On February 24, 1836, at the Alamo in Bexar, Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis appealed to the people of Texas and all Americans for aid while besieged by more than a thousand Mexican troops under Santa Anna. He wrote that his force had endured continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours without losing a man, refused a demand for surrender with a cannon shot, and kept its flag flying from the walls. Declaring that he would never surrender or retreat, he warned that enemy reinforcements were arriving daily and might raise the besieging force to three or four thousand within four or five days. If no help came, he resolved to hold out as long as possible and die like a soldier, under the words "Victory or Death." He added that the Lord was on their side and that, though they had lacked even three bushels of corn when the enemy first appeared, they had since found about eighty bushels in deserted houses and brought twenty or thirty head of beeves inside the walls. William Barret Travis, defender and commander of the Alamo, was born and spent his boyhood a short distance east of this site.