SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Vol. XXXIX OCTOBER, 1935 No. 2
Editors
Eugene C. Barker
Herbert E. Bolton
Associate Editors
Chas W. Ramsdell
E. W. Winkler
Charles W. Hackett
Managing Editor
Eugene C. Barker
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY
THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Austin, Texas
Entered at the post-office, Austin, Texas, as second-class mail matter
CONTENTS
The Earliest Printing and First Newspaper, in Texas - - -
- - - - Ike H. Moore - - 83
The Confederate Exodus to Latin-America, I - Lawrence F. Hill - - 100
Explorations of Albert Pike in Texas - - - David Donoghue - - 135
Letters of Antonio Martinez, The Last Spanish Governor of
Texas, 1817-1822, II - - - - Mattie Austin Hatcher - - 139
Book Reviews and Notices: Hackett, Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits
of Louisiana and Texas; Malone (Ed.), Dictionary of American Biog-
raphy, XV, XVI; Greer, Grand Prairie; Gambrell, Mirabeau Buona-
parte Lamar; Forrester-O'Brien, Art and Artists of Texas; De Shields,
Tall Men With Long Rifles; Wiley, An Admiral from Texas; Schubert,
Come On, Texas!; Clark, Organized Labor in Mexico; Tompkins,
Chasing Villa; Chabot, The Alamo - - - - 148
EX-PRESIDENTS:
Mrs. A. B. Looscan
Dr. Alex Dienst
PRESIDENT:
W. E. Wrather
VICE-PRESIDENTS:
J. L. Clark
Rev. Paul J. Foik
Harbert Davenport
Herbert Gambrell
RECORDING SECRETARY AND LIBRARIAN:
Eugene C. Barker
TREASURER:
Charles W. Ramsdell
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY:
Mrs. Coral Horton Tullis
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL:
President W. E. Wrather,
Vice-President J. L. Clark,
Vice-President Paul J. Foik,
Vice-President Herbert Gambrell,
Vice-President Harbert Davenport,
Recording Secretary and Librarian Eugene C. Barker,
Treasurer Charles W. Ramsdell,
Ex-President Mrs. Adele B. Looscan,
Ex-President Dr. Alex Dienst,
State Librarian Fannie Wilcox,
E. W. Winkler for Term Ending 1935.
Fellows
Mrs. Ethel Rather Villavaso for term ending 1936.
Anna Powell for term ending 1937.
Adina de Zavala for term ending 1935.
L. W. Kemp for term ending 1936.
J. Evetts Haley for term ending 1937.
Members
Frank Kell for term ending 1938.
Samuel E. Asbury for term ending 1939.
PUBLICATION COMMITTEE:
W. E. Wrather
Eugene C. Barker
E. W. Winkler,
Herbert E. Bolton,
Charles W. Ramsdell.
The Association was organized March 2, 1897. The annual dues are three
dollars. The Quarterly is sent free to all members.
Contributions to The Quarterly and correspondence relative to historical
material should be addressed to Eugene C. Barker, Austin, Texas, or to
Herbert E. Bolton, Berkeley, California.
Other correspondence may be addressed to The Texas State Historical
Association, Austin, Texas.
OF THE
ASSOCIATION
The constitution of the Association provides that "Members who
show, by published work, special aptitude for historical investigation
may become Fellows. Thirteen Fellows shall be elected by the Asso-
ciation when first organized, and the body thus created may thereafter
elect additional Fellows on the nomination of the Executive Council.
The number of Fellows shall never exceed fifty."
The present list of Fellows is as follows:
Barker, Prof. Eugene C.
Biesele, Prof. R. L.
Bolton, Prof. Herbert Eugene
Buckley, Miss Eleanor C.
Casis, Prof. Lilia M.
Castañeda, Dr. Carlos E.
Christian, Prop. A. K.
Clark, Prof. J. L.
Clark, Prof. Robert Carlton
Cox, Prof. I. J.
Curlee, Miss Abigail
Davenport, Mr. Harbert
Dienst, Dr. Alex
Estill, Prof. H. F.
Foik, Dr. Paul J., C. B. S.
Gambrell, Prof. Herbert P.
Hackett, Prof. Chas. W.
Haley, Mr. J. Evetts
Hatcher, Mrs. Mattie Austin
Holden, Prof. W. C.
Looscan, Mrs. Adele B.
Marshall, Prof. Thomas Maitland
McCaleb, Dr. W. F.
Miller, Prof. E. T.
Neu, Dr. C. T.
Powell, Dr. Anna
Ramsdell, Prof. Chas. W.
Richardson, Prof. Rupert N.
Shelby, Miss Charmion
Smith, Prof. W. Roy
Smither, Miss Harriet
Tucker, Mr. Phillip C. 3rd
Villavaso, Mrs. Ethel Rather
Webb, Prof. W. P.
West, Miss Elizabeth H.
Williams, Dr. Amelia
Williams, Judge O. W.
Winkler, Mr. Ernest Wm.
Wrather, Mr. W. E.
Zavala, Miss Adina de
The constitution provides also that "Such benefactors of the Asso-
tion as shall pay into its treasury at any one time the sum of fifty
dollars, or shall present to the Association an equivalent in books,
MSS., or other acceptable matter, shall be classed as Life Members."
The Life Members at present are:
Allen, Mr. Wilbur P.
Armstrong, Mr. B. W.
Arnold, M. L.
Barker, Eugene C.
Beazley, Miss Julia
Benedict, Prof. H. Y.
Blount, Mrs. Guy
Bowen, Mr. R. D.
Bryan, Mr. Guy M., Jr.
Cartwright, Mr. and Mrs.
Clayton, Mr. W. L.
Cochrane, Mr. Sam P.
Courchesne, Mr. A.
Crane, Mr. R. C.
Davidson, Mr. W. S.
Dealey, Mr. George B.
Dilworth, Mr. Thos. G.
Donaldson, Mrs. Nana Smithwick
Farrish, Mr. W. S.
Fortman, Henry F.
Fulmore, Sterling R.
Gilbert, Mr. Harvey Wilbarger
Gilbert, Mr. John N.
Gleason, Rev. Joseph M.
Gunnell, Mr. W. N.
Hanrick, Mr. R. A.
Hefley, Mr. W. T.
Hill, George A., Jr.
Houghton, Miss Kate
House, Mr. E. M.
Hyde, Mr. James H.
Jones, Mr. Roland
Kell, Mr. Frank
Kenyon College
Kirby, Mr. Jno. H.
McFadden, Mr. W. P. H.
Milby, Mrs. C. H.
Minor, Mr. F. D.
Moody, Col. W. L.
Moore, Mrs. Jno. M.
Morehead, Mr. C. R.
Neale, Mr. Wm. J.
Pearce, Prof. J. E.
Peden, Mr. E. A.
Perry, Mrs. Hally Bryan
Radford, Mr. J. M.
Rice, Mr. J. S.
Rice, Hon. W. M
Rugeley, Hr. Henry
Schmidt, Mr. John
Sevier, Mrs. Clara D.
Sinclair, Mr J. L.
Stark, Mr. H. J. L.
Terry, Mr. Wharton
Thompson, Mr. Brooks
Todd, Mr. Charles S.
Walker, Mr. J. A.
Webb, Mr. Mack
Willacy, Hon. John G.
Williams, Judge O. W.
