3 Copyright � 1996-2000, Alamo de Parras, All Rights Reserved.
