Why did Sam Houston send Jim Bowie to the Alamo?

Answer 1

General Sam Houston did not yet have enough soldiers under his command to relieve the Alamo, so he sent orders for Colonel James Fannin to do it, as Fannin had the largest Texan force available at that time. Fannin complied with the order, but two of his wagons slipped their wheels, and he returned to Fort Defiance. After the Alamo was taken by the Mexican Army, Fannin surrendered Fort Defiance without a fight, whereupon he and his entire command were put to death by the Mexican Army; the infamous Goliad Massacre.

Although Fannin was one of the agitators of the Texan Revolution at Gonzales, he may have been too hestitant to engage Mexico after the Revolution began. He had only 400 Texan troops against 1500 Mexican troops. Houston, although he certainly wanted to help the Alamo, had not even as many troops as Fannin had. As the commander of an army which did not exist yet, Houston had to think strategically, which sometimes means cutting off a finger to save a hand. The Alamo was the finger, and Texas was the hand.

Answer 2

His orders were to strip it of the artillery, gunpowder, shot, weapons and manpower and to join up with the retreating forces of Houston's Army. Bowie appealed that order when he saw that the Alamo defenders wanted to defend their position to the last man. In defense of Bowie's position was the fact that he lacked the wagons, oxen and manpower to accomplish that task.

Answer 3

Mexican General Santa Ana's troops had vastly outnumbered the Texans at the Alamo, and Houston's own troops were not yet assembled. Had Houston's initial forces been sent to relieve the besieged Alamo, then the entire Texan army would have been defeated, and Santa Ana's forces would have carried the day everywhere.

Houston knew that he was sending the Alamo defenders to their deaths by ordering them to hold; the defenders themselves had to have known that there would be no relief. But the Alamo's defenses held back the Mexican army long enough to allow the Texan forces to assemble and annihilate Santa Ana's army at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Answer 4

They would have been wasted in the effort to stop Santa Anna.

Answer 5

The Alamo was a delaying tactic to give Sam Houston the time to raise a large enough army to defeat Santa Anna in the area now know as the San Jacinto Battlegrounds.

Answer 6

He ordered them to retreat to have time to train the troops better and be prepared for their battle against General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.