Line of Glory

The final 13 hours at the Alamo began around 5 o'clock on the afternoon of March 5, 1836. Colonel William Barrett Travis drew a line in the dirt with his sword and asked all those who would stay and fight to cross it. Everyone there knew that General Santa Anna's final attack on the fort was coming. Hopes, fears and destinies played out that night for four people. Susannah Dickinson, a woman of surprising courage, waited inside the chapel cradling her baby daughter, while her husband, Captain Almeron Dickinson, commanded the cannon battery atop the chapel. Young James Taylor had come to the Alamo with his two brothers to help free Texas from the tyrannical rule of Santa Anna. "Moses" Rose, the one man who refused to cross the line Travis drew, left the Alamo in the dark of night because, he said, he "wasn't prepared to die." Colonel Juan Morales, commanding the Mexican column ordered to assault Crockett and his men at the south palisade, believed attacking the Alamo was a foolhardy waste of men. But his real disgust was for Santa Anna, a man who allowed whims to dictate his decisions.