THE
SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
Vol. XXXIX OCTOBER, 1935 No. 2
The publication committee and the editors disclaim, responsibility for views expressed
by contributors to The QUARTERLY
THE EARLIEST PRINTING AND FIRST NEWSPAPER
IN TEXAS
*
The printing press was first used to describe Texas in 1542, when
Cabeza de Vaca's Relación
was published in Zamora, Spain,
1 but
more than two hundred and seventy years passed before a press was
actually in operation upon Texas soil. On the far-flung, sparsely
populated frontier of New Spain there was little need to duplicate
documents in large numbers, and the more important news was
passed from one settlement to another to be posted on the church
door or read aloud by the town crier. When the press finally did
reach the Internal Provinces, it came to destroy rather than to
sustain the Spanish regime.
Even though printing came to Texas comparatively late, the
time and manner of its coming are still matters of dispute. So
restricted was the circulation of the early printing and so turbu-
lent were the times that it is not surprising that not a single
product of the first three presses in Texas has yet been found.
Despite the lack of actual imprints from these presses, two of
them have been accepted by historians and bibliographers without
question: the Manifiesto
of the Mexican revolutionist General
Francisco Xavier Mina, printed on Galveston Island and dated
February 22, 1817;
2 and the short-lived Texas
Republican,
the first
issue of which was published in Nacogdoches on August 14, 1819.
3
Mina's Manifiesto
and the Texas
Republican
are now considered, re-
spectively, the first imprint and the first newspaper of Texas. It
is the purpose of this paper to suggest that there was a news-
paper published in Texas in 1813, which is therefore, in the ab-
sence of still earlier printing, at one and the same time both the
first printing and the first newspaper of our State.
Who, then, was the first Texas printer and when and where did
he set up his press? As early as 1878 Texas investigators have
given the distinction to Samuel Bangs,
4 a young printer from
Baltimore, who was attached to Mina's expedition and whose name
appears on the back of the Manifiesto.
A. C. Gray, the first capable
historian of the Texas press, writing in 1898, similarly honored
Bangs,
5 and in 1931 Mrs. Lota M. Spell entitled her scholarly
biographical sketch of the man: "Samuel Bangs: the First Printer
in Texas."
6
Mexican and Cuban historians, on the other hand, have long
intimated that the first printing in Texas was done under the
direction of José Álvarez de Toledo, a thirty-four-year-old Cuban,
who came to Texas to aid the Gutiérrez-Magee filibustering expe-
dition in the spring of 1813—almost four years before Bangs
visited Texas.
7 Lucas Alamán, writing in 1851, said that Toledo
had a press,
8 and he is supported by González (1867), Cossio
(1925), Trelles (1926), and Robles (1932).
9
Careful students have been slow to accept the claim made for
Toledo because no reprint of his work is known to exist, as is the
case with Mina's Manifiesto,
and not even extracts have been found,
as is the case with the Texas
Republican.
Newly discovered and
identified evidence, however, permits us to construct a much
stronger case for Toledo, and makes it probable rather than possi-
ble, I believe, that 1813 instead of 1817 is the date of the first
Texas printing.
In the conservative and scholarly North
American
Review
for
July, 1836, there appears an unsigned article of thirty pages re-
viewing three recent works on Texas: Mrs. Mary Austin Holley's
Texas
(1833), the anonymous Visit
to
Texas
(1834), and Stephen
F. Austin's Address
to
the
People
of
Louisville,
Kentucky
(March,
1836).
10 As was the literary fashion of the time, the three books
are merely a point of departure for the reviewer, who devotes most
of his space to sketching Texan-Mexican relations from the rise
of Hidalgo in 1810 to the battle of San Jacinto. After giving a
cursory but accurate background of conditions in Mexico during
the period, the writer traces events in Texas from the Gutiérrez-
Magee expedition of 1812-1813 through the just-completed revo-
lution of 1836.
The reader is immediately struck by the detailed treatment given
the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, especially the part played by José
Alvarez de Toledo. In discussing the expedition the writer inter-
sperses his narrative with much personal detail and fulfills his
promise to write "particularly of some occurrences in the internal
provinces of New Spain, of which no authentic account has ever
been given."
11
After telling the familiar story of how José Bernardo Gutiérrez
da Lara, a Mexican creóle from Nuevo Santander, fled to the
United States in 1811 after the collapse of the Hidalgo Revolu-
tion; of how he plotted for a year before gathering together, with
the aid of Augustus Magee, of the United States army, a motley
band of Mexican refugees, Indians, and Anglo-American adven-
turers; and of how it took six months of stubborn fighting for
them to capture San Antonio, the reviewer comes to the activities
of Toledo.
Don Jose Alvarez de Toledo [he wrote], who was destined to
succeed Don Bernardo in the command, was a native of the Island
of Cuba. Very early in life he received a warrant of midshipman
in the Spanish navy, and continued in that service until he was
appointed a lieutenant. During the invasion of the Peninsula,
he joined the land service, and acted as the aid-de-camp of Gen-
eral Blake, during the retreat of Sir John Moore upon Coruña.
Toledo afterwards took his seat in the Cortes of Cadiz, as the
supplying member for the Spanish part of St. Domingo, and be-
ing detected in some correspondence with the governor of that
Island, in which he advocated the independence of Spanish
America, he was compelled to fly. He took refuge in the United
States, and arrived at Philadelphia in 1813 [1811]. He brought
with him an authority, signed by many of the members of the
Cortes, who represented the Spanish provinces on this conti-
nent, to take command of any forces which might be in arms to
sustain the independence of Spanish America. He was author-
ized at the same time to draw on Cadiz for such sums as he
might need. He did draw bills of exchange at Philadelphia for
some thousands of dollars, which were duly honored.
Having learned the auspicious commencement of the enterprise
under Don Bernardo, and being disposed to cooperate with him,
Toledo, after visiting Washington City with a view of propitiat-
ing the government, set forward towards Pittsburg with a few
followers and friends. They took with them, among other things,
a printing-press and a font of types, and the printer himself
formed one of the party. His name was Moore, a man of sin-
gular versatility of talent, possessing a vast amount of practical
knowledge, and at the same time brave, enthusiastic and enter-
prising. This little party embarked at Pittsburg for Natchez
in the month of December on board a small flat-boat, which had
been constructed for that purpose. Nothing can be conceived
more heterogeneous than this little party. There were Toledo,
and his two aids, the one an American, and the other a French-
man. Don Juan Picornel was an old Spaniard, a native of Ma-
jorca, who had been buried in the dungeons of the Inquisition;
whose ankles had been rendered callous by chains, with which he
had been loaded as the conspicuous enemy of Godoy; who had
been engaged in the first revolution in Caraccas, and had escaped
from the earthquake and the counter revolution; wrinkled with
age, and yet full of zeal in the cause. Another of the party was
a Frenchman from Marseilles, by the name of Colonie. He
boasted of having been a chef
de
brigade
in the republican armies
of France; but, such was his ardor in the cause, that he accepted
the humble rank of chef
de
cuisine
in the service of Toledo.
These, together with an honest, intrepid, and faithful Gallician
boy, and an American shoe-merchant, who had advanced some
funds for the enterprise, and who accompanied the general by
way of collateral security, formed the personnel
of the outfit. The
material
consisted of provisions, a few arms, baggage, and some
books.
It was not until the month of March, 1813, that Toledo and
his party reached Natchez after suffering greatly from cold, and
from the breaking up of the ice on the Ohio. From Natchez he
proceeded by land to Natchitoches. From that point a messenger
was despatched to San Antonio with letters to Don Bernardo,
tendering to him the cooperation of Toledo and his friends, in the
enterprise in which he was engaged. In the mean time Toledo and
his party, in company with William Shaler, Esquire, proceeded to
Nacogdoches, and established his head-quarters. Here the print-
ing press was set up; and the first paper ever published in the
Internal provinces of Mexico was issued in Spanish and English
early in May, 1813.
