The charm of Barker's Life of Stephen F. Austin may be glimpsed from the closing paragraph of Chapter VIII:
"Though his efforts were absorbed in other directions, Austin's interest [in education] did not flag. From Mexico in 1833, surrounded by desolation and death, and himself recovering from an emergency treatment which barely averted cholera, he instructed Williams to locate for him, and not sell a beautiful tract of land on the east bank of the Colorado, at the foot of the mountains, as a retreat to which he could go and get away from trouble. 'I mean to go and live there. It is out of the way and will do for an academy scheme with which I can amuse myself and do good to others.' With rare appropriateness that tract of land now contains the Capital City and the University of Texas, and Austin lies buried in the land that he himself chose for his last peaceful years."
Ninety years have passed since Austin died at Columbia, worn out in the service of the commonwealth he had builded in the wilderness. At the age of forty-three his quiet efficiency and untiring zeal had not only created an Anglo-American state in the no-man's land of Texas, but had shaped the relations between Anglo-Saxon and Latin America for three generations, and changed the map of North America more than the map of Europe was to be altered by the great World War. Yet this is his first biography. He was a modest, unassuming man. The deep impress made by his personality and labors on the course of American history was not understood in his own day; and ours has produced but one historian qualified by temperament and training to know and understand the patience, personal courtesy, perseverance, firmness, tact, fortitude and infinite capacity for taking pains, which were the essential elements of Austin's genius. For the writing of this book Eugene C. Barker has prepared himself through a quarter of a century. The result is singularly happy; worthy alike of the founder of Texas and of the author; an enduring historical study; a biographical classic; and a masterpiece of literary craftsmanship.
It is not easy to tell, in five hundred pages, the life story of Stephen F. Austin. He was, heart, mind, soul and body, of a type which thrives in civilization, and ordinarily works and dwells where civilization flourishes. Austin in an old world court, or at a great seat of learning, would have easily found his place. But circumstances dictated that he should live, labor and die, in the farthermost outposts of the Anglo-American frontier. Barker has visualized his life there against its background of raw frontier conditions, Indian wars, Anglo-American land speculations, and Mexican revolutions, and by masterly presentation of his facts, has reconstructed the personality of the father of Texas so that the reader knows and loves him as one held dear and not long dead.For Barker is one of the few modern historical writers possessed of a fine literary touch. He writes in strict conformity to the canons of modern historical writing, yet his narrative glows with romantic charm. The imagination of the novelist could hardly conceive a hero as interesting as Stephen F. Austin; and few of those who write to entertain can approach the beautiful proportioning, piquant style and purity of diction, which characterize Barker's writings.
Especially pleasing are the delightful early chapters which deal with the migrations of the Austin family prior to the beginnings of the Texas venture, and with Austin's early life. There is not much in American literature finer than our glimpse of the childhood of Stephen F. Austin, in the little half French village on the Missouri frontier, where he "was to grow to manhood with instinctive, sympathetic understanding of gentle, courteous, proud and sensitive people, whose friendship and good will depended upon the observance of social niceties that the Anglo-American too often dismisses with self-conscious embarrassment. It was among such people that his great work was to be done, and upon the harmonious cooperation of such that his success was to depend"; or the deft characterization of Moses Austin, which shows better than a volume of expository writing could have done why the success of the Texas project depended on the early transfer of its management from Moses Austin to his son, "[Moses] Austin possessed many sterling virtues—uprightness, perseverance and the ability to mind his own business—but his little world required tact and adaptability, and, above all a sense of humor; and, besides having an impetuous temper, he was without a germ of either. As a result he had racking controversies with unscrupulous neighbors, and was subject to emotional turmoils that a more plastic spirit would have been spared. That he was nearly always right is clear from the fact that he enjoyed the cordial friendship of his most worthy contemporaries, as well as the confidence of American officials after Louisiana passed to the United States; but this only softens without obscuring one's impression of a choleric disposition that habitually met vexations more than half way."
The chapters which describe Austin's first visit to Mexico in 1822 break new ground, in relating the history of the Colonization Law, and showing the importance of Austin's contribution to the Mexican Constitution of 1824; and there is a clear and vivid picture of the settlement and early government of Austin's first colony, which paved the way for all the others; but it is in the two chapters which treat of the controversial phases of Austin's life; or, rather the two chapters which deal with matters concerning which Austin has been criticised by uncritical historians, that the author rises to the greatest heights as historian and as biographer.
For eighty years historians have followed blindly Henry S. Foote's perverted story of the "Fredonian Rebellion." Barker tells, for the first time, the whole truth about that insignificant émeute, and shows, incidentally, that its only real historical importance was the opportunity it afforded Austin to win the confidence of the Mexican officials, and render valuable services to everyone concerned. In this chapter and the chapter concerning the disturbances of 1832 we learn for the first time something of the history of the unauthorized settlements on the lower Trinity and within the eastern border leagues. These settlements played an important part in the early history of Texas, but hitherto Texan historians have merely taken them for granted. As for the Robertson Colony controversy, Barker by masterly statement of the undisputed facts completely refutes the vicious charges which Robertson, or rather T. J. Chambers in Robertson's name, made against Austin in 1834, while the latter was a prisoner in Mexico and helpless, and shows that there was nothing about that affair which need concern us now, except natural curiosity as to why John Henry Brown should have thought proper, so late as 1892, to waste good space in rehashing Robertson's forgotten charges, and the garbled and in part perjured testimony with which Chambers induced the corrupt legislature of Coahuila and Texas to annul that portion of the Austin and Williams grant, which overlapped the former grant to Leftwich under which Robertson was a sub-contractor.
