THE QUARTERLY OF THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
VOLUME V. JULY, 1901, TO APRIL, 1902.
PUBLICATION COMMITTEE. John H. Reagan, Z. T. Fulmore, C. W. Raines, George P. Garrison, Mrs. Bride Neill Taylor. EDITOR. George P. Garrison. AUSTIN, TEXAS: PUBLISHED BY THE ASSOCIATION. 1902.The Texas State Historical Association.
Organized March 2, 1897.
PRESIDENT.
John H. Reagan.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Guy M. Bryan, 1 F. R. Lubbock,
Mrs. Julia Lee Sinks, T. S. Miller.
RECORDING SECRETARY AND LIBRARIAN.
George P. Garrison.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY AND TREASURER.
Lester G. Bugbee. 1
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL.
Mrs. Dora Fowler Arthur, George P. Garrison,
W. J. Battle, F. R. Lubbock,
R. L. Batts, T. S. Miller,
Lester G. Bugbee, 1 C. W. Raines,
Rufus C. Burleson, 1 John H. Reagan,
Beauregard Bryan, Mrs. Julia Lee Sinks,
Guy M. Bryan, 1 Mrs. Bride Neill Taylor,
Z. T. Fulmore, Dudley G. Wooten.
CONTENTS.
NUMBER 1; JULY, 1901.
The Escape of Rose from the Alamo W. P. Zuber 1
Reminiscences of Capt. Jesse Burnam 12
Capt. Joseph Daniels Adele B. Looscan 19
The Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War Z. T. Fulmore 28
Dr. Rufus C. Burleson Harry Haynes 49
Book Reviews and Notices 61
Notes and Fragments 66
Affairs of the Association 71
NUMBER 2; OCTOBER, 1901.
Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick 85
The Connection of Peñalosa with the La Salle Expedition E. T. Miller 97
Reminiscences of Texas and Texans Fifty Years Ago W. D. Wood 113
Guy Morrison Bryan George P. Garrison 121
The Old Fort on the San Saba River as Seen by Dr. Ferdin and Roemer in 1847 Adele B. Looscan 137
The Early Settlers of San Fernando I. J. Cox 142
Book Reviews and Notices 161
Notes and Fragments 164
Affairs of the Association 170
NUMBER 3; JANUARY, 1902.
The Beginnings of Texas R. C. Clark 171
Father Edmond John Peter Schmitt I. J. Cox 206
The Mexican and Indian Raid of '78 212
Book Reviews and Notices 252
Notes and Fragments 263
Queries and Answers 267
NUMBER 4; APRIL, 1902.
The Quarrel Between Governor Smith and the Provisional Government of the Republic W. Roy Smith 269
Genealogical and Historical Register of the First General Officers of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Elected in 1891 Mrs. Adele B. Looscan 347
Book Reviews and Notices 352
Notes and Fragments 355
Affairs of the Association 357
Vol. V. JULY, 1901. No. 1.
The publication committee and the editor disclaim responsibility for views expressed by contributors to the Quarterly.
I wish to say something in self-defense and for the truth of history, concerning my published account of the escape of a man whose name was Rose from the Alamo, March 3, 1836. The occasion of what I have to say is that I have been reliably informed that my account of that escape has been contradicted. I have not seen any published contradiction of it by any reliable authority, neither do I know of any reliable person who has publicly contradicted it; yet I am led to believe that such contradictions, though unreliable, have made an impression upon the minds of some well meaning persons. Therefore I feel called upon to present the case more fully.
It should be remembered that I learned the facts, though secondhand, from Rose himself. He recited them to my parents, who, in turn recited them to me.
I must admit that, after years of reflection, I arrived at the opinion that in my first writing on this subject as published in Richardson's Texas Almanac for 1873 I erred in stating Rose's service in the French army; and I wish to explain how I did so. My father was then afflicted with deafness, and was very liable to misunderstand many things that were told to him. Learning that Rose had served in Napoleon Bonaparte's army, he understood him to say that he had served under that general in Italy, as well as in Russia, and so I then stated; but my mother, whose hearing was unimpaired, did not hear him say that he had served in Italy, though she did hear him say that he had served in the invasion of Russia, and on the retreat from Moscow. On later reflection, I infer that my father was mistaken regarding the service in Italy. Remembering his habits, I now believe that Rose told him something which he had learned of the Italian campaign, and my father inferred that he had served in it also. I also believe that I would have done better to omit Rose's estimate of the number of slain Mexicans that he saw near the Alamo, when he looked down upon them from the top of the wall. Of course, being horrified at the hopeless condition of the garrison, as Travis had just explained it, he saw what appeared to him a great number, and he had no leisure even to think of counting them. He only said that they seemed to be so many. The rest of his statement was all repeated to me by my mother, and I vouch for its correctness. In my account of this escape in Mrs. Pennybacker's History for Schools, I have made the needed corrections, and I affirm that I believe my entire statement in that excellent little book to be correct.
Now, were I to admit Rose's entire statement to be false, yet I would contend that no person is now able to disprove it. The Alamo was not in 1836, as now, in the heart of the city of San Antonio, but a considerable distance from it. The town then covered about one-half of the peninsula formed by the horseshoelike bend of the San Antonio river; and that the west end of it was farthest from the fort, while the east end, next the fort, was uninhabited and covered by a dense mesquite thicket, which obstructed the view between the town and the fort. The view between the fort and the small suburb of Laveleta was likewise obstructed. This was the situation when I explored part of the ground in 1842. During the siege, though the people in the town heard the reports of fire-arms, as used by the besiegers and the besieged, none of them could see what was done about the fort without needlessly risking their own lives, which they probably had no inclination to do. The men in the fort (all but Rose), were killed, none surviving to tell the story. Mrs. Dickinson and Travis's negro were shut up in rooms, and could not see what was done outside the fort, nor much that was done in it. None of the Mexicans knew all that was done, and the official reports of the Mexican officers were not distinguished for veracity. Then, how can any person at this late period disprove Rose's statement of what occurred about the fort?
I must notice an error which has been thrust into history, which seems to have been relied upon as a disproof of Rose's statement. That is, that, prior to March 3d, 1836, no Mexican soldier had approached within rifle-shot of the Alamo. 3 But both probabilities and facts are against this assertion. We know that Santa Anna, during his Texas campaign in 1836, perpetrated some gross blunders; but, to say that he stormed the Alamo without first having it closely reconnoitered to obtain, so far as practicable, a knowledge of the strength of its walls and of the condition of its defenders would be to accuse him of incredible stupidity, and to say that he delayed doing so till after the ninth day of the siege would be an accusation to the same effect. To my mind, it would be clear without positive evidence that, for this purpose, before the ninth day he sent scouting parties even to the ditches which surrounded the walls. As such approaches could not be made in daylight, they were of course made in the night, when but few persons even in the Mexican army were aware of them, excepting those who participated in them. And, of course, the watchful inmates must have slain a large number of those who thus approached.
But we are not without positive evidence that such approaches were made. At least, I have it. Colonel Travis had not leisure to write everything in his dispatches, and of course he sent out as couriers some of his most reliable men, who would state facts and nothing else. His last courier, sent out on March 3d, 1836, who arrived at Washington-on-the-Brazos on the morning of March 6th, stated to members of the Convention then sitting in Washington, that the enemy had more than once approached to the walls of the fort. Of course, I infer that the courier meant that they approached to the brinks of the ditches which were as near toward the walls as they could proceed. On the next day, March 7th, Dr. Anson Jones, afterward President of the Republic, passed through Washington, halting there; and several members of the Convention repeated to him what the courier had told them of such approaches. On the night of the same day, Dr. Jones arrived at the residence of Mr. A. D. Kennard, Sr., twenty-three miles east-northeast of Washington, and stayed there till after breakfast on the next morning, March 8th, 1836, when he repeated to several other gentlemen what had been told by the courier to members of the Convention, and by them to him, of several approaches by the enemy to the walls of the Alamo. He did not say how often they had approached, but his expression was “more than once.” Dr. Jones does not tell this in his Republic of Texas; nevertheless, I was then at Mr. Kennard's, en route, as I thought, for the Alamo, and I heard him repeat this statement. 4 Thus we have excellent positive evidence that, before the 3d of March, 1836, some Mexican soldiers did, more than once, approach within rifle-shot of the Alamo, and nearer than that.
Rose left the Alamo on the afternoon of March 3d, and historians say that the courier, Captain Smith, left on the night of the 3d. If it were certain that Smith left on the night following the 3d after Rose left, this would prove Rose's statement to be false; for Smith said nothing of Travis's speech. But Smith certainly left before that night. I have no doubt that he left on the 3d, and in the night; but his departure evidently was on the morning of the 3d, between midnight and daybreak—say, soon after midnight. He could not have escaped the vigilance of the Mexican guards earlier than about midnight, as they were on strict watch for men from the Alamo. But suppose he left about midnight following the 3d. Then he would have, at most, three days in which to ride to Washington, where he arrived on the morning of the 6th. The distance from San Antonio to Washington was one hundred and eighty miles, and to cover this distance in three days would have required him to go sixty miles per day; but he could not have ridden at that rate during three successive days, without great danger of breaking down his horse. Suppose, however, that he left soon after midnight on the morning of the 3d. This would give him four days in which to ride the one hundred and eighty miles; that is, forty-five miles per day, which is reasonable. So I opine that Smith certainly left before the delivery of Travis's speech. 5
I have now to refer to a striking instance of interpolation in a history by an officious publisher or printer. I have no doubt that the historian Thrall was a truthful and conscientious gentleman, but evidently he sometimes relied too much upon his memory in stating historical facts; and his publisher or printer added to his mistakes. This is demonstrated in a passage, in which it is said:
“Travis now despaired of succor; and, according to an account published in 1860, by a Mr. Rose, announced to his companions their desperate situation. After declaring his determination to sell his life as dearly as possible, and drawing a line with his sword, Travis exhorted all who were willing to fight with him to form on the line. With one exception, all fell into the ranks; and even Bowie, who was dying with the consumption, had his cot carried to the line. The man who declined to enter the ranks that night made his escape. [This tale is incredible, since he reported large pools of blood in the ditch, close to the wall, when no Mexican had then approached within rifle shot.]” 6
This passage is evidently the work of more than one writer. Had its authors intended to embrace as many errors as possible within a given space, they could scarcely have crowded more into a paragraph of the same length. The statement referred to was not published in 1860, nor by a Mr. Rose. The man who declined “to enter the ranks” (that is, to cross the line) did not wait till that night to make his escape. That statement did not mention a ditch. And Mexican soldiers had, more than once, “approached within rifle-shot” of the fort, and nearer than that. Rose was the author of that statement, which he made orally, but not its writer or publisher; moreover, it was not written till 1871, and it was first published in Richardson's Texas Almanac for 1873.