The party of Toledo increased daily by the arrival of fresh
volunteers, and he was already at the head of a considerable re-
inforcement, carefully organized and disciplined,, and making
preparations to proceed to San Antonio, when, to the utter amaze-
ment of everybody, an express arrived from Don Bernardo, with
letters for Toledo, together with a formal and peremptory order
to him to quit forthwith the territory of the Republic. This re-
pulse, from such a quarter, was an enigma which none could ex-
plain at the time. Toledo, after consulting his friends, deter-
mined to obey, rather than hazard the success of the enterprise
by pushing forward in despite of Don Bernardo. While he re-
tired across the Sabine, his friends organized themselves into a
company of about forty well-armed men in uniform, under the
command of one of his aids, and took up the march for San
Antonio.
On their arrival, the mystery which accompanied the expulsion
of Toledo was soon explained. It appeared that Cogswell, who
had been discarded by Toledo and his party at Pittsburg on ac-
count of some dishonorable intrigues, had written to Don Ber-
nardo in terms highly derogatory to the character of Toledo, repre-
senting him as secretly in the pay of the Spanish minister at Wash-
ington, and on his way to the Internal provinces for the purpose
of betraying the cause. Although Don Bernardo knew that the
whole story was false, yet he thought it a good pretext to rid
himself of a rival, whose influence he dreaded. The persons who
had accompanied Toledo from Philadelphia, and who knew the
motives of Cogswell and the falsity of his statements, represented
to Gutierrez the truth of the case, and urged him to revoke the
order expelling Toledo from Texas. He peremptorily refused,
still persisting in charging Toledo with correspondence with the
enemy. The officers of the American volunteers then united, and
distinctly announced their intention to abandon the enterprise,
unless Gutierrez would retire from the command. After a variety
of movements, it was finally determined that an election of a
commander-in-chief should be held, in which the officers of the
army, the members of the Junta, and the notables
of the capital
should vote. The result was the election of Don Jose Alvarez
de Toledo, and Gutierrez immediately retired to the United States.
Toledo, having in the mean time approached near San Antonio,
then made his appearance, and was invested with the command
in chief. This change took place in July, 1813.
12
This account is straightforward and unequivocal, and if it
be correct there is, of course, no question that the first printing
in Texas was done in 1813. Is this account of the printing a
true one? To determine this, let us inquire into the general
credibility of the review itself and then sift the additional evi-
dence, contemporary and otherwise, which bears on the subject.
Who wrote the review? Since the North
American
did not
allow signed contributions until as late as January, 1868, there
is no clue to the authorship in the magazine itself except the
internal evidence that the writer had a detailed knowledge of
Toledo's activities. The identity of the writer was established by
reference to William Cushing's Index
to the first 125 volumes of
the North
American.
According to Cushing, who had access to
the editorial records of the magazine, the author of the review
was one Henry Adams Bullard.
13 Of all the persons who might
have written about Toledo's activities in Texas no one, not even
Toledo himself, was better equipped by first hand knowledge and
scholarship to speak with authority and no one could have been
more capable of establishing Toledo as responsible for the first
Texas printing.
Henry Adams Bullard, a member of the famous Adams fam-
ily, was born in Massachusetts in 1788. After graduating from
Harvard in 1807 he studied law in Philadelphia. While there,
he met Toledo. The Cuban patriot was so impressed by the
young lawyer's intelligence and knowledge of Spanish that he in-
vited him to become his secretary and aid-de-camp. Bullard
agreed and was with Toledo from the time the small party left
Philadelphia until the defeat of the Republican army by General
Joaquín de Arredondo at the Medina River on August 18, 1813.
After this crushing blow to his hopes for a new home in Texas,
Bullard escaped to Louisiana, and in this state he spent the rest
of his life. When he died in 1851, he was a distinguished and
respected man. From 1831 to 1834 and again in 1850-1851
he was a Whig congressman, from 1834 to 1846 a member of
the state supreme court, and in 1847 a professor of law in the
University of Louisiana. In 1836, just before he submitted his
review to the North
American,
he helped establish the Louisiana
Historical Society and was elected its first president.
14 As a
jurist he knew how to weigh evidence, and was qualified to con-
tribute two excellent articles to historical publications.
15
Thus, this article in the North
American
Review,
written by
an eyewitness who was also a historian, is not only of first im-
portance in establishing the date of the first printing in Texas,
but it can now be recognized as an authoritative and hitherto
unused source of Southwestern history. Fortunately, contempo-
rary documents are also extant that verify Bullard's narrative
in every important particular and amplify many of its details.
Let us examine these.
The Gutierrez-Magee expedition may be said to have had its
beginning when Bernardo Gutierrez came to the United States
in September, 1811,
16 and on the 28th of that month at Natchi-
toches, Louisiana, issued an appeal for aid in behalf of the Mexi-
can Eepublican cause.
17 From Natchitoches he went directly to
Washington, D. C, and in December held conferences with James
Monroe, the secretary of state, William Eustis, the secretary of
war, and other cabinet members. The Madison administration
received the Mexican patriot sympathetically but the officials
were so careful not to compromise the United States with Spain
that they gave him little satisfaction.
18
In the meantime Toledo arrived in the United States and pub-
lished a long defense of his break with the Spanish government.
19
Through the public press Gutiérrez learned of Toledo's activi-
ties,
20 and on December 27 the two rebels met at Washington.
In marked contrast to their later relations, the first meeting of
the two men was very cordial.
21
Gutiérrez returned to Louisiana in March, 1812. Reaching
Natchitoches on April 28, he cautiously set to work arousing in-
terest in an invasion of Texas.
22 As early as January other Mex-
ican nationalists on the frontier, especially creóle priests and
traders, had taken great pains to spread republican doctrine
throughout Texas by circulating the Declaration of Independence,
which their fellow rebels in Colombia had promulgated the pre-
vious November.
23 "For want of printing presses," wrote a cor-
respondent of Niles'
Register,
"they are copied by the itinerant
monks, and posted up by the creoles to animate their country-
men."
24
Hand copying was a poor substitute for printing, and it is
natural that Gutiérrez would seek to obtain a printing press. In
some manner he did secure one, for on April 28, the day he ar-
rived in Natchitoches, he wrote John Graham, chief clerk of the
United States Department of State, seeking assistance in procur-
ing a printer with whom Toledo was acquainted.
25
A few days later Felix Trudeaux, Spanish consul at Natchi-
toches, wrote Bernardino Montero, the commander at Nacog-
doches:
Bernardo Gutierrez has returned from the United States. With
him is an American, whom I believe to be a person of some im-
portance. I suppose his intention is to find every means possi-
ble for starting a revolution in the Internal Provinces. It is said
that there will soon be a printing press here and it is thought
that it will be used exclusively to publish proclamations and lies
provoking an insurrection. There are two printers; one is a Span-
iard and the other a Portuguese. Since, I believe, they cannot
make a [honest] living at it, there is no doubt that they are be-
ing paid by someone who wants to see the shedding of blood.
26
As Trudeaux predicted, the press soon arrived. On May 23
he wrote Montero that it had been set up.