The story of Austin's mission to Mexico in 1833, and of his long imprisonment there is supplemented by a splendid chapter concerning the growth of the colonies and events in Texas during Austin's absence. These chapters are an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of those all-important years, and of the undercurrents of Mexican politics which were slowly bringing about the conditions which ultimately separated Texas from Mexico. The biographical side of Austin's imprisonment, and the stories of his life while detained in the Mexican Capital, and of the changes which gradually took place in the colonies during his absence, are complete in themselves and are admirably told, but Barker only hints at the sinister story of the land speculations and corruption in which Austin's bitterest enemies as well as some of his warmest friends were engaged during those years, and which were undoubtedly the main contributing cause of his long detention at the Mexican Capital.
Through the haze which surrounds these land speculations, the author as yet sees but dimly. The original plan of the speculators was to separate Texas from Coahuila and accord Texas a territorial government. Texas lands, of course, under this plan, would have been controlled by Mexican Federal officials. Austin's opposition defeated this scheme, and, as he with good reason believed, made him powerful enemies and materially lengthened his imprisonment. Later, when the speculators learned that the corrupt legislature of Coahuila and Texas was amenable to their schemes, the territorial plan was discarded in favor of exploitation of the public lands under state laws. In these schemes Austin's most dangerous enemies and some of his close friends played their part. The story of these speculations, and of their part in bringing about and shaping the course of the Texas Revolution is yet unwritten. But it is beyond cavil that Austin and his colonists regarded such speculations as unholy, and opposed them to the end; and there is little doubt that the speculators, whether his friends or his enemies, were content that the effect of his influence against them should be dispersed in its long passage from the Mexican Capital to Texas.
Though Austin was yet to render some of his greatest services to Texas, one suspects that the author, lest he should seem unduly partial to his hero, has, in his closing chapters, deliberately minimized his importance to revolutionary Texas. Thus, while the account of Austin's services as Commander-in-chief of the Texan Volunteer Army from October 12 to November 24, 1835, is accurate in every detail, the author's estimate of the value of those services is unnecessarily deprecating and apologetic. As a matter of fact, Austin's handling of the discordant mob he was elected to command, was a military marvel. He was weak and ill and the command of a collection of undisciplined frontiersmen was a thankless task at best. Many of his soldiers were would-be generals; others were active and intelligent representatives of the land speculators, with purposes of their own to serve. Austin not only kept this difficult army in being, and partially amenable to command, but by confining Cos to the vicinity of Bexar, and cutting off his supplies, effectually neutralized the invading Mexican army and brought about the conditions which eventually compelled its surrender. Austin, and not Burleson, or Milam, or any of those who fought beside them, was the real victor over Cos at Bexar.
There is also a chapter yet to be written concerning Austin's life and work during the month after he turned over the command of the army and prior to his departure for the United States as one of the Commissioners chosen by the General Consultation. But in his account of Austin's services as commissioner, and of the shabby treatment accorded him and the other Commissioners by the Burnet Government, Barker is again at his best. Other beautiful chapters complete the story of Austin's continued service and self-sacrifice, until the end came at Columbia and he could serve and sacrifice no more.
At all times after 1822 Austin's life was molded by his whole-hearted and single-minded devotion to Texas. In a truer sense than that in which Washington is called the father of his country, Stephen F. Austin was the father of Texas. But Texas was more than child to him; its hold on his affections combined the love of wife and child and home and country. So long as was possible he and those who came with him were supremely faithful to Mexico; but the welfare of Texas was ever first in Austin's mind and heart, and when, in his judgment, allegiance to Mexico became incompatible with the safety of Texas, his ringing declaration for independence made him, in a sense that John Henry Brown could never understand, the true author of Texas Independence.
For its fidelity to truth and its contribution to America's knowledge of an important epoch of its history, Barker's "Life of Stephen F. Austin" would live were it only the usual special student's treatise, written for the special student. As a model of biographical interpretation of sheer simplicity and beauty it would win readers were it the life story of a much less interesting and important man. It would survive as literature, without regard to its value as biography or history. But in that it has caught and held and graphically portrayed the soul of a truly great American, and preserved for all time the story of the life and work of a man who, by the arts of peace and by lawful means, swept aside the arbitrary barriers which race prejudice and national pride had erected against further southwestern expansion of the Anglo-American frontier—of the man who by sheer charm of personality and integrity of purpose won a way for his people where arms had failed and violence met with bloody repulse—it will live forever as the record of a great American's vital and lasting contribution to the making of America.
HARBERT DAVENPORT .
How to cite:
"The Life of Stephen F. Austin: A Chapter in the Westward Movement of the Anglo-American People", Volume 029, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 317 - 322. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v029/n4/review_13.html
[Accessed Thu Dec 4 12:39:17 CST 2008]
