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, 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; and the short-lived Texas
Republican,
the first
issue of which was published in Nacogdoches on August 14, 1819.
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, 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, and in 1931 Mrs. Lota M. Spell entitled her scholarly
biographical sketch of the man: "Samuel Bangs: the First Printer
in Texas."
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. Lucas Alamán, writing in 1851, said that Toledo
had a press, and he is supported by González (1867), Cossio
(1925), Trelles (1926), and Robles (1932).
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). 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."
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.
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. 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. As a
jurist he knew how to weigh evidence, and was qualified to con-
tribute two excellent articles to historical publications.
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, and on the 28th of that month at Natchi-
toches, Louisiana, issued an appeal for aid in behalf of the Mexi-
can Eepublican cause. 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.
In the meantime Toledo arrived in the United States and pub-
lished a long defense of his break with the Spanish government.
Through the public press Gutiérrez learned of Toledo's activi-
ties, 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.
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. 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. "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."
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.
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.
As Trudeaux predicted, the press soon arrived. On May 23
he wrote Montero that it had been set up. 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."
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 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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).
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.
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, 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. It may be significant that Easton is only fifty miles
from Philadelphia, Toledo's headquarters while selecting his
party.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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." 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." 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.
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." 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."
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.
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." 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.
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.
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."
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."
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."
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.
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."
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. 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. 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.
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 !
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.
Thus the general answer to the question why the exodus from
the South during the few years following the close of the war is
to be found in the state of mind of the southerner caused in part
by the desolution which the war itself wrought and in part by
the vindictive reconstruction program which followed. Naturally
the specific factors responsible for the attitude of mind of the
individual or of different groups varied considerably. With some
individuals, as well as with some groups, the most discouraging
factors were the dilapidated farms and the absence of a labor
supply. To these the idea of using free Negro labor was pre-
posterous, for the liberated man could never be induced to work.
Some despaired because the future promised no society in which
Negroes would not function equally with their children. This
was unbearable. To some chief disappointment resulted from the
fact that dearest friends sold their souls for a mess of pottage
and accepted service along with the Negroes and carpet-baggers.
To some the politicial situation was anomalous: Parson Brown-
low's government in Tennessee was a travesty on decency; the
riots of Memphis and New Orleans, the rape and murder in every
hamlet were the rumblings of a terrible impending disaster. Many
feared that the wave of vengeance upon which Charles Sumner
and Thaddeus Stevens were mounting would rise until it de-
manded the lives of at least the higher officials of the Confederate
army and government. And the fear was no idle dream.
Many quotations from the utterances of those who decided
upon expatriation could be produced to substantiate the above
remarks, but two excerpts must suffice. The first is from a let-
ter written by Major Joseph Abney, president of the Southern
Colonization Society, to a kinsman in Kentucky in an attempt to
explain why the writer and many of his friends were planning
to establish new homes in Brazil. He said it was because
One can not close his eyes upon passing events, and situated
as we are, entirely ignore the lessons of experience, and the
solemn admonitions of history. The future is enveloped in clouds
and darkness, and we were less than men if we made no efforts
for the preservation of our families and to avert the manifold
dangers that lie in our way. We are just beginning to solve a
problem, in reference to the capacity of the negro to labor with-
out coercion, the solution of which, will make manifest the pov-
erty, decay and bankruptcy of the whole south. Our substance
had already been consumed by the war,--our people overwhelmed
with debt, and sorrow, and disappointment; and now at one fell
dash of the pen, to set free the negroes who constituted three
fourths of all the property that remained to us, and nearly the
whole of the laboring power of the country, and quarter them
among us, where they will defy our authority, remain a subject
of continual agitation for fanatics, engender a festering wound
in our side, and discourage and utterly hinder the introduction
here of a better class of laborers, is enough, without the most
marked interference of Divine Providence, to drive any people
to despair and desperation. A deeper degree of destitution and
want is inevitable, and as the negro will not work, and must
eat, hunger, and starvation, and madness and crime will run riot
through our borders and there is no. earthly power that can in-
terpose to save us and our children from the last extremities to
which man can be reduced. We are even now, prostrate, stran-
gled, submerged in
"A gulf profound as the Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mt. Cassius old;
Where armies whole, have sunk."
I utter these sentiments with pain and sorrow, for I have long
ceased to be angry, and there is no service I would withhold
from my government, that might contribute to redeem and save
our people. Laboring under these sad convictions, and being as-
sured that vast numbers of our friends who are destitute of good
farming lands, and now also destitute of labor, and yet are em-
barrassed with debt, must be brought to beggary, unless they ex-
change their accustomed habitations for a more genial clime and
more fruitful soil, it is our purpose to form a Southern Coloniza-
tion Society. . . .
The second excerpt is taken from a letter of an ex-Confeder-
ate who had already found a new home in Brazil to a friend back
home. In urging former friends to join them, he told them they
had the strongest motives for emigration
that ever goaded any people to extremities. The political power
which they wielded for self-protection, has been ruthlessly
wrested from them and placed in the hands of their former
slaves,, who once were very valuable laborers, but who are now
consuming the substance of the country as does the caterpillar
its great staple; and now Southerners must endure, unless they
flee it, such abuses of that power as inevitably result from the
vice and stupidity of the negro, directed by the most malignant
enemies that ever tyrannized over any people; and they must
pay the most exorbitant tax ever imposed on property, which tax
supports the Government that has ruined them and still pursues
them in their humilation as unrelentingly as ungenerously,
and will it be credited by history that Southerners voluntarily
remain and pay tax to pension the soldiers who ravaged their
country like barbarians and robbed them of liberty ?
These and many others were the reasons why his southern friends
should join him.
The seriousness of the state of mind to which many southern
people brought themselves by reflection upon the past, by brood-
ing over the desolation all about them, or by gloomy forebodings,
expressed itself in many ways. Some spent their "time in seclu-
sion--reading law for employment and pastime and wandering
in the woods like a 'melancholy Jacque,' or Jack Ass . . .
refusing to be comforted"; some decided to flee from their
native land and establish themselves anew under foreign flags;
some took themselves and their scant belongings to the Gulf-coast
regions, where they kept in readiness to flee in case the worst
came to pass; while a few--like Edmund Ruffin of Virginia--
after fighting throughout the war went to the extremity of tak-
ing their own lives.
As already intimated, most of those who decided upon expa-
triation chose the tropics of Mexico, Central America, and
South America. The choice was determined in part by the pres-
ence of fertile lands, which were adapted to cotton-growing and
which could be had on liberal terms, in part by the social in-
stitutions--slavery in the case of Brazil--of the countries offer-
ing the inducements, and in part by the lingering romantic in-
terest which writers and travelers had aroused in ante-bellum
days.
The romantic interest aroused in earlier days burst forth anew
in some of the heroic souls as they contemplated ventures into
the tropics,
Where the flowers ever bloom and the beams ever shine,
and all, save the spirit of man is divine."
One "Defunct Reb" while contemplating making his future home
in Brazil composed the following amusing lines:
How sweet all day, on diamond reefs to lie,
While 'long the wanton waves sweet mermaids hie,
While far above, the Condor bird does sore, [st'c]
Proud breasts his native air,
Sweeping in circles there!
0, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
Home of the sunbeam--great kingdom of heat,
With woods evergreen, and snake forty feet!
Land of the diamond--bright nation of pearls,
With monkeys a plenty, and Portuguese girls!
How sweet all night in hammocks to swing,
While grief and woes to the devil we fling!
Up among the leaves of the lofty cocoa,
Unceasingly to go
To and fro, to and fro!
0, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
I long to rest 'neath the broad spreading palm,
To gaze at her rivers so placid and calm--
Pluck her gold fruits so delicious and sweet,
And try a taste of her guanaco meat!
How sweet in death, in dismal swamps to sleep,
While 'bove you, buzzards sad vigil keep,
While o'er your bones slimy reptiles crawl,
Eating, devouring all,
Till you in pieces fall!
Oh, give me a ship with sail and with wheel,
And let me be off to happy Brazil!
I yearn to feel her "perpetual spring,"
And shake by the hand Don Pedro, her king,
Kneel at his feet--call him, "My Royal Boss"!
And receive in return "Welcome, Old Hoss" !
Whatever else may be said of the southerners who expatri-
ated themselves, they did not pull up and leave their old homes
precipitately. Quite to the contrary, most of them gave care-
ful consideration to the evidence pro
and con.
No doubt the
deliberation and careful planning were largely results of ominous
and timely warning from friends and newspaper editors. There
was hardly a southern paper that did not attempt to discourage
expatriation, though most editors submitted that conditions in
the South justified a resort to extreme measures.
The task of preparation for the exodus was in the main a
cooperative enterprise between the governmental agencies of the
Latin-American countries concerned and representatives of irrec-
oncilable groups of southerners. The cooperation worked effec-
tively in part because the Latin-American nations were at the
time offering liberal inducements to foreign immigrants in gen-
eral. The southerners, who had reputations of being provident
and progressive, were especially welcome everywhere. The Max-
imilian government in Mexico believed that the sturdy landhold-
ers would offer much support against the turbulent masses led
by Benito Juárez; the British colonial administration at Belize
found special need for the southern sugar planters; Dom Pedro
II was convinced that the imperial regime of Brazil would be
strengthened greatly by accretions to the landholding aristocracy.
The governments at Mexico City, Belize, and Rio de Janeiro
resorted to various expedients in order to make effective attempts
to induce southerners to migrate to their respective domains.
All advertised extensively in southern newspapers their liberal
inducements to immigrants, the natural beauties of their land-
scapes, and the unsurpassed fertility which their virgin soil
afforded agriculturists; all spent large sums of money to enter-
tain and to facilitate the labor of the inspecting agents sent out
by the southerners; the Maximilian and Brazilian governments
appointed prominent southerners to important positions on their
immigration staffs.
--southerners were preparing to avail themselves of these induce-
ments. In many localities they pooled their efforts and formed
associations for the purpose of assembling information concern-
ing conditions in the Latin-American countries. These associa-
tions, sometimes singly and sometimes in conjunction with other
similar bodies, raised funds and dispatched agents abroad on in-
spection tours in order to gain first-hand information on a
variety of subjects connected with home-building. When the pros-
pecting agents returned, their reports were often published by
the associations which sponsored them.
Of the many associations that came into being during this
period, perhaps the best known--at least to the writer--was the
one which had its initial meeting at Edgefield Court House,
South Carolina, on August 21, 1865, and which resolved itself
into the Southern Colonization Society at the second meeting
held on the first Monday in September of the same year. At the
August meeting
it was resolved to send two or more Agents with as little delay
as practicable to explore the Southern and Western Territories
of the United States and especially the great Empire of Brazil,
to ascertain what inducements they might offer for the immi-
gration of our people, and, in the event of a favorable report
[apparently on Brazil], to make all necessary arrangements for
the procurement of lands, and for the establishment of a good
and permanent settlement there. Dr. Hugh A. Shaw and Major
Robert Meriwether were the agents selected for the mission and
Dr. Hugh A. Shaw, B. C. Bryan, Wm. M. Williams, Major Isaac
Boles, and T. B. Reese were appointed a Committee to collect
funds for the subscribers and friends to the enterprise, in order
to equip them for their journey. ...
At the second meeting, held on the first Monday in Septem-
ber, the name of Southern Colonization Society was taken, a
constitution adopted, and the following officers elected: Major
Joseph Abney, president; Colonel D. L. Shaw, vice-president;
Colonel A. P. Butler, secretary; Major John E. Bacon, corre-
sponding secretary; and Thomas B. Reese, treasurer. At this
meeting the society also affirmed what had been done at the pre-
vious session and authorized the president to reconstitute and
enlarge the committee appointed to raise funds for defraying the
expenses of the prospecting agents.