But Mr. Thrall is responsible for only the first three errors, to wit: those relative to the date and publisher of the statement and the time of the man's escape. These are comparatively unimportant.
The last three errors are between brackets, showing that, without authority from Mr. Thrall, they are interpolated by the publisher or printer. They are the assertion that Rose's statement “is incredible”; the allusion to a ditch; and the assumption that “no Mexican had then approached within rifle-shot.” It is fortunate for Mr. Thrall that the authors of these eccentricities relieved him of the responsibility for them, by inserting them between brackets.
Mr. Thrall himself, in effect, gave full credit to Rose's statement, as is evidenced by a passage in his biography of Col. James Bowie, the facts of which he could have obtained from no other source than Rose's statement, as first published by me. In it he says:
“During the siege, when Travis demanded that all who were willing to die with him defending the place should rally under a flag by his side, every man but one promptly took his place, and Bowie, who was sick in bed, had his cot carried to the designated spot.” 7
But even here is an instance of our historian's too great reliance upon his memory, though the mistake is in a mere want of precision. Travis requested all his comrades who would stay with him and die fighting not to “rally under a flag by his side,” but to step across a line which he had drawn with his sword.
It may be thought that, under such excitement as Rose must have suffered before leaving the Alamo, his memory must have been blunted. On other subjects, it may have been blunted; but, as to the substance of Travis's speech, which he afterwards repeated in his manner, the excitement only sharpened his memory. That speech was a sudden revelation to him, and every idea expressed thereby sank deep into his soul and stamped its impression there.
With the explanations already given, it does seem to me that, without further comment, every item in Rose's narrative ought to be accepted as quite reasonable and credible; but, as some persons seem determined to discredit it, and I know not what points may yet be assailed, I prefer to subject it to a severe sifting.
Rose was in the Alamo a short time before it fell. While the mass of his contemporaries lived, this was acknowledged even by those who affected to discredit the rest of his statement, and none but two unnamed tramps are known to have asserted otherwise. In evidence of this fact, and of the consequent inference that he was one of the men who perished in that fort, his name was on the first partial list of those heroes, including only seventeen, which was published soon after the fall of the Alamo, in the Telegraph and Texas Register, at San Felipe. It was also on the more extensive list in Richardson's Texas Almanac for 1860, on page 82; and it has been further recognized by the inscription of his name on two Alamo monuments, one of which yet stands; that is, the one in the porch of the old capitol at Austin, which was destroyed by fire in 1881, and the present one in front of the new capitol. In the three lists first mentioned, the Christian name is omitted. The two printed lists named him as “— Rose, Texas,” that is, of Texas; and on the destroyed monument it was simply “— Rose.” Yet, no one who knew the author of the narrative under consideration doubted that he was the man referred to, and I am sure that he was the only Rose in the Alamo. On the new monument now standing, the name is inscribed “Rose, J. M.,” for J. M. Rose. It is on the fourth pillar, the first name after that of David Crockett. 8 I understood his name to be Moses Rose; but by whom or why the “J” is now prefixed is unknown to me. I know that he was generally understood to be in the Alamo when last heard of before its fall. However, he was not one of the heroes who died in defense of that fortress, and his name ought to be erased from the monument.
Colonel Travis was known to be an apt extemporaneous speaker; and I judge that all who knew him believed that, if any man could, under the trying circumstances, deliver such a speech as Rose affirmed that he delivered in the Alamo on March 3d, 1836, Travis was the man. I do not doubt that, to one unaware of the known facts, it would seem a high pitch of absurdity to believe that, under such circumstances, any man could deliver such a speech. Yet it would seem more absurd to believe that one hundred and eighty men would stay in a fort, and die fighting in its defense, rather than surrender or retreat; yet more absurd that they would die without first mutually pledging their honor to do so; and equally absurd that any orator could, by a speech, induce them so to pledge themselves. But it would be far more absurd to believe that they would make this pledge without being induced to do so by such a speech. Nevertheless, we know that, whether such an appeal was made to them or not, and whether they so pledged themselves or not, they did stay, fight, and die. Knowing this, we must pronounce Rose's account of that speech and of that mutual pledge reasonable and credible.
Is it incredible that, when all the other men in that little garrison covenanted to stay there and fight to the death, Rose alone declined to do so, and resolved on an attempt to escape? I believe that a majority of men will admit that, if similarly situated, they might do as Rose professes to have done. Is it incredible that, to disencumber himself for descending from the top of the wall on the outside, he threw down his wallet of clothes, which fell into a puddle of blood, part of which adhered to some of his garments, and on drying glued them together? My mother saw her black servant-girl, Maria, take those garments out of the wallet and find them so glued. On leaving the fort, he did not attempt to go east through the Mexican army, by which he would have been killed or captured, but went west, through San Antonio; then south, down the San Antonio river, about three miles; then east, through the open prairie, to the Guadalupe river, carefully avoiding roads after leaving San Antonio, from fear of encountering Mexican scouts. Is this incredible? Any prudent man would have traveled the same route. Is it incredible that he saw no person in San Antonio; but, so far as he saw, all doors in the town were closed? The danger of the time was sufficient to cause the people of the town to keep themselves shut up in their houses. Is it incredible that, after leaving San Antonio, he saw no person till after crossing the Colorado, and only one family at home between the Colorado and the Brazos? His road down the San Antonio river did not then lead by any residence; nor did it till more than six years later. There were then no residences between San Antonio and the Guadalupe excepting a few ranches on the Cibolo, and avoiding roads he passed between these. All families on the Guadalupe had left on the “Runaway Scrape” excepting those of De Leon's Colony, which was below his route, and the people of Gonzales, which was above it. 9 After resting three days on the Guadalupe, and proceeding slowly, on account of his lameness, to the Colorado, he arrived at that river after nearly all the people between it and the Brazos had left home; and only one family remained on his route between those two rivers. I could name that family; but, for personal reasons, I prefer not to do so unless it shall become necessary. Is it incredible that, in his haste to get away from danger, he traveled all the first night out, but was bewildered and made but little progress? Is it incredible that, in his attempt to travel during that night, his legs were gored by hundreds of the large cactus thorns which abound in that region? Is it incredible that he did not take leisure to relieve himself of them till they had worked so deep into his flesh that he could not bear the pain of drawing them out? My parents drew those thorns from his legs with nippers. Is it incredible that he crossed rivers by rolling seasoned logs into the streams, seating himself upon them, and paddling across with his hands? Other men who could not swim have done so, and why not he? Is it incredible that, after traveling two days without food and being hungry, sore, lame, and weary, he rested three days at an abandoned house at which he found plenty of provisions? Is it incredible that he rested during some time with the only family that he found at home west of the Brazos? Is it incredible that two unknown men, professing to live in Nacogdoches, spent a night with that family, and, when about to leave, drew the landlord out where Rose could not hear them and told him that they knew Rose to be an impostor, who had never seen the Alamo, and advised him to send him away immediately? The landlord told many persons that they did so. It is not incredible that honorable men residing at Nacogdoches would then be traveling in that abandoned region, from which the Texas army was retreating, and to which the Mexican army was advancing. Had their purpose been, as they professed, to confer a favor upon the landlord, they would have tendered their advice in Rose's presence. What could they have intended? The only conceivable object was to gain the landlord's favor, and thereby to save their bill for accommodations. Is it incredible that the landlord did as those tramps advised him to do? It is surprising, yet true. He, as well as Rose, said that he did so; and he said so boastingly to many persons. Is it incredible that a man of very tender sensibility was so wounded and discouraged by such treatment that he resolved never again to say that he had been in the Alamo? Such a resolve was foolish, and injurious to himself, yet he said that he had made it, and I believe that generally he had stood to it. Is is not most probable that his subsequent reticence on this subject was what prevented his statement from being inserted in the early histories of Texas? Is it incredible that, his rash resolve notwithstanding, when he found friends who had seen his name on a partial list of the heroes of the Alamo, who believed his report, and who kindly ministered to his affliction, he, at their request, narrated to them his escape and journey to their residence? Finally, is it incredible that, yielding to their importunities, he repeated his story to them till they knew it by heart?
Now, I have directed attention to about all the notable items of Rose's narrative. And when they are compared, which one of them is absurd or incredible? To my mind, every statement therein is reasonable and credible; yet to some minds his story may seem too much like truth to be accepted as such.
My writing down of Rose's narrative was incidental to a more important purpose, which was to preserve the substance of Colonel Travis's speech to his fellow-heroes of the Alamo, on March 3d, 1836. Rose's disconnected recitals of that speech, my mother's repetition of them to me, and my many rewritings of the same, by which I compiled the disconnected parts into a connected discourse, all are explained in my account of the adventures of Rose, in the revised edition of Mrs. Pennybacker's History of Texas for Schools, pp. 183-188, especially pp. 187-188. The speech itself, as compiled by me, fills a foot-note in the same book, pp. 139-140. The first issue of the revised edition contains one misprint, p. 139, which has been corrected in subsequent issues. It represents Travis as saying that the enemy outnumbered the defenders “two to one.” The correction is “twenty to one.”
