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For every modern man the house of life has a thousand doors
and windows; his necessities, passions, ambitions, duties, pas-
times; all the arts, all the sciences, all the professions; religion,
politics. Were the light of each and all these thousand windows
and doors to beat upon us in the blinding splendor that the light
of one art, or one science, often beats upon the sharpened senses
of some one soul, either we should go blind in all our senses, or
we were geniuses. So nature is merciful. Most of the doors
and windows of our houses of life remain closed, or barely ajar.
Economic justification of our existence in this modern world
also demands that we close, and keep closed, nine hundred and
ninety-nine of the windows and doors of our house of life: one
science, or one art, or one profession, or less than that: one
division of a science or art or profession; one specialty of that
division; or even one specialty of that specialty. Such is the
price of success in our time. The price is slavery, physical, in-
tellectual, and spiritual. Great leadership is now great slavery.
rich, ethically indefensible; but we who are ethically defensible
as we play our free minds over the cosmos, since we do not
neglect our share of the necessary drudgery of civilization,--we
are the amateurs, the salt of the earth.
True, an amateur may prefer to one large house of life, his
village of a thousand huts. That is the amateur's peril. But
the real amateur builds his great house of life over his village of
a thousand huts. Each hut becomes a window or door in the
greater edifice. Which of these huts shall become the house, the
center of design, the real organic unit, depends upon the amateur,
his heredity, his environment, and upon chance.
The village of a thousand huts has been your writer's peril.
He is interested in everything in the cosmos except sport, social
functions, and the grandstand front of things. But just be-
cause he is not interested in these, ninety-nine of a hundred
can't see that he is interested in anything. Well,--music, poetry,
drama, painting, sculpture, architecture, all science, and each
science, real politics, real religion, real philosophy, real history:
what are these to the ninety and nine?
Call it chance, heredity, environment, or pure volition, his-
tory has become this amateur's house of life. That is, not merely
literal history, documented and verified; but mainly real his-
tory, the imaginative reconstruction of the past or the forecast-
ing the future through a single fine art, or better, the ensemble
use of many fine arts. But not the whole historic sum of things,
celestial and terrestrial. Even not all America, not all Texas.
Only twenty years of Texas, the pioneer and revolutionary era
from 1820 to 1840. And within these years, just one, the year
1836. And in that year just two months, March and April.
And within these months, just one night, that of March 13,
1836, when at just one place, Gonzales, Sam Houston's army
began its famous retreat, and the people of Texas began their
"Runaway Scrape."
But from this pin point in time and space, the vistas from
our house of life, through a thousand doors and windows, reach
on and on to the limits of human consciousness again, which are
the limits of the universe, too. At this time, we must close all
the doors except those appropriate to this meeting of the Texas
State Historical Association; that is, the doors to music, drama,
poetry, and so on. (Your writer is attempting a music-drama
for the centenary year 1936, upon that pin point in time and
space, Gonzales on the night of March 13, 1836.) Yet are there
not a thousand doors and windows still, each and all inviting
one far, far, and far? Gonzales on the 13th of March, 1836,
presupposes the history of the Texan colonists; it presupposes
the history of the American people, and of the English and other
races; it needs the history of Mexico and Spain, and even South
America; it requires close study of the North American Indian;
of the frontier animals and plants; the rivers, forests, prairies;
the climates and seasons; the disasters of nature and the scourges
of human life.
So I have thought it well to make my address an appeal to
the amateur historians of Texas, briefly suggesting some of the
thousand and one windows and doors not yet closed down upon
us. For be it remembered these windows and doors are closing
down about us all the time. Perhaps the main urgency to this
paper is this ceaseless closing down of windows and doors
around us.
The most usual windows and doors to this house of history
are the memories of old men and women. Their memories are
like tunnels from the present under the mountain of time inter-
vening to the clear light of early times in Texas. True, few
of these old men and women (and indeed, many of them are not
old), can remember Gonzales in March, 1836. But many of them
knew the later years of the pioneer and revolutionary heroes.
Many of them heard the stories of those terrible times from men
and women who lived through them somehow; heard them over
and over until they knew, and know, them by heart.
There are difficulties. The greatest is this, that these men
and women with memories are themselves immersed in great
affairs of their time. Men holding great executive positions have
no time for memories. All their energies of mind and body are
challenged by the duties and responsibilities of affairs, public
and private. Their reminiscent era must come after. And no
man gives way until compelled. So when we find them really
reminiscent, all too often old age and disease have set their
heavy seal upon them. Further, they are not historical scholars.
They are likely to spend their energies retelling badly what has
long been known and minutely verified and documented. Finally,
their memories may not be completely trustworthy, either from
wilful bias, or unconscious prejudice and lapses.
