QUARTERLY
Vol. XXXIX APRIL, 1936 No. 4
Editors
Eugene C. Barker
Herbert E. Bolton
Associate Editors
E. W. Winkler
Chas W. Ramsdell
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
Jackson's Neches Claim, 1829-1836 - - - Richard R. Stenberg - - 255
The Mercer Colony in Texas, 1844-1883,I - Nancy Ethie Eagleton - - 275
The Free Negro in the Republic of Texas, I - - Harold Schoen - - 292
The Confederate Exodus to Latin America, III - Lawrence F. Hill - - 309
Letters of Antonio Martinez, The Last Spanish Governor of
Texas, 1817-1822, IV - - - - Mattie Austin Hatcher - - 327
Book Reviews and Notices : Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century
of Frontier Defense; Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of
Nationalist Expansion in American History; Malone (Ed.),
Dictionary of American Biography, Vols. XVII, XVIII; Barker,
The Father of Texas - - - - 333
Texas State Historical Association and Mississippi Valley His-
torical Association: Program of Joint Meeting - - - - - - 338
Index of Volume XXXIX - - - -
EX-PRESIDENT:
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 Dr. Alex Dienst,
State Librarian Fannie Wilcox,
E. W. WINKLER FOR TERM ENDING 1935.
Mrs. Ethel Rather Villavaso for term ending 1936.
Fellows
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 Prof. 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.
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, Prop. 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, Prop. 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 APRIL, 1936 No. 4
The publication committee and the editors disclaim responsibility for views expressed
by contributors to The Quarterly
JACKSON'S NECHES CLAIM, 1829-1836
The Florida treaty of February, 1819, defined the southwest-
ern boundary of the United States as the Sabine River from its
mouth to the thirty-second parallel, from thence a line due north
to the Red River, and ultimately the line of the forty-second par-
allel westward to the Pacific Ocean--"the whole being as laid
down in Melish's map of the United States, published at Phila-
delphia, improved to the first of January, 1818," so Article III
of the treaty states. Melish's map properly labels the more east-
ern of the two rivers which separately flow into Sabine Bay the
"Sabine," and labels the more western river "Rio de Nieves or
Neches R."
1 It would seem that there could have been no ques-
tion or honest doubt about the true southwestern boundary
after 1819.
Nevertheless, the American-Texas land speculators and expan-
sionists of the southwestern border region conceived the conven-
ient notion at an early date that the Rio Neches, the western of
the two rivers, might feasibly be considered the Sabine referred
to in the Spanish treaty of 1819. Unfortunately for this pre-
tension (which grew up after 1819),
2 the Neches did not inter-
sect the thirty-second parallel and therefore could not fulfill the
treaty specification, even if the treaty had not designated the
Sabine as indicated on Melish's map.
3 And in this respect
Melish's map was quite correct.
The western river, the Neches, had never been known as the
Sabine, nor the eastern, the Sabine, as the Neches. An examina-
tion of old Spanish maps shows, however, that up to the end of
the 18th Century there was a very widespread ignorance and un-
certainty regarding the topography of East Texas, then largely
uninhabited. Thus some Spanish maps, failing to show Sabine
Bay, had pictured the two rivers as flowing directly and inde-
pendently into the Gulf of Mexico, while other maps pictured the
two rivers as joining to form one river before entering the Gulf,
while yet other maps showed only one river where the two should
have been. Also the superfluous designation "Rio Mexicano" had
by some Spaniards been applied to the Neches and by others to
the Sabine. The Spaniard Pichardo, who made a close study of
the Louisiana-Texas boundary matter in the first decade of the
19th Century, reports all of this past confusion, pointing out at
the same time that in general the then fixed designations of the
two streams--Neches or Rio de Nievas for the western and Rio
de Sabinas for the eastern--had been well established for years.
And when the Rio Mexicano designation had been used it had
only properly applied, in his opinion, to the Neches. Pichardo
points out that Fray Puelles in his map of Texas at the begin-
ning of the 19th Century was thus careless in labeling the Sabine
as the "Sabinas, or Mexicano, or de las Flores."
4 From all this
it appears there was some confusion and redundancy in nomen-
clature, but nowhere does it appear that the Neches had ever been
called the "Sabine."
The American speculators of the Southwest, anxious to have
the extensive territory (with Nacogdoches as center) between the
Sabine and Neches and south of Red River come into the posses-
sion of the United States--though preferable would be the acqui-
sition of all of Texas--, found grounds easily in this ancient con-
fusion in nomenclature for their assertion that the Neches was
the real Sabine. And so they came to find it easy to claim and
perhaps to imagine, quite contrary to actual fact, that the Neches
was the more considerable of the two streams and must for that
additional reason have been the river intended as boundary by
the negotiators of the Florida treaty--as if Adams and Onis did
not know what they were doing when they ran the line according
to the Melish map! John Sibley, an old resident of Natchitoches,
Louisiana, who had some expectation of being appointed by Presi-
dent Monroe as one of the joint commissioners to survey the treaty
boundary with Spain's commissioners, wrote on October 29, 1821,
privately:
There will be a difficulty about the River Sabine. The Main
Branch is the Nechez, which is beyond Nacogdoches. The treaty
obliges the Commissioners to begin in the Sea at the Mouth of
Sabine &
keep up on the West Bank. By the old maps it lost the
name of Sabine from the Junction of the Nechez which is about
sixty miles from its mouth. & the Branch that Modens [moderns ?]
calls Sabine used to be called the Mexicano River. Should we be
able to fix the Netchez as the Boundary it will give us an acces-
sion of a tract of country of abount one hundred miles by three
hundred . . . many Intelligent Gentlemen are of my opin-
ion, on this subject.
5
Such argument, in face of the treaty stipulation, justified the
Mexican General Teran in his comment on the imperialistic
Americans:
They begin by assuming rights . . . impossible to sustain
in a serious discussion, making ridiculous pretensions based on
historical incidents which no one admits. . . . The efforts
that others make to submit proofs and reasons are by these men
employed in reiterations ... to attract the attention of their
fellow countrymen, not to the justice of their claim but to the
profit to be gained from admitting it. ... In the meantime,
the territory against which these machinations are directed, and
which has usually remained unsettled, begins to be visited by
adventurers and empresarios.
Some of these take up their resi-
dence in the country, pretending that their location has no bear-
ing upon the question of their government's claim or the bound-
ary disputes . . . and the matter having arrived at this stage,
. . . diplomatic maneuvers begin."
6
Teran thus exactly describes the situation that developed south
of the Red River and between the Sabine and Neches Rivers.
One of the Texas-land speculators tells us that "In the year
1819 about the time Mr. Adams was negotiating with Don Onis
. . . several persons passed over to Texas, and purchased
lands lying between the Naches river and the Sabine, in antici-
pation that the Naches would be the line between the two coun-
tries. This was not the result of the negotiation."
7
The Mexican revolution intervened, and the boundary survey
lay unaccomplished for many years; for the American govern-
ment, eager to acquire Texas, delayed confirming the line of 1819
with Mexico as long as possible. The Neches claim was revived
in August, 1829, when Colonel Anthony Butler of Mississippi, a
speculator in Texas lands near
Nacogdoches,
as Jackson probably
knew,
8 appeared at Washington to urge President Jackson to
try to buy Texas from Mexico. Butler suggested to Jackson that
the Neches might feasibly be claimed as the "Sabine" of the
Florida treaty. Butler's ludicrous arguments for this view were
those noted above.
Jackson was ready to believe that there could be a doubt. It
might prove useful. The Neches claim, accordingly, first appears
in American diplomacy in Jackson's instructions to Poinsett of
August 25, 1829, authorizing him to offer Mexico $5,000,000 for
a cession of the whole of Texas. Certain possible points of dis-
pute, said Jackson, would be obviated by a cession of Texas to
the United States, and as one of these he put forth the Neches
claim in the following language:
It is represented to us that, of the two streams which empty
into the Sabine Bay through the same channel, the one farthest
west is the most considerable, and may with reason be claimed to
be the one referred to in the treaty. The distance between them,
although only four miles where they enter the bay, at some places
approaches to one hundred. That there is much ignorance of the
localities of the province, and consequently confusion and error
in the maps of it which are extant, is certain. Whether the rep-
resentations which have been made upon the subject to this Gov-
ernment be founded in truth, or are the suggestions of interested
individuals to subserve particular views, remains to be seen.
Jackson adds: "But this is not the only nor the strongest ob-
jection" to viewing the real Sabine as the boundary, and he goes
on to show that the Neches should be the boundary because it
would be more profitable to the United States to have the more
westward river as boundary!
9 The fact that Jackson mentions
possible "interested individuals" suggests that he was well aware
of their existence and anxious to avoid appearance of being iden-
tified with them.
Jackson made no effort through the years thereafter to fortify
the claim, which could find no justification; but merely continued
to the end to speak of the Neches as "represented to him" to be
the true Sabine, avoiding as much responsibility as he could.
10
Jackson observed to Poinsett--and to his successor as ambassador
to Mexico, Anthony Butler--that if the line of 1819 were run
according to Melish's map the United States would "lose" some
territory south of Red River in which Americans had settled and
which at the time formed "two populous counties" of Arkansas
Territory. (What had these Americans expected when they set-
tled south of the American boundary?) Jackson instructed Gov-
ernor Pope of Arkansas to exercise jurisdiction over this territory
south of Red River pending a settlement with Mexico,
11 and re-
peatedly expressed his unwillingness that Mexico should have
these "Arkansas counties."
In order to obtain a commercial treaty from Mexico, the
reluctant Poinsett had at last been forced in 1828 to sign a bound-
ary treaty confirming the southwestern boundary of the Florida
treaty. The treaty of 1828 remained unratified. But in 1831
the Mexican government forced Butler to sign a new treaty, again
confirming that of 1819.
12 In the spring of 1832, after Mexican
ratification, Butler sent this treaty to President Jackson, urging
him not to submit it to the Senate and to repudiate the Florida
treaty settlement. But Jackson put the treaty before the Senate
(which, despite his private request that action be delayed,
promptly ratified it), and replied to Butler on February 25, 1832,
that he could not utterly repudiate the treaty, as the national
honor was compromitted. But he privately assured Butler that
he would instruct the commissioners to be sent to survey the
boundary with Mexico to insist upon the Neches, and that he
would never yield this claim, while the Mexican commissioners
would never agree to it, and that in this way he would defeat the
treaty of 1831 and keep the whole Texas question open.
Jackson had fully discovered the usefulness of claiming the
Neches, for imperialistic reasons; and was determined to enforce
the claim, forcibly if necessary, as will be seen. Though doubt-
less knowing better, Jackson conveniently viewed the Neches as a
"branch" or "fork" of the Sabine—"the west fork of that river,
which formerly was called the Sabine," he writes Butler, adding:
"I am told Mexico will contend for the line to run up the East
fork which they say is the Sabine, and call the west branch by
another name, which we cannot agree to, as it would take from
us two populous counties."
13 The National
Intelligencer,
August
6, 1836, ejaculated upon the President's geography: "A branch
of a Bay!
Who ever heard of such a thing before? . . . James
River ... a branch
of Hampton Roads!"
of which he might have to seize the whole of Texas forthwith to
protect the American border from Indian depredations! 14 He
again wrote Butler on April 19 of his survey commissioners:
Our instructions will pursue the express words of the Treaty,
which declares, it shall commence on the gulf of Mexico, on the
west bank of the Sabine and run up the west bank etc. etc. there-
fore it must, when the Sabine forks, take the west bank of the
west fork. This by us will not be abandoned and it is intimated
that Mexico will contend for the East fork. This we will not
consent to.
15
Of course Jackson knew
that Mexico would contend for the true
Sabine; his mode of expression may well strike a reader as some-
what pharisaical.
16
We learn, on what seems good authority, that Jackson told Sam
Houston in the spring of 1832 (on the eve of Houston's departure
for Texas) that he was claiming the Neches and "would defend
and fight for that line."
17 This understanding with Jackson,
which Houston remembered well, seems to play a large part in
Houston's retreat in 1836 during the Texas war for independ-
ence. Jackson's Neches claim was, in fact, public knowledge in
Texas as early as October, 1832, and the Texans were indignant
at "this hitherto unheard-of claim."
18
The survey of the line of 1819 was never made with Mexico,
though as late as 1836 Jackson was hypocritically expressing his
great desire to have the line run. Revolutionary conditions in
Mexico caused delay in sending commissioners, while Jackson was
only too glad to have the matter put off. T. M. Marshall, who
has made a careful study of the matter, shows Jackson's policy
to have been one of procrastination, at which the Mexican dip-
lomats complained more than once.
19 At his great leisure Butler
negotiated a new survey article in the spring of 1835 and sent
it to Jackson, reminding him of the usefulness of adhering firmly
to the Neches claim, this not merely to obtain the territory around
Nacogdoches and the "Arkansas counties," but as a means of
coercing Mexico into a cession of all of Texas.
20 In private let-
ters in the fall of 1833 and spring of 1834 Butler urged Jackson
to seize the "disputed" territory east of the Neches as a means
of encouraging the Texans to revolt from Mexico.
21
Did the American government ever bring the Neches claim be-
fore the Mexican government and offer to negotiate about it?
Jackson and Butler seem to have been not a little secretive about
their claim. Butler told the Mexican Foreign Minister, Alaman,
in June, 1832, that a cession of Texas would make it unnecessary
for President Jackson to decide whether or not he had the con-
stitutional power to yield territory inhabited by Americans, if
and when the line of 1819 were run—an insinuating allusion to
the "Arkansas counties."
22 Later Butler mysteriously informed
the Mexican Minister in September, 1833, that he was instructed
"to propose a review of the question of limits, for the purpose of
defining more exactly and clearly the landmarks of such line than
had been done by the treaty of 1819."