Now, I think I have fully explained this affair; and what is the conclusion? One of two hypotheses is evidently a fact. Rose's statement is either true or false. If it be false, who fabricated it? The guilt would rest upon one of three persons; that is, upon Rose, upon my mother, or upon myself. Rose, being illiterate, could not possibly have manufactured what is represented to be Travis's speech. I do not believe that my mother could have done so, if she would; and I am sure that she would not. I do not know that I could have done so, if I would, and I would not have perpetrated such a fraud,—to save my own life. My sole purpose was to perpetuate the memory of what I knew to be of great historical importance; that is, the substance of Colonel Travis's speech to his comrades in the Alamo, and to show how I learned it. If I have succeeded, I have done well; and, if I have failed, I enjoy the consolation of knowing that my failure is in a just and truthful cause. If the present generation and posterity refuse to do me justice, God will award it to me in the day of final account. But I am not distressingly anxious for what the world may say about my veracity, for I believe that my reputation as a truthful man is well established; and, even should I be mistaken on this point, I have a clear conscience, and this is better than all things else on earth.
I was born in Kentucky, Madison county, September 15th, 1792, being the youngest son of seven. My father died when I was quite young, and my mother moved to Tennessee in my sixteenth year, and settled in Red Fork County, near Shelbyville. We were very poor.
In my twentieth year, I married an orphan girl, named Temperance. I was still poor. I made rails for a jack-leg blacksmith, and had him to make me three knives and forks, and I put handles to them. My wife sold the stockings she was married in—made by her own hands—for a set of plates, and spun and wove cloth for sheets and tick for feathers. I traded for a small piece of land, and then we were ready for housekeeping. We used gourds for cups.
In my twenty-second year, I went into the war of 1812. John Hutcheson was my captain, and Col. John Coffee commanded the brigade. During this campaign I contracted a disease, and the physicians advised me to seek a warmer climate.
I started with nine families besides my own, and settled on Red River, at Pecan Point. From there I went to the interior of Texas, stopping for a few months where Independence now is. I had three horses, and brought what I could on them, my wife bringing her spinning wheel, and weaving apparatus.
We got out of bread before we stopped. Being too feeble to hunt, I employed an old man to keep me in meat. I had fixed up a camp, so that my family could be comfortable. My man failed to kill a deer, and we were out of food for two days. At last I heard one of my children say, “I am so hungry.” I had been lying there hoping to hear the old man's gun. I was too feeble to hunt, but I got up and began to fix my gun slowly. I listened all the time for the old man's gun. I didn't feel as though I could walk, but I started on my first hunt. I had not gone far when I saw two deer, a fawn and its mother. I shot the fawn first, knowing the doe would not run far, then I shot and killed her. “Oh ho!” said I, “two deer in one day, and my first hunt!” I took the fawn to camp to my hungry children, and took William, my oldest boy, and a horse after the doe. My wife had dressed a skin and made William a shirt, but it lacked one sleeve, so she dressed the fawn skin that day and made the other sleeve.
It was while camped at Independence that I saw my first Indian. I went out to kill a deer and had killed one and was butchering it, when an Indian came up and wanted to take it from me. I would not let him have it, but got it on my back the best I could and started for camp. The Indian began to yell, I suppose for help, but I would have died rather than give the deer up. I thought if there was only one I would put my knife in him and save my gun for another. I walked along as fast as I could, he pulling at the deer and making signs that he wanted it on his back. I could not put it down to rest, so I walked into a gully and rested it on a bank, the Indian all the time making frightful threats and grimaces. Oh, but I was mad! When I got to camp it was full of Indians, and every one had been dividing meat with them. I told them I would not give them a piece to save my life, and that if that Indian came about me I'd kill him.
I stayed in that camp four or five months, and then moved down on the Colorado to what is now the John Holman plantation. It was the league that Austin had surveyed for me, my name being the thirteenth on the list of Austin's colony. All the colony had moved further down, so it was the highest upon the river of any of the settlements, and most exposed to Indians. All my neighbors moved down for protection, and at last I had to go, but did not stay long. I went back and built me a block house to fight from. It was at this place I had my trouble with the Indians in recovering the horses they tried to carry off. 11
We were still out of bread, and it had been nine months since we had seen any. A man from lower down the country came up and told me that he had corn that he had planted with a stick. There were no hoes nor plows in the Colony. I gave him a horse for twenty bushels and went sixty miles after it with two horses, and brought eight bushels back. I walked and led my horse. I had prepared a mortar before I left home to beat it in, and a sieve made of deer skin stretched over a hoop and with holes punched in it. I had always young men about me for protection, and they would generally beat the corn. Then we would have to be very saving, of course, and were allowed only one piece of bread around.
During the time I was without bread, a man stayed all night with us who had just come to the country. He had some crackers and gave the children some. My son took his out in the yard, made him a little wagon and used the crackers for wheels.
Our honey we kept in a deer skin, for we had no jars, jugs, nor cans. I would take the skin off a deer whole, except having to cut it around the neck and legs, and would tie the holes up very tight. Then I would hang it up by the fore legs, and we had quite a nice can, which we always kept pretty well filled.
About this time my oldest daughter's dresses were worn out before we could get any cotton to spin, and she wore a dress of dressed buckskin. I never wore a deer skin shirt, though there were many that did. I had pants and a hunting shirt made of deer skin. My wife colored the skin brown and fringed the hunting shirt, and it was considered the nicest suit in the Colony.
At one time while in the camp at Independence, I had but six loads of powder. A traveler stopped at my camp, and I asked him if he had any. He said he had. I had a Mexican dollar that Colonel Groce gave to one of the children for dried buffalo meat. He asked me if I would sell him some. I told him no, but he could take as much as he wanted. But, not wishing to accept in that way, he gave one of the children the dollar. I gave it to the traveler and told him to give me as much as he could, for I was nearly out and did not know where to get any. He asked for a teacup and filled it about two-thirds full. At one time I had twelve loads and killed eleven deer with them.
You ask me to tell you about taking the man's leg off. 12 I was living on the Colorado at that time. His name was Parker, and he lived on the opposite side of the river. His leg was terribly diseased, and he begged us to cut it off two months before we consented. One day he sent for me. I went over, and he took hold of my hand with both his and said, “Oh, have you come to take my leg off?” I said “Yes, I have come to do anything you want me to do.” “That is right,” he said. “If I die I don't want to take it with me.” So Tom Williams, Kuykendall, Bostick, and I undertook the job with a dull saw and shoe knife, the only tools we had. I heated and bent a needle to take up the arteries with. I was to have the management of it and hold the flesh back, Tom Williams was to do the cutting of the flesh, Bostick to saw the bone, and Kuykendall to do the sewing. I took his suspenders off and bandaged the leg just above where we wanted to cut. I put a hair rope over the bandage, put a stick in it, and twisted it just as long as I could; then I was ready to begin operations. When Mr. Kuykendall began to sew it he trembled, so I took the needle and finished it. Parker rested easy for several days; but the third day he complained of his heel hurting on the other leg, and the eleventh day he died. 13
The first fight we had with the Indians was at Skull Creek. We were commanded by Bob Kuykendall, who had eighteen men in the fight. We killed fourteen Indians and wounded seven, who afterwards went and complained to the general government. We lost not a man. I killed one and wounded two. 14
I served as lieutenant under Kuykendall, and after two or three months took his place as captain.
The next fight with the Indians I had was in the recovery of some horses at what is now known as the John Holman plantation, where I first settled on the Colorado. There were seven families living above, who were compelled to move further down into the settlements. They were stopping with me, and the horses belonged principally to them. The Indians had been concealed in the bottom waiting for an opportunity to steal horses. One morning at daylight, three Indians were seen driving horses by a man living with me. They were aiming for the head of the prairie on Williams's Creek. He ran in and gave the alarm, before I was out of bed. I had William, my oldest son, to saddle my horse, which I always kept secure, while I got ready. My horse was very fast, and he was the only one left. I mounted him, taking a pair of holster pistols and a rifle. The Indians were in sight when I started, and they were three-quarters of a mile from the house when I overtook them, in plain view of my family and those who were camped there at the time. I ran up within forty yards of them, dismounted, and attempted to fire on them; but they jumped about so that it was impossible to get a true shot at them, still driving the horses before them. I again mounted and pursued them.
By this time the Indians that had remained in the bottom joined them, making twelve in number. Seeing my only resort was to stampede the horses, I made a charge, yelling and shooting at the same time. The Indians stopped and prepared for me, thinking I would run through them, as the Mexicans always did. Attention being drawn from the horses, they turned towards home, as I expected. No sooner was this done than I charged in between them and the Indians. They fired one gun and a number of arrows, but none hit me. I succeeded in recapturing the horses, eight in number.
In 1824, I was informed by Captain White, an old trader who ran a small vessel, that there were Indians at the mouth of the Colorado river. He lived at La Bahia, and had started from there, and embarked at Port Lavaca in his little boat loaded with salt to trade for corn. He steered up the Colorado to what is called the Old Landing, two miles from the mouth. The Carankawaes were camped there, and they requested him to stop on his return with corn, as they wanted to trade with him. After landing he left a Mexican and a little boy in charge of his boat. He went up Peach Creek to the Kincheloe settlement in search of corn. There he told of the Indians' being at the mouth of the river. These Indians were hostile to the whites. The settlers sent a runner to me, sixty miles above. I received the news as I was on my way to the field to plow. Taking my harness off and putting my saddle on, I was ready in about a half hour. Having but two neighbors near me I left them, and went to Judge Cummings', fifteen miles below on my route. From this settlement I took half the men, which was seven, leaving the others to watch the Wacoes. I always left half the men at home for protection. I then went to the Kincheloe settlement, and took five from there, which made my number twelve, White in the meantime had exchanged his salt for corn, the corn to be delivered and the salt to be received at the boat. So we started on our march with a sack of corn apiece on our horses, having sixty miles to go. We camped after leaving Kincheloe's at Jenning's camp, where Captain Rawls joined me with twelve men. He had gone to the assistance of Captain Jones on the Brazos. On his return to Kincheloe's settlement he heard that I had left there with only twelve men. He never unsaddled, but came on and overtook me at the place mentioned.
