Santa Ana stepped into the court-yard. There were six prisoners. His orders were that none should be taken. Nevertheless, David Crockett and five others had stoutly resisted, until his clubbed rifle broken in his sinewy hands, the dauntless backwoodsman listened to the promise of quarter. Santa Ana paused a moment before his unmoved captives. It was but for a moment. The next his hand sought the hilt of his sword. Crockett, divining his purpose, sprang at the traitor, but he was too late; a dozen blades had flashed at the sign and the hapless prisoners fell dead, the last of all the garrison. These men of the Alamo were volunteers, simple citizens, bound by no tie save that of fealty to cause and comrades. Unsung of poet, all but unnamed in history, the brave men of the Alamo went to their certain death, with a sublime fortitude, beside which the obedient immolation of Balaklava's Six Hundred is but the triumph of disciplined machines. A monument raised to their memory bears the magnificent inscription:-- "Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none." It needs more than judicial impartiality to question the right of the Texan revolution while telling the story of the Alamo. Right and wrong are barred from consideration in recalling the tragedy of Goliad. Colonel Fannin and 330 of his men, who had surrendered to Santa Ana as prisoners of war, under a solemn promise that they should be returned to the United States, were marched out of the fort, on the morning of Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, and, without a moment's warning, fired upon and murdered in cold blood. The outlaws to whom this fearful penalty was dealt out, without even the mockery of a Spanish trial, were all young men or lads, "the oldest not over thirty years of age." The world, freely as its soil is saturated with human blood, stood aghast at this horrible slaughter. Texas trembled at the Mexican's vengeance. Houston alone, husbanding his scanty means, animating his raw levies, working, planning, providing for all, laid his trap with such shrewd forethought, that in less than two months he had sprung it upon Santa Ana and all his army, and on the banks of the San Jacinto, dictated terms of peace to his captive, the butcher of the Alamo and Goliad. The victory was unstained by a single act of revenge. Thenceforth the world knew that Texas was free. The men who could use success with such forbearance were men worthy of self-government.