23 But Colonel Butler did
not explain. Later still, and for the last time, Butler alluded to
the Neches claim in a note to the Mexican government of Decem-
ber 21, 1834, in which
he would only observe, that Mexico was actually occupying a large
territory which the government of the undersigned considered as
justly belonging to the citizens of the United States . . . and
as it was well known, that not only the government of Mexico,
but that of the United States, had already granted a large part
of this territory to various natives and foreigners, the prompt con-
clusion of this affair became every day more urgent.
Writing Jackson on March 7, 1834, Butler intimated that Mexico
was aware of Jackson's Neches claim and considered it a mere
pretext, and he assured the President that Mexico would never
admit the claim. He recommended again that Jackson simply
occupy the "disputed" territory.
General Almonte, who made for the Mexican government a tour
of inspection in Texas during the early half of 1834, heard while
at Natchitoches, in April, of the Neches claim among the Ameri-
cans. On inquiring he was told that the Sabine had once been
known as the Mexicano and that inasmuch as many sabine
(cypress) trees bordered the Neches the latter must be the real
Sabine!
24
Thus the matter rested until the outbreak of the Texas Revo-
lution, when at Jackson's request Secretary of State Forsyth
apprised the Mexican chargé,
Castillo, in an oral
conversation
on
November 4, 1835, that pending the struggle between the Mexi-
cans and the revolted Texan colonists the American President
would view the region between the Sabine and Neches as "neutral
territory" and would permit neither of the belligerents to "vio-
late" that territory.
25 Jackson's declaration in his annual mes-
sage of December, 1835, "It has been thought necessary to apprise
the government of Mexico, that we should require the integrity
of our territory to be scrupulously respected by both parties" to
the Texan war, thus takes on a sinister meaning. Secretary
Forsyth refused to discuss Jackson's Neches claim with Castillo.
In consequence of Forsyth's intimation to Castillo of Jackson's
arbitrary "neutral territory" pretension, the Mexican government
sent Gorostiza as "Minister Extraordinary" to Washington to pro-
test and to protect Mexican interests. When Gorostiza inquired
why the American government had never brought the Neches
claim openly into diplomacy, Forsyth, known well as "the Talley-
rand of America," blandly responded:
If the true demarcation according to that treaty has not been fully
made known to Mexico, it is because there has been on the part of
that government a delay to proceed to the execution of that instru-
ment. Questions belonging to the duties of the commissioners and
surveyors, could not be properly presented or considered until they
met to enter upon those duties. A correspondence between the
United States and Mexico, for the treaty of limits . . . was
no place to look for traces of the pretensions of the two govern-
ments, founded on a construction of that instrument. . . .To
discuss them in advance, would have been useless, if not suspi-
cious. . . . Whatever may have been done or omitted prior
to that time, it is certain that want of information on this point
since November last, cannot be complained of by the Mexican
government. The undersigned had the honour to give to the
Mexican charge d'affaires, Mr. Castillo, in a conference in that
month, the most distinct intimation of the claims and expecta-
tions of the government of the United States under the treaty of
limits ... a conference which the undersigned has supposed
was the chief cause of the subsequent extraordinary mission of
Mr. Gorostiza to the United States.
26
Gorostiza justly replied that upon Melish's map, "the only au-
thority which the Mexican government will recognize agreeably
to the treaty, . . . Nacogdoches is situated several miles
beyond the Sabine river, and consequently far within the indis-
putable territory of Mexico."
27
One would be amply justified in the belief that Jackson had
for years been secretly planning to use the Neches claim as a
means of intervening in Texas to aid the colonists and annex the
Texas territory whenever a Texas revolution (an event which he
had anticipated ever since 1829) should occur. Jackson was an
unscrupulous opportunist, seemingly, of subtle and deep calcula-
tion, a master of duplicity and intrigue.
28
The contemporary belief that President Jackson connived at
his friend Sam Houston's schemes, from 1829 to 1832, of filibus-
tering against and revolutionizing Texas seems to the present
writer to be justified by the very documentary "proofs" by which
Jackson intended to prove the contrary.
29 Besides the testimony
of Anson Jones as to a Jackson-Houston understanding that Jack-
son would on suitable occasion "defend the fight for" the terri-
tory between the Sabine and Neches Rivers, we have also the tes-
timony of J. F. H. Claiborne and Henry A. Wise to the same
effect.
30
Jackson's and Houston's actions in the early part of 1836 would
point to this putative understanding between them: namely, that
Jackson would use the Neches claim to aid or join the Texan
insurgents in their struggle with Mexico. Besides wishing to
obtain Texas, Jackson would in his desire for California and New
Mexico (a large part of which he had instructed Butler in August,
1835, to try to buy from Mexico) have a further motive for war
with Mexico.
31 The evidence tending to show that Houston in-
tended to retreat to the "neutral" Sabine-Neches region to lure
the Mexican army under Santa Anna across the Neches and into
conflict with the American army seems conclusive to the writer.
Houston seems to have been preparing his soldiers for a later dis-
closure of this policy when he told them, on ordering retreat east-
ward from the Colorado: "Fellow Soldiers: . . . we cannot
expect reinforcements. . . . There are but a few of us, and
if we are beaten the fate of Texas is sealed! The salvation of
the country depends upon the first battle with the enemy. For
this reason I intend to retreat, till I find I can beat the Mexicans
in battle, if I am obliged to go even to the banks of the Sabine."
32
On reaching the Brazos Houston told several of his associates,
Anson Jones included, that he intended to retreat to the Neches
or even the Sabine if necessary "to gain a bloodless victory."
33
That this was his intention was the general belief among his sol-
diers and officers. But there is even more definite evidence, fully
attested, which leaves even less room for doubt: Houston sent
messages ahead to the Trinity River ordering volunteers coming
from the east to halt and await his arrival there, and he borrowed
a Mrs. Mann's pair of oxen expressly to help transport his equi-
page to the Trinity along the Nacogdoches road. Houston had
clearly in mind his understandings with President Jackson, and
wrote his friend Colonel Henry Raguet of Nacogdoches on April
7, 1836: "Don't get scared. Remember Old Hickory claims
Nacogdoches as 'nutural [neutral] territory.'"
34 Houston's use
of the Jacksonian vernacular is suggestive.
to Houston with orders that the General stop retreating and fight
the Mexicans. But Rusk went over to Houston's program, and
the retreat continued. As Burnet remarked later in the year,
"His presence in the army produced no apparent change in the
policy of General Houston, and I believe it can be proved by in-
disputable evidence, that a retreat to the river Trinity was
intended, until the irresistible impulse of public opinion in the
army compelled that happy movement which resulted in the mem-
orable battle of San Jacinto." 35 For, eventually, about April 15
the soldiers forced Houston to deflect southward from the Nacog-
doches road to meet the Mexican army at San Jacinto, as we are
told by a mass of testimony by participants in the campaign.
On being thus forced to yield his own plans, Houston told a num-
ber of his subordinates that he was only marching to Lynchburg
or San Jacinto at the order of his government, against his own
judgment, and would take no responsibility for the outcome.
There is even strong evidence that even to the last he wished to
continue the retreat. 36
The Texans fought and won the battle of San Jacinto on April
21. On April 24 the French correspondent Bar adere writes from
Galveston Island, where the Provisional Government of Texas
had taken refuge: "Yesterday, while it was being deliberated
whether it was necessary to flee further, letters came from the
army telling us that the soldiers have forced
Houston to fight."
37
It was only after
the Texan victory that Houston claimed credit
for it.
This is not to censure Houston's retreat policy, which may well
be viewed as farsighted and statesmanlike, and find its explana-
tion in his understanding with Jackson. By involving Mexico in
war with the United States he would not only have ensured the
success of the Texas Revolution but enabled Jackson to fulfil his
further expansionist desires at Mexican expense.
Let us turn to Jackson's maneuvers, to see how they jibe with
Houston's retreat. Jackson was well informed by Butler that
Mexico would not observe his absurd "neutral territory" preten-
sion. Butler apprised him by letter of December 19, 1835, of
Santa Anna's declarations to the foreign diplomatic corps on the
eve of his departure for Texas:
He spoke of our desire to possess that country, declared his
full
knowledge
that we had instigated and were supporting the revolt,
and that he would in due season chastise
us
for it. Yes Sir, he
said chastise
us:
he continued, I understand that Gen. Jackson
sets up a claim to pass the Sabine, and that in running the divi-
sion line, hopes to acquire the country as far as the Naches. "Sir
said he, (turning to Gentlemen present) I mean to run that line
at the Mouth of my Cannon, and after the line is Established, if
the Nation will only give me the means, only afford me the nec-
essary supply of money I will march to the Capital, I will lay
Washington City in ashes, as it has already been once done,"
(turning and bowing to the British Minister). . . . There is
little doubt but that Genl. Santa Anna, will be taught a lesson
by the people of Texas themselves, how difficult it would be to
reach even the Sabine River much less visit our Capital. . . .
Nay that he may become so placable as to permit boundary yet
westward of the Naches.
38
Thus when Jackson gave General E. P. Gaines discretionary
orders, and encouraged
him, to march over the Sabine in the
spring of 1836, he was wittingly inviting war with Mexico. If
Games should comply with Jackson's hinted desire that he pro-
tect the "disputed" territory, and if the Texans should retreat to
that region pursued by the Mexican troops, what could result
but war?
Jackson ordered Gaines to the southwestern border on January
23, 1836, with instructions to protect "American territory" from
encroachment by the contending forces in Texas and to protect
the inhabitants on both sides of the boundary from possible
Indian ravages. But at the same time Gaines was told to pre-
serve American neutrality. Gaines knew of Jackson's Neches
claim; but whether or not he was at once informed of it, pri-
vately or otherwise, by Jackson does not appear. However, the
Secretary of War on April 25, 1836, sent Gaines instructions
encouraging him to view the Neches as the American boundary,
authorizing him to advance if he
should think necessary to Nacog-
doches, and enclosing "as a part of your instructions" a memo-
randum of an interview between Secretary Forsyth and Gorostiza
of April 20, in which Forsyth had stated that the President con-
sidered the Neches the rightful boundary.
39 In this conference
Forsyth told Gorostiza vaguely that in consequence of appre-
hended Indian disturbances on the frontier
orders would be given to General Games to take such a position
with the troops of the United States as would enable him to pre-
serve the territory of the United States from any violation by the
Mexicans, Texians, or Indians. . . . That, should the troops
. . . be advanced beyond the point Mexico might suppose was
within the territory of the United States, the occupation of the
position was not to be taken as an indication of any hostile feel-
ing, or of a desire to establish a possession or claim not justified
by the treaty of limits; the occupation would be precautionary
and provisional; and that the position would be abandoned when-
ever (the line being run, and the true limits marked) the dis-
turbances in that region should cease.
40
This seems to show clearly that Jackson intended and expected
Games to advance to Nacogdoches under his orders (then prepar-
ing) of April 25. This view is, in fact, almost forced on us by
Jackson's later expression of chagrin at Gaines' failure to advance
promptly to Nacogdoches to occupy the territory he claimed: "I
have very little doubt but Genl Gaines wishes were to give the
possession to Texas that their claim might be strengthened . . .
because he was ordered at first to take a position as far advanced
as Nacogdoches, but he did not, and by a late order was directed
to occupy it, neither Texas nor Mexico being in possession, and
there keep our Indians at peace and sustain our neutrality."
41
General Gaines, though not over-anxious to accept the respon-
sibility of crossing the Sabine at Jackson's equivocal invitation,
was apparently ready, long before he received his orders of April
25, to aid the Texans, if they were reduced to the last extremity,
by protecting the "disputed" territory. Early in April, on his
way to confer with Gaines, the Texan Secretary of State, S. P.
Carson (also a one-time friend of Jackson's, when Congressman
from North Carolina), heard a rumor that Gaines had already
sent a battalion of troops to the Neches: "I
believe it to be true.
General Gaines is there and doubtless my letter by Parmer had
the desired effect. Jackson will protect the neutral ground." On
April 13, after reaching Gaines at Natchitoches, Carson reported
"a full and satisfactory
conversation. His position at present is
a delicate one ... to protect the frontier and neutral ground,
and also to keep the Indians in check."
42 Carson himself favored
Houston's policy of retreat, writing the General on April 14:
"My view is, that you should fall back, if necessary,
to the Sabine.
I am warranted in saying that volunteer troops will come on in
number from the United States. . . . You must fall back,
and hold out, and let nothing goad or provoke you to battle, un-
less you can, without
doubt,
whip them, or unless you are com-
pelled to fight."
43 Just before the unexpected battle at San
Jacinto Gaines was telling the Americans who were crossing the
Sabine to join the Texan army that the American boundary was
the Neches.
44 Had the Texans retreated further and drawn Santa
Anna into the "neutral" territory Gaines would doubtless have
engaged the Mexicans.
It was almost the general belief of contemporaries that Jackson
deliberately intended through Gaines to bring on war with Mex-
ico to save the Texans; and in view of the circumstances above
seen it can hardly be doubted that such indeed was his secret
design, despite his many professions of neutrality and despite his
(rather unsuccessful) attempt to repudiate Gaines after San
Jacinto and shift upon Gaines the public odium which attached
to his own unneutral policy and instructions.
45 Even Jackson's
mouthpiece, Blair's Washington Globe,
defended Jackson's bound-
ary claim and instructions to Gaines very vaguely and evasively,
on May 12, 1836, while loudly denouncing as "pro-Mexican" and
"foreign in all its aspects" the public criticism of Jackson's policy
and conduct.
Gaines was justly wroth at Jackson's inconsistent conduct towards
him, not appreciating being made Jackson's scapegoat.
46 The
President's anger at Gaines was not owing to the General's ad-
vance to Nacogdoches in June-July, 1836,
47 but apparently to the
fact that Gaines instead of advancing much earlier had only "let
the cat out of the bag" (as Gaines later expressed it, in review
of the matter) by calling, even as his orders authorized him, upon
the governors of several western states for a vast army, too
plainly exposing an unneutral intention. The instructions sent
Gaines by Jackson had intentionally been most equivocal, encour-
aging him to aggression upon Mexico and at the same time being
so worded as to leave the government free to repudiate him with
show of virtue if he advanced.
