The Men of Gonzales

This 1960 novel by acclaimed author John H. Culp, author of Born of the Sun and The Restless Land, tells the tale of the heroic thirty-two men, guided by Texan political figure John W. Smith, who rode to the relief of the Alamo on March 1, 1836. At dawn on this day, Capt. Albert Martin, with 32 men (himself included) from Gonzales and DeWitt’s Colony, passed the lines of Santa Anna and entered the walls of the Alamo, never more to leave them. These men, chiefly husbands and fathers, owning their own homes, voluntarily organized and passed through the lines of an enemy four to six thousand strong, to join 150 of their countrymen and neighbors, in a fortress doomed to destruction. A gripping read.