Now here is the usefulness of the amateur historians, far and
wide in Texas. They have heard the stories of old men and
women. They have read almost all that is written down on
Texas history, both the established facts, and the conclusions
from these facts by trained historians, and untrained. And they
have pondered over the mysteries. Let them sift the known
from the unknown. They must simply ask pertinent questions,
and if necessary, impertinent. They must find out the truth
or the half-truth, or the hundredth of the truth that these
memories of old men and women contain. They must compare
their findings with the written records, and never accept the
well-known for the unknown. All this will be opening wider
the windows and doors to our house of Texas history.
The officers and members of the Historical Association have
been very kind to me, and very appreciative and exceedingly
helpful in my Quixotic assaults upon the mysteriius windmills
of Texas history. Though, my windmills are pretty much mine
alone. It does not seem supremely important to regular his-
torians whether William Barrett Travis was red-headed or not.
Now, to the dramatist, the psychological implications of this
fact are almost endless. But the mystery of the Alamo is still
an unsolved problem to us all, professional or amateur, artist
or historian. Why did they do it? No one knows. Well, then,
the red hair of Travis, taken in connection with other estab-
lished facts, is one of the keys to Travis's character; and
Travis's character is one key, but not the only one, to the mys-
tery of the Alamo. The characters of Crockett, Bowie, and
Bonham are keys of equal or almost equal importance. And so
the recent contention that Travis was a foundling, were it estab-
lished, which I say most emphatically it was not, would recolor
my whole conception of that mighty Alamo catastrophe.
The officers of this Association, individually and severally,
have urged me to give some account of my various adventures
charging the windmill mysteries of Texas history. Perhaps
when the account is richer I may do so. But it seems to me
now more important to urge my fellow amateur historians to
open the doors and windows closing down around them in the
old towns and new towns in Texas, and in the great cities, too.
It is startling to realize that so few descendants and so few old
men and women with memories live near the scenes of the deeds
they remember. It is almost a paradox that to find what hap-
pened during the San Jacinto campaign in South Texas, one
must go to West Texas, or North Texas, or California, or Okla-
homa. Or else it is in the great cities of Texas, Houston, Dallas,
Austin, far away from the scenes remembered, and covered over
by generations of urban living, and non-pioneer experience.
Perhaps the most striking method of bringing home to Texas
amateur historians the need of exhausting local possibilities will
be to state some of these mysteries as questions. One has al-
ready been given: Why did the Alamo defenders die rather
than retreat? Oh, yes, they were brave men, they were patriots.
But that gets us nowhere. They would have been brave men and
patriots had they retreated in time. The question still stands:
Why did they do it?
It is true, neither the Alamo nor Goliad is included in the cycle
of five plays I am attempting on the San Jacinto compaign.
But their tremendous shadows cover the whole period, determin-
ing and reversing the general campaign and the individual for-
tunes of all concerned in that series of events. So it becomes
absolutely paramount that complete pictures of these two great
backgrounds of the San Jacinto campaign should be present in
the mind of the historian or artist recreating the time.
'One great way to solve a mystery is to study the lives of all
participants, both before and after the event. The Alamo had
no survivors of the first importance. So this problem requires
the study of the lives of the leaders and of the rank and file be-
fore the catastrophe. While I have by no means exhausted all
the possibilities, still from what I have studied, it seems to me
chance threw together an extraordinary number of men to whom
life was not particularly worth living longer. Certainly, this is
true of Crockett and Bowie, and most probably of Bonham. It
is probably more than half-true of Travis. And I have been
struck with the fact that little strip of light on the characters
of the Alano rank and file I have found confirms this general
mood of reckless scorn of death.
No Texas historian has given due weight to the enormous in-
fluence of the mere presence of Davy Crockett in the Alamo.
Travis and Bonham were not known to great fame till then.
Bowie was indeed famous, but the slur, perhaps unjust, of being
a mere desperado, together with his drinking and quarreling while
sick in the Alamo, weakened his influence there both as man and
commander. But Davy Crockett's fame was continental and
European, thanks to his books and the legends invented by him-
self and his friends and enemies. He was the idol of the fron-
tier. So that any solution of that momentous decision to stay
to the death in the Alamo must give the highest value to the in-
fluence of Davy Crockett. Yet I do not recall any article on
"Davy Crockett in Texas" by qualified historians.
A second question has grown in my mind from a study of the
Land Office maps of Texas counties. Why did so few of the
old settlers take part in the San Jacinto campaign? Any ama-
teur can repeat this experience. Check out on your county map
the names, the surnames, of all old settlers with headright en-
tries that are found on the rosters of the San Jacinto campaign
and the lists of the dead in the Alamo and at Goliad. There
must be allowances, of course. Sons were more likely to go to
war than fathers; many headrights were speculative and long
since sold to residents of the United States. But after all de-
ductions are made, the challenging question still stands: Why
did so few old settlers take part in the war?