48 In that respect as in others this
southwestern border episode bears a remarkable resemblance to
that of 1845-46, which brought on the Mexican War.
49 This
would suggest that President Polk consciously followed the pat-
tern set by his predecessor and former patron.
The Texan victory at San Jacinto put an end to Jackson's and
Gaines' immediate expectation of joining war with Mexico. Even
if that unexpected event had not intervened, the ambitious Gaines
was far too hopeful if he fancied that he would become the great
hero of a Mexican war, and the "Second Cortez." (General Jack-
son had no love or consideration for Gaines or for any other of the
professional military leaders of his day, among whom a most intense
mutual jealousy reigned.) Gaines' anger at Jackson for his unjust
treatment would have been greater still had he known that his
chief part in the prospective war with Mexico would have been
limited to serving usefully as Jackson's cat's-paw in provoking
it! For the supreme command and conduct of the expected war
President Jackson had privately determined to place in the hands
of Colonel Thomas H. Benton, his one-time military aid and now
faithful and powerful political lieutenant in the Senate. As a
means of ensuring the fulfilment of Jackson's well-known pro-
gram for the "line of succession"—Van Buren after Jackson and
then Benton for two terms in the White House--this appoint-
ment was exceedingly well conceived.
50 It is worth noting Ben-
ton's remarks in the Senate in defense of the war that seemed
impending in consequence of the President's orders to Gaines.
Benton spoke on May 4, 1836,
at the most critical moment of the contest, and when the reported
advance of the Mexicans upon Nacogdoches, and the actual move-
ment of General Games and our own troops in that direction,
gave reason to apprehend the encounter of flags, or the collision
of arms. . . . It was then that I used those words . . .
that there might be emergencies in which the obligation of duty
[of neutrality] could have no force . . . when, in fact, a
man should have no head to think! nothing but a heart to feel!
and an arm to strike. . . . It was after the affair of Goliad,
and the imputed order to unpeople the country. . . . I de-
clared it to be my sentiment that treaties were nothing, books
were nothing, laws were nothing! . . . and that the Ameri-
can soldier, hearing the cries of helplessness and weakness [of
the Texans] . . . should fly to the rescue, and strike to pre-
vent the perpetration of crimes which shock humanity and dis-
honor the age. I uttered this sentiment not upon impulsion, but
with consideration . . . as a rule for action . . . and
with a view to the public justification of General Gaines and his
men, if under circumstances appalling to humanity, they should
nobly resolve to obey the impulsions of the heart.
51
The history of the Neches claim came to an end in Decem-
ber, 1836, when Jackson withdrew the American troops from
Nacogdoches, apparently no longer feeling the need of asserting
it. When the United States and the Eepublic of Texas ran the
boundary in 1840 the joint-commissioners readily agreed that the
Neches was not the Sabine.
52
FOOTNOTES:
An Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years
1822-23, By an English Gentleman (London, 1824). A facsimile of the
map was reproduced in National Intelligencer (Washington), August 6,
1836, to refute President Jackson.
boundary pretension, in 1836: "The boundary set up by our Government
in the place of the Sabine, contrary to the treaty, contrary to all the maps,
and to the continued assertions of Louisiana, is something entirely new
to me. . . . I never heard of another Sabine; nor did it ever enter
into the head of any one, while I was in Louisiana, to claim the post of
Nacogdoches excepting under the general pretension to the whole as far
as the Rio del Norte, which was abandoned by the treaty. I think the
case too plain even for the pretense of claim." Brackenridge's letter,
August 1, 1836, in National Intelligencer, August 24, 1836.
Samuel Swartwout, December 30, 1840, quoted in Southwestern Social
Science Quarterly, XV, 241 note; G. W. Featherstonehaugh, Excursion
Through the Slave States (London, 1844), II, 155.
rivers, Pichardo concludes: "In view of this can we not say quot capita
tot sentie" --or, more correctly, "quot homines, tot sententiae," i. e., as
many opinions as men. C. W. Hackett, ed., Pichardo's Treatise on the
Limits of Louisiana and Texas, I, 378-379, 397-402. A number of the old
Spanish maps may be found in Professor Hackett's work and in H. E.
Bolton's Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century. Fray Puelles wrote a
Texas boundary question (published as a pamphlet in Mexico in 1828;
reprinted in Louisiana Historical Quarterly, I, 21-43), in which he speaks
of the "Sabinas or Mexican River" some leagues east of Nacogdoches.
Jedidiah Morse, in his American Gazetteer (Boston, 1804), also evidently
refers to the Sabine when he speaks of the "Mexicano River or Adayes, in
Louisiana," for he adds: "Fort Adayes stands on its north-eastern side,
20 miles from Natchitoches."
origin of the name of the later short-lived "Fredonian Republic" in Texas,
that Morse in the 1804 edition of his American Gazetteer (Introduction
and Appendix) suggested and argued at length for "Fredonia" as a new
and more suitable name for the United States, a "generic name" which
"shall honourably distinguish our country from the rest of the world,"
being more eloquent of our political principles than "America" or
"Columbia."
Louisiana Historical Quarterly, X, 507.
Alleine Howren in this Quarterly, XVI, 400.
MSS., in the University of Texas Archives.
1827: "I have been into Texas, and have a long letter to write you on
the soil climate and local advantages of that country—It must belong to
the United States; and I hope that it may be one of the acts of your
administration to obtain it for us." Jackson MSS., Vol. 67, in Library
of Congress.
App. 128.
Kendall: "We contend, from the words and spirit of the treaty, that
all the navigable waters of the Sabine belong to the United States . . .
and as I am advised will be able to show from the ancient map of Spain
that the western branch . . . was known by the name of the Sabine
at the time Louisiana was ceded. . . . We have been anxious to
run this line for a long time." J. S. Bassett, ed., The Correspondence of
Andrew Jackson, V, 420.
of Jackson, IV, 185.
Treaties, Conventions, . . . between the United States and Other
Powers, I, 1082-85. The Florida treaty may be found in Am. State Pap.,
For. Rel, IV, 623.
25, 1832, in Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, IV, 390, 409-410. Jack-
son's instructions to Poinsett of August, 1829, above noted, show that he
was well aware of Saibine Bay, and it is difficult to believe that he hon-
estly came to think that the Neches and Sabine joined to form one river.
True, we have only too many astonishing illustrations on record of Jack-
son's "irrepressible ignorance" in geographical matters . (see, e. g., C. F.
Adams, ed., The Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, VIII, 324, and Bassett,
Correspondence of Jackson, IV, 60 and note); but as to Texas topography
we have it on Poinsett's authority that Jackson was well posted. Poin-
sett, who on his return from Mexico conversed with Jackson early in
1830, tells us of the President's anxiety to obtain Texas: "He appeared
perfectly acquainted with Mexican affairs, and enquired earnestly of
Texas . . . what prospect there was of our acquiring that Territory
by purchase. He seemed much disappointed when I replied that there
was not the remotest probability of our doing so; that the Mexicans were
a proud people, and would never consent to sell one foot of their terri-
tory: that I had not made the offer officially, because I had ascertained
that such a proposal would not only be rejected, but would be regarded
as an insult." Poinsett spoke of the revolutionary feeling in Texas and
of his conviction that its revolt and annexation to the United States
were "inevitable," and declared that "the Americans in Texas, although
they would loyally fulfil their compact with the Mexican Government,
would not submit to any violation of it; and that, sooner or later, cir-
cumstances would force them into our Confederation. On hearing this,
the General took down an enormous map of that country . . . and
pouring over its bays, rivers and mountains, he pointed out the impor-
tance of its acquisition, exhibiting throughout all his observations an
intimate and even minute acquaintance with the advantages and resources
of that country, and showing that he had examined the whole subject
and every circumstance connected with it, with careful solicitude." Ora -
tion on the Life and Character of Andrew Jackson, Delivered on the 4th
of July, 1845, by J. R. Poinsett, at Greenville, S. C. (1845), 6-7.
of Texas are given in the writer's papers, "Jackson, Anthony Butler, and
Texas" and "The Texas Schemes, of Jackson and Houston, 1829-1836," in
Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, XIII, 264-286; XV, 229-250.
son, IV, 436.
to Butler, of September 4, 1832, and November 27, 1833, in Ibid., IV, 472;
V, 229-230. In that of November 27, 1833, Jackson writes that he must
soon be told if the desired boundary (ceding all or a large part of Texas)
could not be obtained, so "we may proceed to make one ourselves . . .
and take possession of Nachedages."
Republic of Texas, 32, 82-83.
Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, I, 489.
Jackson wrote his adopted son on December 19, 1832, that he has nomi-
nated John Donelson as a commissioner, but that "from the convulsed
state of Mexico, it may be a long time before he is called upon to perform
this duty." Jackson MSS. J. Gutierrez wrote Van Buren, May 29, 1834
(in Van Buren MSS., in Library of Congress), that the Mexican charge
at Washington "complained to his government ... of the difficulties
or delays opposed by the cabinet of Washington to bringing the negotia-
tion to a conclusion." The writer is indebted to Professor E. C. Barker
for a copy of Gutierrez's letter.
han, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations, 72; Callahan in-
cludes the part of Butler's dispatch which was expurgated from the dis-
patch as published in the congressional documents.
March 7, 1834, in Anthony Butler MSS., in the University of Texas
Archives and in the Texas State Library Archives; Southwestern Social
Science Quarterly, XIII, 277-278.
versity of Texas transcripts from the Mexican Archives. This fact was
called to the writer's attention by Professor Barker.
ably broached this ex parte declaration of "neutral territory" orally to
Mexico so that the matter should not appear too plainly in black and
white in the public records. See Castillo's correspondence with Forsyth,
October, 1835, to March, 1836, in Ibid., 6-30.
No. 190, pp. 85-87.
Houston above cited, note 14, see the writer's "Jackson, Buchanan, and the
'Corrupt Bargain' Calumny," in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Bi -
ography, LVIII, 61-85, where a probable forgery made by Jackson is indi-
cated (p. 61 note). The writer has in preparation an extensive critique
of Jackson's career.
ter of December 10, 1830, have all the appearances of being mere hoaxes,
in the writer's opinion. See Southwestern Social Science Quarterly XIII,
265-266; XV, 230-239.
Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 148-152. Claiborne's testimony, from
personal knowledge, that William M. Gwin, Jackson's friend and Marshall
of Mississippi, visited Houston at Nacogdoches at Jackson's instance "and
that the great programme was then planned which was subsequently fol-
lowed as closely as events permitted," is corroborated by a memoir in the
Gwin MSS. in California archives, which records Gwin's visit to Hous-
ton soon after his visit with Jackson at the Hermitage. C. R. Wharton,
Texas under Many Flags (1930), I, 430. Another Mississippi protege of
Jackson's, Robert J. Walker, whom Jackson supported in his senatorial
campaign against George Poindexter, was declaring in speeches in the
fall of 1835 that Texas was an integral part of the Union under the
Louisiana Purchase. See Mississippian (Jackson), September 25, 1835.
Slacum. Also noteworthy is Aaron Leggett's letter to Marcy of October
16, 1846: "The Mexican Government, through General Tornel, Secy, at
War, agreed while I was there in 1835-6 to settle my claims on Mexico
by a grant of a great portion of the best part of Upper California. This
agreement which I sent home to Mr. Forsyth was frustrated, and, as I
believe, through English influence. . . . I have looked to California
as the best means that Mexico had of paying our claims and I advised
Mr. Forsyth in 1835 to seize upon that whole country to pay them."
California Historical Quarterly, XI, 34.
Coleman, Houston Displayed, or, Who Won the Battle of San Jacinto
(Velasco, 1837), 13-14; W. R. Hogan, "Pamelia Mann: Texas Frontiers-
woman," in The Southwest Review (Dallas), XX, 361-362; J. J. Linn,
Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (New York, 1883), 252.
sity of Texas Archives. Houston added: "Col Rusk is here ... He
proves himself a Patriot and a soldier."
Register (Columbia), September 6, 1836.
Houston's intention of retreating to the "disputed" territory in South -
western Social Science Quarterly, XV, 248-249, note. To these should be
added: Mosely Baker to Houston, December, 1844, MS. in Texas State
Library (copy in University of Texas Archives), published in part by
Professor Barker in Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association,
IV, 273-287; R. M. Potter, "The San Jacinto Campaign," in Magazine of
American History, IV (New York, 1880), 321-350; R. M. Potter and R. J.
Calder, in ibid., VIII, Pt. 1 (1882), 55-59; D. G. Wooten, A Compre -
hensive History of Texas, I, 272; Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas
(New York, 1880), 172; H. Smither, ed., The Papers of M. B. Lamar,
IV, 68-69, 290-292; A. H. Dana to Swartwout, March 24, 1849, in Swart-
wout MSS., in the University of Texas Archives.
May 30, 1836. Italics in original.
Jackson, V, 381-382. This letter of Butler's was read by R. J. Walker in
the Senate on May 9, 1836, as an argument for the immediate recogni-
tion of Texas. Cong. Globe, 24 cong., 1 sess., 436-437; a more detailed
account of Walker's reading of the Butler letter, and the effect produced,
is given by a Washington correspondent in National Gazette (Phila.),
May 12, 1836. A German gentleman, who, at Mexico City at the time,
was informed of Santa Anna's declarations by the British Minister, visited
New Orleans later, and there gave out the substance of Santa Anna's
threatening remarks in terms practically identical with Butler's report
of them. See El Correo Atlantico (New Orleans), May 2, 1836. Cf.
Santa Anna's similar comment on the boundary matter in dispatch of
February 16, 1836, to the Mexican Secretary of War, in C. E. Castañeda,
ed., The Mexican Side of the Texas Revolution, 69.
1 sess., No. 256, pp. 40-41, 43-44.
