THE MERCER COLONY IN TEXAS, 1844-1883
*
The subject of this thesis, The
Mercer
Colony
in
Texas,
was
the suggestion of Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, archivist in the
library of The University of Texas. Although the colony was a
source of friction from its beginning, it played an important role
in peopling the Republic and State and in the annexation of
Texas. It influenced very materially the blending of the insti-
tutions and ideals of Spanish America, the Old South, and the
Middle West. The fact that my investigations recalled "fireside
memories" of the incidents of generations ago related by my
great-aunt and inspiring lectures given by my history professors
in The University of Texas has added more than ordinary fas-
cination and zest to my search for the material for this thesis.
The subject has been continually challenging, even defiant at
times. It is involved in diplomacy and in local politics; in the
economic structure of the United States and that of Texas; in
Indian affairs and legislative battles; and in judicial procedure
and legal history. An effort has been made to amass the facts
from original research and to present them in their proper per-
spective. Little attempt has been made to interpret these facts.
The first-hand information that I have found has come pri-
marily of diplomatic correspondence of the Republic of Texas,
reports and records from the General Land Office, legislative and
congressional journals, colonization papers, court records, and
contemporary newspapers. This information has been supple-
mented to some extent by information gained from biographies
of Mercer's contemporaries and from letters duly noted in my
bibliography.
I should like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Mr. M.
A. Roberts, Superintendent of the Reading Room, Library of
Congress; Mr. J. H. Walker, Commissioner of the General Land
Office of Texas; Mr. Hillary Hart, Clerk of the United States Dis-
trict Court at Austin, Texas; and Miss Harriet Smither, archivist
of the Texas State Library.
Mr. J. Evetts Haley, Collector of Documents, of The University
of Texas, rendered valuable assistance in suggesting the location
of manuscripts; and Miss Opal Humphries, Librarian of the North
Texas Agricultural College, assisted me in securing both primary
and secondary materials.
I should like to express my very grateful appreciation to Dr.
R. L. Biesele for the direction and assurance he has given and
the careful criticism he has made of this thesis.
The kindly interest and cooperation of my colleagues stimulated
the interest and enthusiasm with which I have carried on this
work.
N. Ethie Eagleton.
Austin, Texas
August, 1934
Charles Fenton Mercer was sixty-six years old when Sam Hous-
ton, President of the Republic of Texas, contracted with him,
January 29, 1844, to establish a colony
1 in the "Indian Lands of
Texas." Mercer was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, June 16,
1778, the youngest son of James and Eleanor Mercer.
2 His
eminent forbears had rendered distinguished service in both the
military defense and the legislative development of the colonies.
His mother was the daughter of Major Charles Dick and the
former Miss Roy, who were among Fredericksburg's most promi-
nent citizens and whose home is still standing there. James
Mercer (1731-1793), his father, who was educated at William and
Mary College, was commissioned as a captain in the French and
Indian War and placed in command of Port Loudoun, Winches-
ter, Virginia. He served as a member of the Virginia House of
Burgesses from Hampshire County, 1762-1776; Virginia conven-
tions, 1774-1775-1776; Committee of Public Safety, 1775-1776;
Continental Congress, 1779; as a judge of the General Court,
1779-89; and as a member of the first Court of Appeals of Vir-
ginia, 1789-1793. In the capacity of her attorney, he drew the
will of Mary, the mother of George Washington, and was a wit-
ness to her signature. The grandfather of Charles Fenton Mercer
was John Mercer (1704-1768) of Marlborough, Stafford County,
Virginia, the author of the Abridgment
of
Laws
of
Virginia,
published in 1737,3 and publisher of the First
Code
of
Virginia,
Laws,
17
59.
4 He was Secretary of the Ohio Company and a large
landed proprietor. His wife, Catherine Mason, was the aunt of
George Mason of "Gunston," the author of the Virginia Bill of
Rights, and an eminent statesman of the Revolutionary period.