27 Two days later
Gutiérrez records in his diary: "I went to the printing office
to see printed a thousand copies of the proclamation which goes
to the Realm of Mexico; I was much interested in seeing the dex-
terity of the printers."
28
evidence that the filibusters carried it into Nacogdoches in their
successful attack of August 11. In fact, all the numerous proc-
amations issued in Texas are in long hand
29 which would in-
licate that Gutiérrez had lost his press, his printers, or both,
before crossing the Sabine.
In the meantime Toledo tarried in the United States. Why
he did not set out for the frontier sooner is not clear.
30 The sim-
plest explanation is that he did not consider himself needed until
hostilities began, for his departure for Texas late in 1813 coin-
cides closely with the arrival of news of Gutierrez's initial suc-
cesses. It is not surprising that Toledo brought a press with
him: not only did the insurgents now need one badly, but he
had become thoroughly acquainted with the effectiveness of print-
ing through his extensive use of it in the United States.
Toledo's activities were well known to Luis de Onis, the Span-
ish minister, who had employed spies to report his movements.
31
When Toledo and his party departed for Texas, Onis learned of
it, and on March 4, 1813, wrote Félix Maria Calleja, the new
viceroy of New Spain, to prepare for them. Among other things,
he said:
It is asserted that Toledo has topographical maps of the
internal provinces, compared and corrected according to the in-
formation and reports which the emissaries of this country have
recently gathered [from material] furnished by the insurgents
[along the border]. He has with him, so I have been told, plans,
instructions, and printed incendiary proclamations, the printer of
them, who is probably Picornel, and a printing press.
32
Diego Morphi, the Spanish consul at New Orleans, had his
own spies waiting in Louisiana for the arrival of Toledo's party.
and on May 8 he reported to the Viceroy:
The fugitive ex-deputy Jose Alvarez de Toledo who was alter-
nate delegate to the Cortes from the Island of Santo Domingo
has gone from Philadelphia to Natchez, where he arrived in the
middle of last March. He gives himself the title of general and
wears a uniform. On the 30th he left for Natchitoches, saying
he was going to the internal provinces to place himself at the
head of the insurgents, who called him there. A certain Picornel
was with him along with ten or twelve others, who have all gone
to Natchitoches. On April 19 he was still in that town solicit-
ing men and only waiting for a dispatch in order to proceed to
Nacogdoches. From there he was to go to Bahia del Espiritu
Santo, where the army of Bernardo Gutierrez was encamped. It
has been reported that Toledo has taken 4,000 rifles from Phila-
delphia, but this cannot be proved.
33
Two weeks later Morphi again wrote the Viceroy, enclosing a
letter which his spy in Natchitoches had written on May 5:
. . . Jose Alvarez Toledo is still in Nacogdoches and it seems
that the small number of settlers at that point do not trust him.
I believe he will remain there until he receives information favor-
able to his plans, although he said that he would go on anyway.
34
It will be noticed that this letter verifies Bullard's statement
that Toledo was in Nacogdoches in early May, 1813, the exact
time of the supposed printing.
While in Nacogdoches Toledo learned of Gutierrez's capture
of San Antonio on April 1 and of the subsequent butchery of
Governor Salcedo and his staff. As Bullard relates, the two men
broke off their alliance, Toledo remaining along the frontier un-
til late in July, when lie went to San Antonio and replaced
Gutiérrez as commander of the insurgents.
35
In Toledo's relations with Gutiérrez from May to July, 1813,
may probably be found the reason the newspaper was published
it Nacogdoches when it was. Since none of the papers have yet
been found, we are not able to judge for ourselves what Toledo's
purpose was, but we do have the almost contemporary testimony
of Gutiérrez. Anything that this arch-enemy wrote about Toledo
should be used with care, but there is no particular reason for
questioning what he said about Toledo's printing activities. In
an account of his services to Mexican nationalism made to "the
Sovereign National Congress of Mexico" on August 1, 1815,
Gutiérrez charged that Toledo and Picornel had been conspiring
to take away his command even before they left Philadelphia.
When they reached Nacogdoches, he learned of their schemes and
ordered them to leave Texas. In retaliation, Gutiérrez con-
tinued, Toledo forged letters from the council of Bexar in order
to carry on his intrigues and published "innumerable calumnies
about me on a printing press which he carried with him. He
called this libel which he printed and dated Nacogdoches the
'Mexican.' [El
Mejicano]
He introduced copies of it to Texas
and also sent very clever emissaries and spies who ... got
into Bexar and began to intrigue and establish a faction."
36
In the revised and expanded form of this account, which
Gutierrez published in 1827, he adds another small bit to our
knowledge of Toledo's press by calling it "a little printing press"
(una
imprentita).
37 Additional evidence that the press was small,
and, moreover, a clear substantiation of Gutiérrez's statement
that Toledo carried it about with him is found in a letter that
Juan Beramendi, a follower of Toledo, wrote from Natchitoches
on July 24, 1813, just after his leader had left for San Antonio:
.
.
.
I am not going [to San Antonio] because I am afoot,
fate so ruling it. After the very worst mounts in the republic
were chosen for me., two of them were lost. Jose gave three head
to Mercio Hambre, that makes five. Three that I had gave out orj
the road and here they have taken away from me for the use of
Colonel Kemper and M. Bosi four mules equipped to carry the
press and another to ride.
38
Three other phases of the subject need investigation. In the
first place, were the "innumerable calumnies" called El
Mejicano
a newspaper, strictly speaking? This seems to be largely a ques-
tion of definition. If we insist upon periodic publication for sev-
eral weeks as the standard, they were not. On the other hand,
they were probably not mere broadsides. Bullard uses the term
paper,
which when he wrote his article in 1836 was already well
established as the common abbreviation for newspaper,
39 and
Gutiérrez implies that more than one printing was issued. If
Publick
Occurrences
Both
Forreign
and
Domestick
(Boston, Sep-
tember 25, 1690), which was issued only once, can be considered
the first newspaper in the American Colonies, it seems that
El
Mejicano
also has the right to be called a newspaper.
In the second place, what happened to the press ? There is no
indication in the extensive material relating to Toledo's activi-
ties after August, 1813, that he had a press of his own after this
date, though he sorely needed one in his three-year attempt to
rally his scattered forces and reinvade Texas.
40 It is therefore
probable that the press was either destroyed or was captured by
Arredondo and the Spanish army.
In his history of Nueva León, which was first published in
1867, Dr. José E. González quotes Dr. José Ángel Benavides, a
historian of Monterrey, as follows:
Early in 1815 there was to be seen in this capital the first
printing press. This caused considerable surprise even though it
was a small one, a press for an army campaign, as they called it
... On August 18, 1813, on the Medina River, Texas, Gen-
eral Arredondo won a celebrated battle from General Toledo,
whose forces were completely routed. As part of the booty of
war there was captured the aforementioned press, which had been
brought along by the North Americans who accompanied the
leader of the enemies' forces. There are two old documents
printed by the press that confirm this fact besides many eye-
witnesses who are still living.
41
This account has been disputed on the ground that Arredondo
did not include a printing press in list of booty captured from
Toledo. Such argument is not convincing, however, because
Arredondo included only implements of war in his report.
42 Be-
sides, the press could have been found after the report was made.
In any event Toledo unquestionably brought a press from the
United States, and there is no other explanation of what hap-
pened to it.