Jackson, V, 420-421. Cf. Jackson's endorsement on his copy of Acting
Secretary Asbury Dickens to Gorostiza, August 1, 1836: "The answer is
proper--Mr Gorostiza is well advised that Texas claims her independ-
ence and sets up a claim by conquest, to the eastern branch of the
sabine when we claim the western navigable branch--we are ready to
run this boundary line and Mr Gorostiza is well assured of the motives
we have in taking possession of this disputed territory, not to injure
Mexico, as he is assured, when the line is run, if we are west of our
boundary, we will withdraw our troops." Jackson MSS., Vol. 95.
284-286; and may be found also in other Texas histories.
II, 169 note; italics in Yoakum.
iscences," in Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, IV, 168.
San Jacinto arrived, were full of indignation at Santa Anna and scarcely
veiled threats against Mexico. See Yoakum, History of Texas, II, 169-170;
Washington correspondents writing on April 14 and May 4, in El Correo
Atlantico (New Orleans), May 2, 30, 1836; New Orleans Bulletin, May
28, 1836. Cf. Correspondence of Jackson, V, 419.
Natchitoches, September 2, in National Intelligencer, October 12, 1836;
letter written by one of Gaines' young officers, in Washington (Globe,
April 5, 1837 (from Mobile Advertiser, November 11, 1836); Gaines to
Secretary Marcy, September 10, 1845, in Sen. Docs., 29 cong., 1 sess.,
No. 378, p. 40.
ter of July 18, 1836: "We expect to hear of some hard fighting in Texas
soon--I am still convinced that nothing but force, and that of a number
and description rendering it disposable and imposing, will preserve this
frontier and the disputed territory from assault." Quoted from the
Charleston Courier in El Correo Atlantico, August 15, 1836. Cf. Gaines
"to the officer commanding the U. S. troops at or near Nacogdoches," July
10, 1836, explaining the advance as based on Jackson's instructions, in
National Intelligencer, August 10, 1836. The Texans were in fear of a
renewal of the war by Mexico, which fact caused Gaines to cross the
Sabine.
Western Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, 144 ff.
1845," in Pacific Historical Review, IV, 39-68.
army against Mexico--General Jackson himself proposed it in 1836, when
our affairs with that country looked warlike, and then, as now, I agreed
to take it," Benton says, in a speech in the Senate, January 25, 1847, on
the Lieutenant-General bill. Cong. Globe, 29 cong., 2 sess., 247.
son's policy was made by Senator Garland of Louisiana in his speech of
May 7, 1836, in Ibid., XII, Pt. III, 3530-3540.
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.
THE FREE NEGRO IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
*
CHAPTER I
The term "free Negro" as applied in this paper is exclusively
a legal term referring to those inhabitants of the Republic of
Texas classified as "free persons of color" and subject to the
special regulations enacted to govern them. There were never any
strictly defined categories based upon ethnological considerations
by which Negroes were segregated from whites. Among the native
Mexican population, there probably were some persons with large
percentages of Negro blood, but none of these were technically
"free Negroes."
In a census of San Antonio recorded by Morfi in 1777, includ-
ing the presidio, villa and the five missions, in a total population
of 2060 persons, 151 are classified as "'de color quebrado' [lit-
erally 'of broken color,' meaning colored]."
1 Again, Morfi refers
to the Spanish colonists of Texas as "una quadrilla de trapientos
de todos colores," literally "a ragged crew of all colors."
2
An official Spanish census of December 31, 1792, records 247
male mulattoes, 167 female mulattoes, 15 male Negroes and 19
female Negroes in a total population for Texas of 1617 males and
1375 females. An itemization of 308 household heads in San
Fernando records 30 families in which both husband and wife
were Negroes, 33 families in which either husband or wife were
Negroes, and 35 widows and bachelors of Negro blood.
3 Of 69
Negroes giving their nativity, 24 claimed San Fernando or vicin-
ity, 10 claimed Adaes on the Louisiana border, 8 claimed Saltillo,
one each claimed Guatemala, Guinea and the Canary Islands,
and the remaining 24 claimed Mexican cities, mostly in bordering
provinces.
4
The complete disappearance of this large number of Texan
Negroes and their descendants, in the short period of forty-three
years from 1792 to the declaration of Texan independence, prob-
ably cannot be explained through absorption, death or migration.
Legally, however, these de
facto
free persons of color and their
descendants disappeared with the organization of the Republic.
The fact that these persons were free Mexican citizens, owned
Spanish names and spoke the Spanish language, doubtless, was
a consideration in their classification as other than free Negroes.
The widespread admixture of Spanish, Indian and Negro blood
made accurate classification impossible and the presumption that
these hybrids considered themselves Mexicans and were accepted
by them as their relatives and countrymen, may account for the
fact that nowhere do we find Negroes of Spanish name and Mexi-
can nativity complying or forced to comply by the laws of the
Republic with the special regulations governing free persons of
color.
Another large group of persons with Negro blood, virtually free
though legally enslaved, demands some notice. The contact of
black and white races everywhere has led to some intermixture,
and Texas was no exception. The paucity of women in early
Anglo-American Texas was an additional factor in leading white
men to take Negro slaves as concubines and wives. The children
of these unions, according to the common law, took their status
from the mother and legally were slaves. Many of these children
were actually free, and some fathers made attempts to have their
progeny legally declared free persons of color.
5
Benjamin Lundy, the abolitionist, on his second trip through
Texas made note of "two brothers, named Alley . . . in-
dustrious immigrants from the State of Missouri. They have
never married. They purchased, however, a handsome black girl,
who has several fine-looking party coloured children--specimens
of the custom of some countries."
6
An incident in Frank Brown's "Annals of Travis County"
affords inferential evidence of both coneubinal and marital ar-
rangements between the races. A plantation owner offered any
Negro on his farm for the recovery of his favorite horse which
had been stolen by Indians. A young man, evidently white,
devoted to the planter's youngest daughter, Dolly, inquired
whether she was included in the offer, to which her father replied
affirmatively. In romantic fashion, the young man recovered the
horse, to the great delight of the owner, and although it is not
recorded that the youth received his reward, "Dolly was married
shortly afterward, and it is reasonable to suppose that he got her."
7
Another marriage, more definite in character, was that of John
F. Webber, the founder of Webberville. Webber had a child by
a neighbor's slave. "Too conscientious to abandon his yellow off-
spring and its sable mother to a life of slavery, he purchased
them from their owner, who, cognizant of the situation, took
advantage of it to drive a sharp bargain." Webber built himself
a fort in the unsettled prairie, "took his family home and ac-
knowledged them before the world." Noah Smithwick, a friend
md old-time partner of Webber, adds, "There were others I wot
of that were not so brave."
8 Webber continued to live in Texas
throughout the whole period of the Republic, but because of in-
creasing social pressure, was finally forced to sell out and move
to Mexico in 1851.
9 Mrs. Webber and her children probably
retained their legal status as slaves, for at no time did they com-
ply with the laws governing free persons of color.
In addition to the Texan-born slave children of white men,
there were those of immigrants. William Primm, a white man,
emigrated to Texas in 1835 from Louisiana and settled on an
estate in Fayette County. He brought with him a part of his
family, including five mulatto children, whom he owned as his
natural offspring, but who were legally slaves.
10
All the Negroes in the cases thus far examined, in the broad-
est sense, might be considered as free Negroes. Legally, however,
the first group were Mexicans, the second, slaves.
The origin of legally free Negroes, with which the body ot
this paper is concerned, may be attributed to many sources but
falls conveniently into four divisions: (1) purchase of freedom
by the slave; (2) manumission by the master; (3) escape of the
slave from the master; (4) immigration of the Negro already free.
A clear case of purchase was that of Tomas Morgan, a negress,
who came to Texas as a slave in 1832 and "purchased her free-
dom with the proceeds of her own labor sometime during the
vear 1834."
11
A note in Benjamin Lundy's diary indicates an indirect pur-
chase of freedom by a Negro slave, who, for the price of his free-
dom, either served his master's term in a debtor's prison, or per-
haps paid his debts.
[August 24, 1833]. . . . There lives here in Bexar, a free
black man, who speaks English. He came as a slave first from
North Carolina to Georgia, and then from Georgia to Nacog-
doches, in Texas. There his master died, and the heirs sold him
to another person. This new master, being apprehended for debt,
offered the slave his freedom if he would take him out of prison.
The slave complied, but the master dying soon after, an attempt
was made to re-enslave the man, which however proved unsuc-
cessful. He now works as a blacksmith in this place. I have
been [in] converse with him, he having seen me at Nacogdoches
last summer, and knowing me again when he met me here. . . .
Though he is jet-black, he says the Mexicans pay him the same
respect as to other laboring people, there being no difference made
here on account of color. . . .
12
The second group of free Negroes had its origin in manumis-
sion. A common cause for manumission was the blood or con-
cubinal tie existing between owner and slave. Such manumis-
sions, granted to relatives, were common throughout the South
during the whole period of slavery. A grant of this kind in early
Texas was recorded by Lundy on July 18, 1834.
I became acquainted with a white man, named David Town, who
originally resided in Georgia. Thence he removed to Louisiana,
taking with him a black female slave, who was in fact his wife.
She was a very capable woman, and had several likely children.
Eight years ago, Town removed to Nacogdoches, where he eman-
cipated his wife and children, who, up to that period, had been
slaves, in the eye of the law. They all live together in harmony,
are quite industrious, and make a very respectable appearance.
The daughters are as fine looking as can be seen almost any-
where, and are free, in their whole demeanor, from the degrading
restraint, so observable among coloured people in our country.
The Mexican ladies of Nacogdoches are very sociable with them.
13
The scarcity of labor in early Texas served to minimize manu-
mission for meritorious services, but at least one such case is
known. William McFarland brought his slave Fannie McFar-
land to Texas in 1827, and granted her freedom eight years later.
Her four children, however, were held as slaves. Fannie lived
at San Felipe and lost all her possessions there during the revo-
tion. In 1837, she moved to Houston and by "industry, pru-
dence and economy" gathered together a little property.
14
A third group of free Negroes, had its origin in the successful
runaway slave. The fact that Texas was under Mexican rule, in
which the fugitive slave law was inoperative, probably induced
many runaway slaves to head for Texas. There, on account of
the scarcity of labor, they were welcomed without searching ques-
tions, and even protected against recapture by the friendly Mexi-
can officials and the populace.
Runaway slaves were often successful in resisting capture and
they doubtlessly received the aid of their employees in their
efforts. On August 2, 1834, Lundy records the following:
I reached the Trinity river, and having crossed it, I put up at
the house of Nathaniel Bobbins, who has on his farm a number
of coloured people that are claimed as slaves, by a person in
Louisiana, named Mays. Mays is at present in Nacogdoches,
where he made up a party of nine men, a few days since, and
came here to take the coloured people, vi
et
armis.
Instead of
succeeding, however, he and his whole band were taken prisoners.
The . . . slave-shooter, Williams, was among the number;
and it is said that he was the most easily captured of all.
15
Some slaves who escaped, enlisted in the Mexican army and so
insured their continued liberty. Colonel Bradburn, a Mexican
officer, harbored two runaway slaves from Louisiana, enlisted
them in his detachment and refused to surrender them on the
owner's demand.
16
One case of an Alabama slave who fled to Texas before the
declaration of independence indicates that others were not uncom-
mon. W. E. Primm, a slave owner of Alabama, in order to regain
control of his man, Cuggoe, prayed the Texas legislature for the
passage of A law . . . that all persons of color that was
slaves Before they came to Texas Eather By absconding or Run-
ing away from the legal owner and came to Texas Before the
Declaration of Independence of Texas shall Be Delivered up to
the Legal owner with Damage and Satisfactturoy proof that such
negro was Realy A Slave Before he came to Texas and that his
Being in Texas before the Independence shall not Be so construd
as to give him his freedom.
17
Not all the successful runaway slaves came from the United
States. Some slaves owned by American colonists in Texas were
equally successful in making good their freedom by running
away to Mexicans who harbored and protected them. One case
is revealed by Lundy when he stopped at the Gonzales home of
Francis Berry, "who was originally from Virginia, and came last
from Missouri." "He has no slaves," Lundy wrote, "all he for-
merly had having run away, as he [Berry] states, 'to the Span-
iards.'" Berry was philosophical enough to think himself "best
off without them."
18
The fourth and chief origin of the free Negro in the Republic
of Texas, however, was emigration from the United States.
Essentially, this migration was a part of the general westward
movement of population. It is difficult to determine with any
accuracy, the time at which this immigration began but it is rea-
sonable to suppose that the purchase of Louisiana gave it sharp
acceleration. An entry in Lundy's diary, written in San Antonio
on September 29, 1833, would place the date as early as 1807.
I walked out this forenoon with Matthew Thomas, to see the
cane patch, ground, &c., of his father-in-law, Felipe Elua, a black
Louisiana creole, who was formerly a slave, but who had pur-
chased the freedom of himself and family. He had resided here
twenty-six years, and he now owns five or six houses and lots,
besides a fine piece of land near town [Bexar]. He has educated
his children so that they can read and write, and speak Spanish
as well as French. They are all fine looking smart black people.
He has a sister, also residing in Bexar, who is married to a
Frenchman. The sugar cane, of which there is a patch of about
an acre on Elua's land, looks as well as that which grows in
Hayti, and the land is evidently well adapted to it. ...
Besides the cane, we saw some fine looking cotton, a large patch
of sweet potatoes, together with beans, and other garden vege-
tables, the property of the same black man, and all in beautiful
order.
19
William Goyans was living in Nacogdoches at least as early as
1821. Eleven years later, when Lundy became acquainted with him,
Goyans was married to a white woman, a native of Georgia. Accord-
ing to Lundy, they appeared "to live happily together, are quite
wealthy, and are considered as very respectable." Two brothers of
Mrs. Goyans, who, like their sister, were white, came to visit her
during Lundy's stay. "They appeared well satisfied with their col-
oured brother-in-law, whom they had not seen before; and they
took a very friendly leave of the family. . . ." Goyans was
of considerable help to Lundy on his trips to Mexico for the pur-
pose of establishing a free Negro colony in Tamaulipas.