5
Charles Fenton Mercer was left an orphan at the age of fif-
teen. Of his children and youth he wrote from London, England,
June 6, 1856, to his niece, Mrs. James Mercer Garnett, Jr.:
My mother died before I could know a mother's love. My father
was the mother of all his children, but mine especially. . . .
Often did he join me in my boyish amusements--to sail a boat,
or float a balloon constructed by myself. His first present to me
was a box of tools of which he taught me the use.
Speaking further of his father's devoted patriotism, he stated
that his father's death removed him from Fredericksburg and
that his time was spent between London and Essex until 1795,
when he chose James Mercer Garnett of Elmwood, Essex County,
his sister's husband, as his guardian. In residence at Elmwood
he was engaged in "laborious but delightful study" under the
tutelage of his beloved sister. Of that experience he further
states:
Those studies formed my character and the basis of whatever
improvement I have since made. Her letters for the five follow-
ing years strengthened the lofty sentiments that have never ceased
to animate me under many and severe trials of a varied life.
6
The academic preparation which he received at the hands of
his father and sister enabled him to enter the College of Prince-
ton in 1795, which place he made his home until 1801. Unre-
strained by its discipline, he enjoyed the companionship of the
professors and the venerable president of the college. Of his
experience as a student in Princeton, Mercer wrote:
I entered the college a stoic, if indeed, I had any settled opin-
ions on the subject of religion. In outward form a Christian, I
had derived my principles of action and theory from Plutarch,
and the then fashionable democratic philosophy of Godwin, whose
Political
Justice
and
Inquiries
were among my favorite volumes.
Both had taught me that I was to live not for my country, but
in a sense more enlarged, for mankind.
7
In attempting to reach this goal, to live for mankind, Mercer
was often encouraged by the friendship of John Henry Hobart,
a college mate and an Episcopalian minister. Mercer himself
served as a vestryman of Shelbourne Parish, Virginia.
8
Awarded the rank of first honor, when he received his bachelor
of arts degree from Princeton University, in 1797, Mercer deliv-
ered for his valedictory address a discourse favoring a permanent
navy for the defense of the United States. Remaining in Prince-
ton for three more years and pursuing the study of law under
the guidance of his godfather, Bushrod Washington, he obtained
his master of arts degree in 1800, and spoke for his commence-
ment address upon "The Voice of Prophecy." This address was
published at Philadelphia, 1801.
9
When invasion was threatening from France, 1798, Mercer
enrolled in the Princeton corps on July 4, for "public defense";
but, because war was no longer pending, he declined the commis-
sions of lieutenancy in 1798 and of captaincy of Cavalry in the
United States Army in 1800.
10
By his vote in the Virginia Assembly he opposed the War of
1812, but when war was declared he volunteered his service to
Secretary of State Monroe.
11 Mercer served as Major of the 5th
Virginia Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Edward
Jones, from February 20, 1814, to June 10, 1814. He served as
Inspector General of the Virginia Militia from August 31, 1814,
until his resignation, November 9, 1814.
12 In this last command,
he was serving as an aide to Governor Barbour when Richmond,
Virginia, was being placed in a state of defense after the fall of
Washington.
13
Mercer's commissions of high military rank were in no way
an index of those interests in which he expended his great energy.
In fact, he condemned the war of the United States against the
Seminoles, 1818, for, as he said, it "drained the treasury of its
specie, and drove the government to the negotiation of loans in
order to preserve its credit."
14 He supported Henry Clay, repre-
sentative from Kentucky, 1821, in his resolution favoring the
immediate recognition of the revolted South American countries,
15
and assisting them in setting up their independence by sending
ministers there forthwith.
In his study and practice of law, even as a legislator and a
congressman, no man assisted Mercer more than his godfather,
Associate Justice Bushrod Washington, of the Supreme Court of
the United States. The Justice had been a student of Mercer's
father and was a favorite nephew of General George Washington
When he laid down his command and put his affairs in shape
after the battle of Yorktown, General Washington packed his kit
and "hooks and lines" and set out with Bushrod in search of a
better route from Alexandria to the navigable waters of the Ohio.