Next morning I started, expecting to go to where White had landed that night. Knowing I would be seen in the daylight, I waited in the postoaks until dark, then marched on, traveling twenty miles to reach the landing. We were very sleepy and tired, after traveling one hundred and twenty miles.
White was to inform the Indians of his return by making a camp-fire, a signal used by them. He gave the signal just at day-light. I left twelve of my men at the boat, for fear the Indians might come in a different direction, while I took the other half and went afoot down the river, to the Indians' landing place, about a hundred yards below where White had landed to wait for them.
About half an hour by sun the Indians came rowing up the river, very slowly and cautiously as though they expected some danger. The river banks were low, but with sufficient brush to conceal us.
Just as they were landing, I fired on them, which was intended as a signal for my men to fire. My signal shot killed one Indian, and in less than five minutes we had killed eight. The other two swam off with the canoe, which they kept between them and us; but finally one of them received a mortal wound from one of my men named Eray, 15 who took rest on my shoulder while I took hold of a bush to steady myself, and as one of the Indians raised his head to guide the canoe he received the shot. I returned home without the loss of a man.
White wanted to go down the river, so I sent some of my men with him for fear he would be molested by the remainder of the Indians. Three men went with him until they thought him out of danger, and then came back. He was taken after they left him, but through the entreaties of the Mexicans who were with him, he was turned loose. 16
HISTORIAN, DAUGHTERS OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS.
The following is a brief sketch of the life of one whose best years were spent at the capitals of Texas, and whose distinguished service as a military man was equaled by his efficiency in the civil service of the Republic of Texas.
Joseph Daniels was born in Boston, Massachusetts, July 26th, 1809. He went to New Orleans, Louisiana. in 1830, and there raised the first military company made up wholly of Americans ever organized in the city. It was called the Louisiana Greys, and he was its first lieutenant, a man named Brush being captain.
When, after the battle of San Jacinto, General Sam Houston, wounded, went to New Orleans, Lieutenant Daniels was detailed to go with his company to meet the general, and escort him to the city. This was the first meeting of the two men, whose acquaintance cemented into the warm friendship which lasted with their lives. The admiration which young Daniels felt for General Houston induced him to follow him to Texas, which he did in 1837, settling first at Houston, then the capital of the Republic.
On the 9th of November, 1838, he was appointed captain of the Milam Guards. His commission was signed by Sam Houston, President, and Geo. W. Hockley, Secretary of War. He remained for two years in Houston, and then, becoming attached to the service of the government of the Republic (holding various positions—chief clerk of the General Land Office under Col. Thos. Wm. Ward at one time, and at another acting postmaster general), he removed his residence with the seats of government to Austin, to Washington-on-the-Brazos, and thence to Austin again.
While in the latter city he became captain of the Travis Guards, and was also appointed aid-de-camp to the executive with the rank of colonel of cavalry, his commission being signed by Sam Houston, President, and Wm. C. Hamilton, Acting Secretary of War, December 5th, 1844.
In June, 1846, Captain Daniels was appointed assistant quartermaster U. S. A., with rank of captain on the staff of Gen. John A. Quitman. He served as aid to that general in the battles of San Augustine, Coyoacan Batteries, Chapultepec, and Mexico, and was brevetted for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco.
August 28th, 1847, General Quitman's division was the first to enter the City of Mexico after its capture, and as the quartermaster Major Daniels made all the public seizures, some of which were of great value. He resigned at the close of the war and went to San Francisco, California, where he died May 25th, 1886, at the age of 76 years and 10 months.
Major Daniels left a widow and two children, having been married October, 1839, to Ann Van Versel, of New Orleans, Louisiana. The marriage took place in Houston, Texas, where the only surviving daughter, Josephine F., was born. Three other children died in infancy, and Sam Houston, named after his father's old friend, was born after the removal to California.
The family history of Major Daniels is mingled with the beginnings of colonial independence in New England, and the strong Southern character of his wife, together with their long residence in Louisiana and Texas made them and their family representative of the best of the old South, forming a part of a circle of California society at once distinctive and distinguished.
The son and daughter maintain a deep reverence and love for the old ideals bequeathed to them. Josephine F. Daniels has been a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas from the first year of the society's organization, always testifying her zeal in the furtherance of objects for which the association was formed. Sam Houston Daniels has long held a highly responsible position in the Bank of California. A business man of the first ability, he takes an active interest in all questions of public importance, and is a member of the patriotic associations, “Sons of Pioneers” and “Sons of the Golden West,” who commemorate the lives and services of the California pioneers and important events of the history of the State.
Among the papers of Major Daniels were found a number of army orders issued to him while captain of the Milam Guards, which illustrate the nature of the service of this company in times of danger from Indians. On November 9th, 1838, Mr. Daniels received his commission as captain of the company he had organized and drilled. In the Telegraph and Texas Register of October 27th, 1838, is the following notice:
“The President arrived in the city on Monday last. He was escorted into the city by the Milam Guards. Their commander, Capt. Daniels, has gained much credit for his untiring exertions in behalf of the company, and is reputed one of the best drill officers in the country.”
The following orders show that the company was immediately called into service, and they also help to throw light on its movements:
Ordnance Dept., Houston, 14th Nov., 1838. To Capt. Daniels.
Sir: You are hereby authorized to take possession of any public arms you may find in the hands of the citizens of this place.
Robt. Olmer, Capt. of Ord'ce.
Headquarters near McCurley's, Nov. 29th, 1838. (By express.) To Capt. Joseph Daniels, Commanding Milam Guards.
Sir: By order of Gen. Baker I am directed to rendezvous on the Little Brazos at the house of Jesse Webb, 20 miles above Nashville. You will repair to that post with all possible diligence. It is unnecessary to urge dispatch to a soldier.
You will pass through a country infested with small bands of Indians, and it will be necessary to use every precaution to prevent them from stealing horses.
By order of Geo. W. Bonnell, Major Commanding.
Headquarters, Nacogdoches, Dec. 2d, 1838. Capt. Joseph Daniels.
Sir: You will march the Milam Guards to Fort Houston 17 and take command of that post, where you will be joined by the company under the command of Capt. Box. Immediately after your arrival at Fort Houston you will send out spies and ascertain where the enemy is, and if not found in numbers over one hundred you will give them battle. You will use the greatest precaution in the event the enemy is to be found to collect all the force you can. You will, if it is found necessary, order Capt. Worthem's company to join.
Yours respectfully, K. H. Douglass, Brig. Gen'l 3rd Brigade, T. M. P. S.—You will draw from Fort Luz Beef to last 100 men 20 days. K. H. D.
Brigade Order.
Houston, Jany. 8th, 1839. To Capt. Joseph Daniels of the Milam Guards.
Sir: With the company under your command you will march forthwith to the Falls of the Brazos 18 and there station yourself, for the purpose of giving protection to the frontier against Indian depredations.
You will daily send out flankers to the right and left of your position for the purpose of discovery, and you will exercise all the diligence and vigilance which a soldier's pride should always call forth, and which I am sure you will not be wanting in.
You will be as economical as possible, and not consume more of the provisions of that section of the country than necessity shall imperiously require.
You will report as often as convenient your progress in the object contemplated. The destiny of upper Brazos is in a measure committed to the custody of the Milam Guards, and I am sure they will return from the discharge of that duty with the gratitude of the people as their reward.
Your Obdt., Moseley Baker, Gen. 2nd Brigade. A. M. Tomkins, Aid.
Camp Arnold, Banks of the Navasota, January 14th, 1839. To Capt. J. Daniels of the Milam Guard.
Sir: In compliance with an order from you of this date to summon twelve of the Milam Guards to act as jurors in investigating the circumstances attending the death of our unfortunate friend and brother soldier, Sergeant Robt. Hamet Breedin, I have the honor to report that I have performed said duty by appointing John Chenoweth, O'Neill, Wm. G. Evans, Lewis Way, Lyman Tarbox, Best, James Duncan, Lee, Joseph Wells, Thomas Waters, Joseph Little and Jno. E. Jones said jury, and by submitting the following evidence elicited at the inquest, together with the verdict rendered in accordance therewith.
Very respectfully, yr. obt. serv't, Jos. C. Eldredge, 1st Sergeant Milam Guards.
Jury Room, Jan. 14th, 1839.
A jury having been empaneled and duly sworn by Capt. Jos. Daniels of the Milam Guards for the purpose of ascertaining the manner and circumstances attending the death of Sergt. R. Hamet Breedin proceeded to the examination of the following witnesses:
Wm. T. Carter being duly sworn, testified as follows: “I, together with Patrick D. Cunningham, was in charge of the packmules, and at the time of the accident was in advance of the company, and had stopped at the roadside to let our horses graze and to light a pipe. We dismounted, and I asked Mr. Cunningham twice if his gun was loaded; he replied that it was not. He then laid his rifle in the hollow of his right arm, and primed it. I had a piece of rag rubbed with powder in my hand ready to light. I was facing Mr. Cunningham with my back to the road when the explosion took place. I turned around and saw Sergt. Breedin in the act of falling from his horse. I ran up and caught him in my arms, and called him twice by his name, but he did not speak. His face was from me, so that I could not see whether he made an attempt to do so. I laid him on the ground, and in less than five minutes he was dead. I heard no words pass between Sergt. Breeden and Mr. Cunningham; had halted about ten minutes when Sergt. B. rode up. He had his back toward us, about fifteen paces distant, and I deem his death to have been purely accidental.”