20
Emanuel J. Hardin came to Texas in 1822, settled in Brazoria
County, evidently as a farmer, and by living an "industrious and
orderly" life, he "acquired a considerable amount of property in
the County besides supporting himself and family." Hardin mar-
ried Tomas Morgan, an "industrious and useful" negress who
had purchased her freedom and held in her own name "a consid-
erable amount of Real Estate in the Country as well as personal
property."
21
A quadroon, Jean Baptiste Maturin, by name, received a grant
from the Mexican government dated Leona Vicario, October 20,
1823, conceding to him one sitio
of land in Nacogdoches County
"about four leagues West from the Town Nacogdoches." Maturin
emigrated with his "wife and numerous family of children" at
the time of the grant and made "valuable improvements" which
enabled him to support his large family over a period of at least
fifteen years.
22
In 1827, David and Sophia Gowns came to Nacogdoches with
their six children, to whom three more were added in a short
time. Sophia Gowns was a negress, but her husband, David,
probably was a white man, as no reference is made to him as a
Negro. The two oldest daughters married and between them
added five more free Negroes to the population.
23
Robert Thompson, a Negro of "prudence and industry," came
to Texas in 1831, at a later date purchased 200 acres of good
land in Montgomery County for which he paid $600 "in par
money," stocked it with a considerable number of horses, cattle
and hogs, and found himself so situated that he could live "inde-
pendent and happy."
24
In 1832, at the age of sixty, James Richardson came to Texas
from Philadelphia. A man of "industry, sobriety and correct
deportment," he made his living from the "habit of entertaining
travellers between Velasco and San Luis" and he was guaranteed
a monopoly of the business on this thoroughfare since he was in
"a location where a white person equally serviceable could not be
expected to reside." He was without descendants and without a
wife, if he ever had one. The entertainment he provided con-
sisted of serving "oysters and refreshments," the exact nature of
the latter being undetermined.
25
Samuel McCullough, a white man, came to Jackson County in
1835, bringing with him two Negro women, Peggy and Rose;
his three daughters, Harriet, Jane and Mahaly; a son, Samuel
McCullough, Jr., and another member of his family, a free Negro
girl named Ulde. Samuel McCullough, Jr., was handicapped in
life "by reason of an unfortunate admixture of African blood,
which he is said, without any fault of his, to inherit from a
remote maternal ancestor." No mention of the mother of this
family was made, unless she was either Peggy or Rose.
26
Moses Ashworth came to San Augustine previous to the decla-
ration of independence, bringing with him four sons and a daugh-
ter. Moses was a white man but his children were free Negroes
and described as "people of mixed blood though nearly white."
His daughter was married to Elisha Thomas, a Negro.
27
John Bird, his son Henry, and his son-in-law, Edward Smith,
together with their three large families, emigrated to San Augus-
tine County previous to the declaration of independence, "believ-
ing they would be received as citizens under the colonization laws
of Mexican United States." John Bird claimed to be the grand-
son of General Bird of Virginia. He had previously lived in
Logan County, Kentucky, and later at Courtland, Alabama, where
for "many years" he was known to be a "truly honest man."
28
At least three free Negroes were accepted by Stephen F. Austin
as colonists, two of whom definitely received title to their land.
Lewis B. Jones, "a man of Color the Descendant of African
Parents," emigrated in 1826 and was received by the Empresario
as a colonist. He was a farmer from Mississippi, and brought
with him his wife, Sarah, two daughters and a "dependent." In
December, 1829, he applied for a half league of land on Fish
Pond Creek to adjoin Jared E. Groce on his east boundary.
29 He
claimed to have been given a league of land on March 25, 1831,
which he selected and settled in 1834. In 1837, he was still in
possession of the land and attempting to have his title legally
recognized.
30
Greenbury Logan, a blacksmith from Missouri, arrived in Texas
in February of 1831. On December 22, of the same year, he
applied for a quarter league of land on Chocolate Creek in Bra-
zoria County, to which Stephen F. Austin granted him legal
title.
31
Samuel H. Hardin brought his family to Texas from some part
of the United States, arriving in March of 1822. On March 12,
1831, he applied for a half league of land in Austin's colony.
Samuel M. Williams, Austin's agent, reported that Hardin had
lived in Texas nine years with his family, that Austin had ac-
cepted him as a colonist with permission to select a half league
of land, that Hardin had always conducted himself well, that he
was very industrious and active, and that he was worthy of the
land. On April 25, 1831, Hardin was given title to half a league
of land in Waller County.
32
Immigration of single free Negro women was not uncommon.
Harriet Newell Sands, a free woman of color, emigrated from
Michigan in 1834, with a Mr. Manton and remained in his em-
ployment, and in that of Edward Manton, his son, during which
time she gave birth to two mulatto girls and a black boy.
33
Zelia Husk, a "good and industrious" negress, emigrated from
Richmond County, Georgia, previous to the declaration of inde-
pendence. Her location up to 1838, is unknown, but in that
year she was living in Houston, "peaceably earning her liveli-
hood" by "exercising the Industry of a washerwoman."
34
Diana Leonard emigrated to Texas in 1835 and gained em-
ployment with Colonel James Morgan for a year, after which she
also "exercised the industry of a washerwoman" in Houston, so
supporting herself and her child.
35
That there were other free Negroes in Texas previous to the
formation of the Republic is adduced largely from evidence pre-
sented by them in later years to establish their right to special
residence privileges which were extended to early Negro settlers.
Little else is known about the early activities of many of them
except that they came to Texas previous to the declaration of
independence. In view of the lack of census figures, their num-
ber can only be estimated. Men, women and children, the free
Negro population at the time of Texan independence was in the
neighborhood of 150 persons.
In addition to the Negroes for whom there is some account,
many of whom had a large percentage of white blood, it is possi-
ble that there were others who were able to pass the color line.
Few places afforded a better opportunity for success than the
frontier, and along that frontier in no place was it easier of
accomplishment than in Texas with its large Mexican population.
Negroes who intermingled with persons of Spanish ancestry, as
we have seen, were accepted by the Mexicans as their countrymen
and relatives, and were likewise accepted by the Anglo-American
settlers. It is not to be inferred that Negroes from the United
States would encounter no difficulty in passing the color line
among the Mexicans, but the difficulty would be considerably less.
If any of them were wholly successful in passing the color line,
necessarily there would be no evidence. Noah Smithwick, in an
account of the marriage of David Holdeman, "Bastrop's principal
merchant," to Sam Craft's stepdaughter, reveals a partially suc-
cessful attempt of two Negroes to pass as white men. "This
[wedding] being an extraordinary occasion, all the elite in the
country were invited, and few regrets were sent."
There were a couple of strangers present who attracted a good
deal of attention—an elderly man, with a professional handle to
his name, and his son a lad of twenty or thereabouts. They had
money for which they were seeking investment. Both of them
were well dressed sporting gold watches and shirt studs, and the
young man was cutting a wide swath among the girls, laying us
buckskin boys quite in the shade. But by and by old Aunt Celie,
a mulatto woman who was looking on through the open door,
beckoned to her young mistress, Miss Harriet Craft, and taking
her aside said:
"Miss. Ha'it, wat you in dar dancin' wid dat niggah fo'?"
"Hush, Aunt Celie; that isn't a nigger," said Miss Craft.
"He is niggah, Miss. Ha'it; he jes as much niggah as I is. Look
at his ha' and his eyes," urged the indignant old woman.
. . . Later developments proved the keenness of the old
woman's perception.
36
No planned Negro immigration from the United States ever
materialized, but a number of schemes to colonize free Negroes
in Texas was suggested by Anglo-Americans, Mexicans and
Negroes.
The chief exponent of such proposals was Benjamin Lundy,
who contemplated the establishment of a colony of free Negroes
in Texas as early as 1830. His chief purpose was to demonstrate
that the cultivation of sugar, cotton and rice could be engaged
in profitably by the use of free labor. To this end, Lundy hoped
and worked for the repeal of the law of April 6, 1830, which
prohibited emigration from the United States to Texas, but
finally, upon the advice of Almonte, Texas Commissioner of Col-
onization from Mexico, shifted his efforts to Tamaulipas, and
there received a large grant of land, which, however, he was never
able to develop.
37
Lundy's plan received publicity, if not encouragement, in both
northern and southern newspapers, and apparently it was a sub-
ject of discussion and debate among white men as well as Negroes.
The
New
York
Commercial
Advertiser
of April 27, 1833, accord-
ing to the African
Repository,
"holds the following sensible lan-
guage in regard to . . . this visionary scheme" of coloniza-
tion in Texas:
It is understood that the delegates [to a proposed Convention
of Free People of Colour] are generally, if not altogether op-
posed to the Colonization Society--adverse to going to Liberia--
and that they have in contemplation to plant a colony in Texas.
. . . if it can be clearly
shown that a settlement in Texas
would answer the purpose of the blacks, we would not lay a straw
in their path. We are quite certain, however, that they will find
[a number of] obstacles in their way, much more difficult to over-
come than a settlement in Liberia. [These obstacles are as
follows:]
[1] . . . a conveyance to the Texas [sic] would be more
expensive, on an average, than a passage to Monrovia. . . .
[3] . . . they must conform to the Catholic religion (if
they would have any religion at all) whatever may be their par-
ticular creed, or they will live in constant inquietude, as well
from the jealousies of the Government, as of their neighbors
around them.
[4] . . . very few of our colored people are acquainted
with the Spanish language, and this they must acquire if they
would hold any intercourse with the present population of that
region. . . .
[5] . . . admitting all these difficulties susceptible of re-
moval, there is another which we presume will be found to be
insurmountable. The presumption is founded upon the belief that
their purpose will be to emigrate over land; for if they should
proceed by water, the navigation would be almost as long, and
altogether more dangerous than the voyage to Liberia. If they
over take [sic] it over land, how will they get to Texas? They
must pass through Louisiana, which is a slave State, and will
never suffer any facilities to be given for the establishment of a
black colony on her borders. Laws would be passed to seize them
on their way, and thus to frustrate their object. Indeed there is
such a community of feeling among all slaveholding States, that
we are much inclined to think that in the apprehension of the
Texas colony becoming a refuge for runaways, they would con-
trive ways and means to prevent their emigration even by sea.
At all events the . . . embarrassments we have alluded to
are such that we trust the Convention will ponder the matter
well, in all its bearings, before they venture upon a measure
fraught with so many obvious and appalling discouragements.
38
The
Richmond
Whig,
in the same vein, declared:
It can never be shown that Texas will answer the purpose of
the free people of colour of this country. The country does not
exist, which from its social and political conditions, is more un-
suitable for the location of the blacks. Already entered by great
numbers of adventurers from the United States, and the refuge
of all who avoid justice from Mexico, the blacks will stand as lit-
tle chance for peace, quiet, and the protection of laws, among a
population thus fierce, turbulent, and often lawless, as the lamb
for quarter in the fangs of the wolf. Can they contend with the
treacherous Spaniard and Creole, or those hardy and law despis-
ing adventurers who are sure to be found on the skirts of civiliza-
tion? They cannot, and a brief space would see their settlement
invaded, their possessions rifled, and themselves expelled from
their chosen city of refuge. . . .
39
Efforts to secure land for Negro colonization nevertheless con-
tinued, and they were not confined to Lundy nor to white men.
In April, 1834, Nicholas Drouett, a mulatto and a retired Mexi-
can army officer, who, for a time, was associated with Lundy in
his efforts to gain a land grant in Tamaulipas, came to Texas
seeking the privilege of introducing five hundred Negro families
from New Orleans, where he had many relatives and friends.
40
After several conferences with Drouett and two of his aids,
Almonte decided that the project was impractical, since the greater
part of the Negroes in New Orleans were artisans, and would
not be permitted to live in the cities because of the peculiar aver-
sion Texans had for Negroes. In a letter to the Minister of Rela-
tions at Mexico City, Almonte outlined his reasons for rejecting
the land grant, and at the same time informed the minister that
he had heard of two conventions of free Negroes held in New
York City and Philadelphia in which they endorsed emigration
to Texas, but lacked means to transport themselves. He believed
this immigration to be advisable and suggested that the matter
be taken up with the charge
d'affaires
in Washington.
41
Colonization projects were warmly discussed, although usually
rejected by Negro conventions. The third annual convention for
the improvement of the free people of color, held in Philadelphia
in June, 1833, to which Almonte alludes, was originally called
"for the purpose of giving aid and encouragement to a settlement
of coloured people in the province of Upper Canada, in conse-
quence of the revival of certain oppressive acts of the Legislature
of the State of Ohio."
42 Contrary to the expectations of the news-
papers and the belief of Almonte, the convention neither pro-
posed nor endorsed any colonization plan. The committee on the
Canadian report gave as its opinion that "there is not now, and
probably never will be actual necessity for a large emigration of
the present race of free coloured people, they therefore refrain
from recommending any emigration whatever, but would respect-
fully say to such as may be desirous to go, that the fertile soil of
Upper Canada holds out inducements far more advantageous than
the desolate regions of Africa, where the scorching rays of a
meridian sun, blasts by its withering influence the enlivened
growth of successful vegetation."
43 This committee proposed two
resolutions which were unanimously adopted:
Resolved,
that this Convention most respectfully Eecommends
to their constituents, to devote their thoughts and energies to the
improvement of their condition, and to the elevation of their
character, in this their native land, rejecting all plans of coloni-
zation any where.
Resolved,
that should any State by Legislative enactments, drive
our brethren from its jurisdiction, we will give them all the aid
in our power to enable them to remove and settle in Upper Can-
ada, or elsewhere, that they may not be compelled to sacrifice
their lives in the insalubrious climate of Liberia, provided for them
by the American Colonization Society.
44
A communication from Benjamin Lundy relative to his pro-
posed colony in Texas was read at the convention and ordered to
be printed in The
Genius
of
Universal
Emancipation,
but no
endorsement was given to the plan.