Upon an occasion when his house was full of guests and he was
in a hurry to be gone to a meeting of his Potomac Company in
1786, General Washington took time out to answer a letter from
his nephew inquiring into the need of the electorate,
to instruct our delegates what they ought to do upon their de-
parture for Richmond, and upon their return, to inquire what
they have done. ... Representatives are the servants of the
electors, and the people are the best judges of their wants, their
own interest. . . . Evil disposed men clothed with power
should be prevented from abusing it.
16
The interest that Bushrod Washington exhibited in the west and
in responsible government inspired Mercer to work toward those
goals.
17
Another, a colleague and companion of Bushrod Washington,
was also a friend and adviser of Mercer. This was John Mar-
shall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Marshall and Mercer
were appointed by the Assembly of Virginia in 1812 to examine
the prospects of "improving communications in the headwaters of
the James Kiver by a railroad or a continuous canal."
18 These
three men were in accord on the plan of the American Coloniza-
tion Society, which was mercilessly attacked by abolitionists.
19
When Mercer obtained his license to practice law in 1802 he
established his residence at "Aldie," Loudoun County, Virginia.
After having served in Richmond as the special agent on mat-
ters of important public interest for the voters of Loudoun County
in 1808 and 1809, he was elected to the Virginia Assembly in
1810 and served until 1819. He was elected in 1818 to the House
of Representatives of the United States Congress and served that
body until 1840.
20 Of his service in Congress he states:
In Congress as in the State Legislature, I found enough to ani-
mate my zeal and to reward my labor in endeavoring to accom-
plish measures wholly disconnected with the politics of the day.
Many of these measures could not indeed have been successfully
prosecuted, without the concurrence, to a certain extent, of both
parties which have at all times agitated public councils.
21
The interest which impelled Mercer's grandfather, John Mer-
cer, to serve as the Secretary of the Ohio Company, which car-
ried George Washington and his nephew, Bushrod, in search of
a "better route from Alexandria to the navigable waters of Ohio,"
and which influenced the appointment of John Marshall and
Charles Fenton Mercer to "examine prospects for improving com-
munication in the headwaters of the James" gave direction to
Mercer's enthusiasm and energy. That interest was the West,
which could be made more accessible by internal improvements.
The Virginia Assembly of 1812-13 approved Mercer's proposal
to create a fund for internal improvements.
22 In 1818, in his
second speech before Congress, he advocated applying the surplus
revenue of the United States through a "well digested system of
internal improvements, to perpetuate the duration and to pro-
mote the prosperity of the union ... the advancement of
public welfare is the only practical mode which a state of peace
leaves open to our industry."
23 In 1823 he invited delegates from
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to meet with him in Wash-
ington, D. C., "to consider expediency and devise some practical
plan of improving the navigation of the Potomac connecting it
with the Monongahela."
24 As projector and first president of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, 1828-1833, Mercer's ardent
labor "executed successfully that stupendous and truly national
work."
25 Throughout his public career, Mercer's interest and
labor for internal improvements expanded with the spread of
population westward. He discussed, argued, and debated expedi-
ents and plans for public improvements in and out of Congress.
As Chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals, 1830-39,
Mercer advocated in 1832 appropriations for a breakwater in
Delaware Bay, repairs on the Cumberland Road, on the road from
Pensacola to Tallahassee, and on the road from Tallahassee to
ÍSÍew Orleans. He strongly urged an appropriation for the im-
provement of navigation on the Red River. Such improvements,
he argued, would bring into market a vast amount of public
land.
26 He reported a bill empowering the state of Illinois to
surrender certain lands granted her by the United States to pro-
vide for the construction of a canal from the Illinois River to
Lake Michigan.