Battinger being called and duly sworn, testified as follows: “Sergt. Beedin, Carter, Cunningham and myself were somewhat in advance of the company. Carter and Cunningham dismounted. I was perhaps sixty yards distant, and heard them speaking of making a fire, but not Breedin. Heard Carter ask Cunningham if his gun was loaded. I did not hear Cunningham reply or pass a word with Sergt. Breedin. Immediately after I heard the explosion I turned and saw Carter catch Breedin as he was falling from his horse in his arms and laid him on the ground. I then ran up and found him dead. I did not hear him speak a word.”
Patrick D. Cunningham, being called, stated as follows: “I was in advance of the company driving the pack-mules; stopped with Carter to light a pipe. Carter asked me if my rifle was loaded. I told him no; had forgotten at the time that it was loaded, but since recollect that I fired it off last evening and loaded it again this morning to shoot some game, but before I had primed it the game flew, and I was ordered to assist in packing mules, laid down my rifle and so forgot about its being loaded. Sergeant Breedin rode up a few minutes before the rifle went off. I was holding it in the hollow of my left arm, having just primed, snapped it for the purpose of lighting a rag held by Mr. Carter, when it went off, and I saw Sergt. Breedin falling from his horse. I never had an angry word or dispute with Sergt. Breedin.”
The foregoing is the evidence given before the jury at an inquest held on the body of Sergeant R. H. Breedin this day.
(Signed) John Chenoweth, Foreman. Jos. C. Eldridge, Clerk. We, the jury, find that Sergeant Robert Hamet Breedin, of the Milam Guards, came to his death by the accidental discharge of a rifle in the hands of Patrick D. Cunningham. John Chenoweth, Foreman.
By the 21st of February, 1839, the Milam Guards seem to have been again in Houston, as shown by the following receipt:
Houston, Feby. the 21st, 1839.
Rec'd of J. W. White, Lieut. of the Milam Guards, sixteen Public Horses and two Mules in Low order, also six Sadels and Bridels and Two Blankets.
P. Caldwell, Q. Master.
On February 24th, of the same year, Captain Danlels received the following:
Houston, Texas, February 24th, 1839. To Joseph Daniels, Esq.
Sir: You are hereby appointed a captain in the first regiment of infantry in the Texian army, and will receive your Commission as soon as the same is ratified by the Senate at their next Session. In the meantime you will discharge faithfully the duties devolving on you as such, and will be obeyed and respected accordingly.
By Order of the President, Mirabeau B. Lamar.
Your obedient Servant, A. Sidney Johnston, Secretary of War.
The last document in my possession relating to the Milam Guards in connection with Captain Daniels is as follows:
Capt. Daniels of the Milam Guards will deliver to the order of Capt. Holliday twenty muskets belonging to the government.
Geo. W. Hockley, Col. Ord. Ord'n Department, 7th October, 1839.
On December 19, 1839, the Morning Star, a newspaper published at Houston, Texas, mentions that the Milam Guards are petitioning Congress for an act of incorporation, and says: “We trust their prayers may be granted. When the fierce savages of the East threatened death and ruin to the frontier settlers, they marched with promptitude to the rescue. Congress should encourage the organization of volunteer forces. * * * To Capt. Daniels and his brave comrades we wish success in their efforts.”
When Capt. Daniels entered the service of the government and removed from Houston, James Reilly became captain of the Milam Guards.
The following papers relate to Capt. Daniels's service as captain of the Travis Guards at Austin:
Republic of Texas, County of Travis.
By the authority of the Republic of Texas and the power vested in me as sheriff of said county, have this day summoned Captain Daniels to call out the Travis Guards to assist in arresting Castro and Flacco, chiefs of the Lappan tribe of Indians, and bring them before some justice of the peace to answer the charge of some of their tribe's having murdered one James Boyse on the 2nd inst.
A. C. Macfarlane, Sheriff T. C. Austin, October 3rd, 1841.
Capt. D.
Sir: You will hold yourself in readiness until you hear from me, as I am going to see Castro and Flacco, and in case of any resistance I will send you a message, when you will proceed to the camp of the Indians, if not otherwise instructed.
Yours, A. C. Macfarlane.
Capt. J. Daniels, Travis Guards.
Dr. Sir: You will much oblige me by letting the bearer have five of the short Roman swords belonging to your company for the use of the Masonic procession.
Yours truly, George K. Teulan, Chairman Com. Arr. Austin, June 23rd, 1841.
Besides the actual service in the field performed by these two companies whenever the needs of the country required, they were to the front in all leading social functions. The newspapers of the day publish notices of military balls given to celebrate the battle of San Jacinto, and the journal of the Milam Guards contains the following resolution regarding such a ball: “And be it further resolved, that said ball shall be strictly a military ball, and none others than heads of families, the officers of army and navy will be invited except by special invitation of the committee on invitation. Adopted April 16, 1839. Jos. C. Eldridge, Sec. pro tem.”
It is probable that no period in the history of the United States, with the possible exception of that embracing the Civil War and its immediate causes, has monopolized so large a share of the attention of history writers and others as the period between 1840 and 1850, the leading events of which were the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. The men and events of no period have been more persistently maligned and more recklessly distorted. The poison that permeates the larger histories carries unmistakable evidences of the ignorance and prejudice that darkened the minds of the authors. The smaller histories, and especially school histories, which for the most part are compiled from the material furnished by the larger histories, have, unintentionally, no doubt, as a rule, selected out many fragments that are real Trojan horses, and baleful in making impressions upon the minds of the young. I have recently examined two Southern school histories, which bear many evidences of having been dressed up to suit the sectional sentiment supposed to predominate in the South, with several doses of this poison extracted along with other matter.
The very strained and elaborate efforts made in the political campaign of 1844 to blacken the reputation of the Texas pioneer and his work as a nation builder, as well as the libelous defamation of statesmen and citizens of the United States, who actively, yet legitimately and honorably, aided in so great a consummation as the annexation of Texas, it would seem ought to have been consigned to the museum of the history of partisanship in this country, but such is not the case. The newspaper, the pamphlet, the speech, the sermon, the vituperation, the billingsgate that appealed to the baser passions of men from 1840 to 1850, have been exalted to the plane of history, and such men as Jackson, Calhoun, Houston, Polk and other illustrious statesmen are gathered in a group with the Texas pioneer, and they are summed up as swindlers, robbers, liars, thieves, cowards, adventurers, slavocrats, “foul mouthed tobacco-spurting Indian killers, demagogues and politicians hunting around to steal a slice of land suitable for slave labor.” 19 This forceful, if not elegant, characterization is expurgated before it reaches the school room.
The main end at which all the labor of this class of historians is aimed is to show, in the first place, that the annexation of Texas to the United States was the culmination of a deliberate scheme to enlarge the area of slavery, and was therefore a measure purely in the interests of the slaveholder. To establish this they hold up the Texas pioneer as a mere instrument in the hands of the slave-holder to make Texas a slave colony, and say that when Texas became large enough to make a respectable show of a rebellion, the revolution against Mexico was precipitated, the slaveholder furnishing the men and means requisite to the success of that revolution. And the effort has been to show, in the second place, that the immediate cause of the war in 1846 was the unwarranted and unprovoked invasion of Mexican territory, which forced Mexico, in self-defense, to attack United States forces and thus become technically responsible fot that war. 20
A very wide range of facts is drawn upon to establish these propositions—facts selected out from a great mass and grouped so as to give plausibility to their theories. To reply in detail to these would consume more than two entire issues of The Quarterly. In lieu thereof some general facts will be given, which will serve, in the main, as an answer to the whole.
As the annexation of Texas and its logical sequence, the acquisition of territory to the Pacific, was the second great step in the history of territorial expansion, a glance at the history of expansion in general in the United States will afford some light upon the attitude assumed in some sections against the measure.
Sectional jealousy is coeval with the history of the country. In the original formation of the Union it manifested itself in various ways. The purchase of Louisiana in 1803, however, was the culmination, in the eyes of New England, of a series of outrages in that section which justified extreme measures. To meet the argument that the larger part of the acquisition would be in the northern section of the Union, they said, “This will be formed into new States, and the South will use them to govern the East, until growing in numbers themselves, will combine to rule both the South and East. Under either set of rulers, New England is doomed.” Public meetings were held, resolutions adopted, and memorials prepared looking to the formation of a northern confederacy. New York was to be secured by the influence of Aaron Burr, who, as part of the scheme, became a candidate for governor of his State. His defeat, to take the lead in a similar scheme a year or two later, together with discouragements from the great mass of censervative citizens, put an end to the first effort at secession. The agitation, however, led to the preparation of a constitutional amendment restricting congressional representation of the Southern States to the actual number of the free white population. The proposition to submit it to the people passed the lower house by the aid of Southern votes, but failed to pass the Senate. 21
The fight on the Louisiana question, however, did not stop at this point. Every obstacle that partisan genius could invent was put in the way of establishing a territorial government over Louisiana. The same constitutional questions were raised by the Federalists of that day as are now raised by Democrats over our recent acquisitions, and the same answers made by the strict constructionists of that day as are now made by the loose constructionists.
Overcome at this point, the next opposition was to the admission of Louisiana as a State. Josiah Quincy, then representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate, and the leader of the opposition, again raised the secession flag, but the disadvantages of a minority and the overshadowing importance of the war with England soon relegated this opposition to the rear. 22
In the negotiations which led to the treaty of 1819, although John Quincy Adams was the especial champion of the claim of the United States to Texas, New England opposition to the acquisition of Florida was so extreme that President Monroe and the slave-holding members of his cabinet, as a concession to New England feeling, forced Mr. Adams to give up, not only Texas, but over 60,000 square miles of what was confessedly a part of the Louisiana purchase, and therefore a part of United States territory, so that more area was lost than gained by the Florida purchase and treaty of 1819, irrespective of any claim which the United States had to Texas proper. 23
Coming on down to the annexation of Texas, opposition arose from the same source, with John Quincy Adams, the former expansionist, in the lead. No invective was too strong, no vituperation too bitter, and no constitutional construction too strained for his opposition to the measure. Finding that the former efforts at secession were fruitless, Massachusetts now adopted the plan of South Carolina, and by legislative action solemnly nullified the acts of Congress, and unless recently repealed this nullification still stands as part of the law of Massachusetts. 24
The present attitude of Ex-Governor Boutwell, Senator Hoar, and Edward Atkinson upon the matter of expansion is therefore historically and geographically consistent.