"Probably owing to the extreme exhaustion of our people,
subscriptions came "in very slowly, and in great disproportion
to the interest apparently manifested in the enterprise." Never-
theless, by continuous appeals a sufficient sum was finally raised
to enable agents Meriwether and Shaw to start for Brazil. They
secured passage on the North
America,
a steamer of the Brazil
and the United States line, left New York on October 30, and
arrived at Rio de Janeiro exactly four weeks later.
The first of May, 1866, the president of the Southern Colon-
ization Society gave to the press the report which Dr. Shaw and
Major Meriwether had submitted to the organization. Covering
more than three closely printed columns in the Edgefield Adver
-
tiser,
where it apparently first appeared, it presented to many
eager readers a vivid picture of those sections of Brazil which
the inspectors considered best adapted to southern emigrants. At
a later time the report appeared again in the Advertiser,
as well
as in several other places. In another connection it will be given
more consideration.
The writer knows nothing concerning the activities of the
Southern Colonization Society after publication of the Shaw-
Meriwether report. Perhaps it had fulfilled its function in stim-
ulating a general interest in Brazil and in locating a suitable
home for all who wished to emigrate. That many of the promi-
nent members of the organization--and these included some of
the elect of South Carolina and Georgia—went to the South-
American country and established themselves anew is beyond
dispute.
While the organization formed at Edgefield Court House was
probably the best known and the most influential of the period,
many similar societies functioned in all parts of the South. In-
deed, there was not a single state south of the Potomac and Ohio
rivers that did not have its society for the promotion of emigra-
tion; many of them had numerous organizations which served
this purpose. About two dozen societies from Mississippi and
Louisiana alone cooperated in sending General William Wallace
Wood of the former state on an inspection tour in Brazil the
latter half of 1865. Other societies aided in other prospecting
itineraries into the tropics.
Although most of the tours of an investigatory nature were
sponsored by the colonization societies, it would be erroneous to
think that all were made under such auspices. For example,
Reverend Ballard S. Dunn, rector of St. Phillip's Church in New
Orleans, and Major Lansford Warren Hastings seem to have made
their extended journeys on their own initiative and responsibil-
ity. Interestingly enough, the latter, although he had served in
the Confederate army with distinction, was a native of Ohio. But
we shall hear more of the rector and the major anon.
At this point it may be of interest to note the general nature
of the plans for southern emigration and to follow a few pros-
pecting agents on their itineraries into the tropics. Arising out
of negotiations between the diplomatic agents of the Confederacy
and the imperial government of France, the first schemes to
evolve were those for settlement in the neighboring country of
Mexico. By virtue of a grant, dated April 27, 1865, from Max-
imilian, Napoleon III's puppet emperor of Mexico, twenty Ameri-
can citizens organized in St. Louis the American and Mexican
Emigrant Company. The prospectus which the company drew
up and distributed in the United States called attention to Mex-
ico's agricultural, forest, and mineral resources and promised to
make all arrangements incident to transportation to and settle-
ment in the promised land. The organization announced the
intention of establishing offices and officials in all the principal
cities of the South, as well as in Chicago and New York, to take
care of its business. Temporary expenses were to come from the
$10 fees charged for honorary membership--only members could
avail themselves of the organization's services--while future
profits would result from the sale of lands which the company
expected to purchase in large quantities. To disguise appear-
ances, the scheme invited general emigration, though the appeal
was to southern people. So far as can be ascertained, no person
left the United States under the auspices of this organization.
Curiosity asks whether the Washington government interfered
too soon or whether other plans overshadowed.
The second plan for colonizing southerners in Mexico was
much more ambitious and probably came nearer the goal of suc-
cess. It, too, was hatched out in Paris as a result of confer-
ences between the French emperor and bold Americans who were
either sympathetic toward the southern cause or were willing to
employ southern anguish to further selfish ends. Known as the
Gwin plan by virtue of its promotion in the New World through
Dr. William M. Gwin, ex-senator from California, the scheme
proposed to open four states of northern Mexico--Chihuahua,
Durango, Sonora, and Sinaloa--to all southerners who would
escape the bloody agony that was believed to await them in their
homeland, and to other persons of the United States and other
lands who might choose to embrace the opportunity. Dr. Gwin
predicted that "the crusades will be surpassed in the emigration
to the country of my future home." Inhabited by the greatest
people that ever assembled, what a country it would be!
The ex-senator was to go out as director-general of emigra-
tion, and eight thousand French troops were to back him in the
exercise of his extraordinary powers. With these crack soldiers
trained in the military tactics of Europe, and with the southern-
ers who would rally by the thousands to the call of Gwin, there
would be no fear of an American army. An amusing complex,
this impassable bulwark against Yankee aggression! A peculiar
sort of breastwork for the protection of a clown draped in im-
perial mantle and a few politicians anxious to exploit the min-
eral resources of a helpless nation!
In the summer of 1865 Gwin and his cohorts professed little
doubt that their project would go through. It had the approval
of the influential men who counselled Maximilian; it awaited
only the emperor's signature. Still it failed. The cause of fail-
ure may have been pressure from Washington upon Maximilian
wrought by way of Paris, for several communications which Dr.
Gwin dispatched from Mexico to Europe fell into the hands of
Secretary Seward. Though unsuccessful directly, the plan caused
hundreds, if not thousands, of Confederates to flock to Mexico.
The third scheme for Mexico followed close upon that of Dr.
Gwin, and achieved a degree of success. Its chief promoter was
Matthew Fontaine Maury, who, as we have seen, in ante-bellum
days wrote voluminously on the wonders of the tropics and the
possibilities of their development in the interest of the southern
people, and who during the war served the Confederacy in the
capacity of scientist and diplomat. A friend of Maximilian for
some years, when the Austrian decided to accept the New World
venture Maury sent him a letter of congratulation. This friend-
ship had a chance to become more intimate in June, 1865, when
the Confederate reached the Mexican capital, whither he had
gone from Havana upon learning of General Lee's surrender.
After declining a ministerial post tendered by the emperor,
though accepting the title of honorary councillor of state, Maury
was made director of the imperial observatory of Mexico. Soon
thereafter he and Maximilian agreed upon a plan for colonizing
southerners in Mexico. This plan made Maury imperial commis-
sioner of colonization and General J. B. Magruder—also of the
Confederate army--chief of the land office, and provided for the
appointment of agents in all the southern states and California,
as well as at convenient points in Mexico, whose duty it should
be to facilitate arrangements for those who desired to take ad-
vantage of Mexico's inducements. The inducements set forth in
Maximilian's decree and commissioner Maury's regulations offered
to heads of families 640 acres of land, to single men 320 acres,
to poor immigrants free passage, and to all freedom from taxa-
tion for one year, from military service for five years and re-
ligious toleration.
Toward the close of 1865 Maury appointed two committees of
distinguished Confederates to investigate the possibilities for set-
tlement in the Cordova and tierra
caliente
region of the east and
in the Tepic and Pacific coast section of the west. The investi-
gation favored the eastern district, and plans went forward rap-
idly for the establishment of a colony. But in February of the
following year the commissioner placed his work in the hands of
General Magruder and others and left the land of his natural-
ized citizenship to join his family in England. Although he
avowed his intention of returning, events decreed that he should
never do so.
Maury remained in Mexico only about eight months; but while
there he championed the cause he represented with all his dy-
namic nature. In the numerous communications which he sent
for publication in the southern newspapers he displayed the tal-
ents which only a learned man of the world can exhibit, talents
which are truly reminiscent of the author's writings on the tropics
in ante-bellum days. In these later communications he scorned
the rumor that Mexico was not a safe place in which to live:
the doors to his house had no locks; he never went to the trouble
of closing them before going to bed at night. He frowned upon
the idea that Maximilian was not a capable ruler: his policies
were enlightened; his government was stable and strong, and
respected everywhere. With his pen dipped in wizard's ink,
Maury described the natural charm of his adopted land and de-
picted the ease with which the southerner could make it satisfy
his every whim. To all disconsolate southerners, "ho for
Mexico !"
The routes taken by the Confederates, the mode of travel, and
the difficulties experienced in getting from the South to Mexico
necessarily varied greatly. But the account given by Isham G.
Harris, ex-governor, ex-senator, general in the Confederate army
and otherwise prominent among the insurgents, in a letter to his
Georgia friend George W. Adair of Atlanta just after his arrival
in Mexico is not far from typical. In his own words penned at
Cordova November 12, 1865, he says:
I lingered near Grenada, endeavoring to arrange some business
matters, until the 14th of May. In the meantime I had a skiff
built, and on the morning of the 14th I embarked, some six miles
east of Greenwood, and set sail for the trans-Mississippi, the
party consisting of General Lyon, of Kentucky, myself, and our
two servants. We navigated the Blackwater for one hundred and
twenty miles, and on the morning of the 21st, just before day-
light, I crossed over to the Arkansas shore. I crossed at the
foot of Island Number 75, just below the mouth of the Arkansas
river; proceeded westward as far as the Blackwater was navi-
gable, and on the morning of the 22d I left my frail bark, bought
horses, mounted the party, and set out for Shreveport, where I
hoped to find an army resolved on continued resistance to fed-
eral rule; but before reaching Shreveport I learned that the army
of the trans-Mississippi had disbanded and scattered to the winds,
and all the officers of rank had gone to Mexico.
Having no further motive to visit Shreveport, I turned my
course to Red River county, Texas, where a portion of my negroes
and plantation stock had been carried some two years ago. I
reached there on the 7th of June; was taken sick and confined
to my bed a week. On the 15th of June, with my baggage, cook-
ing utensils, and provisions on a pack-mule, I set out for San
Antonio, where I expected to overtake a large number of confed-
erate civil and military officers en route for Mexico. Beached San
Antonio on the 26th, and learned that all confederates had left
for Mexico some ten days or two weeks before. On the morning
of the 27th I started to Eagle Pass, on the Rio Grande, the fed-
erals holding all the crossings of the river below Eagle Pass. I
reached Eagle Pass on the evening of the 30th, and immediately
crossed over to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras. On the
morning of the Ist of July set out for Monterey; arrived there
on the evening of the 9th. Here I overtook General Price and
ex-Governor Polk, of Missouri, who were starting to the city of
Mexico next morning, with an escort of twenty armed Missourians.
As I was going to the city, and the trip was a long and danger-
ous one to make alone, I decided to go with them, though I was
literally worn out with over one thousand five hundred miles of
continuous horseback travel. I exchanged my saddle-horse, sad-
dles, &c, for an ambulance, put my two mules to it, gave the whip
and lines to Kan, bought me a Spanish grammar and dictionary,
took the back seat, and continued the study of the Spanish lan-
guage. We made the trip at easy stages, of about twenty-five miles
per day, and reached the city of Mexico on the evening of the 9th
of August. The trip was one of the longest, most laborious, and
hazardous of my life, but I will not tax your time or mine with
its details, many of which would interest you deeply if I were
to give them to you. . . .
Agents from the South, some representing organizations and
others sponsored solely by a few friends or by their own initia-
tive, went also into several of the Central-American and South-
American states. In September, 1865, the southern correspondent
of the New York Herald
estimated that 50,000 people would leave
the South within a short time and said that twenty agents re-
cently had been dispatched to Brazil alone to make prospecting itin-
eraries. Fortunately, excellent reports made by some of these
agents who went to Brazil are extant to inform us on the nature
of the itineraries.
One of the first prospecting agents to go to Brazil was General
William Wallace Wood. A native of Mississippi, though for a
long time a resident of New Orleans, a lawyer, an editor, a fluent
public speaker, the general was about middle age when in the
summer following the surrender at Appomattox about six hundred
despondent southern planters started him to the South-American
country on a tour of inspection. With him were Dr. James H.