45
All this discussion did not occur without official recognition by
the Mexican Government. Three months previous to Almonte's
suggestion to the Minister of Kelations to encourage Negro im-
migration, the Mexican charge
d'affaires
at Washington had
already been informed by his government of the desirability of
such immigration to Texas. He was ordered to make it known
to all Negroes in the United States that equality of rights was
guaranteed them in Texas, that lands and tools were available
for cultivation, and that protection would be given them in order
that they might pursue their work peacefully.
46 The develop-
ment of the Texas Revolution prevented this plan from being
put into operation. Whether or not it would have had any great
effects is problematical but improbable.
At any rate, none of these plans succeeded in organizing Negro
immigration to Texas, or in planting a separate Negro settlement
within its borders. But even the limited publicity and encour-
agement resulting from them, may have influenced individual
Negroes and their families to move to Texas. Long before any
plans were conceived, however, some free Negroes from the United
States were, as we have previously seen, already settled in this
Mexican province.
The migration of Negroes westward took on the same sponta-
neous and individualistic character as the westward movement of
their white brethren, and their motives were probably very sim-
ilar. Negro immigrants to Texas were a cross section of free
Negroes in the United States. They came from the East and the
South, from slave states and free states without distinction. Rich
and poor, old and young, bachelors, spinsters, families and whole
groups of related persons trudged their way west. Free-born
Negro, self-emancipated slave, manumitted slave, and runaway
slave came side by side. Many of them made intermediate stays,
often for periods of years, as they came, and then resumed their
march westward. White men and black men often came hand in
hand. Farmer, housewife, blacksmith, stockman, laborer, washer-
woman, merchant and servant, free Negro immigrants included
them all. Negro, mulatto, quadroon and octoroon, all shades they
came, with varying degrees of proof that they were close to the
civilization they had adopted as it was marching west.
Despite the long subjection of their race to slavery, these Negroes
certainly partook of the pioneering spirit in full measure. They
were a part of the vanguard and it is evident that they easily
learned methods of solving the problems of frontier life. In fact,
they learned the lessons of frontier life in Texas so easily and
well that they often were able to live in places where Anglo-
Americans could not be expected to survive. They were encour-
aged in their efforts by white men who often helped them migrate,
employed them as laborers and mechanics upon their arrival,
accepted them as farmers and colonists, and by these means
advanced and strengthened this thin but significant stream of
Negro pioneers.
FOOTNOTES:
of the University of Texas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the M. A. degree.
Agustín Morfi, Missionary, Teacher, Historian. Translated, with Bio-
graphical Introduction and Annotations, I, 99.
para la Historia de México, Series 3, Vol. 1, 459.
File 15, January 11, 1848. Texas State Library.
Journeys to Texas and Mexico; with a Sketch of Cotemporary Events,
and a Notice of the Revolution in Hayti, 41. Benjamin Lundy was born
in Hardwick, N. J., on January 4, 1789. While yet in his twenties he
organized an anti-slavery society, and in January, 1821, began the pub-
lication of an abolition paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation.
During the next decade he became deeply interested in the colonization
of the Negro in some place more accessible and suitable than Liberia.
He spent much time trying to find such a place to plant a colony, mak-
ing two journeys to Hayti, one to Upper Canada, and three to Texas in
1830-31, 1833-34, and 1834-35. On the last trip he secured a large grant
of land in Tamaulipas. Lundy intended to proceed with his settlement
there and had "a large number of respectable persons in different States
who proposed to accompany" him. But the Revolution in Texas caused
him "to defer it a little" and subsequent events resulted in his abandon-
ment of the grant. During the Revolution Lundy took the opportunity
presenting itself of exposing, with the co-operation of John Quincy
Adams, what they both regarded as a slaveholders' "vile project" of
wresting Texas from Mexico. Meanwhile, after an uncertain and irreg-
ular existence, The Genius had expired toward the end of 1835, and for
his new purpose Lundy began the publication in Philadelphia of The
National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty which
he published from August, 1836, until March, 1838, when he sold out to
John G. Whittier, who changed the name to the Pennsylvania Freeman.
The following summer Lundy left for Illinois, where he revived The Genius
and published twelve more issues before a brief illness resulted in his
death on August 22, 1839. The essence of his vitriolic attack on the
Texas revolutionists is preserved in his pamphlet, The War in Texas, pub-
lished in 1836. Life of Lundy, passim; Dumas Malone (editor), Diction -
ary of American Biography, XI, 506-507.
Library.
Readings in Texas History, 165.
No. 999, Texas State Library. Senate Journal, Fourth Legislature, 340.
in the Land Office.
the man to whom Benjamin Lundy refers as David Town.
1841. House Journal, Fifth Session, 35. Harriet Smither (editor),
House Journal, Sixth Session (manuscript in preparation for publication).
Called Session, 65.
ber 20, 1836.
Austin.
Office.
1022.
cember 11, 1841. In the 1841 petition her name is given as Zylphia Husk.
164, 167, 168, 183, 188, 189.
pacho de Relaciones de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, April 13, 1834.
University of Texas transcripts, Dept. of Fomento, Leg. 8, Exp. 65.
provement of the Free People of Colour in these United States Held by
Adjournment in the Guy of Philadelphia, from the 3d to the 13th of
June inclusive, 1833, p. 22.
No record of a free Negro convention in New York City previous to
April, 1834, has been found.
tion, Vol. III, No. 8, third series.
uary 17, 1834. University of Texas transcripts, Dept. of Fomento, Leg.
8, Exp. 66.
THE CONFEDERATE EXODUS TO LATIN AMERICA
III
As in South America, the Confederates who went into Middle
America tried home building in widely-separated areas. They
tried Honduras, British Honduras, and Mexico, if not other
countries.
Little space is required to tell all that is known about those
who ventured into Honduras. By the summer of 1867 Colonel
Watkins and Major Goldsmith of Georgia and Major Malcolm of
Kentucky had obtained grants aggregating more than 150,000
acres in the vicinity of San Pedro, situated about fifty miles in-
terior from the port on the Bay of Honduras named Omoa, and
had induced about sixty followers--apparently all Georgians--to
settle in the beautiful valley with them. Other immigrants, it
seems from both Georgia and Alabama, augmented the pioneers
until within a few months the number reached the two hundred
mark. The San Pedro settlers introduced the first mills and farm-
ing implements known to the country.
But the San Pedro colony did not thrive. Whether due to the
superior attractions offered by British Honduras, to the hostility
of native, insect, and disease, or to internal dissension, only a
few of the southerners remained longer than a year. Most of the
disillusioned returned to their old homes in the United States;
Major Malcolm, who became the chief director, seems to have
fled to Nicaragua between suns.
1
Southern interest in British Honduras extends back into the
ante-bellum period; and this concern, as we have already noted,
was only a manifestation of a general interest in the tropics.
British Honduras became a sort of Utopia to southerners as a
result of skilled advertising in certain parts of southern United
States, especially in Louisiana. In the eighteen fifties owners of
large quantities of land in the British colony kept on display in
New Orleans and other southern cities sugar cane and other
products grown on Honduran soil. After the lands had been
denuded of the mahogany forests, the woodcutting companies
became willing to dispose of them to planters. The sugar plant-
ers of the United States seemed to be the logical purchasers.
Furthermore, it was to the interest of the merchants in British
Honduras and the United States, especially to those of Belize and
New Orleans, to promote southern immigration to the British
colony.
The Civil War in the United States strengthened the position
of the bourgeois in the two countries. The war fought ostensibly
to save the Union but in reality to impose the economic system of
the more populous section upon the entire country brought a
despotism to the South that caused many of the southern people
to resort to the extremity of expatriation. A thousand or so of
the discontented fell for the bourgeois propaganda emanating
from Belize and New Orleans. It seemed to offer more for the
future than the program of terrorism then emitting from the
vindictive souls of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. In
1867 the choice made by those who decided upon British Hon-
duras for future homes did not seem ridiculous. The highest
officials in the British possession were then saying: "We want
some of your practical and active Southern men to come to this
Country and settle it up." They were told that if they would
do so, "so soon as they are strong enough for self Government,
we will give up the Country to them, as the policy of the English
Government now is to lessen the number of her Colonies, as they
create the necessity for too large a Military force for their pro-
tection."
2
Just how much faith the southerners imposed in this gratui-
tous remark regarding the future political status of the British
colony is unknown. It is quite probable that they saw greater
assurance in the tariff act, which, as amended in 1867, made it
possible for immigrants to take personal property into the colony
free of duty. It is certain that they were attracted by the terms
of the big land companies, such as Young, Toledo, and Company,
which offered large tracts of fine sugar and coffee land at prices
ranging from twenty-five cents to five dollars an acre or one hun-
dred acre tracts situated in the northern and western parts of
the colony to any able-bodied immigrant without cost. Further-
more, the potential emigrants were encouraged by the establish-
ment of fortnightly steamship service between New Orleans and
Belize. Operated by New York corporations, the General
Sher
-
man
and the Trade
Wind
afforded ample accommodations for
passenger and freight traffic. The company which operated the
latter was fortunate enough to secure from the British Honduran
government an annual subsidy of $20,000 for the maintenance of
mail service between Belize and New Orleans.
3
Information assembled to date does not reveal the time of
arrival of the first southerners in British Honduras. But they
do say that an Episcopal minister named Dawson reached the
country as early as 1861. If he left his native land on account
of the domestic turmoil, he showed wisdom in the selection of
the time for departure, as well as in predicting the eventual out-
come of the conflict. At any rate, the summer of 1867 found
him gardening near Belize, waiting to join fellow-southerners in
the establishment of a colony in the southern part of the coun-
try.
4 Two other southerners had gone into the northern por-
tion of the country, fifty miles from Belize, and become proprie-
tors of a sugar plantation as early as the beginning of 1865. Two
years later their labors were rewarded by a yield of four to five
hundred hogsheads of fine sugar.
5
Notwithstanding these and many other early arrivals, the
period of "great migration" from the South to British Honduras
was from 1867 to 1869. During this period the vessels plying
between New Orleans and Belize, chiefly the Trade
Wind
and the
General
Sherman,
usually took out eighty to a hundred emigrants
each trip. In the summer of 1869, the United States consul at
Belize estimated that southerners had entered the British colony
at an average rate of fifty a month for the past two years.
Opposed to the exodus from the United States, his twelve hun-
dred estimate for the biennium was more likely too low than too
high.
6 In the spring of 1868, or about the middle of the period
of "great immigration," T. C. Brewer, whose business it was to make
careful observations, wrote the Mobile Daily
Register
that there
were at that time one thousand southerners in British Honduras
who had become bona
fide
settlers; and, he said, immigration con-
tinued to flow.
7 Whatever the number of southerners entering
British Honduras, or the number resident at any particular time,
there is general agreement that southern immigration had ceased
by the summer of 1869. Indeed, for a few months subsequent to
this time the population movement was from Belize to the United
States. The above-mentioned consul was convinced that of those
immigrants who retraced their steps, some returned to their old
homes wiser, and all "sadder and poorer."
8
The British Honduras colonists were from many parts of the
South. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee,
Texas, and Virginia were frequently represented. More interest-
ing is the fact that many of the colonists had held high positions
in the Confederate army. Consul Prindle said that in Belize
"generals and colonels meet one at every turn."
9
As in Brazil, the southerners went to almost every section of
British Honduras; and, as in Brazil, most of them settled in
groups or neighborhoods. One of the most populous settlements
was at the head of navigation on the Belize River, near the
present San Pedro, in the western portion of the country. Meas-
ured by way of the river, the usual route of travel, the distance
from the capital city of Belize was a hundred miles or more,
though directly through the forests the mileage was only half so
great. One of the first southerners--probably the first--to enter
the San Pedro community was Reverend B. R. Duval of Virginia,
who purchased for himself a large tract of fertile land and who
secured for his bereaved countrymen options on adjoining tracts.
But the divine, no doubt feeling a degree of responsibility in
providing for his sheep, did more: the Confederate town which
his mind envisioned was to be New Richmond, after the blessed
city of his former state; and the entire colony would be delim
ited as Confederate County.
10
Duval was a good advertiser. Within six months after his
selection of a site, General C. J. McRae of Mississippi pur-
chased eighteen sections of land, in consideration of $3500, and
became his neighbor. In writing an old friend back home, the
general described his land as similar to the best sugar lands of
Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana. John M. McRae, former Gov-
ernor of Mississippi, and a brother of the general, left his old
home with the intention of settling in the same community, but
succumbed to tuberculosis five days after his arrival at Belize.
11
By the summer of 1868, about a year after Duval had made
his selection, three hundred persons from the southern states
were living in the vicinity of San Pedro. At this time, more-
over, twenty-one of the colonists of this community, hailing from
six of the southern states and California, directed a letter to the
"Southern Press" designed to refute statements recently appear-
ing in southern newspapers that the colonists in Honduras were
dissatisfied and starving. While admitting that mistakes had
been made, the signers stated that the colonists were contented,
that there was plenty for those who would work, and that there
was no desire to return to the United States.
12 Nevertheless, if
the American consul at Belize can be trusted, the summer of the
following year (1869) found the stream of southerners running
from British Honduras toward the United States, the reverse
from the direction it had been flowing for the past two years.
13
It is not known whether the backward trek included settlers who
had followed Duval into the wilderness of western Honduras.
There were many other southern communities in the British
colony. On the New River, some eighty miles from Belize, sev-
eral planters, chiefly from Louisiana, purchased large tracts of
land for sugar plantations. Among the purchasers were many
persons well known to the Old South--Captain Beauregard,
brother of the creole general; Benjamin, brother of the Confed-
erate secretary of war; Dagle, Doirn, Doughty, Price, and others
from the same state. On the Mullens River, eighteen miles from
Belize, were several planters; on South Stann Creek, forty or fifty
miles south of the capital, were some; on the Moho River thirty
families settled; on the Mannatee in a circuit of five miles were
twenty-two other family groups. Moreover, in the summer of
1868 most of these newcomers were doing well.