27 On June 7, 1834, he presented a resolution
calling for information respecting the cost of constructing a con-
templated embankment across the swamps and watercourses be-
tween Memphis on the Mississippi and the high ground west of
St. Francis. He reported a bill on February 14, 1834, for open-
ing certain roads in the territory of Arkansas, and another one
for the improvement of the harbor of Clinton River in the terri-
tory of Michigan. During the nine years in which he served as
Chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals, nearly every
state and territory of the Union was influenced directly by, and
every session of Congress was crowded with, proposed legislation
affecting internal improvements.
Of his last labor in Congress for internal improvements, Mer-
cer reported that it had required "much research involving an
inquiry into all the various routes proposed for a union of the
Atlantic with the Pacific Oceans, through the Isthmus of Darien."
In his report he included a "diagram from the topographical
bureau and proposed an open cut for a canal of the intervening
highland."
28 In the promotion of this canal Mercer held an abid-
ing interest long after his congressional career.
Another interest which Mercer supported as diligently as he
supported internal improvements was education. As Chairman
of the Committee on Finance, 1815-16, of the Virginia Assembly,
Mercer sought to arouse that body from its apathy towards gen-
eral education by proposing to apply the surplus funds in the
treasury to the establishment of a system of primary schools. Dr.
John Augustine Smith, President of William and Mary College,
asked: "How were the schools to be superintended, and where
were the teachers to come from?" In 1817 Mercer answered by
an exhaustive bill providing "for a board of education with a
permanent secretary; for primary schools in which all white chil-
dren, free wards, or apprentices were to be schooled gratis; for a
system of academies (three of them for girls); and for colleges
(for the training of teachers) and a university."
29 This bill
passed the Lower House, but the Senate rejected it. James Cabell
of the Senate in his opposition to the bill exclaimed: "Extrava-
gance! Funds will be exhausted for primary schools and there
will be none for a university."
30 Long an advocate of public edu-
cation, Thomas Jefferson, in 1817, drafted a plan differing some-
what in organization from Mercer's, but with the same object in
view. Neither the assembly to whom the plan was submitted,
nor the public was ready to act.
Jefferson's dream had long been the establishment of a Univer-
sity of Virginia, in the realization of which he had the support
of both Cabell and Mercer.
31
Throughout his public career, Mercer supported bills in the
Virginia Assembly and the Congress of the United States for a
system of general education. He was not fighting single-handed
in this move. Expressing his concern over the welfare of the
"mass of the people," Chief Justice Marshall wrote to Mercer,
April 27, 1827: "The best that can be done for them is to edu-
cate them. In a government entirely popular general education
is more indispensable than another." In the same letter Mar-
shall's concern over the "labor problem increasing demands upon
a decreasing supply of labor" troubled him sorely. He believed
that only education may be relied upon to prevent pauperism and
famine.
32
On January 7, 1832, Mercer submitted a bill to Congress pro-
viding that
as soon as the public debt of the United States is discharged, the
proceeds from the sale of the public lands shall be applied undei
such regulations as the legislatures of the several states may pre-
scribe in proportion of one moiety to popular education and the
other to the removal of such free people of color as may desire
to emigrate to Liberia or elsewhere beyond the limits of the
United States.
33
In his contract of colonization with the President of the Re-
public of Texas, January 29, 1844, Mercer
secured for each settlement of one hundred families, a section
of six hundred forty, acres to be located as near the center of the
settlement as practicable; and, on payment by such settlement
... of the sum of twelve dollars in gold or silver specie into
the treasury of the Republic, to grant one other section of six
hundred forty acres to each settlement of one hundred families,
in addition to the former; both to be conveyed directly to such
settlement to aid them in the necessary building for religious and
public worship and elementary or primary schools.