Warne and Dr. J. P. Wesson of Tennessee, Robert L. Brown, an
Alabama planter, and W. C. Kernan of Florida. Upon arrival
at Rio de Janeiro in October, Wood's party was accorded a re-
ception not soon to be forgotten. Public processions, church
bells, and Dixie-playing bands interspersed the hours of three
full days of entertainment furnished by the dignitaries of the
imperial government. What was more important, the imperial
government placed at the generaPs disposal every facility that
heart could desire for inspecting any portion of the Brazilian
hinterland purported to be suitable for occupation. Accompanied
by engineer, guide, and interpreter, and with letters of introduc-
tion to all provincial officials who might render aid, the inspect-
ing party left the Brazilian capital on October 17. Going to
Santos by government steamer, thence to Sao Paulo by railroad,
the party continued to the northwest on horses and mules. At
the end of several days of travel and observation, a section of
country on the fringes of civilization captured the attention of
the prospector. The El Dorado embraced about eight million
acres lying on both sides of the Jahú and near the larger, west-
ward-flowing Tieté. Building timber, an equable and healthful
climate, soil adapted to cotton growing, and a good site for a
town were the deciding factors in the choice near Araquara.
Instead of proceeding to examinations in the provinces of
Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul, as previously
intended, General Wood returned to the capital immediately and
entered into negotiations looking toward colonizing the tract near
Araquara, which was about two hundred miles from the provi-
sional capital of Sao Paulo. To such colonists as might come
the imperial government promised land at twenty-two cents an
acre, payable twenty per cent annually for five years, free pro-
visions during the period of establishment, free transportation
from Rio de Janeiro to the settlement site, and citizenship by
the mere taking of an oath. In addition, it would construct
vehicle roads from the colony to the Sao Paulo railroad, thereby
giving communication to the outside world.
With these general arrangements completed, the inspector
boarded the steamship South
America,
landed in New York on
January 25, 1866, and proceeded to the southland. But the news
of his remarkable journey had already reached the ears of an
anxious people; almost a month before his arrival the leading
newspapers of the South had published accounts in their
columns.
At Araquara, in central Sao Paulo, General Wood's party met
Dr. J. McF. Gaston, who was prospecting for a number of South
Carolina families. Indeed, the general and the doctor cooper-
ated in the execution of their programs. At times they made
itineraries together, and each placed his data and observations at
the disposal of the other. But before returning home the South
Carolinian conducted an investigation of the districts about
Iguapé and Cananea (province of Paraná) also. After reaching
home he set forth his experiences and observations in a book of
almost four hundred pages which he entitled Hunting
a
Home
in
Brazil.
Published at Philadelphia early in 1867, this inter-
esting volume was placed with Dr. Hugh A. Shaw of Fort Gaines,
Georgia, for sale to any who had the price. The author could
not act long as agent for his product, for in April, 1867, he left
Savannah for the chosen land with a party of one hundred fol-
lowers.
of Sao Paulo, so these two parties upon their return to Rio de
Janeiro struck up with Meriwether and Shaw, the agents of the
Southern Colonization Society of Edgefield Court House. In fact,
Dr. Gastón joined his fellow South Carolinians on their inspec-
tion tour of Brazil. As the portions of the empire Meriwether
and Shaw "were instructed to visit and examine, were so exten-
sive, and so difficult of access, with the means of transportation
attainable in Brazil, that more than two years would have been
required for the accomplishment," they decided to confine their
examinations to the province of Sao Paulo, which was supposed
best adapted to the wants and necessities of the southern people.
"With the purpose of exploring this Province thoroughly," says
the Meriwether-Shaw report,
we left Rio de Janeiro, in company with Dr. Gaston, who, as
above stated, had seen a considerable portion thereof, with the
guide and interpreter, whom the Minister of Agriculture had com-
missioned to attend us, and went by steamer to Santos, its sea-
port town. We examined the country around this place, for fifty
miles, but were not satisfied with its healthfulness, productions,
or soil.
Convincing ourselves that the country, lying between the
mountains and seacoast, had no large bodies of farming lands,
we directed our attention to the interior, beyond the mountains
which bound the coast. Therefore, we took the cars over the Sao
Paulo and Santos Railroad, the proprietor kindly giving us free
passage both going and returning. This railroad is not yet com-
pleted, but the cars pass over it to about twenty miles beyond
the city of Sao Paulo, the capital of the province of the same
name, and it is graded to Jundaihy, forty miles from the capi-
tal. Its whole completed length is eighty or ninety miles, con-
necting the interior of the province with the seaboard, at
Santos. . . .
At Sao Paulo we were provided with animals to prosecute the
journey over a country almost without roads; for the entire
transportation in the interior is done on pack mules, except that
now and then a bullock-cart is seen hauling at short distances,
over roads which our wagons certainly could not pass. Those
carts are of the most primitive character, the wheels and axles
are fastened together in moving. We have often seen as many
as ten oxen drawing at one cart, and sometimes many more, and
not carrying more than two thousand pounds. The oxen, too,
are as fine as we have ever seen.
By pack mules the party examined the interior of Sao Paulo
as far as Araquara, which is two hundred miles distant from the
provincial capital. But the lands which struck the inspectors'
favor, and which they recommended most strongly to their con-
tituents, lay in the districts of Botucatú, Lençoes, and the ad-
oining valley of the Tieté not quite so far away. The price of
these tracts was from one to two dollars an acre, and they seemed
idmirably adapted to most every southern need. Unfortunately,
the location was more than a hundred miles from the railway
terminus. This fact caused the recommendation of the Campinas
district which was within twenty or thirty miles of rail connec-
tion, and in which improved land could be had for two to five
dollars an acre. In the latter vicinity two planters from Ala-
bama and Louisiana had already settled. As we shall see, hun-
dreds more were to come during the next two or three years.
Upon completing the inspection, the agents returned to Rio de
Janeiro where they soon disposed of necessary official matters
before embarking for New York. Through the Southern Coloni-
zation Society a report of the itinerary reached the public with-
out delay.17
While Meriwether and Shaw were prospecting for the South-
ern Colonization Society in central Sao Paulo, Reverend Ballard
S. Dunn, rector of St. Phillip's Church in New Orleans, was
hunting for a home for himself and such Christian friends as
might follow him in other parts of the Brazilian empire. "After
much laborious travel and investigation" in the provinces of Rio
de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, and Sao Paulo, he chose for settle-
ment a tract of land on the Juquia River, a tributary of the
Eibeiro. Called "Lizzieland" in honor of a daughter of the
rector, the survey was situated a few miles from the coast, on
the border of the provinces of Sao Paulo and Parana, and about
four hundred miles south of Rio de Janeiro. The 614,000 acres
stretched along the river for about forty miles, extending to the
interior often for half this distance. The fact that Brazilians
owned many estates along the river front within the tract was
not a disadvantage, said the inspector, for they were willing to
sell at prices not in advance of those for government lands. Be-
fore returning to Rio de Janeiro to complete official arrangements
for the land, Dunn purchased for his own homestead one of the
best tracts on the Jaquiá River. Named "Ballard," this "centra]
residence" was to be the "nucleus of the proposed settlement."
The contract between Dunn and the minister of agriculture
showed the liberality of the Brazilian government. The rector
was given a provisional title to the lands, which was to be ex-
changed for a permanent one as soon as the purchase price had
been paid; the price to be paid for the government land, includ-
ing the expense for surveying, was forty-one and three-quarter
cents an acre; the quantity of land each settler might take was
to be regulated by the rector, who was responsible for payments
therefor; such manufactures, machines, utensils, and implements
of agriculture as the immigrants wished to bring for their uses
were to be exempt from import duties; the imperial government
would pay for one vessel of transportation for every two vessels
furnished by Reverend Dunn, or would advance to immigrants
upon their arrival in Brazil the cost of passage, reimbursement
to be guaranteed by mortgages on the lands purchased; and the
Rio government promised to house the immigrants pending the
construction of buildings on the homesteads.
As soon as these arrangements had been completed, Dunn re-
turned home and began to solicit settlers to accompany him to
Lizzieland. He appealed to such southerners as were willing to
force among themselves "that law of honor, and Christian recti-
titude, which obviates the necessity for enforcing any other law."
To give his appeal publicity he advertised it widely in the south-
em newspapers, and in 1866 published his Brazil,
the
Home
for
Southerners.
Just above Lizzieland, on the upper Juquiá and its main trib-
utary, the Sao Lourengo, Major Frank McMullen and William
Bowen selected a tract for themselves and a number of Texas
friends and relatives. The choice was made after five months of
continuous travel in the great empire, and the terms with the
Brazilian government were almost identical with those granted
Ballard S. Dunn.
About the same time Colonel Charles G. Gunter of Montgom-
ery secured a grant of many thousand acres in the Rio Doce
Valley. Situated three hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro
in the province of Espirito Santo, Gunter's selection embraced
the beautiful fresh water lake of Juparanao, a body of water
twenty by four miles in extent. The land was sold to the set-
tlers surveyed at the government price of twenty-two cents an
acre. As we shall see in a later chapter, many disconsolate south-
erners, particularly from his own state, followed the kind Ala-
bama colonel to Lake Juparanao.
Finally, we come to the most interesting of all the agents who
prospected in the tropics for southerners. He is the most inter-
esting because, though born in Yankeeland of New England an-
cestors, he went about his task with a zest unmatched by southern
enthusiasts. Fortunately, he left in The
Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil
an enduring monument to his unflinching zeal. Born in
Knox County, Ohio, in 1819, reared, educated, and admitted to
the bar in the same state, Lansford Warren Hastings went to
Independence, Missouri, in 1842 and joined the emigrant train
to Oregon. Although a man of only twenty-three years, Hast-
ings was elected one of the important officials of this train. The
summer of the following year, 1843, found the restless young
man, not in Oregon but in California, where later he seems to
have dreamed and planned to overthrow the existing government
and establish an independent republic with himself as head.
During the year in which the united States acquired the land of
his dreams he married Charlotte C. Toler, whose father was a
Virginian and whose mother was of Spanish descent and a native
of Caracas, Venezuela. It was doubtless through this marriage
that the adventurer developed an interest in northern South
America.
lic life, though he was a member of the California Constitutional
Convention of 1849 and retained a connection with filibustering
into Mexico. The Civil War afforded him an opportunity to re-
sume a more active career. In 1863-64 he sought authority from
high officials of the Confederate government to organize an ex-
pedition for wresting the region of Arizona and New Mexico
from federal control and adding it to the Confederacy. The
proponent pointed out that his offer, though calculated to cost
only a small sum, would give the Confederacy an outlet on the
Pacific Ocean. If the prospects for its continuance had been
brighter, the southern government might have considered the
ambitious proposal feasible; with the gloomy outlook as it was,
it received scant consideration at Richmond. But regardless of how
it appeared to southern officials, the plan reveals much concern-
ing the mind and character of its proponent.
"Immediately after the surrender of the Confederate Army"
Hastings turned his attention to the subject of southern emigra-
tion to Brazil. On March 26, 1866, following a period of great
delay, he left Mobile, Alabama, on board the steamship Margaret
with a party of thirty-five emigrants, "including men, women,
and children." A few days out from shore smallpox made its
appearance on board, in consequence of which it was necessary
to return to Mobile, where quarantine and eleven deaths defeated
the expedition. Nothing daunted, the leader soon set out in com-
pany with Simpson, a Montgomery engineer, for Brazil in order
to select a settlement site and make other necessary arrangements
for such emigrants as would follow him upon his return.
Going by way of New York, Hastings and his companion took
passage on the steamship North
America
and arrived at Para
May 16. Their reception at the Amazon port was cordial; by
two in the morning of the following day they had secured an
interpreter, an American named Charles Collyer, and were aboard
a vessel of the Amazon Steamship Company anxious to begin an
inspection itinerary thousands of miles in length. For some un-
explained reason none of the flock of southern inspectors had
visited the great valley made known to Americans by the writ-
ings of Maury and the explorations of his kinsman, Lieutenant
Herndon of the United States navy! But the negligence made
Hasting's opportunity all the more promising!