To determine the question as to whether the early movements made towards the peopling of Texas were due to the inspiration of the slave holder, we need only note one or two or the formative influences of that period.
Moses Austin, in whose mind the colonization of Texas originated, was a Connecticut man, born and educated in that State. He came to Virginia and remained several years, but never engaged in planting. In his mining operations he imported English laborers. Just before the expiration of President Washington's last term, he left Virginia and went to Missouri, and there engaged first in mining, then in banking. When Missouri reached the necessary stage of development to entitle her to admission as a State into the Union, Austin, true to the instincts of the pioneer, left and came to Texas. His son, Stephen F. Austin, who succeeded him in his colonizing enterprise, was, like many Southern men of that day, an avowed opponent of the institution of slavery. The promulgation of the Monroe doctrine in 1823 was a virtual guaranty of the autonomy of Mexico, and the relations between that country and the United States at that time were of the friendliest character. Many individual citizens of the United States had aided Mexico in her revolution, and the Monroe doctrine was an especial sign of the friendship of the Northern republic. The result was the enactment of liberal colonization laws in terms inviting population to her borders. In response to this, besides Austin, a number of empresarios entered into contracts to bring in settlers. Of these, Robertson, DeWitt, Edwards, Milam, Thorn, and Chambers were from the slave holding States, and Burnet and Vehlein from the non-slave holding States; De Leon, Dominguez, Zavala, Filisola, and Padilla were Mexicans; Purnell, Drake, Exeter, Wilson, S. J. Wilson, and Beales were Englishmen; Cameron a Scotchman; and Powers, McMullen, and McGloin, Irishmen. The only empresarios who actually introduced permanent settlers into the State, besides Austin, were Robertson, De Witt, De Leon, Powers, and McMullen and McGloin. Those introduced into the colonies of the three first named constituted ninety per cent. of the population in 1835. Austin was a pioneer by inheritance and education. Robertson, though a native of North Carolina, was carried when a child to Tennessee by his father, who was the brother and partner of Gen. James Robertson, the founder of Nashville. De Witt was a native Kentuckian, but like Moses Austin, went to Missouri at an early day, and was a conspicuous factor in its development from a wilderness to a State. Austin's colonists were from all parts of the United States and the principal countries of Europe. As many as sixty families came to his colony at one time from the State of New York. The colonists of Robertson and De Witt were principally from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. As a rule, they were a race of pioneers, the boldest and most successful that had ever reclaimed any part of the great area of the United States. The pioneers of the North who crossed the Alleghanies were not able to cope with the savage in Ohio until Mad Anthony Wayne planted the flag in advance of the outermost settlements. As he pushed on to Indiana and Michigan, Wm. Henry Harrison performed the same service, and later on, Zachary Taylor cleared the wilderness of Illinois and Wisconsin. In the Southeast the same policy had to be pursued by the government of the United States in driving back the Seminoles, Creeks, and others, but the westward stream that started out from Virginia and the Carolinas crossed the Alleghanies and unaided drove out the savages, reclaimed the fertile territory of Kentucky and Tennessee, demanded an outlet through the Mississippi, spurred Mr. Jefferson to purchase Louisiana, crossed the Mississippi, settled Missouri and Arkansas and started them on their career as States in the Union, and from 1822 to 1836 struggled and fought in Texas against the greatest odds of any pioneer population in the history of the country.
This was the predominant element that gradually coalesced with kindred spirits from all climes and laid the political foundations of Texas. In the organization of the first government, David G. Burnet, a New Jersey man, was president, and Lorenzo De Zavala, of Mexico, vice-president. Maine gave Ebenezer Allen, the second attorney general, and Timothy Pilsbury, one of the first representatives both in the Texas and the United States Congress. From New Hampshire came Joshua Fletcher, first treasurer of the provisional government; from Vermont, Ira Ingram, first speaker of the Texas Congress, and Royal T. Wheeler, one of the first justices of the supreme court; from Massachusetts, Anson Jones, third president, and Asa Brigham, first treasurer of the Republic; from Connecticut, besides the Austins, Eliphalet M. Pease, comptroller, member of the legislature and governor, and Ashbel Smith, minister to Great Britain and France; from New York, Gail Borden, member of the Consultation, Jno. P. Borden, first commissioner of the general land office, Thomas H. Borden and Francis A. Moore, editors and proprietors of the quasi official newspaper of the Republic, Louis P. Cook, second secretary of the navy, Erastus Smith, Thos. J. Pilgrim, and others conspicuous in the various walks of life; from Pennsylvania, S. Rhoads Fisher, first secretary of the navy, David S. Kaufman, several times speaker of the lower house of Congress and one of the first two members for Texas in the United States Congress; from Ohio, Governor Robinson and General Sydney Sherman; from Indiana, John Rice Jones, postmaster general; from Illinois, M. B. Menard; while from Great Britain and Germany there were Cameron, Ward, Linn, Erath, and numerous others prominent both in civil and military affairs.
The leading Mexicans in Texas were also in full sympathy with the revolution, Navarro and Seguin being among the most prominent. The latter commanded a company at San Jacinto which responded with enthusiasm to the battle cry “Remember the Alamo.”
The constitution of the Republic of Texas is a model of its kind, and it is said that Daniel Webster characterized it as having no superior, and no equal save the constitution of the United States. Imprisonment for debt was abolished fifteen years in advance of any legislation by the United States Congress in that direction. A homestead law was enacted, which has been the model for all the States of the Union to pattern after. In property rights the wife was made equal with the husband, and many other laws may be cited as showing advanced and enlightened statesmanship.
The first efforts of the people in 1832 and 1833 to secure separate statehood have been grossly misrepresented. 25 The political machinery of the dual State of Coahuila and Texas was wholly unsuited to a republican form of government. So late as 1834, there were but two representatives in the congress of that State from Texas, pretending to represent a population scattered over 200,000 square miles of area, and widely diversè in race, education, and political traditions. There were Mexicans at Nacogdoches, San Antonio, and Goliad; Irish at Refugio and San Patricio; and Americans in the central, southern, and eastern portions of what is now the State, pursuing different occupations and having different wants, all with a capital over a thousand miles distant, with no railroad nor telegraph, nor even well defined roads, having department chiefs with undefined powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, and a suffrage system so hampered as to render it useless, no laws being published and distributed among the masses. These were but a few of the many insuperable obstacles to the maintenance of a republican government in the dual State of Coahuila and Texas.
The revolution which began in Texas in 1835 owed its existence to causes not confined to Texas. The movement was quite general throughout Mexico, but in those States nearest to the national capital the presence of an organized military force under the direction of Santa Anna rendered actual resistance useless. Zacatecas made a bold stand, but her defeat was so crushing as to put the whole population of Mexico at the feet of the usurper. Coahuila was in a state of anarchy, and under the power of one of Santa Anna's generals, and it remained for Texans either to abandon their homes and fly across the Sabine, or to remain and resist. They did the latter, not as a separate and independent sovereignty, but as a State under the Mexican flag. The heroes of the Alamo perished fighting under that flag, and while the declaration of independence was being adopted in convention at Old Washington Santa Anna was held in check at San Antonio by Travis and his men. These aspects of the Texas revolution seem to have been ignored by so careful a historian as Woodrow Wilson.
Two attempts had been made by John Quincy Adams, and one in the early part of General Jackson's administration, to purchase Texas from Mexico, neither of which was inspired by the residents of Texas.
After the battle of San Jacinto the policy of anexation was generally favored in Texas, but the overtures of Texas met with no favorable response in the United States. As Texas grew in population and wealth the annexation sentiment grew in the United States, but it took no practical shape until after Mexico made two feeble and ineffectual attempts to invade Texas in 1842. A successful defense of her territory against all attempts at reconquest, and the maintenance of a well organized civil government from 1836 on in the minds of many justified a recognition of her status as an independent sovereignty. The United States and the leading countries of Europe had treated her as such, and in 1843 an anexation treaty was proposed, which was vehemently opposed by New England, with John Quincy Adams in the lead. The United States was officially notified by Mexico that such a step would be regarded as a cause for war. 26 This threat afforded the Whigs an excuse for opposing annexation, and that party as a mass resisted the measure. The result was that when it was submitted to Congress, in 1844, it was defeated by a decisive vote. From this action of Congress the friends of annexation appealed to the people, and the issue of annexation overshadowed all others in that notable campaign which resulted in the election of Mr. Polk to the presidency. An analysis of that vote, by States, will show that it was neither a Northern nor Southern nor a slaveholder's movement. The non-slaveholding States of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, with an aggregate white population of 6,201,991 (census of 1840), voted for it, while the non-slaveholding States of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Ohio, with an aggregate white population of 3,281,401, voted against it. The slaveholding States of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, with an aggregate white population of 2,489,358, voted for it, while the slaveholding States of Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, with an aggregate white population of 2,092,515, voted against it. This result, too, was in spite of the fact that Henry Clay, than whom no statesman in the history of the United States ever had a larger personal following, was at the head of the opposition. The campaign literature of that day shows that the main argument used throughout the United States, outside of New England, against annexation, was that the annexation of Texas would necessarily result in Mexico's waging war. This is significant in considering further on which nation was responsible for the Mexican war.