34
Mercer discovered in 1816 those resolutions of public safety
adopted in secret session by the Virginia Assembly in 1800 just
after an outbreak of negroes. The resolutions had instructed the
Governor to correspond with the President with reference to a
proper place for colonization of "persons obnoxious to the laws,
or dangerous to the peace of society." Nothing had come of the
resolutions.
35 Mercer had felt much concern over the economic
and social aspects of the free, as well as the unfree, negro. Dur-
ing the summer of 1816 he wrote a new resolution on coloniza-
tion and showed it "to many persons in a long journey in the
United States and in Canada."
36 The resolution, which had met
with approval everywhere during the summer, called upon the
Governor to correspond with the President, for the purpose of
obtaining land outside of the United States for the colonization
of free negroes who desired it. Submitted to the Virginia House
of Delegates, December 14, 1816, it passed with only fourteen
opposing votes, and the Senate with only one opposing vote.
37
Interest in the colonization movement, which was general
throughout the United States, found expression in the organiza-
tion January 1, 1817, of "The American Society for the Coloniza-
tion of the Free People of Color of the United States," with
Bushrod Washington as president.
38 For the next five years
Mercer devoted much of his time to the project of African coloni-
zation. He conducted a large share of the correspondence of the
Colonization Society and wrote its second and third reports. In
Baltimore he collected within two weeks' time $4,700 to defray
the cost of an exploring expedition to the coast of Africa to find
a proper site for the contemplated colony. He franked, "8,000
circular letters to clergy, urging them to receive on Sunday near
July 4 subscriptions toward the support of the colony."
39 When
the. state of Georgia in 1819 offered to turn over to the Coloniza-
tion Society all slaves smuggled into her boundaries, provided the
Colonization Society would comply with certain stipulated condi-
tions, Mercer, then a member of the Congress of the United
States, submitted a bill providing for the maintenance and return
of the smuggled negroes to Africa. Congress passed the bill and
appropriated $100,000 to carry it into execution. The bill was
sustained in the House by Mercer, who also secured friends for
it in the Senate. Out of the appropriation of the bill, the colony
of Liberia was established in Africa.
40
Alter the establishment of Liberia, Mercer supported bills in
Congress for its maintenance. He remained active in the Ameri-
can Colonization Society and assisted in the organization of the
Colonization Society of Virginia in 1829, of which he was vice-
president from 1836 to 1838. The Colonization Society of Vir-
ginia was broken up soon after 1838, due to the agitation of the
abolitionists.
41
By a bill which Mercer sponsored through Congress, the African
slave trade was denominated by the United States as piracy and
the President was requested to open negotiations with several
maritime powers of Europe and America to the end that they
might acclaim it as such. The bill passed, and negotiations were
opened; hut only Great Britain and Colombia reciprocated. Mer-
cer states that one of the objects he anticipated was that "it
would render the proposal of England to exchange the right of
search on the African coast unnecessary." He did not indulge
in this hope until "it had been confirmed by consultation with
Chief Justice Marshall and his associate, Judge Washington." A
treaty with Great Britain was negotiated. Upon the advice of
President Monroe, the Senate of the United States ratified it with
amendments which were unacceptable to Great Britain. Mercer
addressed a letter to Stratford Canning, Minister of Foreign
Affairs, urging the acceptance of the treaty. Prime Minister
Palmerston expressed to Mercer his deep regret at its failure.
42
Throughout his political career, Charles Fenton Mercer strove
to uphold national rather than party interests. In 1818, while
opposing the nomination of Monroe for the presidency on the
grounds that he was a Virginian, he stated that "the future pros-
perity of the union, as well as the best interest of Virginia would
not be served by having the executive chair for a fourth time
filled by a Virginian."
43 No hostility was felt towards Monroe,
for January 3, 1831, he proposed in Congress an appropriation
for Monroe's relief.
44
Saying that he regarded "the liberty of mankind incapable of
being subverted by the madness and folly of a single state," he
opposed the "concession of Congress to defiant South Carolina."