For several days, as the little Manâos
fought the muddy current
in her ascent, the filibuster-explorer viewed the wonders of the
mightiest river of the world. He observed the hardwood forests
and calculated their potential values; on the wharves of the small
riparian towns he saw piled high the products of the fertile soil,
including coffee, sugar, rice, cotton, corn, beans, cinnamon, cocoa,
and various fruits. After spending two days at Manâos, the
capital of the province of Amazonas, the thousand-mile return
journey was begun. Two days before the close of May the Hast-
ings party was back at Para. Since the beginning of the inspec-
tion tour on the Amazon, the leading citizens of Para had formed
an emigrant-aid association for the purpose of dealing more
effectively with Hastings or any other prospectors who might
come their way. Through this organization Hastings approached
the imperial government at Rio de Janeiro and ultimately brought
to consummation his contract.
Of all the prospective sites given cursory inspection on the
Amazon journey, the one at Santarém, situated about five hun-
dred miles above Para at the junction of the Amazon and Tapa-
jós, seemed best adapted for a Dixie settlement. The advantages
afforded by Santarém in comparison with those afforded by other
sites may have been more apparent than real; the entertainment
accorded Hastings at Santarém by one of the vice-presidents of
the province of Para made possible effective advertising in its
favor. At any rate, Hastings had been favorably impressed, and
before proceeding to the Brazilian capital to present his plan to
the highest officials of state he sent his companion engineer,
Simpson, for an inspection of the table lands in its vicinity.
Armed with twenty-two letters of introduction, and all neces-
sary documentary authority," Major Hastings left Pará for Rio
de Janeiro on June 28 (1866). Upon arrival at the capital, he
received courteous attention from all the imperial officials, but
especially from the immigrant agents and the minister of agri-
culture, who offered him every facility possible. "After a delay
of forty days," he received papers authorizing him to return to
Para to conclude negotiations with the president of the province
for sixty leagues of land located at any place the inspector might
designate. Early in September Hastings was back to the Amazon
port; within a few days he had completed all remaining official
arrangements and was restlessly waiting for the iron steamer
Tapajós
to take him to Santarém. Several letters from Simpson
riving the results of his preliminary examinations confirmed the
impression that the lands near the mouth of the Tapajós River
offered the southerners their El Dorado.
Accompanied by Barr, Chaffie, and Sparks of the ill-fated
Margaret,
and by Demaret of Texas, the major left for Santarém
in the early morning of September 17. Three days later the
party arrived at its destination, where a generous hospitality
awaited it. Following several strenuous days spent in further ex-
ploration and examination, the tract of sixty square leagues au-
thorized by the Brazilian government was selected so as to em-
brace the table lands "between and bordering upon the Amazon,
Tapajós and Curua rivers." Situated two degrees south of the
equator and five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean, the
selection embraced exactly 960 sections, or 614,400 acres. The
six Americans attested to the fact that the tract was unsurpassed
"in soil, timber, and salubrity of climate"; and the front view
offered "the majestic Amazon, with its vast expanse of turbid
waters, its clear and limpid affluent, the Tapajós, and its con-
tinent-like islands, all mapped with nature's accuracy." Before
Hastings left for the United States to assemble hundreds of his
compatriots and to arrange transportation facilities to their future
homes he and four of his prospecting companions selected ad-
jacent sites for their farms. Indeed, before his departure three
of the four companions making selections had occupied their
lands and were busily engaged in clearing them, in building their
houses, and in sinking wells for water. In the absence of Negro
labor, all this vanguard depended upon Indian servants.
Stimulated by the feeling of success in the choice of a location
for his settlement, and exhilarated by the cordiality of the fare-
well party held on the eve of his departure, Major Hastings
essayed the task of depicting the wonders of the great Amazon
Valley as his boat floated down the river toward Pará. He said:
Who can picture, who can paint nature as here exhibited? With
wonder, admiration and reverential awe, one may contemplate the
vastness with which he finds himself here surrounded, the pro-
fusion of nature's bounties, and sublimity of scenery, but to de-
scribe them, to picture them as they are, is beyond the scope oí
human capacity. Here we behold the great Amazon, by far the
largest river in the world, located in the center of the world,
with its vast tributaries, affording more than ten thousand miles
of uninterrupted, fluvial navigation; extending from the ocean
to the Andes, and from the Orinoco to the La Plata, embrac-
ing more than 2,000,000 square miles, teeming with animal and
vegetable life; a world of eternal verdure and perennial spring,
of whose grandeur and splendor it is impossible to speak in fit-
ting terms.
An Ossa of words, piled upon a Pelion of ideas, would utterly
fail to make anything like an adequate impression upon the mind.
Nature, who ever pours her bounties forth with a full and un-
withholding hand, seems to have chosen this majestic solitude,
for the display of all that her lavish powers could do, to dignify
and adorn her reign. Graceful must be the lips, and eloquent
must be the tongue, that can transmute her wonderful efforts
into becoming language. It is not alone the magnificence of its
majestic waters, its stupendous size, its gigantic mountains, or
its world-like character, that fascinates and overpowers the mind.
Every feature around seems to harmonize, as if rejoicing to lend
additional grandeur to every charm; towering mountain cliffs
look down with meditative admiration upon a world of sylvan
beauty and clustering verdure. Flora, in her most gaudy at-
tire, approaches confidingly to the very margins of the majestic
rivers, looking fearlessly into their profound depths. Thou-
sands of sparkling rivulets gurgle and trickle through the shady
forests, gladdened by the smiling sunlight, flickering through
the overhanging foliage, adorned by a creation of rural beauty
that hourly blossoms. In changeful days, the clouds gather
round, unfolding the whole panorama of eternal beauty, from
dark, rolling storm-clouds, with hearts of thunder, to white,
etherial shadows, that flit like fairies through the air, upon
which the retiring sun, from the western hills, lends his last
rays to drape the whole scene into colorful splendor; when the
rising moon, in cloudless majesty, unveiling her peerless light,
reillumes and adorns this colossal and resplendent temple of
nature, in the midst of whose silent majesty, is a most fitting
abode of peace and purity, like that of heaven.
Little wonder that the author's Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil
captured the imagination of so many romantic southerners!
Maury's spirit must have descended to earth!
While waiting at Para for a steamer to take him to the United
States, Hastings had ample time for interviews with the presi-
dent of the province, who had been authorized to act for the
Brazilian government, in consummating the contract legalizing
the proposed settlement. A temporary deed to the entire tract
of 960 sections was vested in the proprietor, who in turn obli-
gated himself to bring in a minimum of one hundred immigrants,
and who assumed responsibility of payment for the land on the
basis of one-half real
the square braca
or about twenty-two cents
an acre, payment to be made in three equal annual installments
beginning at the end of the third year after the first establish-
ments. The government bound itself to construct provisional
houses for the reception and temporary accommodation of the
immigrants; to supply the money for transportation charges of
needy immigrants, the advances to be repaid within a period of
three years; to exempt from import duties all implements, ma-
chinery, and supplies brought in by the colonists; and to ex-
empt all from military duty, both before and after assumption
of citizenship, except that of self-defense in their own district
or municipality. The contract leaving the allotment of lands to
the judgment of the agent, Major Hastings made the allocations
on the basis of one section to each family and 320 acres to sin-
gle men.
On November 12 the prospector left Pará aboard the American
steamer Guiding
Star,
which was loaded with India-rubber, for
New York. On the 15th of the following month he was back at
Mobile, Alabama, after an absence of eight months. During this
period he had traveled over nineteen thousand miles, nearly ten
thousand of which had been within the limits of the Brazilian
empire. The result of his diligent labors and keen observations
he soon gave to the southern public in his hastily, though re-
markably well-written and intensely interesting, book entitled
The
Emigrant's
Guide
to
Brazil.
Their attitudes toward the prospecting agents show that the
Latin-American governments concerned were very favorable to
southern immigration. The accommodations made available to
the immigrants display the same generous policy. One of the
important functions of the agents sent to New Orleans, New York,
and other points in the United States was that of facilitating
arrangements of the immigrants for the journey to their new
homes. Upon arrival at the ports of debarkation, the seekers
of new homes were given every consideration that they could
have expected—which was indeed no little. They were welcomed
to emigrant hotels or other buildings specially provided for them,
where their needs were furnished for a period at government
expense; following the period of. cordial entertainment, they were
usually given free transportation to their settlement sites. The
hospitalities were usually dispensed through well-organized emi-
grant-aid associations.
After the southerners had decided upon expatriation and had
made choices of future homes, they wound up their business
affairs, assembled farm implements and other supplies which
future needs were certain to require, and repaired to the towns--
usually ports--where they met others of similar mind and from
which they were to take their final departure. During the early
period of the exodus the places of rendezvous and departure were
southern ports, particularly Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston;
later, because of the necessity for securing safer accommodations,
New York became the point of embarkation.
That there was ample justification for the shift in the em-
barkation points from the South to New York the experiences of
the early leave-takers verify. The unfortunate experience of
those on board the Margaret,
which left Mobile in March, 1866,
has already been noted. The experience of part of the same
group on a second attempt in the summer of the following year
was only a little less harrowing: the vessel was able to get no
further than the island of St. Thomas, where the passengers were
compelled to transfer themselves and their impedimenta to a
regular packet bound for Pará. The Frank McMullen colony
of Texas, which left Galveston for southern Brazil in the spring
of 1867, was wrecked on the Cuban coast, the passengers los-
ing all their possessions except a little clothing. It was only
dauntless courage that enabled the stalwart band to reach its
destination at the end of six hectic months. The disaster in
this case--and no doubt in others--was attributable to the un-
seaworthiness of the vessel, which was a hastily renovated block-
ade runner equipped with so many decks as to be top-heavy.
But disasters on the voyages, whether to Mexico, Central America,
or Brazil, were the exception rather than the rule. The emigrants
soon discovered that it was the part of economy and wisdom to
take passage on good vessels of the regular lines.
FOOTNOTES:
ern Literary Messenger, and the Washington Union. See also House Misc.
Doc. 22, 33 Cong., 1 sess. (serial 741); A. P. Pinto, Apontamentos para o
Direito Internacional, II, 420; L. F. Hill, Diplomatic Relations between
the United States and Brazil, 239ff.
the influence of Kidder's book. Eliza Kerr Shippey, who wrote "When
Americans were Emigrants," an article which appeared in a Kansas City
paper, June 16, 1912, is a conspicuous example. A copy of the article
was furnished the writer by D. R. Keyes, another emigrant now living
at Clearwater, Florida.
Recollections, 537.
since the War, 29 et seq., 339; J. P. Hollis, The Early Period of Recon-
struction in South Carolina; 23; Southern Historical Society Papers, XIII,
502; New York Nation, I, 106, 812.
Problem of South Carolina Agriculture after the Civil War," in the
North Carolina Hist. Rev., VII, No. 1, 46-77.
July 22 and 25, 1865.
26, 1865.
Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 222, 230.
Ex. Doc. 27, 39 Cong., 1 sess., 159.
see E. P. Oberholtzer, A History of the United States Since the Civil War,
I, 117 et seq., 377 set seq.; C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era.
were secured through the marked courtesy of Mr. Peter Brannon, of the
Department of Archives and History of the state of Alabama, who pro-
cured them from the D. A. Tompkins Library at Edgefield Court House,
South Carolina, through Mrs. Agatha Abney Woodson, daughter of Joseph
Abney. Hereafter citations will be to "Materials from the D. A. Tomp-
kins Library" without further acknowledgment.
the note on Ruffin the writer is indebted to Dr. H. H. Simms, a colleague
at Ohio State University.
newspapers of the period.
September 13, 1865. Materials from the D. M. Tompkins Library.
Fred Rippey, The United States and Mexico (First Edition), 247-249.
ary 24, and August 18, 1866; Savannah Daily Herald, July 1, 1865; M. F.