In the third place, who was the printer named Moore whom
Bullard praised so highly? It has been beyond my means to in-
vestigate the matter exhaustively, but some interesting supposi-
tions may be offered. As we have seen, Toledo used the print-
ing press freely while he was in the United States. He had
ample opportunity to meet printers, and before April, 1812, knew
one so well that he recommended him to Gutiérrez. Possibly
this was Moore. Dr. Clarence S. Brigham, director of the
American Antiquarian Society and a foremost authority on early
American newspapers, states that there were four men named
Moore known to have printed or published newspapers in the
United States before 1821: William Moore, who published the
Gazette
in Carthage, South Carolina, from 1808 to 1816, Jacob
B. Moore, who edited the New
Hampshire
Patriot
in 1819, South-
wick H. Moore, who published the Spirit
of
the
Press
at Manlius,
New York, 1816-1817, and Samuel Moore, publisher of the Spirit
of
Pennsylvania
at Easton, Penn., from July 16, 1815, to Febru-
ary 11, 1820.
43
All but Samuel Moore may be eliminated. William Moore was
printing his paper in South Carolina in 1813, and in that year
Jacob Moore was only 16 and Southwick Moore 18, neither old
enough to be the "man of singular versatility of talent, possess-
ing a vast amount of practical knowledge," whom Bullard de-
scribes.
44 It may be significant that Easton is only fifty miles
from Philadelphia, Toledo's headquarters while selecting his
party.
45
It is also interesting to note that one of Toledo's aides was
Godwin B. Cotton, the name of the man who in 1829 began pub-
lishing the Texas
Gazette
at San Felipe de Austin.
46 It is highly
probable, since the combination of names is an unusual one, that
Toledo's officer and the printer of the Texas
Gazette
are one and
the same. The Cotton of- the Texas
Gazette
was twenty-two
years of age in 1813, more than old enough to have been con-
nected with Toledo's expedition.
47 As yet there is no evidence
that Cotton assisted Moore in doing Toledo's printing, but it is
significant that only two years after Cotton fled from the Medina
battle-field he was publishing the Louisiana
Gazette
in New Or-
leans.
48 Possibly Cotton's apprenticeship as a printer was served
under Moore.
In summary, I have attempted to show that the first printing
in Texas took place in Nacogdoches in early May, 1813; that this
first printing was also the first newspaper of Texas, a bilingual
sheet called El
Mejicano;
that it was printed on a press intro-
duced into Texas by José Alvarez de Toledo, an anti-Spanish
leader, thus directly connecting the first three instances of Texas
printing with movements seeking the overthrow of Spanish au-
thority; that possibly the immediate reason Toledo printed the
newspaper was to discredit Gutiérrez, his rival; that the printer
of the paper was named Moore, possibly Samuel Moore, of Penn-
sylvania; and that probably the press was taken from San An-
tonio to Monterrey after the defeat of Toledo and that it there
became also the first press in Nueva León.
The evidence in favor of these conclusions is, I believe, very
strong, resting as it does on the testimony of an exceptionally
competent eyewitness and supported by a wealth of first-hand
material. Final definite proof, however, awaits the discovery of
quotations from Toledo's paper in other newspapers, or better
still the finding of what would be the pièce
de
résistance
of Texas
bibliography--a copy of El
Mejicano
itself.
FOOTNOTES:
Texas State Historical Association. The University of Texas, May 3,
book is discussed in H. R. Wagner, The Spanish Southwest, 1542-1794
(Berkeley, 1924), 1-11.
histórico de la Revolucion Mexicana (Mexico, 1843-1860) IV, 317-323.
For a discussion of this printing, see Mrs. Lota M. Spell, Samuel
Bangs: the First Printer in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
XXXV, 267-278.
Nashville, Natchez, New Orleans, and St. Louis newspapers See E. W.
Winkler, "The Texas Republican," Quarterly of the Texas State Histori-
cal Association, VI, 162-165, VII, 242-243; Southwestern Historical Quar -
terly XVI, 329-331. C. S. Brigham, "Bibliography of American News-
papers," in Proceedings of American Antiquarian Society, new series.
XXXV, 98. D. C. McMurtrie, "The First Texas Newspaper," Southwest -
ern Historical Quarterly, XXXVI, 41-46.
Comprehensive History of Texas (Dallas, 1898), II, 368.
1779. His father Luis de Toledo, a native of Seville, held various
Cuban military positions. José was educated in Spam and later studied
at the naval school in Cadiz. He supported the Spanish cause in the
Peninsular War, but in 1811 began to agitate for Cuban Independence.
In July his activities were discovered and he was forced to escape to
the United States. Establishing himself in Philadelphia, Toledo won
considerable sympathy for the anti-Spanish cause by writing newspaper
articles and pamphlets. Late in December, 1811, he met and probably
made an alliance with Bernardo Gutiérrez, a Mexican patriot, who was
soliciting aid in Washington. Gutiérrez returned to the frontier and
late in 1812 invaded Texas. When Toledo learned that fighting had
started, he got together a small party and set out for the scene of con-
flict. Because of Gutiérrez's unpopularity Toledo was able to displace
him as commander of the insurgents. He had been in command just
two weeks when General Joaquín de Arredondo and a large Spanish
army almost wiped out his forces at the Battle of the Medina, near
San Antonio, August 18, 1813. Toledo managed to escape to Louisiana,
and for more than two years plotted a second invasion. In December,
1815, when matters seemed hopeless to him, Luis de Onis, the Spanish
minister, offered the King's pardon if he would return to Spain. After
a delay of a few months Toledo accepted. He arrived in Madrid in
March, 1817. All Mexican sympathizers naturally denounced him as a
traitor, and Gutiérrez charged that he was in Spanish pay all along.
Back in Spain Toledo used his unusual charm and intelligence to such
advantage that he married the rich widow of the Duke of Medina
Sidonia. Through his wife, who was the aunt of the future Empress
Eugénie of France, Toledo won several diplomatic positions. He was
ambassador to Naples in 1831. In later life he moved to Paris, where
he died April 16, 1858. This short sketch is based in part upon Carlos
M. Trelles' Un Precursor de la Independencia de Cuba: Don José Alvarez
de Toledo, Academia de la Historia de Cuba, Havana, 1926. A full length
biography of this interesting and somewhat puzzling man is needed.
Alamán drew much of his Historia from personal observation, and could
easily have heard the story of Toledo's press from eyewitnesses. It is
evident that he also used the Breve Apologia (1827) of Bernardo
Gutiérrez. (See note 37.)
la historia del Estado de Nueva León . . . (second edition, Monter-
rey, 1885), II, 727-728: quoting José Angel Benavides, Hechos histor -
icos (probably a manuscript history). David Alberto Cossio, Historia
de Nueva León (Monterrey, 1924-1925), V, 17. Trelles, José Alvarez
de Toledo, 27-30, 131. Vito Alessio Robles, La Primera Imprenta en
Coahuila (Mexico, 1932), 41-43. These secondary accounts are, with
the exception of Hechos históricos, which may have been contemporary,
seemingly based upon Alamán's history and Gutiérrez's Breve Apologia.
Trelles may have used independent Cuban sources.
with a new version of Toledo's defeat by Arredondo.
1878), 72, 122. Cushing says in the preface: "The fullest sources of
information, in regard to the past and present writers, have been opened
to me by the past and present editors, by the late and present pub-
lishers."
raphy, III, 254-255. See also De Bow's Review, XII (1852), 50-56.
Even after the defeat on the Medina, Bullard still aided Toledo's
schemes, for in 1814 he helped assemble a new group of three hundred
filibusters on the Sabine. Narrative of Capt. Gaines in The Papers
of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, I (Austin, 1921), 283.