45
Mercer further opposed Jackson's bank policy in a speech before
Congress, January 14, 1832, in which he advocated the expansion
of banking capital and the extension of national control over
banks.
46 Mercer denied that Jackson obstructed the progress of
internal improvements until he had first tampered with the cur-
rency thus depleting the treasury.
47
During the last four years of Mercer's tenure in office he re-
versed that political opinion to which he had held in the begin-
ning, namely, that the executive is too weak to counterpoise the
legislative department of the Federal government. This reversal
was due, he said,
to the gradual change of circumstances. The introduction of new
States in the Union, and the consequent multiplication of offices
of high dignity and emolument; the wanton enlargement of the
diplomatic corps; the great augmentation of salaries, so that a
clerkship at Washington has become the retreat of members of
Congress; the growth of corruption and its visible fruit in the
audacious avowal of the monstrous but practised maxim that all
executive offices are but the just spoils of party triumph; all
united together have subjected the legislature to the influence of
the executive, to such extent as to leave the President without any
adequate check upon the abuse of his power.
Consequently, in his last year in Congress, Mercer instituted the
movement to check the power of appointment and to subject its
abuse to new restrictions.
48
Combining a public with a philanthropic service, Mercer, at
the age of 60, felt the heavy drain upon his financial resources..
To his constituents he said: "I entered your service rich; I shall
leave it poor, though, I trust, independent."
49 In view of these
circumstances, he accepted the appointment of cashier from the
Union Bank of Florida at Tallahassee in the fall of 1839, feeling
that he was not at liberty to decline an offer so advantageous.
50
Public recognition of his service in Washington, Richmond, and
Leesburg, was testimony "of his long and able service," "of en-
larged and liberal views," "of their faithful and long-tried public
servant," "of his devotion to the best interests of his country,
and his many private virtues."
51 Of Mercer's personal life, Richard
Birchett, clerk of the superior court, Leon County, Florida, 1841,
and stockholder in the Texas Association from 1841 to 1883, said:
He was a Christian gentleman of captivating manners and
address, possessed of a vast fund of information. . . . He
was a gentleman of the Virginia Old School, of eminently spot-
less character.
52
Of Mercer's retirement from Congress, Henry Wise, Governor
of Virginia, in a warning note exclaimed:
General Mercer is leaving us at a time when no friend of his
country must absent himself a day from his post. The dangers
daily thicken around the institutions of the people. . . .
53
Apparently neither personal praise nor the governor's fears dis-
turbed the equanimity of Mercer, for during this spell of con-
gratulations, praise, and regrets, his characteristic demeanor may
be found in the spirit of the following response to numerous
toasts: "The Constitution of the United States! The offspring
of mutual concession, may it be sustained and perpetuated by
mutual forbearance."
54
In 1841, Mercer was on one of his seven trips to Texas where
he contracted with the President of the Republic to establish a
colony. In spite of the vicissitudes of distance, Indians, weather,
partisan politics, and reversal of legislative policies, he diligently
attempted to fulfill all obligations to the Republic. In despair
on April 22, 1852, he wrote to W. D. Miller, confidential secre-
tary of Sam Houston:
I have in vain expended more than twelve thousand dollars on
the lands I have sought to colonize; but now, deserted by most of
my associates and persecuted as I have been by the Texas legisla-
ture and convention, I ask but a very moderate remuneration for
expenses incurred in adding largely to the population of Texas, and
in directing her character in a very critical state of her affairs--
when her navy was laid up within the harbor of Galveston; her
army reduced to a few frontier rangers; her treasury exhausted;
her territory threatened with, invasion. You will remember doubt-
less the abrupt adjournment of her Congress while we were
together at Washington, on receipt of rumor, which proved to be
unfounded that a large army had crossed the Rio Grande accom-
panied by all the materials for a renewal of Mexican hostilities.
