Read Custer at the Alamo Online
Authors: Gregory Urbach
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Alternate History, #Alternative History
Custer at the Alamo
| Custer at the Alamo | |
| Gregory Urbach | |
| Third Squirrel (2013) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Alternate History, Alternative History |
Sent 40 years into the past by a spell of Chief Sitting Bull, General George Custer and the Seventh Cavalry join Davy Crockett to fight at the Alamo against Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
AT THE ALAMO
AN ALTERNATE HISTORY ADVENTURE
By Gregory Urbach
Copyright © 2013 by Gregory Urbach
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Cover by Doug Stambaugh.
Matthew Bernstein, story editor
Illustrations by Kwei-lin Lum, Chris Stewart & Matthew Bernstein
Website design by Candace Cootz Lovell
Chapter 2 Encounter on the Rio Grande
Chapter 4 Commanding the Alamo
Chapter 6 Negotiating with the Enemy
Chapter 7 The Battle of Cibolo Creek
Chapter 8 Crockett’s Secret Mission
Chapter 11 Picks, Shovels and Bowie Knives
Chapter 12 Santa Anna’s Decision
Chapter 13 By Dawn’s Early Light
Custer & Crockett by Doug Stambaugh
Fall of the Alamo by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, 1903
Custer’s Last Stand by Elk Eber, c.1880s
Custer’s March to the Little Big Horn
The Ruins of the Alamo by Edward Everett
Comanche Village, original source unknown
Crockett’s Last Stand by Robert Onderdonk
Alamo Battle, The Final Position
Following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” The same might be said for anyone foolish enough to write a historical novel about the Alamo and the Little Big Horn. Like many baby boomers who grew up under the influence of Walt Disney’s
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
, I have studied the Alamo and often blindly believed all of the various myths surrounding that historic battle. And like many who came of age in the 1970s, I often believed the revisionist propaganda that made George Armstrong Custer the great villain of the Indian Wars. Real history is, of course, more complicated.
It is hard to blame people for getting so much false information in an age where politics trumps the truth. In July of 2011, I had the misfortune to watch a so-called professor on public cable access, presumably representing California State University, Dominguez Hills. This professor was teaching about the culture clash along America’s southern border and touched on the Texas Revolution of 1836. In the process, he claimed David Crockett was from Kentucky, that he had been forced to flee from the United States, that he was an enemy of indigenous peoples, that he had brought slaves with him to Texas, and that Crockett envisioned Texas as a slave empire.
For the record, David Crockett was from Tennessee, not Kentucky. He was not forced to flee the United States; he left Tennessee after losing a re-election bid for Congress, where he had served three terms. Far from being an enemy of indigenous peoples, Crockett’s political career was destroyed when he bravely supported the Cherokee Nation against President Andrew Jackson’s infamous
Indian Removal Act.
Crockett did not bring slaves with him to Texas, nor is he on record as an advocate for a Texan slave empire. Can we blame kids for being so ignorant when college professors show such contempt for basic historical facts?
George Custer’s reputation has also been submerged by political correctness. Far from the hair-brained, Indian hating egomaniac we see in movies, Custer was an intelligent and dedicated soldier. And he was far more principled than the corrupt politicians who sent the Seventh Cavalry to Montana in the spring of 1876. Custer not only made more peace agreements with the Indians than he fought battles, but his army career was damaged when he spoke up against the miserable way Washington was abusing native peoples. Custer himself is quoted as saying, “If I were an Indian, I often think, I would prefer to cast my lot among those of my people adhered to the free open plains rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation.”
This is not to say that Custer wasn’t a man of the 19th century, with all its prejudices and misconceptions, but he was better than most. And he had many friends among various Indian tribes.
I have no doubt that this novel will contain many errors, and many interpretations that honest people may disagree with. And it will likely inflame those who get their history lessons from television. For the errors, I apologize. But
Custer at the Alamo
is not, in the final analysis, intended to be a history book. This is an adventure story.
Gregory Urbach
Reseda, California
.
On these walls, we take our stand;
Our duty now made clear.
Life’s sweet hopes can’t blunt our cause
Nor Tyranny of fear.
On the hill, the arrows fly;
Soldiers dying side by side.
There is no future, just the past;
Fighting bravely to the last.
Chapter One