January 13, 1836. By Henry A. Bullard, president of the society,"
Historical Collections of Louisiana, I (New York, 1846), 2-23; "A Dis-
course on the Life, Character, and Writings of the Hon. Francois
Xavier Martin," ibid., II (Philadelphia, 1850), 17-40. Of Bullard's
critical ability a friend said: "His opinions while on the bench are
models of judicial rhetoric, brief, perspicuous, and pointed. As a
writer he had few equals; he wrote without effort, yet with a critical
accuracy that defied correction." Ibid., III (New York, 1851), 6.
25, 1812, have survived. The original in the Texas State Library is
translated and edited by Miss Elizabeth H. West in The American His -
torical Review, XXXIV, 53-77, 281-294. Miss West prefaces the diary
with a very helpful biographical sketch.
dealt with by I. J. Cox, "Monroe and the Early Mexican Revolutionary
Agents," Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1911,
I, 197-215. See also Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1812 (New York,
1925), 249-259; and J. M. Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mecrican
Relations (New York, 1932), 7-13.
Philadelphia on December 10, 1811, under this title: Manifiesto ó
Satisfaccion Pundonorosa, á todos los buenos Españoles Europeos, y á
todos los Pueblos de la America, por un Diputado, de los Cortes reunidas
en Cadiz. There are copies at the Library of Congress, Boston Public
Library, and Harvard. A reprint, with notes and additions, published
at Charleston in January, 1812, is in the University of Texas Library.
by Toledo. American Historical Review, XXXIV, 75. Trelles indicates
they appeared in the Philadelphia Aurora, December 17, 1811. José
Alvarez de Toledo, 131.
rejoicing because Señor Alvarez de Toledo has come from Philadelphia;
he is a man of great talents, and passionately devoted to the cause of
the liberty of Mexico; up to the present time he has worked much to
this end; his merit therein is great and worthy of recompense and ad-
vancement in the cause, at the hands of that nation. The discourses of
this gentleman are admirably great and just." American Historical
Review, XXXIV, 76.
dated San Antonio, February 8, 1812.
Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1911, I, 207.
State Library.
293. For a detailed discussion of Gutierrez's activities during the lat-
ter half of 1812, especially his remarkable industry in propagandizing
the Texans, see Walter F. McCaleb, "The First Period of the Gutiérrez-
Magee Expedition," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association,
IV, 218-229.
first one to be used in Western Louisiana. There may be some connec-
tion between it and the press used to print the Red River
Alexandria, about fifty miles down the river from Natchitoches The
Herald was a weekly published by Thomas Eastin. The only copy ex-
tant is volume I, no. 4, new series, September 10 1813. C. S. Brigham,
"Bibliography of American Newspapers," Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, new series, XXIV, 404.
"Monroe and the Early Mexican Revolutionary Agents, 202-205. The
discussion is based largely on the following manuscripts in Washington.:
Papers Relative to Revolted Spanish Provinces and Letters in Relation
to Burr's Conspiracy, MSS. Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department of
State; 35, Miscellaneous Letters and 16, Domestic Letters, MSS Bureau
of Indexes and Archives; Monroe Papers, IV, 549a, MSS., Library of
Congress. An examination of these papers may throw some light on
Toledo's acquisition, of a press.
States kept careful watch over the movements of the Mexican patriot
and protested vigorously to the American government every timed
seemed neutrality laws were being violated. W. R. Manning (ed.), Dip -
lomatic Correspondence of the United States concerning the Indepen -
dence of the Latin-American Nations (New York, 1925), I, 19, 32-35, III,
1891-1904.
scripts, Archivo general de Mexico, historia: Operaciones de guerra, notas
diplomaticás, 1809-1820.
retold on the basis of the extensive source material now available. The
best general account is still H. H. Bancroft, North Mexican States and
Texas (San Francisco, 1889), II, 17-32.
Library.
. . . (second edition with a biographical introduction by José L. Cossio.
Mexico City, 1915), 40. The first edition was published in Monterrey.
of copy August 29, 1817, Nacogdoches Archives.
a letter from John Dick to the Secretary of State, New Orleans, March
1, 1816. American State Papers, Foreign Relations, IV, 431. See also
Niles' Weekly Register, V, 152, VI, 226, IX, 33, X, 415, XI, 239, 291;
Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence, I, 19, III, 1892-1895, 1899-1901,
1931. University of Texas transcripts, Documents Concerning José Alvarez
de Toledo (Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente general, 136-7-9).
la historia del Estado de Nueva León . . . (second edition, Monter-
rey, 1885), II, 727-728.
127. Mr. Brigham writes that Southwick Moore died in 1818, aged 23.
involved from 1797 to 1810 in the Texas filibustering activities of Philip
Nolan and James Wilkinson. James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own
Times (Philadelphia, 1816), II, appendix III.
who were with him at the Battle of the Medina. Entry twelve reads:
"Godwin B. Cotton, Ayudte, en actual servicio." University of Texas
transcripts, Documents Concerning José Alvarez de Toledo.
age as 38. Eecords of General Land. Office, Austin, Texas, quoted by
Eugene C. Barker, "Notes on Early Texas Newspapers, 1819-1836," South -
western Historical Quarterly, XXI, 135.
this paper. C. S. Brigham, "Bibliography of American Newspapers," Pro -
ceedings of American Antiquarian Society, new series, XXIV, 408.
THE CONFEDERATE EXODUS TO LATIN AMERICA
I
During the three or four years following the close of the Civil
War no fewer than eight or ten thousand people left the south-
ern states and sought new homes in Mexico, Central America,
and South America. Before attempting to follow these heroic
souls on their interesting ventures into the wilds of the tropics
it may be well to make brief inquiry into a few factors which
prompted their going-
It is certain that southern interest in the tropics reaches back
into the era of "manifest destiny," when the "Young Ameri-
cans" were saturating the atmosphere with their fulminations,
filling books and newspapers with their chauvinistic philosophy,
and dispatching advance agents into the domains of their Latin
neighbors. Among the thousands of enthusiasts of this wild era
none had more influence in arousing interest in tropical regions
than Matthew Fontaine Maury. A Virginian of Huguenot
descent, Maury's unbounded enthusiasm and imagination had
brought to him honors and distinctions in many fields. Scien-
tists everywhere recognized his achievements in astronomy, geog-
raphy, and hydrography; his own government made him super-
intendent of the United States hydrographical office and astron-
omer of the naval observatory at Washington, which positions he
held for many years. These honors and rewards increased his
prestige in general; they caused the southern people in all ranks
of life to make him the repository of confidence in any field
upon which he chose to expatiate.
So far as his writings show, Maury's interest in the tropics
at first centered on the Amazon Valley. In the decade just prioi
to the outbreak of our Civil War he wrote voluminously and
spoke frequently to southern audiences on the importance of this
region. He thought "the Garden of the Hesperides," covering two
million square miles, was one of the most marvelous areas of the
earth, especially for the scientist and the agriculturist. To the
scientist, it offered for study a thousand species of plant and
animal life; to the agriculturist, it afforded a variety of prod-
ucts unsurpassed, indeed if not unequaled, by any other region
of the globe. In the Virginian's imagination, the possibilities
were so great as some day to allure a hundred million human
beings for their exploitation and enjoyment. It is an interest-
ing observation that the next three-quarters of a century were
to witness the fulfillment of one one-hundredth of this prophecy.
But, were the prophet living today he would muster a convinc-
ing argument explaining why his prophecy had gone awry.
