On this day in 1836, the 13-day siege of the Alamo climaxed in a final bloody battle. There were many fine drunkards who fought and died heroically at the Alamo, most notably James Bowie, who a fellow commander described as “roaring drunk all the time,” and Davy Crockett, who arrived in Texas after losing an election in Tennessee that would have returned him as a U.S. Congressman. It was during a whiskey-fueled farewell party at the Union Hotel’s bar in Memphis that Crockett called out his former constituents with these famous parting words: “Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” A timber toe, by the way, was slang for a peg leg.