Maury Papers (Library of Congress MSS.); Diana Fontaine Maury Cor-
bin, A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury, 224 et seq.; House Ex. Doc. 1,
39 Cong., 1 sess., 521-535.
Daily Herald, January 5; The Daily Picayune, January 6, 1866. A little
later accounts also appeared in the Semi-Weekly Floridian, February 8,
and the Daily True Delta, February 15, 1866.
Library of Congress copy could not 'be located at the time the writei
made a request for it.
Home for Southerners, 227-244.
culture was printed in Dunn, Brazil, the Home for Southerners, 152-179.
26, 1868.
Los Angeles, California, and a great nephew of Lansford Warren Hastings,
through whom a copy (apparently the only one extant) of the guide was
secured from Albert A. Spence, a grandson of Hastings who also resides
in California. The kindness of such men as Mr. Hunsaker and Mr.
Spence contributes much toward making the researcher's task a pleasant
one.
saker and loaned to the writer.
guide.
wrongly insists, without any basis for his position, that the shift was
from New York to the southern ports.
EXPLORATIONS OF ALBBET PIKE IN TEXAS
A little volume entitled "Prose Sketches and Poems" by Albert
Pike, published in Boston in the year 1834, contains two sketches,
"Narrative of a Journey on the Prairie" and "Narrative of a
Second Journey in the Prairie," which have not been listed among
the geographic and exploration items of Texas.
The first sketch describes the journey of Aaron B. Lewis dur-
ing the fall and winter of 1831 from Fort Towson to the Washita
River, up this river to its headwaters in Hemphill County, Texas,
and then along the Canadian River through the Texas Panhandle
into New Mexico. I draw the conclusion that Pike was not with
Lewis on this journey, for twice he plainly states, in the narra-
tion, that he was on the Cimmaron at the time Lewis was on the
Canadian; and he also says that he first met Lewis just as prep-
arations for the second journey were being made.
The second sketch is an account of Pike's adventures in cross-
ing that which we today know as the South Plains or Southern
Llano Estacado and the Permian Basin. Lewis accompanied
Pike on this second journey. Pike says that the narratives were
". . . written entirely from my own memory aided by that
of Mr. Lewis."
Pike's journey seems to have received little attention because it had
no commercial importance, and then again an explorer who would
publish his observations between poems of Shakespearean tempo
gives cause for the historian to wonder if the trip was not a
flight of fancy, and, therefore, discount its accuracy. In fact,
Thomas Maitland Marshall says that Pike "entered the Staked
Plains . . . retraced his steps to the Spanish settlements
and then proceeded to Arkansas, arriving at Fort Smith on De-
cember 10, 1832." Marshall quoted Pike's daughter in this mat-
ter of the alleged return to the Spanish settlements in New Mex-
ico and perhaps his error may be overlooked. A reading of the
narrative convinces one who is familiar with Texas geography and
geology that Pike actually made the trip across Texas, and that
his knowledge of West Texas and eastern New Mexico was re-
markable for the time. His most serious errors are in stating
that the Canadian River and the Arkansas head in the same gen-
eral locality; and that the Pecos enters the Rio Grande near San
Antonio. However, he knew that the North Canadian rose near
the Rabbit Ears Mountains just north of Clayton, New Mexico,
and he had a fair idea as to the location of the head of the Red
River, a problem which was not settled until Marcy's explora-
tions of 1852. Of greatest interest is that to Pike belongs the
honor of naming the Salt Fork of the Brazos.
George Wilkins Kendall credits Pike with making the journey
and Kendall's map shows in a general way Pike's route.
Pike left Picurís (in southern Taos County, New Mexico) on
September 6, 1832, and passed through Mora, Bernal and San
Miguel on his way to the Bosque Redondo on the Rio Pecos
(later the site of Fort Sumner, a few miles below the present
town of the same name in De Baca County, New Mexico).
On September 21, 1832, Pike started from Bosque Redondo
for the Llano Estacado and on September 28, after passing
through some sand hills, came to "a break in the prairie which
opened into a long hollow," the Cañon del Resgate. There are
several points that identify the Cañon del Resgate as that branch
of the Brazos known locally as Blackwater Draw, heading near
Muleshoe in Bailey County, and uniting with Yellow House
Creek at Lubbock. The general course and distance from Bosque
Redondo and the sand hills, which even today cover a large area
in northern Bailey County, Texas, are significant; but, the abso-
lute proof was found through the keen observation and kindness
of Mr. J. Evetts Haley of the Department of History of the Uni-
versity of Texas, who noted on a map published by Captain E.
G. Carter, U. S. A. retired, the name of "Cañon Rescata" on
that branch of the Brazos located just south and west of Canon
Blanco (Running Water Creek), the head of the Salt Fork of
the Brazos.
There may be some argument as to Pike's "Resgate" and Car-
ter's "Rescata" being dissimilar spellings of the name of an iden-
tical geographic feature, but the similarity is close enough to be
accepted by people familiar with Spanish names and their Ameri-
can variations. "Rescate" means trade, barter, ransom. I have
been unable to find "Resgate" in Spanish dictionaries and believe
it to be Pike's phonetic spelling of a word in a language with
which he was not entirely familiar.
The journey continued down the "Resgate" through Lamb,
Hale, Lubbock, Crosby and Garza Counties. When east of Post,
in Garza County, Pike crossed over to the Double Mountain Pork
near Justiceberg, camped at the junction of the forks in western
Kent County, and proceeded down the Double Mountain Fork to
near the northwest corner of Fisher County, a total distance of
164 miles along the "Resgate." Here Pike left the Double Moun-
tain Fork and taking a general northeasterly direction crossed
the Salt Fork of the Brazos three times: in eastern Kent County,
in western Stonewall County where it has a northerly course,
and north of Aspermont in Stonewall County. The Salt Fork
makes a large bend to the north in Stonewall County and Pike,
being unaware of the presence of this bend and possibly not not-
ing the direction of the flow of the stream at the second cross-
ing, concluded that at the third crossing he was on Red River,
an error which he discovered a few days later on his arrival at
the Red River. After leaving the Salt Fork, the route pursued
by Pike took him through the southeastern part of King County,
into Knox County, across the South Fork of the Wichita and the
North Fork of the Wichita into southeastern Foard County and
to the Eed River in northeastern Wilbarger County. The dis-
tance from the "Resgate" (Double Mountain Pork) to the Red
River is given as 140 miles. The route in Oklahoma appears to
have been north and northeast to the Washita River through the
Cross Timbers, probably in Garvin County, thence down the
Washita through the Arbuckle Mountains, thence east to the
Blue and down to the Red River, across the Boggy to the Kia-
mishi and there, taking the wrong road, missed Fort Towson and
went northeast to Fort Smith, Arkansas, arriving there on De-
cember 10, 1832.
These general notes on Pike's trail are susceptible to much
refinement, and perhaps some improvement. There are many
land marks mentioned along the route that can undoubtedly be
identified by one familiar with the local topographic details. The
object of this paper is merely to call attention to the fact that
Albert Pike has a place in history as an explorer in western Texas.
FOOTNOTES:
Publications of the Arkansas Historical Commission, Volume 4, pages
66 to 139. A footnote (page 67) says: "In 1835 General Pike published
the 'Narrative of a Journey in the Prairie' as a serial in the columns oi
his paper, the Arkansas Advocate, whence it is resurrected and repro-
duced here."
I have not compared these various versions. Apparently they are
identical with the exception that the two narratives of "Prose Sketches
and Poems" have been placed under the one title in the reproduction.
tion." The Quarterly, XX, 244.
sas, 1928. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are devoted to an account of Pike's jour-
ney from Massachusetts to St. Louis, Santa Fe, and Taos, down the Rio
Pecos to Bosque Redondo, across the Llano Estacado and Western Texas
into Oklahoma and to Fort Smith, Arkansas. The statement is made that
"Pike was so greatly discouraged that he decided to retrace his steps,
after concluding that he was not on the best road to fame and fortune"
(page 34).
umes, New York, 1844. Volume 1, pages 218, 219.
der command of General R. S. MacKenzie in its operation against hostile
Indians in Texas, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), New Mexico and
Old Mexico during the period of 1871-2-3-4 and 5. Compiled from mili-
tary and other surveys. Prepared by E. D. Dorchester, Freeport, Texas,
1927.
ACROSS WEST TEXAS
LETTEKS OF ANTONIO MARTINEZ, THE LAST
SPANISH GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, 1817-1822
II
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
MATTIE AUSTIN HATCHER
No. 3
I am enclosing to you for your information the diary prepared
by Lieutenant Ygnacio Flores during the reconnoissance he made
of the crossings of the Guadalupe River and the roads from the
interior and from the coast to the east of the Presidio of Bahía
del Espíritu Santo. This diary was forwarded to me by the com-
mandant of that presidio who had noted nothing unusual in that
section.
June 5, 1817
No. 4
I am forwarding to you in quadruplicate the petition of Maria
Loreto Yguera, widow of a soldier of the company of Bahía del
Espíritu Santo, Teodoro Lara by name, who died in the year
1814 at the hands of the Indians. In this, she petitions for the
pension provided for widows of this character by His Majesty.
June 5, 1817
No. 5
I am enclosing to you for your information the sworn state-
ment of the soldier of the company of Bahía del Espíritu Santo,
José Saenz who, on September 7 of last year, was captured by
the Indians in the vicinity of the said presidio. The comman-
dant of that place dropped him from the rolls on this same date
under the impression that he was dead. However, on the 14th
of last month, he reported to the commandant of Bahía, who is
in a quandary as to whether he should be re-instated from the
date he was dropped. I trust that you will decide whatever you
think proper in the case.
June 5, 1817
No. 6
Yesterday the citizens Vicente Sarnac and Manuel Ybarbo
presented themselves to me on their arrival from Natchitoches.
They had been sent out on January 1st of this year by my pre-
decessor Ygnacio Perez with a letter from you addressed to the
vice-consul Felix Trudeaux, with orders for him to send it on to
the consul of New Orleans, Don Diego Murphy. They fully car-
ried out the duty entrusted to them, delivered the letter to Tru-
deaux, and in addition, have brought the answer from the consul,
which I am forwarding to your Excellency in the enclosed sealed
packet.
Although citizen Anastacio Ybarbo, who accompanied Vicente
Sarnac and Manuel [Ybarbo] did not return with them, they
have informed me that they thought it best to leave him at
Natchitoches to secure certain important information for this
government so that he might later come and report it. After
their departure, these men had information that two hundred
troops had arrived at Natchitoches with a train of artillery and
that a division of more than 1,000 men was to follow them.
Likewise, two citizens of Natchitoches have arrived in company
with Sarnac and Ybarbo. They are Alexandro de la Garza and
Matias Peña, who brought his wife with him. The first named
intends to settle in this region while the last intends to go back
as soon as he receives his mules that were used in bringing Sar-
nac and Ybarbo to this place and he knows of a safe convoy back.
I have ordered sworn statements secured from all of them as
to their observations regarding the bandits. These I, likewise,
send your Excellency in the original for your information.
In view of the recent occurrences and in order that you may
have information of everything as soon as possible, I have thought
it best to arrange to have everything sent to your hands post
haste by a special messenger. I beg of you, if you consider of any
importance what Diego Murphy, consul of New Orleans, communi-
cated, to inform me so that I can take all possible measures
for the defense of this province if the enemy makes any attempt
on the coast or over land.
I have already pointed out to you the sufferings of the troops
of this unfortunate province; and, now, once more, I beg you not
to forget me and to send me all I have asked for. In addition,
will you be good enough to send me the iron and steel necessary
for the repair of the gun carriages upon which the artillery is
mounted. They are in such a condition that they are not worth
anything to us. We need it, too, so that lances can be made for
these troops, for they have none. They would be very helpful
to us, for at the present time, the soldiers have neither lances nor
swords. It is imperative that the cavalry be supplied with one
of these weapons.