In expatiating upon the wonders of the Amazon Maury struck
the practical as well, as the academic chord. The Amazon Val-
ley, perhaps the result of nature's design, was complementary to
the great valley of the Mississippi. Each produced what the
other lacked; together they supplied all that the human mind
craved. The wind and ocean currents facilitated the exchange
of products of one region with the other. A chip thrown into
the Amazon, or one of its thousand tributaries, would eventually
pass through the Gulf ports of the United States. The great
scientist did not tell how the same natural forces might retard to
equal degree the commerce from the Mississippi toward the
Amazon. He was primarily concerned in the material progress
of his beloved South.
Maury's ideas were given to the southern people in various
ways. Between 1849 and 1855 several of his articles appeared
in De
Bow's
Review,
the National
Intelligencer,
the Southern
Literary
Messenger,
and the Washington
Union
--all of which had
wide circulation. Some of the articles at first appeared under the
attractive pseudonym of "Inca"; many of them reached a larger
reading public through reproduction in Letters
on
the
Amazon
and
Atlantic
Slopes
of
South
America,
Maury popularized his
ideas and ambitions through the southern conventions, such as
those at New Orleans in 1851 and Memphis in 1853, which
adopted and printed his memorials, as well as through the pub-
lications of the national government. Two facts greatly aided
the process of dissemination: Maury was a scientist of world
repute; Maury wielded the pen of a wizard. If he could induce
hard-headed government officials to appropriate funds for the
exploration of the Amazon Valley and for the necessary negoti-
ations leading to the opening of its great river, he could with
less difficulty capture the hearts of an imaginative, simple-
minded public. The fact that the post bellum southerners re-
membered his writings is evidence of the facility with which he
accomplished the lesser task.
1
At a later period Maury became fully as enthusiastic--he was
an enthusiast par
excellence
--about the wonders and the impor-
tance of the developments of Mexico as he had been about the
possibilities of Brazil. Indeed, soon we shall learn that early in
the post-bellum period he became the chief instrument in an am-
bitious plan to colonize thousands of southerners in Mexico.
But Maury had assistance in advertising tropical Brazil to
the southern people; and Daniel P. Kidder, a missionary who
perhaps was personally unknown to the Virginian, may be con-
sidered his chief collaborator. In Kidder's Sketches
of
Resi
-
dence
and
Travels
in
Brazil
(published in 1845), the author told
of thrilling personal experiences extending over two and a half
years' travel in nearly all the empire's provinces, and gave de-
scriptions of the many natural wonders encountered therein.
Almost every page of the two volumes gripped the attention
and stirred the souls of its readers; and the readers were not
few, for many a southern collection contained, and several still
contain, copies of the book. The romance and beauty, the habits
and customs of the dwellers in that enchanted land, made a
broad appeal.
2
If through these and other sources the ante-bellum southern-
ers acquired a lively interest in Brazil, they acquired even
greater interest in the tropics of Middle America (Central
America and Mexico). If one may judge by the space which
the newspapers and periodicals devoted to the region, interest in
Middle America during the decade and a half preceding the Civil
War was fully as great as interest in the far West. Indeed, in
this era the fingers of "manifest destiny" pointed southward as
frequently as westward, though most so-called "American" his-
torians have not yet discovered the fact. All the forces that
impelled in one direction also impelled in the other; hence the
unanimity of interest.
The means by which the southerners acquired a knowledge of
and an interest in Middle America were many and varied. The
adventures of a great host of prospectors and the daring exploits
of the filibusters, such as William Walker, afforded sensational
materials for dozens of books and hundreds of magazines and
newspapers that had circulation in all parts of the country.
Moreover, the forum, the pulpit, and the platform contributed
their parts in saturating the atmosphere with news from the
southland. The post-bellum southerners would have had short
memories had they forgotten all. They did not forget all.
Largely romantic, this ante-bellum interest of the South in
the tropics carried over to post-war days, when it was trans-
formed into practicability. The transforming force was the state
of complete desperation that came over the South following the
surrender at Appomattox. Nothing short of living in the South
at the time could fully explain this unhappy state; but a cur-
sory examination of conditions there will furnish a partial ex-
planation.
Wreck and ruin, desolation and starvation covered the land
from Virginia to Texas. A battleground for contending armies
throughout the war, Virginia had been converted from a garden
into a desert. Marching armies had left the beautiful and fer-
tile Shenandoah Valley a waste; Sheridan's "barnburners" had
stripped it so bare that "a crow could not fly over it without
carrying his rations with him."
3 Between Richmond and Wash-
ington only heaps of ashes and solitary chimneys remained to
tell the story of death and destruction; between Alexandria and
Charlo.ttesville the country was "horrible to behold."
4 Around
Petersburg the farmers had to remove the dead animals and the
iron which cannon had belched forth before they could plough
the blood-soaked soil. Richmond itself was only a mass of black-
ened ruins.
5
Conditions in the Carolinas, particularly in South Carolina,
were no better. Sherman's army of Vandals had left Calhoun's
state so bare that a northern visitor declared that "you can have
no idea of the desolation of this country."
6 Only the soil of
the state escaped the desolation of war. "The banks were ruined.
The railroads were destroyed. Their few manufactories were
desolated. Their vessels had been swept from the seas and
rivers. The live-stock was consumed. Notes, bonds, mortgages,
all the money in circulation, debts, became alike worthless. The
community were without clothes, and without food. Every thing
had gone into the rapacious maw of the Confederate Govern-
ment; vast estates had crumbled like paper in a fire. While the
shape was not wholly destroyed, the substance had turned to
ashes. Never was there greater nakedness and desolation in a
civilized community."
7
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and one of the most
beautiful cities on the continent, was after the war "a wilder-
ness of ruins." "On each of twelve streets" for "three-fourths
of a mile" only "blackened chimneys and crumbling walls" re-
mained. On the eighty-four blocks swept by flames 1386 build-
ings had been consumed. Where once flourished in the open air
the japonica, the cape jasmine, the English and Spanish laurel,
the Chinese hawthorn, the holly, the Australian pines, the live-
oaks, the mock-orange, the magnificent magnolia now remained
rows of blackened trunks. Of the five railroads which had en-
tered the city, one now ended twenty-nine miles away, one thirty,
another thirty-two, another forty-five, and a fifth fifty. The
irons found twisted around trees and telegraph poles told the
story of vandalism.
8
The grand old town of Charleston had fared little better. Five
months after the close of the war a northern visitor saw it "a
city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women,
of rotting wharves, of desolated warehouses, of weed-wild gar-
dens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and
voiceless barrenness."
9 The wharves were so overgrown that they
resembled a wilderness; droves of army mules grazed in the
streets; St. Michael's Church, once the center of the city's fash-
ionable and aristocratic life, gave silent testimony to the bom-
bardment; northern soldiers' graves identified the famous old
Race Course.
10
But South Carolina--indeed the entire South--was a rural
community; and in the country the end of the war found condi-
tions bad enough. In hundreds of places country, mansions lay
in ashes; in many others the buildings remained, but their in-
teriors had been stripped of the libraries, paintings, and even
family portraits by northern soldiers. Confiscations, mortgages,
and loans to the Confederate government left many a wealthy
landholder a pauper. One scion of a Carolina estate that yielded
$150,000 a year in ante-bellum days peddled tea by the pound
and molasses by the quart on a corner of the old homestead to
the former family slaves in order to gain a livelihood. Planta-
tion lands that before the war brought twenty-five and thirty
dollars an acre were now to be had at two, three, four, five, and
ten dollars an acre, with small chance of sale. The poor peo-
ple of the country had lost less, but the little was their all.