In view of this sentiment in the United States, another treaty was prepared late in 1844. When news of this reached the ears of the Mexican minister at Washington, he promptly notified the authorities that “Should the United States commit the unheard of attempt (inaudite atentado) of appropriating to themselves a portion of Mexican territory he would demand his passport and his country would declare war.” 27 In other words, if Texas was annexed, or attempted to be annexed to the United States, Mexico would declare war. The resolution to annex Texas did pass both houses of Congress, and the minister as promptly demanded his passports and left the country. It is well to note at this juncture that the United States was the first country to recognize the independence of Mexico as a republic, and to establish diplomatic relations with her; and that Spain did not acknowledge the independence of Mexico until sixteen years after independence was actually won, but chose to regard her as a revolting province. This was the attitude of Spain and Mexico when San Jacinto was fought. Following the example of her mother country, Mexico refused to acknowledge Texas independence and chose to regard her as a revolting province; hence Almonte's reference to it as a part of the territory of Mexico. In the mean time, however, Mexico had solemnly covenanted that she would, and she actually did, recognize the independence of Texas, upon condition that Texas would annex herself to no other country, and gave Great Britain and France as security for the permanent autonomy of Texas.
In view of the threatening aspect of affairs, President Polk (called by H. H. Bancroft, Von Holst, and that numerous class of historians, “Polk the Mendacious”) referred in his message of December 2, 1845, to the situation in the following clear and succinct statement: “Texas has declared her independence and maintained it by her arms for more than nine years. She has had an organized government in successful operation during that period. Her separate existence as an independent state has been recognized by the United States and the principal powers of Europe. Treaties of commerce and navigation had been concluded by different nations, and it had become manifest to the whole world that any further attempt on the part of Mexico to conquer her, or overthrow her government, would be vain. Even Mexico herself had become satisfied of this fact, and while the question of annexation was pending before the people of Texas, the government of Mexico, by a formal act, agreed to recognize the independence of Texas on condition that she would not annex herself to any other power. The agreement to acknowledge the independence of Texas, with or without this condition, is conclusive against Mexico. The independence of Texas is a fact, conceded by Mexico herself, and she has no right or authority to prescribe restrictions on the form of government which Texas might afterwards choose to assume.”
New England was now ablaze with excitement. The legislature of Massachusetts solemnly nullified the annexation resolutions, as before stated, and every form of opposition, except open rebellion, was manifested throughout that region, and others that caught the contagion.
The Mexican minister left Washington on the 7th of March, four days after the approval of the resolutions by President Tyler. When the news reached Mexico, that country was excited from center to circumference. On the 29th of the same month their Congress decreed a large loan to meet the expenses of what they termed “the impending war.” The condition of affairs was officially announced to the nation, and the people were summoned to arms in defence of their rights and honor. On the 4th of June the President issued his proclamation, stating that Mexico would oppose annexation with all the strength at her command, and would put into the field the whole strength of the army. On the 12th of July Condé, the war minister, issued a circular letter announcing that the government had decided on a declaration of war, and on the 16th he ordered the filling up of contingents of troops “for the war which she wages against the United States.”
In the meantime Texas was arranging her part of the annexation. A special session of her Congress was called to meet June 16th, and on the 23rd it accepted the terms and called a convention of the people to meet July 4th, ratify annexation, and to frame a constitution. This was done with but one dissenting voice. The United States had not yet sent a soldier west of the Sabine, but in view of the threats of Mexico, the commands then on the western border of Louisiana, where they had been stationed since 1819, were filled out so as to reach 1500 men.
On the 20th of July the supreme government of Mexico decided, with the unanimous consent of the council, that “From the moment when the supreme government shall know that the development of Texas has annexed to the American Union or that troops from the Union have invaded it, it shall declare the nation at war with the United States.” 28
On the 12th of August, Gen. Taylor's troops arrived at Corpus Christi.
Notwithstanding the war-like movements in Mexico in March, April, May, June, and July, the United States learned that Herrera, who was installed as president on the 16th of September, was willing to negotiate with a view of settling all matters in dispute. Accordingly, Consul Black was sent to him to ascertain whether Mexico would receive an envoy empowered to settle all matters in dispute between the two countries. Herrera was in the embarrassing position of being in favor of negotiating a peace, yet at the head of a government whose people were clamoring for war and denouncing as perfidy and treason all attempts to negotiate a peace. 29 As was natural in such a situation he answered evasively to the effect that Mexico would receive a “commissioner authorized to settle the present dispute in a peaceable, honorable and just manner,” whereupon President Polk sent John Slidell, who arrived at Mexico City on the 8th of December.
In the meantime the divisions of Paredes, Gaona, and Arista had been sent to the Rio Grande, or, as the Mexicans said, “to the front.” Paredes had proceeded on his way as far as San Luis Potosí, where he learned of the contemplated negotiations. He stopped his division and issued a pronunciamento announcing that he would reorganize the government on a military basis, and was on his way back to Mexico when Slidell arrived. Under such circumstances Slidell presented his credentials as envoy extraordinary; but the government refused to receive him, on the ground that he had not come as a commissioner to settle the present matter in dispute, but as an envoy authorized to settle all disputes. He remained in Mexico until Paredes arrived. On the 16th of December Paredes deposed Herrera, and after some ineffectual attempts at negotiation, Slidell returned to the United States. 30
Advised of these events General Taylor was adding to his forces at Corpus Christi, and getting things ready to resist the threatened invasion of Texas. In October the people of Texas ratified the new State Constitution, and the terms of annexation. In December Congress passed the act extending the United States laws over Texas, and on the 19th of February following the last formal act was performed which made Texas a State of the Union. Negotiations were at an end, and on the 12th of March General Taylor broke camp and started his army for the Rio Grande. This was the line chosen by Mexico as her front, rather than the Nueces. In his instructions to General Taylor, the President took the extra precaution to order him to act strictly on the defensive, and if he should find any occupied garrisons on the left branch of the Rio Grande to take all needful precautions against a hostile collision. He arrived opposite Matamoras in April, and immediately dispatched General Worth across the river with a courteous note addressed to the Mexican commander at Matamoras expressing the desire that the two armies maintain peaceable relations pending the settlement, by their respective civil authorities, of all matters in controversy between the two governments. The only reply to this was a curt note to the effect that his movements were considered as acts of war.
On the 12th of April, General Ampudia sent him a note peremptorily ordering him to move back across the Nueces, under penalty of immediate hostilities. 31
On the 26th of April a squadron of cavalry was ambushed and captured by some Mexican troops that had crossed the river, and with this and the siege of Fort Brown and the battle of Palo Alto on the 8th of May, the Mexican war was launched, the war which the historians before mentioned are handing down to us as the war of “Polk the Mendacious.”
According to the Mexican, New England, and whig theory, the boundary between the United States and Mexico was the Sabine, and therefore, the moment a United States soldier crossed the Sabine, Mexican territory was invaded, and the United States would be the aggressor. Santa Anna's announced purpose when he took charge was to drive the Gringos across the Sabine, but in actual practice the Rio Grande was, and for ten years previously had been, the extreme outpost of Mexico.
There never had been any dispute between Texas and Mexico as to a boundary line between them. Such a dispute would have been on the same plane as a dispute between Virginia and the United States as to whether the Potomac or Rappahannock was the boundary between that State and the United States. The recognition of such a dispute by Mexico would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of the fact that Texas was sovereign, and therefore separate from Mexico, a concession of the only point at issue between Mexico and Texas.
The idea, so often expressed, especially in our school histories, that the Mexican war was occasioned by a dispute over the territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande was a political afterbirth, having only a very remote connection, if any at all, with the real cause of that war. It was a partisan invention of the enemies of annexation, used as a means of placing the responsibility for the war upon President Polk, and all that he represented in that brilliant epoch of American history. Once concede the fact that the country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande actually belonged to Mexico in 1845 and 1846, and all the odium which the most extreme partisans would cast upon the Southern people generally, and the old Texan in particular, immediately attaches.
If anything in the history of Mexico, Coahuila, Chihuahua, New Mexico, Tamaulipas, and Texas is well established, it is the fact that Texas had no definite, officially defined western boundaries prior to December 19, 1836, when she defined that boundary by act of her Congress. In the discussions of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States over the compromise measures of 1850, with every known source of information available to the able and learned men who for days and weeks investigated the subject, no fact was brought out which showed that Texas had any well defined permanent boundaries on the west, nor had she any fixed boundaries on the east and north until the treaty of 1819 fixed them. The facts from which H. H. Bancroft, Von Holst, and a large majority of the leading historians of the United States indulge the presumption that the westward march of General Taylor from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was an invasion of Mexico involves a recapitulation of the history of the western boundary of Texas in so far as the same is accessible. The Constitution of the United States makes it the duty of the President, when there is threatened invasion, to mobilize troops and repel it. As Texas, after July, 1845, was to all intents and purposes, save the perfunctory acts necessary to adjust her governmental machinery to statehood, a State of the United States, President Polk would have been justified not only in ordering General Taylor to the Nueces, but to the Rio Grande and beyond. President Jackson, Lincoln, or Cleveland would have taken such a course at least five months sooner than President Polk did.
As the boundary question has been pushed to the front as a material matter among the causes of the Mexican war, and it has been assumed as a matter of fact that the Rio Grande was not the western boundary of Texas, and that all territory between that river and the Nueces was Mexican territory, a review of the history of the subject may not be out of place. It has received elaborate attention in speeches made in both houses of Congress, in newspapers, magazines and such pro hac vice productions as Jay's Review of the Mexican War. The discussion takes up several hundred pages of the Congressional Globe, and is marked by a research almost without parallel in the parliamentary history of the United States Congress, but in all these one will search in vain for any reference to any law, decree, order, treaty, or other official designation of the Nueces or any other western boundary of Texas. All the learning on the subject is based upon a common repute in sections remote from either river, a common repute by no means general except in so far as geographers made it so by making maps, which themselves were based upon hearsay testimony.
Taking this as a basis for determining whether or not Texas ever had any actual western boundary line prior to 1845, except such as was marked by the sword in the struggle with Mexico, we find— First.
That the Rio Grande was its ancient western boundary before it became a province of Spain, and continued to be the generally regarded boundary line up to the middle of the 18th century.