Reviewing in this letter the opposition in the Texas Congress
and in the Convention of 1845, and the final conclusion by those
bodies that his rights should be upheld, Mercer recalled the threats
and attacks made upon his surveyors by agents who were inspired
by Texas Rangers and certain members of the legislature. In his
despondency, Mercer seems to have lost the promise Texas held
for him. Yet he wrote:
Seven only of all my associates have been faithful throughout
to their engagements to me, and if your legislature will enable
me to satisfy their part of the claims, I care little what may
become of mine, altho I devoted at an advanced age with dili-
gence rarely surpassed three years and a half of my life to the
prosecution of the object of my grant. Believing as I did that
I could not more usefully terminate a long life devoted to objects
of public improvement than by planting and nourishing a colony
of which I could become the moral head and in the midst of
which I meant to live and die.
55
Besides his personal disappointment in the apparent failure to
secure satisfaction from Texas and his anxiety over the invest-
ments of his friends, Mercer was suffering from the infirmities of
old age and pecuniary distress. Relief came when he transferred
his interests in the Texas project and in a farm at Carrollton,
Kentucky, to George Hancock of Louisville, Kentucky, in return
for which he received an annuity of two thousand dollars which
enabled him to live comfortably. On August 13, 1853, he sailed
from Philadelphia on the steamship Manchester
to visit Europe,
where he traveled extensively for three years
56 in an effort to
unite the governments of the different countries m putting an
and to the African slave trade, which, at his instigation, had
already been denounced as piracy by some of them. During this
trip he conferred with foreign ministers, members of various par-
liaments, and leaders in many fields. He was a friend of Hume
and Corbin.
57
In a letter from Paris, France, written in 1854, Mercer spoke
of having crossed the Atlantic seven times. On his last trip he
visited Saint Petersburg, Bevel, Memel, Tilsit, Berlin, Dresden,
Vienna, Padua, Verona, Milan, Geneva, and London.
58
Under date of August 16, 1855, Mercer wrote from Paris to
his friend E. C. Cabell, who was in London, asking if he, Cabell,
would aid in the promotion in England of the proposed Nica-
raguan Canal, saying that he himself would
cooperate in the mode suitable to his age and ability. . . .
The contemplated railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific
might be used to advantage in England to hasten the efforts in
behalf of the English merchants and capitalists. The railway
would be an American avenue of trade and intercourse; the canal
would be open to all the world.
59
Mercer was no enemy to railroad construction, but he thought
"wild prairies of the west and the wilder population" were not
"prepared for its commencement by any private company or asso-
ciation." He believed that the construction of the railroad should
be executed by the general government. The operation should be
"supported by military force and organization. Forts and block-
houses, wells for water, and villages must be established contem-
poraneously with its progress."
60 Believing the canal the greatest
enterprise then open to man he argued that it would be favored
by British capital as a counterbalance to the danger apprehended
from opening the Suez Canal to India, and proposed that Cabell
become the head of the Panama project. Cabell's refusal was on
the grounds of inadequate health.
61
Upon his return to the United States, Mercer wrote his will at
Tallahassee, Florida, in which he bequeathed his entire estate to
his nephew, Theodore S. Garnett of Essex County, Virginia.
"The only regret I have in making this will," said Mercer, "is
that I shall leave so little to one whom I owe so much."
62
Mercer left Florida soon to return to the home of his nephew
at Alexandria. Stopping in Washington he spent the last evening
before going to Alexandria with his friend, R. T. Birchett.
Birchett states that Mercer "knew his condition was hopeless and
that his death was certain within a very short time."
63 He died
in Howard, near Alexandria, Virginia, May 4, 1858, and was
buried in Union Cemetery, Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia.
64
Thus were rounded out the years of a man who was "early
taught, by precept and example, the obligation to be useful rather
than distinguished--a maxim of Christian rather than heathen
philosophy."
65
FOOTNOTES:
University of Texas in the summer session of 1935 in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree.
of Texas, January 29, 1844. Colonization Papers, Texas State Library.