11
Conditions in Georgia were fully as bad. With the excep-
tion of a single block, the entire business district of Atlanta
had been laid in ruins. Blackened jumbles of brick and. mortar,
charred remnants of upright timbers, scattered pieces of sheet-
iron roofing, and all other sorts and shapes of rubbish told of
General Sherman's visit. The desolation marking the sixty-
mile path made by the general's army in its advance from the
capital to the sea almost defies description. The havoc wrought
by Attila's Huns in their invasion of the Roman Empire could
not have been greater. The products and handiwork of civiliza-
tion that could not be carried away were destroyed. In nearly
every other part of the state the ruins were "heart sickening."
12
In the eastern half of the lower Mississippi basin the desola-
tion was also appalling. A contemporary, one Greene of Mont-
gomery, wrote that it was "scarcely possible to exaggerate the
effects of the late desolating war. Where five years ago every-
thing wore the cheerful aspect of affluence and refinement, where
happiness and prosperity abounded, where were apparent do-
mestic and social amenities such as can scarcely be found in
any other portion of men's heritage, there is now desolation,
poverty, sorrow and suffering; fields are lying waste and un-
fenced that were then teeming with rich abundance; heaps of
ashes and naked chimneys now mark the sites of thousands of
splendid dwellings; hopeless misery and helpless despair now
brood in sullen silence where but recently princely hospitality
and every social and domestic virtue were found in their most
attractive forms. In fact, in almost every part of the South the
march of hostile armies, the deadly carnage of fiercely contested
battles, and all the horrors and devastations of ruthless war may
be traced in ruins, blood, and new-made graves."
13
A northern visitor to the state of Alabama just after the close
of the war found that the "railroads were not in running order"
and were not "likely to be for some months. The war had de-
stroyed their rolling stock. Some were left without cars; nearly
all without good locomotives. Bridges were burnt; rails were
torn up and twisted for miles and miles; the companies them-
selves were utterly impoverished; and unless they could get
unlooked-for aid, most of them would have to go into liquida-
tion." On entering Mobile he saw the "planks had been torn
up for squares along the levee to make firewood, and the bare
sleepers were rotting from exposure; elsewhere the decayed
planks rattled ominously under carriage-wheels, and disclosed
here and there ugly holes that might prove dangerous to unwary
walkers. Half the warehouses and shops along the levee seemed
closed; a few transports only lay at the landing." In the city
proper he discovered "universal torpor of business."
14
In New Orleans, where federal authorities had been in con-
trol for three years, signs of desolation were less numerous. But
even here conditions had changed. The old social order had
been supplanted by a new one dominated by northern soldiers
and cotton jobbers. Such landmarks as St. Charles Hotel and
the old French Market still survived, but their glories had
vanished.
15
The western portion of the lower Mississippi basin was in a
still better condition at the close of the war. For the most part
it had not been the battleground for contesting armies. Never-
theless a New York newspaper correspondent found Galveston,
Texas, "a city of dogs and desolation." Eansacked stores and
houses made "no other city of its prominence so utterly insig-
nificant and God-forsaken in appearance."
16
But it was the scarcity of money and food and the imminence
of starvation throughout the South that threatened the gravest
consequences. The Confederate currency that gradually declined
in value during the contest became absolutely worthless at the
close. As a result, the rich became poor and the poor became
beggars.
17 Generals who had thousands of acres of land and
hundreds of negroes before the war found themselves with in-
sufficient funds for paying transportation home at the close;
women who had large incomes before were unable to purchase
postage stamps at the end; indeed some hitherto wealthy people
came to the end penniless and with heavy debts hanging over
their heads.
18 What was worse, there was no food in most quar-
ters. On many plantations corn bread and sassafras tea were the
only forms of sustenance. In all the towns from Richmond to
Mobile hundreds and even thousands of idle and destitute people
of all colors depended upon the government and private agencies
for food. In some communities one-half the people looked to
these sources for support.
19
No great stretch of the imagination is required to understand
the state of mind of the Confederate soldier when he returned
home in the late spring or early summer of 1865. He had lost
the cause which he had been made to believe was his dearest
possession. He returned to a dilapidated home: the dwelling was
without window shades or curtains, cardboard took the place of
broken window panes, doors were half off their hinges, the piano
was untuned, and the mural decorations had gone north never to
return; the outbuildings needed much repair or replacement; the
fences were down; the crow and the bittern cried hungrily over
the weed-grown fields; the farm implements lay rusting in un-
known places; the skeleton of the once-friendly dog scampered
away at the sight of his old master. No hand could. be had to
clear the fields; the negroes had gone to the northern army camps
to be fed or else they were attending the lectures of the agents
of the Freedman's Bureau in order to learn the tenets of Repub-
lican faith. Until they were disillusioned through the working
of time, the former slaves could not be induced to labor. The
farm could not be sold, for there was no buyer. Taxes were high
and money could hardly be found. Little wonder that several
thousand of these victims of war were ready to flee from their
native land and seek new beginnings under foreign flags! Four
years of grim war had been hell! A yawning hell enveloped the
future! It was too much for romantic souls !
20
The brutalizing effects of four years of war had made condi-
tions in the South frightful. They were made infinitely worse
by the reconstruction program which the federal government
undertook to impose upon the conquered section. The execution
of this program involved the stationing of thousands of loyal
agents from the North throughout all sections of the southland.
Among these agents imposed by governmental authority were the
stern and vindictive soldiers and the soft-hearted missionaries--
an anomalous and impossible combination. Ostensibly in order to
prepare them for their new responsibilities, many thousands of
the freedmen were given responsible positions in reconstruction.
Indeed, more than a hundred thousand were taken into the mili-
tary forces detailed for southern duty. This plan to make ex-
tensive use of the former slaves in the reconstruction process
was most unfortunate. Whatever the motive, the southerners
could see in it only vindictiveness and a woeful ignorance con-
cerning the nature of the problem to be solved.
Under the circumstances it was inevitable that clashes be-
tween the reconstruction agents and the southern people would
be frequent and grave. Indeed they were both. Sometimes the
clashes represented minor altercations and were quickly settled;
sometimes they assumed the proportions of formidable riots and
lasted several days. In any event the reconstruction agents had
their way. They closed churches; they suppressed civic organ-
izations; they censored newspapers; they supplanted duly elected
municipal officials with their own inefficient puppets.
This poorly conceived and badly executed plan of reconstruc-
tion brought to the already distracted South further disorder
and hopelessness. It gave the irresponsible elements of society
a fine atmosphere in which to perpetrate their foul deeds. As
a consequence, nearly every community witnessed almost all the
crimes known to civilized living. Arson, murder, and theft fol-
lowed each other with monotonous regularity.
Southern hope for better times was none too strong in the
spring of 1865. The widespread desolation and poverty discour-
aged even the stout-hearted. At the end of two years of vin-
dictive peace this weak hope was only a flickering candle. Then
came the hurricane that swept all in its path. Known as radi-
cal reconstruction, it was the most dastardly conceived and exe-
cuted crime in the history of the American people. Hatched in
the brain of petty politicians, who hoped to enrich, themselves
and their satellites, it took control of southern society from
decent hands and placed it in the hands of untutored blacks,
unprincipled northerners, and unscrupulous and irresponsible
southern whites. The corruption and unbridled passions that fol-
lowed in the wake of this crime fully justified the fears of the
southern people.