14
Eight miles from the capital, on the Belize River, a Texan
rented a place for $300 a year. In the summer of 1867 he was
living in one of the two dwellings and cultivating thirty acres
planted in almonds, cocoanuts, guavas, limes, oranges, and
tamarinds, the cocoanut trees numbering three hundred and
fifty.
15 Only a half mile from Belize R. T. Johnson, an exile
from the South, sought "that peace and repose denied to him in
his native land" on one of the sandy ridges which stud the
swamp extending along the Honduran coast. Known as "Martinez
Pen"--Pen because the ridge was about two miles long and only
from thirty to fifty feet in width--and hardly more than a foot
above the water mark, this property was devoted to cocoanut,
mango, and other fruit trees. Soon after occupancy the new
owner posted on the bulletin board at the courthouse in Belize
a notice that the enclosed part of the estate, embracing the cot-
tage, and the rear walk leading to the terminus of the ridge,
would henceforth cease to be public promenades. Moreover, the
aged occupant would sell fruit only by the wholesale, and then
not on the Sabbath. Whether the mosquitoes, sand flies, and
other venomous insects which swarm on that part of the coast
materially interfered with the desired "peace and repose" is an
unanswered query.
16
In the capital city the southerners found a rendezvous and
toothsome food at the hotel of Mrs. Foot, formerly of Saint
Mary's Parish, Louisiana. Frequently the governor of the colony
gave to the southerners a grand state dinner, during which the
dining halls resounded to the tune of "Bonnie Blue Flag," "My
Maryland," and, climactically, "God Save the King."
17
Stimulated by numerous advertisements emanating from vari-
ous agencies, hundreds of down-hearted southerners made their way
into Mexico. The promoting agencies were the emigration com-
panies dominated by the profit motive, the philanthropic associ-
ations, and strong-willed individuals such as M. F. Maury. In
nearly all cases the newspapers were the media through which
the discouraged came into possession of data concerning the
hoped-for Utopia. The emigrés
usually entered Maximilian's
empire by one of two routes: some went overland by the Isham
G. Harris route (Monterey, Saltillo, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
City); others made the water journey from Galveston or New
Orleans to Vera Cruz and thence to the interior of Aztecland.
As in the case of Brazil, the seekers of new homes stopped in
regions separated by great distances. While the two most impor-
tant centers of settlements were near Cordova and in the Tuxpan
region, many other portions of Mexico became their dwelling-
places. Some stopped at Monterrey, only a hundred and fifty
miles from the Rio Grande; some chose Saltillo, now the capital
of Coahuila, and once also the capital of Texas; some preferred
the centuries-old mining town of San Luis Potosí, still further
toward the center; a few selected Jalisco, far to the west of the
imperial capital; others halted at Jalapa, not far inland from
Vera Cruz, and during the colonial era a meeting place for Old
and New World merchants; Colonel Mitchell, a Methodist divine
from Missouri, leased for ten years a 5,000-acre hacienda
in the
beautiful valley of the Rio Verde, midway between Potosí and
Tampico. The city of the Montezumas was the rendezvous and
no doubt the earthly paradise for all.
But let us rivet attention for a longer period on the important
Confederate colonies near Cordova and in the Tuxpan. The
former had its beginning in November, 1865, when Maury's com-
mittee of distinguished Confederates, ex-Governor Sterling Price
of Missouri, Judge John Perkins of Louisiana, and ex-Governor
Isham G. Harris of Tennessee, reported in glowing terms on the
possibilities of the Cordova district.
18 The early months of the
following year brought hundreds of southerners to the new col-
ony. The prominence of the trio which chose the site, the un-
questioned integrity of Price, Perkins, and Harris, gave the
enterprise a great boost. The fact that such men proceeded with
arrangements to establish themselves and their dearest friends
in the community made a powerful appeal. The appeal captured
the imaginations of all classes: every rank known to the Confed-
erate army was represented; every sort of politician listed in a
dictionary of political science was included; every type of artisan
and planter known in the Old South was there; every social posi-
tion from big planter to lowly slave was included. The total num-
ber of persons included varied with the seasons, with the months,
with the moons, even with the suns. One settler said that at one
time five hundred emigrants found themselves in the valley about
Carlotta, the name given the town in honor of the Empress of
Mexico.
19 But due to pathetic circumstances the population was
more than peripatetic--and not in the Aristotelian connotation.
The old Mexican town of Córdova, which was the focal point
for the Confederate colonists, lies in the state of Vera Cruz about
ninety-two miles from the city of the True Cross. The settlers
who went by way of the Gulf--and most of them chose this easier
and shorter route--made sixty-four miles of the inland journey,
from Vera Cruz to Paso del Macho, by rail; the last lap of twen-
ty-eight miles was by coach. After arrival the newcomers went
to one of the three hotels that had risen for their convenience--
and no doubt for the profit of the operators--where they spent
indefinite periods of a week or a month or perhaps longer, always
at considerable expense. Some went into the rural communities
on prospecting itineraries and incidentally saw for the first time
coffee and sugar plantations in operation. The latter, of course,
were not so novel to the emigrants from Louisiana and Texas as
to those from Missouri and elsewhere. Others became discour-
aged and disgusted within a short time and began the backward
trek without venturing beyond Córdova's corporation limits. Back
in the United States, the wailings of the sojourners soon found
prominent places in the southern newspapers and journals, and
emigration to Mexico was checked.
20
But the wailings of the returned are less pertinent at this point
than the ventures of those who remained in and around Córdova.
These ventures were indeed varied. Two American physicians,
Doctors Xaupé and Russell, found a need for their knowledge
when the rainy season came and brought in its wake an epidemic
of yellow fever. General James E. Slaughter and Captain Price,
son of General Sterling Price of the Confederate army, went into
the rich timber belt between Córdova and Orizaba and put into
operation a steam sawmill. General Shelby and Major McMurtry
operated a stage between Paso del Macho, the terminus of the
Vera Cruz railroad, and Orizaba, and secured a concession to
transport iron and other railway material to Mexico City. Gen-
eral Stevens, one of General Lee's chief engineers, and Superin-
tendent Norris, formerly with the New Orleans and Jackson rail-
road, found employment on the project which sought to connect
Mexico City with the port of Vera Cruz. Most important of all,
however, were the ventures connected with plantation establish-
ment.
21
In the vanguard of the plantation builders were the three men
--Price, Harris, and Perkins—who selected the colony site and
laid out the town of Caiiotta. Close upon their heels came their
old friends and Confederate associates, including Generals Hind-
man, Hardeman, Shelby, Watson, Colonels Pox, Green, Roberts,
Whaley, and others of lesser renown. Soon fifty persons among
the select had staked out for themselves no less than 50,000 acres
of the best land in the community, most of them hoping to real-
ize enormous profits as the population increased. Some of those
who had capital, such as Harris, Price, and Shelby, constructed
shanties for temporary habitation and launched upon tasks of
clearing the land and planting crops; the less fortunate turned
temporarily to such forms of employment as promised a neces-
sary livelihood.
For those who arrived in the autumn of 1865 and the few
months immediately succeeding, the future seemed bright. The
fertile soil and the equable climate pledged cooperation in the
production of two crops of corn, cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane;
and coffee, vanilla, and other products would grow with a mini-
mum of labor. Equally as encouraging was the prospect of a
cheap labor supply provided in Mexico's system of peonage, a
form of slavery in disguise. Under the system the laborer found
it practically impossible to prevent falling into debt to the mas-
ter or patron, with whom he must remain until the obligation
was paid. As a result, the original contracts, which were to be
for a term of not less than five nor more than ten years, became
obligations for life in a majority of cases. Moreover, when a
laborer died while in debt service to a patron, the latter became
the guardian of the former's children, who, until they attained
their majority at the age of twenty-five, were to remain with the
master under the same conditions agreed to by the father. The
Negroes who followed their old masters from the United States
to Mexico would constitute the backbone of the labor supply for
a time; later the natives would serve the same purpose.
22
Early hopes among the Confederates about Carlotta were soon
turned into despair. The causes for the change were numerous
and the responsibility therefore must fall upon many heads.
The enthusiasm of Maury and his cohorts caused them to picture
conditions in Mexico that future events failed to sustain; indeed,
as events turned out, the picture appeared as a fabric of the
wildest imagination. But Maury and his satellites were hardly
responsible for the character of the colonists themselves; they
could not prevent the laggard, the libertine, and the thief com-
ing along with the industrious, the upright, and the honest; they
were not entirely responsible for the fact that success in an un-
developed country requires some capital and much arduous labor
for at least a period of two or three years.
The conduct of the leaders and early settlers furnished occasion
for much disconent among those who arrived on the scene at later
dates. Those in the vanguard staked out for themselves and their
close friends most of the best lands available for agricultural pur-
poses. Within a few months fifty of the early arrivals had pre-
empted no less than fifty thousand acres with the hope of future
pecuniary gain. To the less fortunate the policy seemed grasp-
ing and selfish and was denounced in scathing terms. Squabbles
which arose over unsurveyed boundaries and lawsuits instituted
as a means of redress added to the confusion. The dissatisfac-
tion was intensified by the departure before the close of the first
year of many men of influence and character.
23
Just as the idiosyncrasies and foibles of the inhabitants played
their roles in turning hopes to despair, so did the manifestations
of that side of nature which is more remotely, if at all, subject
to the control of man wield their discouraging influences. The
first rainy season brought diseases, especially fevers and dysentery,
over which medical science in that isolated region had little con-
trol. The natural environment, to which the newcomers were
necessarily poorly adjusted physically, and the spiritual discom-
fort resulting from the uprooting of long-established social con-
tacts conspired with disease to strike low many of the exiles. The
high and the low among the colonists succumbed alike to these
forces. The travail of soul is rather painfully exhibited in the
last paragraph of a letter which one P. H. Thompson, a lonely
emigré, wrote at Vera Cruz immediately upon the death of a
friend. It reads:
"Let us congratulate ourselves that that noble and lamented son
of Louisiana, Henry Watkins Allen, never yielded to infatuation,
but, although enthusiastic in regard to the future of the Empire,
always gave his friends true advice. He was emphatically 'an
honest man.' I was with him constantly during his last illness,
and between the paroxysm of pain his mind constantly reverted
to Louisiana, and his conversation was about the friends whom
he had left there. The only wish he expressed was that he could
once again see the waving fields of cane as they were in the olden
time. Peace to his soul. We stood around his grave, that Mon-
day evening in April, 1866, with the snowy peak of Popocatapetl
towering above us, and as we listened to the sublime ritual few
among that little band of exiles but thought of the homes which
were once so peaceful and happy, and wondered wistfully would
it be our fate to die away from our kindred, and without the
gentle touch of woman on our brow."
In fairness to the writer of this letter it should be stated that
it was his intention to remain in Mexico permanently. Although
he possessed a deep longing for his old friends back home to be
around him, he could not conscientiously advise them to take the
step he had taken.
24
But the selfishness of colonial leaders and the apparent un-
kindness of nature in unleashing her devastating tropical diseases
could be no more disheartening than the political and social tur-
moil with which the Mexico of Maxmilian's day was afflicted.
The chaos which can fatten only upon the selfish personal ambi-
tions of a decadent militarism and a wretchedly poor and igno-
rant indigent population was surely at its zenith in the eighteen
sixties. The European adventurer had been brought over to serve
as the instrument of the conservative elements in the army, in
the Church, and in society in general. At the beginning, all the:
liberal forces of the country, supported by a large percentage of
the population, were arrayed against the new ruler; and in the
attempt to pursue a moderate middle course he soon alienated
many of his early supporters and at the same time he gained few
friends from the liberal ranks. Still, because of the flattering
counsel that came from his entourage, for a long time Maximilian
did not fully realize the seriousness of the indescribable orgy that
was tearing the country into shreds. When he finally realized
the extent of the calamity, his extreme measures of vengeance
only added to the difficulties.
A novice can easily discern the bearing of such chaos upon the
plan to colonize ex-Confederates in Mexico. Early in the year
following the plan's inauguration it became necessary to abandon
the proposal to pay transportation costs to the country.
25 Much
more serious was the refusal of the opponents of the imperial
regime to recognize the validity of the confiscation measures which
had placed the southeners in possession of their lands. Whether
acting on principle or subterfuge, liberal leaders, sincere or pro-
fessed, organized bands and attacked the communities to which
the newcomers had moved. The attack on the settlement of
Omealco, situated about thirty miles from Córdova, at daybreak
on the morning of May 15, 1866, was perhaps the worst, but not
the only one, of such pillaging forays. Fortunately, a victim of
this raid has left us an account of his and his companions' grue-
some experiences during the four weeks they were prisoners fol-
lowing the Omealco attack. The narrator, one John Lane of
Texas, says that the descent was made by a nondescript band of
liberals--a loosely-used term to characterize any opponents of
Maximilian and his conservative supporters--under the leader-
ship of General Figarro, who was "slashing around, eating and
drinking at the expense of his noble friends, the American colon-
ists, whom he so loved that he made an appointment to speak to
them at some public place upon condition of affairs, upon the
good wishes and intentions of his [the liberal] government
towards them, and upon topics of mutual interest." When the
colonists had assembled and were waiting, Figarro's troops sur-
rounded and made them prisoners. After rifling their pockets
of their lean contents and seizing their available property, chiefly
agricultural implements and live stock, and disposing of it for
their own uses, they marched the prisoners over mountain and
valley, desert and stream, from ranch to ranchero,
until their
shoes were worn from their feet, their patience and strength were
exhausted, and their colonial hopes and aspirations vanquished.
On one occasion the prisoners thought they were drawn up to be
shot; but in the end they were spared--the victims thought by
some timely gunshots near by.
In the course of their ramblings somewhat beyond the middle,
the Omealco victims happened upon Joseph Soublet, a creole from
New Orleans, who entertained and furnished them food and trans-
portation from his ranch across the lakes and arms of Bianco
Bay. Finally, they were given from Figarro's to General Gar-
cia's command; the latter was generous enough to provide civil-
ized treatment and transportation to Vera Cruz, which most of
them reached hatless, shoeless, and penniless. It would be super-
erogation to say that these victims returned to their old homes in
Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri to stay, or that they could have
conceived of Mexicans as other than the repository of the world's
surplus treachery.