Second.That since that time the line had been variously regarded as at the Aransas, the San Antonio, the Medina, and the Nueces.
H. H. Baneroft, who has compiled probably the most elaborate history of Mexico extant, and who may be regarded as standard authority on that subject, when discussing questions free from the polar disturbance of the slavery issue, says, in Vol. I, History North Mexican States and Texas, on page 375, “Coahuila, in the 17th century, was the region north of 26° between the Bolson de Mapimi on the west and the Rio del Norte on the east.”
Writing of a later period he says (Ibid., p. 604): “Coahuila extended northeast across the Rio Del Norte, to the Medina, which was generally regarded as the boundary between that province and Texas.”
How, when, or by what authority the boundary line was moved from the Rio Grande to the Medina, he does not state; but, in a note, says: “This boundary is not a satisfactory one. * * * As a matter of fact there were no exact bounds, for none were needed. * * * Why the Medina, rather than the Nueces or Hondo, was generally spoken of as the boundary it is hard to determine.”
As Tamaulipas was not organized until after the middle of the 17th century, we have to rely upon the circumstances attending the subjugation of that region and its organization into a province to determine what was regarded as the boundary between that province and Texas.
In this connection it must be remembered that the local affairs of the provinces of Mexico under Spain were under the control of a tripartite government, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, first one and then another, particularly the military and ecclesiastical, performing all the functions of government. Their jurisdictions, functional and territorial, were different, and in speaking generally of divisional lines there is uncertainty as to which is meant, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.
When José de Escandon, a military subaltern at Querétaro, was commissioned to subjugate, settle, and organize the Tamaulipas region, the extent of his operations north confined him to a distance which took him to the Rio Grande. When he reached that point he stopped, but permitted Basterra, one of his captains, to go on to the Nueces. This officer went as far east as the Guadalupe river to the old mission, La Bahía del Espíritu Santo. He dismantled this mission and re-established it an Santa Dorotea (Goliad), on the San Antonio river. Accompanying his official report was a map, entitled “Colonia de Nuevo Santander,” 32 with that river as the eastern bounds of his province. From this circumstance the San Antonio river was regarded as the boundary, notwithstanding the fact that San Antonio, further up the same river, was and had been the capital of Texas since 1715. This continued to be regarded as the boundary until the Nueces was put down upon the maps as such, it is said, about the year 1805.
In 1833, Texas, which had been attached to Coahuila since 1824, petitioned the Mexican government for separate statehood, and now arose the first occasion for Mexico, as a republic, to officially consider the question.
Santa Anna commissioned Almonte, a man of wide learning, and his trusted adviser, to visit Texas and acquire such information as would enable him to intelligently consider and act upon the petition, and among other things to thoroughly explore and mark out a western boundary line.
The general features of Almonte's report are familiar to the student of Texas history. In the matter of a boundary he said: “Notwithstanding the fact that up to this time it has been believed that the Rio Nueces is the dividing line between Texas and Coahuila, 33 for it appears so on the maps, I am informed by the government that in this an error has been made by the geographers, and that the true line ought to commence at the mouth of the Aransas and run thence to its source; thence in a direct line to the confluence of the San Antonio with the Medina river, continuing thence up the left bank of the Medina to its source; thence in a straight line to the boundaries of Chihuahua.” 34
Almonte, in this definition of a boundary, ignores Tamaulipas, has Coahuila extending down to the mouth of the Aransas, makes the Nueces appear as an old boundary between Texas and Coahuila, and leaves more than one-half of the western part of Texas without a boundary,—all of which shows that the highest authorities in Mexico were totally ignorant of the actual geography of the country.
The petition of Texas was not granted, and this proposed boundary came to naught. It is cited as an illustration of the character of knowledge the most prominent Mexican officials had so late as 1835.
When the people of Texas determined, in 1835, to rid the country of the presence of the Mexican army, they made the Rio Grande their boundary, it being the most natural, the most convenient, and for nearly one hundred years the most generally recognized western boundary; and from December, 1835, up to the battle of Palo Alto, the evidence is well nigh conclusive that both Mexico and Texas regarded and treated it as the western boundary. In November, 1835, the Texans captured Fort Lipantitlan, the only garrisoned fort between the Nueces and Rio Grande. In December they captured San Antonio and a garrison of 1600 Mexican troops, and paroled them upon the condition, among others, that they leave Texas,—not by going beyond the Nueces, but beyond the Rio Grande. In April, 1836, they captured Santa Anna and the force immediately under him, and stipulated with him that his life (which had been forfeited by the Goliad massacre) should be spared, and the bulk of his army be permitted to retire, unmolested, across the Rio Grande, which in future should be the recognized western boundary of Texas. It is true Santa Anna was a prisoner when he made this agreement, but he obtained for himself and his army every benefit asked, and upon principles of equity its annulment by Mexico was not justified. Its binding force in morals and law was recognized and insisted upon by Filisola, his next in command, who asserted that the army was saved from destruction and a national disgrace avoided by it.
Santa Anna's ideas as to a western boundary may be inferred from an expression in a letter to President Houston, November 5, 1836, in which he referred to it as a matter that had been “pending many years.” This period, of course, long antedated the Texas revolution.
After the armistice between Texas and Mexico, in June, 1844, General Woll, in command of the frontier forces of Mexico, issued his proclamation from beyond the Rio Grande, denouncing as “traitors all who should be found at the distance of four leagues from the left bank,” not of the Nueces, but “of the Rio Grande,” 35 clearly indicating his idea as to where the boundary was.
In February, 1847, Santa Anna, in writing to his government concerning a peace messenger that had been sent to him by General Taylor, said, “I observed we could say nothing of peace while the Americans were on this side of the Bravo,” showing that he still thought the Americans would be in their proper place anywhere east of the Rio Grande.
The matter can hardly be better stated than it was by the Mexican peace commissioners, who said, “The intention of making the Bravo a limit has been announced in the clearest terms for the last twelve years. *** After the battle of San Jacinto, in 1836, that was the territory we stipulated to evacuate, and which we accordingly did evacuate by falling back on Matamoras. In this place was stationed what was called the army of the north; and though it is true that expeditions and incursions were made upon them, even as far as Bejar, we have very soon evacuated, leaving the intervening space absolutely free, and General Taylor found it so when he entered there by order of his government”—an admission that if the Nueces had ever been a boundary, it had been changed to the Rio Grande by the Texans, long before General Taylor entered.
Mr. Von Holst, who professes to have visited Texas, characterizes this strip as a desert one hundred and sixty miles wide by about one hundred and twenty long, and he says that being a desert it was the suitable and proper boundary; but Mr. Bancroft, on the other hand, considers it land suitable for slave labor. The slave population, in 1860 in this area, outside of Corpus Christi, was ninety-nine, and the assessed valuation for 1899 over $22,000,000, while its real value will approximate $50,000,000, a sum considerably in excess of the assessed values of the entire State of Texas in 1846.
Much stress has been laid upon actual occupancy as necessary to title, as well as upon the fact that Texas had never exercised actual jurisdiction over this strip. It must be remembered that Texas started on her career as a republic with a population of only about 30,000, and with an area of over 300,000 square miles. If her title had depended upon actual occupancy, thousands of square miles would still be “no man's land,” although her population has swelled to 3,000,000. The exercise of jurisdiction is an incident of population. The ability to drive away intruders, and to continuously protect territory from intrusion, was the basis of the claim to the dominion which Texas had over this strip. When General Taylor took possession he did so by permission of Texas. Mexico had never driven an intruder from it since 1836, whereas Texas had driven the Mexicans from it, in November and December, 1835, in 1836, in March, 1842, in September, 1842, and in 1845 her constructive possession was as complete as it was to over 200,000 square miles of other territory, conceded by all to belong to Texas proper.
Von Holst says 36 that Texas admitted that she had no title west of the Nueces by making an alliance with the leaders of the movement for the Republic of the Rio Grande. In this he has been misinformed. President Lamar not only refused 37 to enter into any such alliance, but ordered 38 the forces that had gathered on the west bank of the Nueces to disperse.
Time and space will not allow a notice of the many errors in fact, and still more in conclusion, that now pass current as the history of annexation and the Mexican war. When they are sifted out and weighed, it will clearly appear that the origin, growth, and development of Texas into a republic and her subsequent annexation to the United States was neither a Northern nor a Southern, but a purely Western movement, neither long retarded by the abolitionist nor hastened by the slaveholder, nor seriously affected by the political storms of the East; but a movement having its inspiration in the minds of a class which before the beginning of the last century crossed the Alleghanies and gave to civilization the fertile valley of the Mississippi. It will be seen that its motive power was neither sectional nor political in the partisan sense of that term, and that it was neither unlawful nor immoral. Had it been political aggrandizement, Texas would long since have had in the Senate of the United States ten instead of two representatives, with a corresponding increase of power in the electoral college. It was not a move in the interests of slavery, as annexation affected that institution neither one way nor the other. Texas had the option in 1845 of remaining a separate republic, with slavery, and guarantees from the two most powerful nations of the earth, or of casting her lot with the United States. She chose the latter in the face of the dangers that then threatened that institution.
The immediate cause of the Mexican war was not a matter of boundary, for no such question was in dispute between Texas and Mexico, such a thing being the subsequent outgrowth of partisan invention. Between the United States and Mexico the expressed, sole cause was annexation. The conservative elements in Mexico were powerless before the tornado of public sentiment that swept her on into a desolating war.
When the final verdict of history is reached, and the partisan excrescences that now disfigure its pages are pruned away, that period, instead of being one of the darkest, will become one of the brightest beacons that light the path of the Anglo-American, and the memories of Houston, Jackson, Calhoun, and Polk, and the rest of that illustrious band of statesmen that added Texas to the galaxy of States, will be cherished by all true Americans; while the Texas pioneer will stand facile princeps in the van of the movement that has conquered a c