From the enclosed report your Excellency will see the number
of troops in the garrison and in the different points that are oc-
cupied. Therefore, your Excellency, if you feel that any band
of revolutionists are planning to attack this place, you will feel
impelled, I hope, to send me some reinforcements. In addition
to the fact that the number in this place is small, the soldiers
are poorly armed and without the means of repairing their
weapons due to the lack of iron and steel, as I have already
pointed out to you. Although you were good enough to send a
hundred guns for the troops of this province, they will be of no
service whatever. In addition to the fact that they are miser-
ably poor guns they have been already used as long as they were
of any account. It is evident that they were discarded by other
troops.
Of the 6,000 pesos you were good enough to order delivered to
the paymaster of this garrison for the salary of the officers and
for supplies for the troops of this province, only a scant 1,000
has been available because, when it arrived here, there were
already debts greatly in excess of this amount. Therefore, your
Excellency, it will be a good thing if you could see your way to
send me 3,000 or 4,000 pesos in addition to the sum that has to
be sent to cover payment of salaries and supplies. In this way,
it would be possible to pay many people in this place whom we
already owe. On the contrary, things will continue in this same
condition, for, at the present time I do not have a single half
real with which to supply the troops after the 15th of the present
month. All of this I call to your attention for your guidance.
June 4, [sic] 1817
No. 2
This morning at dawn, I received information from the com-
mandant of Bahía del Espíritu Santo to the effect that a large
number of Americans had landed at the Port of Matagorda. Cer-
tain Indians of the Coast, who had a skirmish with the invaders,
came especially to bring the news which had not, as had been
thought, been secured through a sergeant who was on duty at
that point with a party of troops. According to the story of the
Indians the detachment had retired before the arrival of the
enemy. They had not yet reached Bahía. I had sent the com-
mandant there a letter advising him of my suspicions and they
may have been murdered or taken prisoners by the enemy and I
feel that it is necessary for me to give you this information.
The garrison at Bahía is very small and is afoot, without a
single horse. They are absolutely naked and perishing for the
necessities of life. For this reason, the commandant of that post
asked me for immediate aid. I was not able to furnish him any-
thing as the garrison of this capital is in the same condition as
that. Supplies are very scarce. I must cover all the various
points in this province. I have fifty men with an officer on the
road to Rio Grande to bring back grain so that the troops may
not die of hunger. Another party of fifty men under two offi-
cers have gone out against the Indians who attacked this prov-
ince and murdered one unfortunate citizen almost at the very
door of his home on the evening of the 4th of the present month.
I have at this capital twenty-four cannon. Only eight of them
are mounted on carriages. They are absolutely useless and I
have neither mules nor drivers to move them and I may say even
to spike them if necessary. Besides, I have repeated orders from
the commandant general to retire with the troops and settlers
in case I am attacked by a superior force. May I hope, Sir,
that you will not fail to take active steps to remedy these evils
so that I may not be forced to abandon this beautiful province
that is so important to this kingdom. This would be very pain-
ful when I have not actually finished taking possession. I do
not expect this, Your Excellency. I regret to say that I can do
no less than to inform you that I am cognizant of the infinite
number of petitions my predecessors have presented to the com-
mandant general in this matter, and, far from his having taken
the slightest steps, their appeals have not even received an an-
swer. I promise myself a similar fate, particularly at the present
time, when the commandant general is unofficially out of his
headquarters and I do not know the point at which I might find
him to place my complaints before him nor what help I can count
upon that could come as soon as the enemy might fall upon me.
The distance and the unsettled state of this province demands
that anticipatory measures be taken for the necessary help as I
set forth to you when I expressed my reluctance to come and take
command here, for I knew beforehand the condition I would find.
Nevertheless, I can do no less than set forth to you that, in
spite of the orders I am under and the implicit obedience I have
always rendered, I am resolved to defend this province at all
costs or perish in it gloriously. However, I trust that you will
give your attention to this section you have placed under my
charge, for with my limited insight, I firmly believe that sad
consequences for all the kingdom would result from its loss.
On the 4th of the present month certain spies sent to Natchi-
toches by this government presented themselves at this place.
They carried sealed communications from the commandant gen-
eral addressed to Don Diego Murphy, Consul at New Orleans.
I am ignorant as to what they might have contained but, from
sworn statements secured from the said spies (who are to be
trusted), I find 200 men have arrived at the post of Natchitoches,
consisting of troops with a train of artillery, that another divi-
sion of 1500 is to follow them, that the Americans have formed
a settlement on the other side of the Colorado River and that
another much larger settlement has been established on this side
of the Sabine. You can see that these men are not acting in
good faith for they are not content with their settlement in the
Neutral Zone but are contniuing to push into our territory. I
might add to this that, from a deposition of the sindico
procura
-
dor
of Vallupier, it is ascertained that he learned from the col-
onel commanding the fort of Natchitoches, that war has been de-
clared against Spain, but that the order of suspension had been
received six days thereafter; and that there is a larger settlement
of Comanche and Lipan Indians on the San Saba River. They
were formerly very hostile toward each other but they are now at
peace and harmony and they intend to make, or actually are
making, preparations to commit hostilities against this province.
If these notices demand my attention, I am justified in believ-
ing that they cannot be indifferent to you. I trust that you will
take wise and energetic measures. God guard you many years.
June 7, 1817
No. 7
At three o'clock this morning, I received information from
Captain Juan de Castañeda, commandant of the Presidio of
Bahía del Espíritu Santo, that a large number of Americans had
landed at Matagorda and had had a skirmish with the Indians
who came immediately to report the matter to him. The ser-
geant, whom he had stationed at that point with a party of ob-
servation, did not report the matter--for he had previously re-
tired without waiting for orders. However, as he has not yet
reached that presidio, Castañeda fears that he may have been
caught by these enemies. Castañeda asks me for help as soon
as I can possibly send it. This garrison, however, is very small.
I have fifty men under an officer on the road to Rio Grande for
the purpose of bringing corn from that presidio. I also have
fifty men under two officers out after the Indians who had the
daring to attack this settlement on the 4th day of the present
month, killing one citizen right at his own house.
I have given what I considered the best possible instructions
for the defense that must be made at that point. He is to retire
only in case he is forced to do so because the enemy is too power-
ful to be withstood. In this case he is to retreat and join me
here in this capital. He is to be governed by the orders that
have been issued to him in view of the instructions you have
given this government on this point—that is, your last orders of
March 15th of this year.
The garrison at Bahía is entirely afoot. I have already re-
ported to you the condition of the troops of this garrison, hav-
ing done so at the time I took command of this province. It only
remains for me to say to you that I am hoping that, since you
are so much interested in the preservation of the provinces under
your command, you will not fail to send all the help your re-
sources will permit in order that it may be saved and that I may
defend it as my ardent desires urge me to do, with the under-
standing that I have now taken steps to collect as large a force
as possible and march in person with them to the aid of Casta-
ñeda. I have this moment informed him of this fact. Only in
case there is no other alternative will I abandon the province.
In accordance with your Excellency's orders and in view of the
said situation of the troops, I have sent information to the gov-
ernor of the province of Coahuila and to the commandant at
Rio Grande, asking them to protect my retreat in case I am
forced to retire from this province with as many of my troops
as I can carry with me as Your Excellency has ordered. I do
not hope for this because I know the situation they are now
facing.
I trust that you will be good enough to let me know of your
plans. I will not fail to keep you advised of everything that is
worthy of attention.
June 7, 1817, five o'clock in the morning
No. 8
I am enclosing to you the paper sent you by the consul of New
Orleans, Don Diego Murphy. It has been brought to this capital
by Agustin Piernas, a citizen, and the soldiers Fernando Mar-
tinez and Ventura Hinojosa, who, on the 9th of the present
month, arrived here from Natchitoches, where they were sent as
spies by my predecessor, Manuel Pardo. There is enclosed also
the sworn statement I secured from them concerning their ob-
servations.
While awaiting a second report of the landing of the Ameri-
cans at the port of Matagorda, I have postponed forwarding the
enclosed paper. I was also afraid that it would be lost since I
did not know your Excellency's present location. However, the
expected report has just reached my hands and I must say to
you, according to what Castañeda tells me, the Americans had
landed on the coast at Matagorda, were pitching camp and throw-
ing up breastworks. Their morning and evening guns had been
heard. However, Castañeda has not been able to state the num-
ber of men. He only knows that twelve vessels landed at the
port. Two of them had three masts and other ten had two masts.
Still another one was aground. The Carancahua Indians ex-
changed some shots with them, killing ten of them. The Indians
have the spoils, among other things some holy vessels and orna-
ments.
The terrible condition of the small force Castañeda has in
addition to the fact that he has no food for the soldiers and that
they are all afoot and without shoes prevents his even planning to
send out parties of observation. Such parties as he might send
would be at a terrible risk. I am almost in the same situation.
I cannot at present send him any supplies. As to soldiers, I have
already informed you I have fifty men at Rio Grande to bring
out the corn. Ten men under Lieutenant Colonel Pérez have
been forced to go out for the purpose of punishing a large band
of Indians that are committing hostilities against us with great
frequency. I have remained in the capital with only thirty or
forty men, most of them sick. Those who are not sick cannot be de-
pended upon, for they are afoot and cannot use the arms they
chance to find. I base my safety upon the small number of citi-
zens alone and they are in exactly the same condition I have pic-
tured. Nevertheless, I am sending two men to follow the route
taken by Ygnacio Pérez and to overtake him so that he can re-
turn. The moment he arrives, I will leave him in command of
this place and I will march with my force to the aid of the pre-
sidio of Bahía unless, in the meantime, I have other orders from
you that will prevent my making the expedition as planned. I
hope that when you become informed of the situation of this
province you will fix your attention upon it and furnish it all
the aid in your power, both in money or provisions and in men,
for unless conditions improve the force I have will not be suffi-
cient, as you must have noticed from my report which I enclosed
to you in my letter No. 7 of the 7th of the present month.
I have begged you for iron and steel to mend such of the arms
as can be mended, for the most of them cannot be repaired. For
this reason and because of the urgent need of replacement and
the repair of some one hundred guns or escopets as well as of
powder and balls, I need only say to you that I have only 27,000
cartridges for supplying the parties that must he continually sent
out against the Indians as well as to perform other necessary
duties, for, although I have a box of powder, it is useless and
can be of no help whatever.
I know the many duties that your Lordship must, at this time,
perform. I also know the lack of money you are experiencing.
However, the situation this province is in does not permit me to
remain silent regarding the things I have petitioned your Ex-
cellency for. In spite of the great needs that are mentioned, the
things I have cited do not permit the least possible delay. I am,
therefore, awaiting such measures as your Lordship may be
pleased to take.
June 11, 1817
No. 9
When the special messenger was on the point of starting with
the enclosed sealed paper, I received your Excellency's letter of
the 28th of last month written from "Cinco Señores" which con-
tained the circular you sent me. Informed of what you wrote
me, I cannot fail to report that I will send to Bahía the aid re-
quested in the aforesaid paper as soon as possible.
June 11, 1817
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Pichardo's
Treatise
on
the
Limits
of
Louisiana
and
Texas:
An
Argumentative
Historical
Treatise
with
Reference
to
the
Verification
of
the
True
Limits
of
the
Provinces
of
Louis
-
iana
and
Texas;
Written
oy
Father
Jose
Antonio
Pichardo
. .
.
to
Disprove
the
Claim
of
the
United
States
that
Texas
Was
Included
in
the
Louisiana,
Purchase
of
1803.
Published for the first time from a transcript of the orig-
inal manuscript in the Mexican Archives; translated into
English by Charles Wilson Hackett, Ph. D., and Charmion
Claire Shelby, M. A., and annotated by Charles Wilson
Hackett, Ph. D., Professor of Latin-American History in
the University of Texas. (Austin: The University of
Texas Press. 1934. Volume II. Pp. xv, 618.)