A third problem has grown in my mind, partly from a study
of the Land Office maps, but also from a study of scattered facts
and documents: What was the real final fate of all the pro-
Texan Mexicans after the revolution of 1836? Many agree to
John N. Seguin's contention of a conspiracy among certain
Texans in San Antonio to ruin wealthy Mexicans. The matter
has been left untouched by historians. John N. Seguin, the
Coriolanus of Texas, did great services to the Texan cause. And
as to his father, Don Erasmo Seguin, that page in John Henry
Brown's history, where the Texans turned the old man's ox-cart
back towards San Antonio, as he told the long story of his aid
to Americans, beginning with his befriending the Austins, father
and son, twenty years before,--that story would have moved a
heart of stone.
The maps suggest a fourth question: Why so much fraud
and rascality in Texas land speculations? A good answer has
been given that these land frauds were no worse in Texas than
in the frontier states and territories of the United States. There
are many fine articles on Texas lands, but none that I have read
give names and dates, and also give a spade its proper name.
A fifth question—the Indians. I have read all the apologies
for the Texans down to date, I believe. Were the Cherokee In-
dians justly treated in 1835, 1836, 1839? For all these years
cover just one general action. My own answer is most emphati-
cally no. Their treatment was good politics but bad faith.
A sixth question: What was the effect of immigration on the
politics and economic development of Texas from 1835 to 1860?
How many times did these incoming voters reverse previous pop-
ular judgment at the polls? In what years did these waves of
immigration reach their highest crests? How many years dur-
ing various decades did it require to equal by fresh immigration
the population already present?
A seventh question: Why has no exhaustive critical biography
of Thomas Jefferson Rusk ever been published? To me, he is
a figure in Texas politics fully as important as Sam Houston or
Stephen F. Austin, and in national politics more so. His suicide
was as great a calamity for the moderates before the Civil War,
as Abraham Lincoln's assassination was after it.
An eighth question: What was the effect of the enormous
whiskey drinking of the time upon the character and duration
of life of public men between 1830 and 1860? Certainly the
study of the period changed my own views favorably to prohibition.
The great list of suicides and early deaths of able men of the
era can fairly be laid to hard, steady drinking.
And so on and on, an almost endless list of unsettled ques-
tions remains for the amateur historian's might or mite. Cer-
tainly, he can gather local facts and traditions inaccessible to
the regular historians. And as a little matter turns the balance
in a larger, and that turns the scales upon a still larger one, it
may well be that some insignificant facts yet unknown may re-
verse even time-honored historical judgments in Texas.
I devote the rest of this paper to almost unused keys and
latches to these doors and windows to the past. Enough has
been said of the memories of the old men and women. Scarcely
less important are the Land Office county maps. With these,
investigations could be started that would throw light on almost
every question raised in this paper. And this brings us to one
rich field as yet scarcely touched by historians. I refer to the
records of the General Land Office of Texas. Sometimes, I feel
that I could spend there five years with profit on the problems
that arise in connection with my cycle of Texas music-plays.
Almost equally rich are the records of the courthouses of the
old counties of Texas. Many years could be spent in them, too,
with great profit, if combined with field work among people now
living in those counties. But often the cost is prohibitive to any
but rich men. A dollar an hour is far too rich for most of us.
A much exploited field is the family papers of famous Texans.
Yet so much remains unknown as to these. Where are the
papers of McArdle, the artist? Judge Raines called him the
greatest authority known upon the topography of the San Jacinto
campaign. Where are the letters which William Fairfax Gray
wrote to his speculating employers in Kentucky and Virginia?
In these letters he elaborated fully for business purposes what
are mere memoranda in his diary. Where are the Yoakum
papers? It is said Yoakum gave them to Judge Gray, and the
Judge willed them with his own papers to the Masonic Grand
Lodge in Waco. And then, where are the Rusk papers? In-
deed, where are the Houston papers? Here is a curious situa-
tion. Two men, Houston and Rusk, dominate Texas for a gen-
eration yet there are no Houston papers, no Rusk papers, like
the Austin papers, the Lamar papers, or the Bryan papers. Yet
these papers must exist, or have existed, somewhere. And so
one might go on listing names of men who should have accumu-
lated papers, but which have not come down to us, or else are
scattered far and wide, or are held in private hands.
I admit real, professional historians were better employed for
all these tasks held out to amateur historians, but these trained
historians are few indeed; and the possible amateurs in Texas
are as the sands of the sea. The work is so great, and the doors
and windows continue closing down so ceaselessly, that nothing
but the large enlistment of the amateur historians will save this
great body of historical material from complete loss.