MS. January 21, 1934. W. Garnett Chisholm, according to the secretary
of the Virginia Historical Society, is the person best posted on the life
of Charles Fenton Mercer--Ro. McLean Whittet, Richmond, Virginia,
August 5, 1933, to N. Ethie Eagleton. (Ro. McLean Whittet of the firm
Whittet and Shepperson, publishers of Garnett, Biographical Sketch of
Charles Fenton Mercer, 1911). Upon the request of the author of this thesis,
Dr. Clyde Eagleton, New York University, New York, personally interviewed
Mr. Chisholm relative to Mercer's youth, his connection with the abolition
movement, and his European contacts. Mr. Chisholm very kindly pre-
pared some notes for use in this thesis, based on a manuscript sketch
Mercer had written of his own life and some of his letters which are in
Mr. Chisholm's possession. Subsequent references to this paper will be
given as Chisholm, "Notes on Charles Fenton Mercer."
lege Quarterly, XVII, 210.
1083; James Mercer Garnett, Biographical Sketch of Honorable Charles,
Fenton Mercer, 1778-1858, p. 5.
uents, 1839. Library of Congress. Appendix: Accounts of dinners ten-
dered and toasts made in recognition of his service were taken from
Leesburg, Genius of Liberty, December 27, 1839. John Wright gave the
following volunteer toast, "Charles Fenton Mercer. He opposed by his
vote the declaration of the last war with Great Britain but he was on,
of the first to draw the sword in the defense of his country.
D. C. July 28, 1933, to N. Ethie Eagleton.
XL, 61.
1778-1858, p. 22.
1778 -1858, p. 6.
1839.
1839.
1778-1858, p. 22.
John Quincy Adams, 1794-1845, 381, 452.
1778-1858, p. 22.
ginia, 1776-1860, 15. Issued by the State Board of Education as one of
a series of animal reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
p. 15.
President of Texas, January 29, 1844. Colonization Papers, 1843-45, Texas
State Library.
printed in Niles' Weekly Register (XIV), March 9, 1833.
uents, 1839; Garnett, Biographical Sketch of Charles Fenton Mercer, 1778-
1858,p. 21.
uents, 1839; Garnett, Biographical Sketch of Honorable Charles Fenton
Mercer, 1778-1858, pp. 22-23.
Of Mercer's resignation, John Quincy Adams writes in his diary as
follows:
Philadelphia, November 22, 1840.
"I was able this morning to write for a couple of hours before break-
fast. Met at the breakfast table Mr. Charles Fenton Mercer, who, after
twenty-two years of Service in the House of Representatives of the United
States, last winter, in a fit of despair, accepted an office of cashier of a
bank at Tallahassee, in Florida, and is now going to England—I suppose
to raise the wind for that institution. Mercer is one of the most respec-
table natives of Virginia, and has devoted his life to the internal im-
provement of the country and to the gradual extinction of slavery in the
State. In both of these benevolent and exalted purposes his exertions
have been abortive. The savage and barbarous genius of slavery has not
only baffled them all, but has kindled a flame of popular odium against
him, from which he has shrunk into the cashier of a bank at Tallahassee.
A noble spirit doomed to drudge in the mines."—C. F. Adams, Memoirs
of John Quincy Adams, X, 360.
vs. Walsh. Internal Revenue Building, Austin, Texas.
tin, Texas. This letter is on file in the records of the case, Preston vs.
Walsh.
B. Gambrell "Notes," Southern Methodist University.
B. Gambrell "Notes," Southern Methodist University.
sition of Theodore S. Garnett, Sr., May 2, 1880, in the records of the case,
Preston vs. Walsh.
uents. Garnett, Biographical Sketch of the Honorable Charles Fenton
Mercer, 22.
How to cite:
Nancy Ethie Eagleton, "Mercer Colony in Texas, 1844-1883", Volume 39, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n4/contrib_DIVL3488.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 14:55:28 CST 2009]