The long title page of this book tells the story about as well
as it can be briefly told. Pichardo was the second of two scho-
larly priests appointed to compile evidence combating the claim
of the United States to Texas through the Louisiana Purchase.
The first was Father Melchor de Talamantes, who did little more
than formulate a plan of procedure before becoming involved in
a nationalist political movement and being deposed. Pichardo
was chosen to carry on the task. He worked from October, 1808,
to the beginning of 1812. He compiled a truly stupendous mass
of material, digested it, and made a report of some two million
words in which he incorporated the substance of all that he had
collected. Pichardo's Treatise is, therefore, a library of source
materials on Spanish explorations and missionary settlements in
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Volume I of Professor Hackett's translation is concerned
largely with Spanish and French rivalry along the Atlantic and
Gulf coast. This volume is given wholly to the interior extend-
ing from the Mississippi River to the Colorado of the West.
Chiefly, however, it deals with the Plains country of New Mex-
ico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, describing the Spanish ex-
plorations, the geography of the region, and the Indian tribes
who occupied it.
Professor Hackett brought to the labor of translating and edit-
ing Pichardo's Treatise an exhaustive knowledge of Spanish ac-
tivities in the Southwest, and his work is a model of erudition
and patient industry. It was a task that needed to be done, and
Professor Hackett has accomplished it so thoroughly that no
other scholar need ever be tempted to re-thresh his old straw, or
even to winnow his good grain. Therefore, though the sugges-
tion may fall ungratefully upon Professor Hackett's ears, it is
to be hoped that, before settling down to a well earned rest when
the remaining two volumes are published, he will write his own
digest of Pichardo's memoir. For it must be confessed that
Pichardo is hard reading. One loses the thread of his argument
in a multitude of details--ethnic, geographical, and historical.
To one who accepts his thesis, as this reviewer does, that the
Louisiana Purchase did not include Texas, the argument is con-
vincing and needs no great elucidation; but one who believes the
contrary will be tempted to consult his own ease and remain of
the same opinion still without reading the fruit of Pichardo's
labor. The spacious leisure of the early nineteenth century was
conducive to such studies. Moreover, there was a little matter
of some four hundred thousand square miles of territory involved
in the controversy. Today it is only an academic question of
history. The study requires briefing, and Professor Hackett is
nominated for that service.
Eugene C. Barker.
Dictionary
of
American
Biography.
Edited by Dumas Malone.
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Vol. XV, pp. x,
647. Vol. XVI, pp. x, 621. 1935. Price, $12.50 a
volume.)
These two volumes of the Dictionary
of
American
Biography
extend, alphabetically, from Charles Adams Platt, archivist, to
William H. Seward, statesman. They contain in the neighbor-
hood of twelve hundred and fifty sketches and range through
every field of human activity, intellectual and physical. The
articles average about a page each in length. Each is the result
of conscientious research by a writer equipped with particular
knowledge of the subject, and each one closes with a more or less
comprehensive bibliography which enables the reader who desires
to do so to study the subject further.
of being superhumanly efficient. One wonders, for example, what
is meant by the statement that President Polk's expansion policy
added only 5,000 square miles of territory to the United States;
one wonders why Nicolo Sacco should receive three columns of
space when the average length of all sketches is less than two
columns and many individuals of really considerable attainments
are dismissed with only one; one smiles at the unconscious (and
unmerited) double meaning in the description of the frugality
of Henry Rosenberg, of Galveston, who, after working in a dry-
goods store for three years at eight dollars a month, was able to
buy out his employer.
Of the longer sketches, "Theodore Roosevelt," by Professor
Paxson, "James Ford Rhodes," by the editor, "Josiah H. Royce,"
by Ralph Barton Perry, and "Augustus Saint-Gaudens," by
Royal Cortissoz, stand out with singular distinction. Texan char-
acters, some of them deserving fuller treatment, are: 0. Henry
(Sydney Porter), by Carl Van Doren; Robert Potter, first secre-
tary of the navy of the Republic of Texas; Quanah Parker; John
H. Reagan and L. S. Ross, by Professor S. S. McKay; Johan
Reinert Reiersen, founder of a Norwegian colony in the Repub-
lic of Texas; William Marsh Rice; Thomas J. Rusk; James Finch
Royster, by Howard Mumford Jones; O. M. Roberts and John
Henry Sayles, by Professor C. S. Potts; Henry Rosenberg; and
Louis Juchereau de St. Denis. These names of a dozen Texan
characters illustrate what should have been done for some three
thousand other makers of Texas history by the promoters of the
Texas Centennial. Such a monument would be far more lasting
and useful than can be erected by mortar, stone and bronze.
The Dictionary
of
American
Biography
is fostered by the
American Council of Learned Societies, and its preparation and
publication were made possible by a subvention of more than
$500,000 donated by the New York Times Company and its late
President, Mr. Adolph S. Ochs. It is non-partisan, non-secta-
rian, and non-sectional, and is truly national in scope. Its value
is beyond calculation to school and college libraries, editorial
offices, teachers, and writers. Its cost is necessarily high, but
the publishers, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, offer generous
terms to those who wish to buy on the installment plan. The
work was planned to include twenty volumes, with a supplemen-
tary volume to be issued every ten years or so.
Eugene C. Barker.
Grand
Prairie.
By James K. Greer. (Dallas: Tardy Publish-
ing Company. 1935. Pp. (vii), 284. Price, $2.50.)
The ten chapter titles of this book, though attractive enough,
give little indication of the variety and interest of their contents:
"On the Grand Prairie," "Counting the Costs," "Social Condi-
tions in the Fifties," "Varmints and Pests," "Then Came the
War," "Tonkawa Trailers," "Reconstruction Years Bring
Changes," "Frontier Daughter," "Political Consciousness," "An
Era Passes." The Table of Contents should be expanded to give
a clearer and more comprehensive suggestion of the scope and
value of the book.
Professor Greer, who is head of the history department ot
Howard University, Birmingham, Alabama, defines the geograph-
ical area of Grand Prairie as including ten or a dozen central
Texas counties, extending from Bell County in the south to Cooke
County in the north. Bosque County is, roughly, the center of
the area and receives the emphasis of the narrative. The book is
a thoroughly creditable example of social and economic history,
interesting enough to read for entertainment and definite enough
and sound enough to leave an unusually vivid impression of life
in those frontier counties during the forty years from 1850 to
1890.
Professor Greer happens to have been born and reared in the
area that he describes, though he was born much later than 1890.
The experiences and recollections of his parents; his publication
of Buck
Barry,
Texas
Ranger
and
Frontiersman,
1845-1906;
and
industrious and discriminating study of a variety of source ma-
terials; together with a somewhat unusual historical imagination
have enabled him to write a book that more pretentious social
historians might serve themselves by studying. Use of the first
personal pronoun, rare but not unknown to historical works, is
an aid to the narration of many homely, and singly insignificant
details without which his picture would be much less vivid.
The author modestly states his creed and his purpose in his
preface: "Many books have been written of the Old West-
fiction, biography, and pseudo-biography--and some of them will
live. While there can hardly be too many life-stories of the men
who grew up with the West and have lived to tell them, the
author feels that there is a need for studies of the less dramatic
experiences in the lives of those who participated in the pictur-
esque drama of settling the frontier. . . . Barely, however,
does the student have available those details from which alone
the real state of a section can be determined. With these ideas
in mind, the author sought an informal and impartial medium
for portraying something of those subjects merely referred to
by authors of more vivid narratives."
The book has some blemishes, which a more careful editorial
staff in the publisher's office would have eliminated, and it de-
serves a more tasteful format, but, in most essentials, it could
be imitated to advantage by other writers of "social" history.
Eugene C. Barker
Mirabeau
Buonaparte
Lamar,
Troubadour
and
Crusader.
By
Herbert P. Gambrell. (Southwest Press, Dallas, 1934.)
The definitive biography of Mirabeau B. Lamar has yet to be
written. Neither A. K. Christian nor Herbert P. Gambrell has
told the complete story of the life and deeds of the second presi-
dent of the Republic of Texas. It is only fair to point out, how-
ever, that Professor Christian concerned himself with the public
services and political activities of Lamar, while Professor Gam-
brell admits the unilateral scope of his undertaking in his prefa-
tory statement "that this work is not so much a study of Lamar's
presidency as it is a study of the man's career." The worth of
the book may be measured, then, by the degree of success that
the author has attained in placing his protagonist against the
scenes of the half century in which he lived.
To this reviewer Lamar emerges from the pages of his biog-
raphy as the apotheosis of mediocre versatility. He did a num-
ber of things acceptably, but never exceptionally, well. He
was a military dilettante, a "talented amateur" in statescraft,
and a rococo rhetorician rather than an orator. He was a versi-
fier whose efforts never rose to the level of poetry, save in two
possible exceptions that serve to prove the rule. He took part
in amateur theatricals, played the violin indifferently (one sur-
mises that Money Musk and Buffalo Gals was not a part of his
repertoire) and painted a little.
On the positive side, he was patriotic; he was brave to the
point of recklessness; he was honest; and apparently he was not
galled with the saddle of personal ambition as was his contem-
porary, Houston. If he was not moved to the great heights of
personal achievements by passing events, on the other hand he
held to his dominant purposes steadfastly while more volatile
men were swayed from their original designs. Santa Anna, con-
vinced of Lamar's obdurate will, said, "There goes the shadow
of Farías," and in so saying did both Lamar and Gomez Farías
honor.
The elements of a visionary and a hard-headed realist were
mixed up in Lamar; he dreamed of a Greater Texas that would
stretch from the Sabine and the Red to the Pacific, from the
highlands of San Luis Potosi to the Jackson Hole country. The
natural results of such an ambition was the Santa Fe Expedi-
tion, which, by the way, Gambrell does not believe so chimerical
a dream of conquest as has been professed by Lamar's opponents.
Lamar was a particularist in politics, both as an ardent state's
rights man in Georgia and Alabama and as an anti-annexation-
ist in Texas. There are not lacking those in Texas today who
assert that the happiest solution of her problems would have
been the realization of his plans for the creation of a Greater
Texas.
So much for the man. Professor Gambrell has delineated him
in chiaroscuro rather than in colors. We know too little of what
he was like even after reading his biography. For instance,
what actually did he read: Plutarch, Shakespeare or Gibbon?
What was his economic status? Undoubtedly he had slaves, but
not a word about them to enliven the narrative.
Nevertheless, the touches are there in spots. Here is a volun-
teer who walked to San Jacinto and commanded the cavalry of
Texas on that field. Here is the major-general of the Army of
the Republic of Texas who found himself ejected from his com-
mand by the viva
voce
of the common soldiery. Here is the
vice-president who could recognize with a straight face the sen-
ator who was going to deliver the opposition speech that he him-
self had written. Here is the chief magistrate who at his own
inauguration heard the retiring president occupy three hours in
a self-laudatory panegyric and then chose to have his own ad-
dress read in a sing-song by his private secretary. Here is the
president who acted as his own groom and cook in the camp of
the forces of which he by virtue of his office was the commander-
in-chief. Yes, the narrative is alive in many places and these
places redeem by contrast the remainder of the book.
Gambrell has written the best available biography of Lamar
for the general reader. Despite its obvious shortcomings, it
serves, if for nothing else, to rescue Lamar from the odium
heaped upon him by partisans addicted to Houston-itis. It por-
trays him as a very human sort of a man, one worthy of friend-
ship and respect. Somehow one feels that he can tie to a man
that David G. Burnet loved. All in all, the work betrays prom-
ise that Gambrell's forthcoming life of Anson Jones (which will
be by way of his magnum
opus)
will be worth looking forward
to by all readers of his Mirabeau
Buonaparte
Lamar.
State Teachers College, Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Rex Wallace Strickland.
Art
and
Artists
of
Texas.
By Esse Forrester-O'Brien. (Tardy
Publishing Company, Dallas, 1935. Pp. 408, illustrations.)