For instance, Henry Watterson: Not until Watterson is over
eighty does he tell us Texans casually, almost accidentally, that
in his boyhood he sat on Sam Houston's knee in Washington
City and heard the story, or stories, of the San Jacinto campaign
over and over. I write to him to tell it again and have stenog-
raphers take it down. Mr. Watterson's secretary writes me that
Mr. Watterson is; so old and feeble, the excitement of the recital
might end fatally. So one window closes down forever.
The amateur has some great advantages over the professional.
He can more often think what he pleases and say what he thinks.
The professional is limited by his public position and his repu-
tation as a scholar. Surely, he can think what he pleases, and
he does. But he cannot say what he thinks in frank striking
words. He is bound to weigh his evidence and qualify his words
to fit his facts exactly. He is also bound to respect public opin-
ion and sentiment, sectional feeling and state pride. I do not
mean that these sentiments subvert his own thinking. I mean
they limit and determine the statement of his thought into
something often innocuous and jejune. Of course, this is boldly
and frankly so in state text-books, because of the large public,
the conflicting interests, and the great financial reward. But it
is true otherwise, also. A real historian will be assailed by
trained specialists for an organized special interest. For in-
stance, no North Carolina historian has told the truth about the
Mecklenburg Declaration without suffering financial loss and
great obloquy from the pens of trained historians who are de-
scendants. Besides, the professional historian is usually fight-
ing for some concrete institutional enterprise, a state library, an
historical commission, against great odds; that is, indifference
of the public, miserly appropriations, and frequent hostile demo-
gogic movements to abolish the very institution itself, for econ-
omy or to increase the general school fund ten or twenty thou-
sand dollars. One must choose the relatively important. Why
tell of a particular fact or truth, if an infinitely greater cause
must go down in a consequent storm of senseless popular clamor?
From all these limitations the amateur should be free. But
while the amateur may tell the truth when he knows it,—that is
just the rub. How can he be sure that he knows the truth? He
is limited by his deficient training and his consequent wrong
valuations. Often, he is bound more strongly than the profes-
sional by local sentiment, state, and family pride. Alas, too
often he is merely a descendant. At his best, however, he is a
saving grace. He speaks out the unpublished thinking of the
responsible professionals, taking the burden and credit as his
own. There is no clamor, because of his lack of official signifi-
cance. Often there is none, because he fails clearly to express
himself. It amounts to the same obscurity as the professional's,
but not from the same cause. And in most cases he is in posi-
tion to tell the clamorous to clamor where it is hotter.
There is a contention that men and peoples must be judged
by the standards of their times. But a judgment is always a
two-edged blade. We judge ourselves as well as the men and
peoples when we judge them by the standards of their own times.
Such a judgment denies the reality of the science of ethics. The
true historian, amateur or professional, accepts the possibility,
indeed the reality, of final ethical valuations. Comparative his-
tory is the method of approach to ethical values. The treatment
of Cherokee Indians by the early Texans merges into the whole
story of the white American and the Indians. This in turn
merges into the larger question of the treatment of the weaker
races by the stronger since the origin of man. It passes then
into abstract questions of philosophy. What is right? What is
justice ?
But if the amateur historian, along with the professional, is
free to play his mind over the deeds of bygone eras, bringing
them to the bar of modern ethical judgments, he is not justified
in mere harsh condemnation. Too much amateur history con-
sists in hounding the villain and kissing the feet of the hero.
Too much professional history is like that, too. James Ford
Rhodes is the nearest to ideal fairness I have read. But it seems
to me the model for the amateur or professional historian is no
historian at all. At least, scholars have shown his reputed
events, his "Histories," to be almost all directly wrong. I refer
to William Shakespeare. Grant his facts are wrong; yet his fair-
ness is almost perfect. Indeed, a certain tenderness, even, hangs
over his blackest villains, Richard III, Iago, and the king in
Hamlet.
Angel, who never fails to place all deeds squarely in the Great
Record, yet reckons the ethical valuations by a Perfect Code.
The amateur or professional historian may not ever know the
system of valuation used in the Great Record, but he may rest
assured that the standards of the science of ethics are an ap-
proach thereto.
FOOTNOTES:
dodge our share of the necessary drudgery of civilization, as
parasites; or we may stop short of leadership, the real modern
slavery, and content ourselves with secondary standings in the
hierarchy of success in one specialty, and then play our fret
minds over the rest of the cosmos. The parasites are the idle
How to cite:
Samuel E. Asbury, "Amateur Historian", Volume 28, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v028/n2/contrib_DIVL1081.html
[Accessed Thu Dec 4 12:18:56 CST 2008]