In Esse Forrester-O'Brien's Art
and
Artists
'in
Texas
the
Tardy Publishing Company has brought out a fitting sequel and
complement to Florence E. Barns's Texas
Writers
of
Today.
Both
books are especially in good time, since Texas is to be on parade
for a year.
There are chapters devoted to pioneer artists, modern painters,
sculptors, miniature painters, print makers, craftsmen, wood carv-
ers, metallists, architects, designers, and cartoonists; and also sec-
tions dealing with art organizations, art museums, art monuments,
art in the Capitol Building and the Governor's Mansion, and the
Public Works of Arts Projects. Under each division there are bio-
graphical and critical sketches of all the artists who merit atten-
tion ; and some account is taken of practically every item of artistic
significance in the State. Since the author relied for biographical
information largely upon letters from the various artists, there
is of necessity a false proportion among the sketches. And the
reader finds himself wishing for more definite information than
is given--dates, for example. Doubtless many of the artists re-
fused to divulge birth dates, but the author, it seems, did not
make use of all the specific facts at her disposal.
Some dozen illustrations are included; and the book is made
more useful by an alphabetical arrangement of the sketches, by
bibliographical notes at the end of each sketch, and by an index.
The chapter and section divisions, especially toward the first of
the book, do not appear to be inevitable, or even logical.
Arlin Turner.
Tall
Men
with
Long
Rifles.
By James T. DeShields. (The Bay-
lor Company, San Antonio, 1935. Pp. xvi, 240, illustra-
tions. $2.00.)
According to his own story, Creed Taylor fought throughout
the Texas Revolution, from the first skirmish at Gonzales to the
battle of San Jacinto. A few years before he died in 1906, at
the age of about a hundred, he dictated to James T. DeShields
his recollections of the Texas War of Independence. The result
is Tall
Men
with
Long
Rifles,
a book which Mr. DeShields calls
"the only complete personal narrative of the Texas Revolution
that has come down to posterity."
Tall
Men
with
Long
Rifles
begins with some account of the
nature and origin of the "tall men." Then come accounts of
the rise of the Texans after the arrest of Travis and his com-
rades; of the first scrap at Gonzales on October 2, 1835; of the
skirmishes at Lipantitlan and Concepción; of the half-serious,
half-comic "Grass Fight"; of the taking of the Alamo by the
Texans; of Dr. Grant's disastrous expedition against Matamoros;
and of the "Runaway Scrape."
Reports of the Constitutional Convention, the fall of the
Alamo, and the slaughter at Goliad have been supplied from other
sources, for Taylor, admittedly, was not on hand. This is by far
the weakest part of the book; the chronology is confused and the
narratives are repetitive. The make-up of the book is good, but
the proof-reading was not as careful as might be desired.
Arlin Turner.
An
Admiral
from
Texas.
By Henry A. Wiley, U. S. N. Retired,
formerly Admiral and Commander-in-Chief, United States
Fleet. (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1934.
x, 322 pp. 8vo. Illustrated.)
"From the plains of Texas to the Admiral's bridge of the
United States battleship Texas,
flagship of the United States
Meet, seems like a long, long jump. It is. It took forty-six
years to make it." With this sentence begins the book. Born
in Alabama in 1867, the son of an ex-Confederate soldier, Harry
Wiley came to McKinney, Texas, when a year old, to grow up
with the country. The title he gave his autobiography indicates
his feeling for his home State.
"During my forty-six years in the navy, I had served in every
type of surface craft from full-rigged sailing ship to our heavi-
est modern capital ship, and in every capacity. These years em-
braced a period during which our navy passed through the great-
est changes it or any other navy had ever known, or will, in my
humble opinion, ever know in the future." Admiral Wiley is a
keen observer, has clear-cut, practical ideas, and is direct and
outspoken. He points out the valuable service of the navy to
this country in peace and in war. He does not mince words in
answering its opponents and detractors.
During the World War he commanded the Wyoming,
serving
with the Sixth Battle Squadron, British Grand Fleet.
E. W. W.
Come on,
Texas!
By Paul Schubert. Decorations by Arthur
Hawkins. (New York: J. Cape &H. Smith, 1930. viii,
244 pp. 8vo.)
This is the biography of the battleship Texas,
told in the
form of fiction. A petty officer is the principal narrator.
"Ship spirit is a curious thing. In war they call it morale,
and it's as important as your guns. In peace it wins trophies;
it's the life and breath of a battleship." Much of the story is
taken up with the rivalries between the men of different battle-
ships, in rowing, in maintaining smart appearance, in maneuver-
ing, in shooting, etc. "And Texas!
Oh, Texas
was the queen of
the Navy." This sounds strikingly like an outburst of college
spirit after a football victory. In An
Admiral
from
Texas
one
finds this sober comment: "I wanted to command a ship that
shot well, steamed well, maneuvered well; a ship that was always
ready at the drop of the hat to perform any duty, and that would
perform that duty up to the handle. My experience had taught
me that it was most unusual for the winner of trophies to be
the smartest ship. Paradoxical as it may seem, quite the con-
trary was true."
The Texas
belonged to the Sixth Battle Squadron, British
Grand Fleet, in 1918.
E. W. W.
Clark, Marjorie Ruth, Organized
Labor
in
Mexico.
Pp. 315.
Chapel Hill (The University of North Carolina Press), 1934.
Price, $2.50. Under the auspices of a fellowship from the Social
Science Eesearch Council, the author of this scholarly volume has
made an excellent contribution to the valuable series of books pub-
lished by The University of North Carolina Press. With the aid
of profuse illustrations and a valuable and lengthy bibliography
(which she calls "by no means exhaustive"), the author ably dis-
cusses the history of organized labor in Mexico, in both agricul-
ture and industry, from its definite beginning in 1874 to the
present day. For the first time the problems underlying the labor
movement in Mexico are intelligently presented in the English
language.
In 1912, the Casa del Obrero Mundial, "the first coordinat-
ing factor in the Mexican labor movement," was established, and
until 1918 was the leading element of labor in Mexico. But it
was not until 1916 that a labor congress representing to some
extent all labor organizations, was convened. Its work resulted
in a complete failure because of the incompatibility of the dif-
ferent labor groups and the hatred which they felt for each other.
At a third congress, called under governmental auspices, a suc-
cessful organization was established, called the Confederación
Regional Obrera Mundial or C. R. O. M. This organization has
lasted down to the present time and is still the chief labor or-
ganization in the country. It has safely weathered attacks from
non-labor groups and other labor organizations. Its unit is the
union of laborers of the same craft or of the same establishment,
which may be called by various names but which are really trade
or labor unions. These local unions form a local federation, the
local federations combine to make a state federation, and the
state federations form a national group. Aside from these, since
1929, there are five national industrial federations in the C. R.
0. M., each consisting of all the workers of one industry in the
entire country. A select inner group called the Grupo Acción
dictates the policy of the federation.
After showing how closely the labor parties and national and
local politics are united in Mexico, the author discusses at length
the political activities of the Grupo Acción through the admin-
istrations of Carranza, de la Huerta, Obregón, Portes Gil, and
Calles. Then, dismissing the Communist threat in Mexico as
unfounded because of the active opposition of the C. R. 0. M.
to Communism, she gives a short history of Communist activity
in Mexico and of left-wing unionism, followed by a shorter ac-
count of the Catholic union movement, begun in 1903 to "edu-
cate" the worker and to "guard his morals," a movement which
never received much support in spite of the stronghold of the
Catholic Church on the lower classes of Mexico, and which died
in the Church-State struggle beginning in 1926.
A discussion of the political activies of the C. R. 0. M. dur-
ing and following the Obregón administration, of local agricul-
tural and industrial unionism, and of the national labor code
comprise the chief remaining features of this truly excellent study
of the Mexican labor movement.
F. L. H.
Tompkins, Colonel Frank, Chasing
Villa.
Pp. xx, 270. Har-
risburg (The Military Service Publishing Company), 1934. Price,
$2.50, postpaid. With Colonel Frank Tompkins' Chasing
Villa
there has finally appeared a most complete story of the military
side of the Pershing Punitive Expedition into Mexico, which was
sent, as the author points out, not "to capture" Villa, but "to
disperse" him and his bands. As is well known, after "Pancho"
Villa's attack on Columbus, New Mexico, during the early morn-
ing of March 9, 1916, American troops under the command of
General John J. Pershing, after receiving official permission from
Washington, began a pursuit that lasted until February 5, 1917,
ending not in the capture of Villa, but, according to the author,
accomplishing its purpose, that is, the dispersal of Villa and his
bands. Following a lengthy introduction in which he presents
the political and international situation which led up to the
Columbus attack, the author proceeds with the detailed story of
the expedition sent to punish Villa. Ably aided by notes of his
own taken on the field and by memoirs written by his compan-
ions, and supplementing these with numerous heretofore unpub-
lished pictures and an excellent map which shows in great de-
tail where the various troops were stationed even at different
times of the same day, Colonel Tompkins takes us through the
fight at Guerrero, the fight at Parral, the fight at Agua Caliente,
the fight at Tomochic, the withdrawal to the north and the new
plan of attack, the killing of Cárdenas and Cervantes (Villista
chieftains), the fight at Carrizal, and the final withdrawal of the
American troops (which he calls "an inglorious ending"). Gen-
eral Pershing established his headquarters at Colonia Dublán, near
Casas Grandes, and from there despatched three columns after
Villa, who, although wounded in a fight with Mexican Govern-
ment (Carrancista) troops, escaped, using at times even a litter
to accomplish this purpose. For three months Villa had to re-
main inactive, safely recuperating in a cave, and he was given
up as dead. The author minutely describes the marches of the
American columns who arrived as far as Santa Cruz de Villegas,
Parral, and Agua Caliente, over inclement mountains and steppes,
with men and horses exhausted and suffering from the rigor of
the weather, and always in territory hostile to the invasion of the
outsider. Throughout the story the author vehemently decries
the treachery of the Carrancistas, or troops of the de
facto
Mexi-
can Government, and the inadequacy of President Wilson's pol-
icy toward Mexico. It is difficult to reconcile his early statement
that the expedition was sent to disperse Villa and not to capture
him, a duty which it accomplished, with his final statement that
the expedition ended ingloriously. The book is supplemented
with variousappendices containing useful military information.
It is not because of his method of description, but it is owing
to the harrowing and interesting experiences of the expedition
itself that the author is able to keep the reader in suspense. In
fact, the language consists too frequently of only the short tele-
graphic notes taken by him and his companions on the march,
and in several places it is so crude and vulgar that the corre-
sponding events could well have been left untold in a book which
supposedly was to be of universal interest. The impression is
also left that military men perform their acts of bravery only
for the sake of the medal of honor which will be theirs to dis-
play later, for the writer ends each exploit (and there are many)
with words similar to the following: "I recommended him for
the Medal of Honor. He was awarded the Distinguished Service
Medal." It is also puzzling to know why Colonel Tompkins, in
speaking of his own experiences, should constantly alternate be-
tween the first and third persons. Finally, for his own good, he
could have omitted many of the very obvious pats on his own
shoulder.
F. L. H.
Chabot, Frederick C, The
Alamo,
Mission,
Fortress,
and
Shrine.
Pp. 53. San Antonio (The Leake Company), 1935. Mr. Cha-
bot's latest contribution, a small pamphlet based mainly on well-
known secondary materials, may be dismissed with the following
general analysis. Of the 149 paragraphs in the text, thirty-six
are entirely enclosed in quotation marks, without the correspond-
ing citations; seventy-three contain extensive quotations, without
the corresponding citations; and only forty are entirely in the
author's own words, and in the last-named he makes such ob-
viously inaccurate statements as: ". . . the mission, San An-
tonio de Padua, being officially recognized as already existing
on December 7, 1716," and ". . . in 1729 they [the east Texas
missions] were removed to the San Antonio river. . . ."
F. L. H.