26
From similar sources came raids upon other settlements or
haciendas
which the southerners occupied in the region within
the thirty or forty mile radius extending from Cordova. Trouble
might have been avoided had the aggressive newcomers waited
until the Maximilian government was able to afford military pro-
tection in the occupation of the lands to which it had given legal
title. Of course, as events turned out, the Maximilian govern-
ment never became able to furnish the physical protection to its
new immigrants from the Old South; nevertheless, the delay
would have postponed the raids.
The fevers brought by the summer rains of 1866 were equally as
disheartening to the Cordova colonists as the raids of the Mexi-
can malcontents. Both caused abandonment of many rural hold-
ings and concentration at Cordova. These two forces and the
general loss of faith in the imperial regime to establish order and
security in Mexico were primarily responsible for the abandon-
ment of Córdova itself and the backward trek to old friends and
relatives and former attachments in the United States. Negro
suffrage and all its attendant horrors on the one hand seemed
preferable to hard work, disease, and unlicensed robbery on the
other. Thus, by late January, 1867, or at the end of an epoch
only a little more than a year in length, a maximum population
of five hundred homeseekers had been reduced to the member-
ship of two families. The few remaining members had caught
the contagious home-fever and were wandering about the streets
of Córdova in order to give vent to their restlessness. A few of
the stouter and more resourceful spirits took passage to various
European cities, perhaps to assuage their resentment a trifle,
though ostensibly to attend to business matters.
27
In marked contrast to several portions of Brazil, and unlike
British Honduras, the Cordova district of Mexico today shows
only slight evidence of Confederate occupation. The domestic
situation which made land titles impermanent and the short period
of occupancy in Mexico were primarily responsible for the differ-
ence. Yet, five years ago (1929) a descendant of one of the
southern families that essayed settlement at Cordova spent some
time at the Mexican capital in an attempt to secure legal valida-
tion to a land claim dating back to the Maximilian era.
Finally, we may let our imaginations traverse a hundred and
fifty miles of forest and jungle in a northward course from. Cor-
dova and arrive at the scene of the second venture of southerner
at home building in the Mexican wilderness. Situated in the
northern part of the state of Vera Cruz, about 145 miles toward
the Rio Grande from the port of the True Cross, the site ex-
tended up from the mouth of the Tuxpan River for a distance
of thirty miles by direct line. The tracts of land upon which
the several settlements were made lay on the well-drained hill-
sides above the marshes and were, the settlers believed, the health-
iest anywhere within the tropics. They were not chosen, how-
ever, solely for the health of the occupants; they were choice
lands for coffee, sugar cane, corn, and toothsome fruits. The
choosers of these tracts could not have known that a few hun-
dred feet beneath the surface lay some of the most prolific oil
pools which the next half century would unbosom to man.
The first settlement in the Tuxpan valley made by former
residents of the United States was on an estate named Tumbadero.
Situated eighteen or twenty miles from the mouth of the river
by direct line, and embracing 10,138 acres, mostly suited to the
production of the crops just mentioned, the tract was occupied
by Major John H. Brown and friends April 28, 1866. Three and
a half years later ten or twelve American (the writer is follow-
ing the usual, but erroneous, custom in the use of the term)
families were living on Tumbadero, despite the general fear that
the estate might revert to its former proprietor at any time in
consequence of the original American purchasers remaining in
the United States and failing to make the stipulated payments.
Adjoining Tumbadero several families lived on an 1817-acre tract
purchased and paid for by one Coleman.
About half way between Tumbadero and the mouth of the
Tuxpan lay the 7,000-acre tract called Zapotal. Purchased and
paid for by other parties in the same year, its several families
also enjoyed comparative good health and a fair degree of pros-
perity. On this estate the enterprising inhabitants erected in
1869 a large sugar mill, with attachments for grinding corn and
cutting lumber.
In addition to these were perhaps twenty other families living
on small holdings scattered over the region between the mouth
of the river and a point thirty miles above and purchased indi-
vidually of the natives. All told the Tuxpan settlements num-
bered about a half hundred families in 1869, or three years after
the first arrivals, though the available information nowhere even
estimates the number of individuals included.
Once more we are fortunate enough to have a brief contempo-
rary account by a prominent colonist of a few conditions which
all the colonists confronted. It is by Major John H. Brown,
one of the many Texans who cast their lots in the valley of the
Tuxpan. The major said that most of the settlers were "poor,
though a few possessed means sufficient to open and cultivate
respectable farms. They are generally steady, industrious and
law abiding; and have lived as resident American citizens in
entire peace with the natives, without a single disturbance be-
tween them, or a personal outrage to complain of."
The colonists, however, felt aggrieved at customshouse "exac-
tions and delays, and especially at being heavily taxed by duties
on tools, implements and machinery brought by them to aid in
developing a section in which neither a wagon, plough nor hoe
had ever been used by the natives."
He then mentions the example of the planters who attempted
to import a sugar mill by installments. On the arrival of the
first small installment they were compelled to pay heavy duties
on the whole machine, regardless of the fact that the last parts
would not arrive until six months later.
Other obnoxious examples followed. A poor widow who sought
to import a piano in order to practice her profession of music
teaching was forced to sell her cherished instrument to pay the
one hundred-dollar duty demanded. More: Major Brown him-
self was asked to pay a customshouse duty of $12.80 on a box of
seeds intended for gratuitous distribution and costing only $10
in the city of Galveston, Texas, though after a strong protesta-
tion that the law admitted seeds free, and a vexatious delay, the
box was delivered. These and other impositions "occurred, as
if designed to deter foreigners from locating in that fertile but
wilderness country."
28
The only direct communication between the Tuxpan and the
United States was through the port of Galveston. Since most of
the settlers had come from. Texas, this line of contact was not in
all respects inconvenient, though the small sailing vessels that
almost scorched in the Hazing sun as they crossed the Gull of
Mexico were not exactly like the floating palaces of today.
29
The postscript to Major Brown's communication from which
the above extracts have been taken is worthy of quotation in full.
It reads:
With some reluctance I venture to allude to the impression to
some extent existing in our native land, that this settlement is
composed of disaffected ex-southerners. I cannot speak for the
entire little community, because I am not intimate with all, but
if there is a single one who wishes to denationalize or un-Ameri-
canize himself I do not know it,--nor do I believe there is one
such. On the contrary, though a large majority hail from the
South, they have come here chiefly to recuperate from the rav-
ages of the war, and they earnestly pray for the happiness, pros-
perity and glory of their native country in all its length and
breadth. Moreover a fair portion are from the North, includ-
ing several married ladies, (like my own wife) who are not
mentioned.
We have as earnestly desired emigrants from the North as from
the South, regarding them as of the same blood, language, religion
and free institutions, and realizing that, though lately engaged
in dreadful and lamentable strife, they are nevertheless the only
people under the sun combining all the great elements of affilia-
tion with us as citizens of a free, representative Republic.
This postscript was probably more tactful than truthful--not-
withstanding the fact that three years of pioneering in a wilder-
ness under a foreign flag act as a palliative, if not as a perma-
nent cure, for piques of almost any number and character. At
any rate, it was timely: accompanying it was a suggestion that
an American consul was needed to shield the settlers in their
political and economic difficulties with the Mexican officials; fol-
lowing closely was a petition signed by fifty-four American resi-
dents urgently requesting the United States government to send
out such agent. Whether the petition were granted, the available
information fails to reveal; the present writer suspects it was not.
As in the case of several of the colonists which southerners
attempted to plant in the tropics, the newspapers and other
records for the period beyond the beginnings are much too silent.
All of the curious would give much to know what happened in
the valley of the Tuxpan after the first four years. While the
present writer suspects that not all the southerners were uprooted
immediately upon the hushing of the records, he must leave the
imaginations of the readers unsatiated until the appearance of the
novelists.
30
FOOTNOTES:
and Register, October 23, 1867, and June 8, 1868.
ary 3, 1865, consequent upon a conversation with the lieutenant governor
of British Honduras, in Belize Dispatches, III.
May 9, 1867, in Mexican Despatches, XXX.
Picayune, June 14, 1867.
Register, September 28, 1868.
it appeared in the Daily Richmond Enquirer, January 26, 1866.
and Register, June 15, 1866.
September 10, 1865, in Mexican Despatches, XXX.
Picayune, February 3, 1867.
1866.
annah Daily News and Herald, May 31, 1866.
veston News.
Picayune, February 3, 1867. It gives an interesting history of the Cór-
dova experiment.
can. Minister Thomas H. Nelson, September 10, 1869; see Nelson's dis-
patch of September 28, 1869, in Mexican Despatches, XXXVII.
minister to Mexico, January 5, 1870, in Mexican Despatches, XXXVIII;
The Daily Picayune, February 12, 1868.
LETTERS OF ANTONIO MARTINEZ, THE LAST SPANISH
GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, 1817-1822
IV
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
MATTIE AUSTIN HATCHER
N. 15.
I am enclosing to yon the sumaria
of declarations made by the
prisoners taken in the battle of the 19th of the present month at
the place called "Dos Corrales" and likewise the papers found on
the aforesaid prisoners so that you make whatever use you may
wish of them.
1
I have ordered the small number of horses captured with the
prisoners turned over to the troops. I am making but a small
charge for them because they are so very poor and because, hav-
ing been stolen on the coast, they will later be claimed by their
owners. I desire your approval of all my actions.
June 23, 1817.
No. 16
In spite of what you say to me in your letter No. 13 of the
22nd of the present month, concerning the Spaniard José Manuel
Costilla, who was captured in the battle of the 19th of the present
month against the bandits and the Americans whom he was guid-
ing, I am enclosing to you the testimony ordered drawn up so
that, with it before you, you may make whatever decision you
may think proper. Under guard I am sending him to Rio Grande
so that the commandant at that point may send the prisoners on
to the governor of Coahuila because it is not safe to keep them
here, because I have nothing with which to support them, and
because I wish you to dispose of them as you think proper. I
am also enclosing to you a list of the names of these persons.
June 28, 1817.
No. 17.
I am enclosing to you quadruplicate lists of the reviews passed
by the company of Bahia during the present month as well as
diaries and duplicate reports of the same company for last month.
June 27, 1817.
No. 18.
I have just received your letter of the 9th of the present month,
from which I learn that you have arranged to have the manager
of the tobacco department at Monterrey send to this province ten
boxes of cigars and also to have the treasurer at Saltillo deliver
to the paymaster, Francisco Collantes, 6,000 pesos for the sup-
port of the troops.
I have also learned that you have arranged to have four boxes
of powder sent to me by relays. I must inform you that, upon
my arrival in this capital, I found debts overbalancing the first
sums I received. These debts were contracted by my predecessor
for food for the troops. I have been able to pay only a very
small part. The settlers who advanced most of it have had only
a small amount of money upon which to operate and this was not
their own. When they were called upon to make an accounting
of their management, they pressed me frequently in spite of their
generosity and patriotism. Therefore, since there is not a single
grain of corn in the warehouse, I am reporting to you that money
alone will not suffice for the maintenance of the troops, for, un-
less these sums are repaid and unless the paymaster secures a
loan of grain, nothing can lessen the suffering I describe, nor
can I fail to repeat my petitions. Yesterday, the troops were
actually on the point of mutiny as they cannot bear the sufferings
they and their families are forced to endure. In spite of the con-
dition they are in, I was compelled to use severity to impress
them. I thereupon called a council of ways and means composed
of certain individuals. They have been able to do nothing more
than make an offer of a few head of stock which a party has gone
out today to round up and make them up into rations. In this
way the citizenship will not perish from hunger. The suffering
has been so great that not a single person has been able to spare
as much as twenty pesos.
Without them--and particularly without reinforcement of troops
--it is not possible for me to attend to the various matters that
so urgently demand my attention. In addition to the anxiety
the Americans cause me I am pressed by the Indian nations.
Just today I have had information of a large body of Indians
who have been committing terrible depredations against the Prov-
ince of Coahuila and who may fall upon this place at any moment
where they would be able to harm the people alone since there is
not a single cow or horse left.
June 28, 1817.
No. 19.
I have just received your letter of the 13th of the present month
by which I am informed of all you tell me concerning the traitor
Vicente Travieso. I already had news of him before my arrival
from Bahia. This is why I left Castañeda twenty-five men in
addition to the thirty he already had to depend upon. This is
all the reinforcements I could spare from the small force I have,
for, in addition to the fact that the number of men I have is
naturally small, many of them are sick while many others have
deserted. Nevertheless, you may rest assured that I will not lose
a moment in carrying out your orders as far as my small force
will permit so that the commandant of Bahia will not be in the
same hard position he has lately been in. I am sending two four
inch cannon to that place. I have also sent him the necessary
ammunition. I am now sending him a letter charging him to
be vigilant and to take all possible precautionary measures. A
few hours since I received information that there had not been
any particular development since my departure from that point
except the capture of two Lipan Indians--father and son, the
elder being blind. The plans are to send them to you.
June 28, 1817.
[Nos. 20, 21, 22, and 23 are formal letters of transmittal, all
dated June 29, 1817, covering military reports and reviews.]
No. 24.
For your information I am enclosing to you the diary of events
on the march I made from this capital to Bahia and back.
June 29, 1817.
No. 25.
Omitted in original letter book.
No. 26.
I am enclosing to you the petition of Alferez Claudio de Luna,
acting commandant of the veteran company of this capital, so
that, in view thereof, you may make whatever decision you may
wish.
July 6, 1817.
No. 27.
I am in receipt of duplicate copies of your letter of June 13th
last in which you were good enough to report to me that the
traitor Vicente Travieso with a party of one hundred rebels was
planning to march near Bahia for the purpose of joining the
traitor Gutierrez and instructing me, on my part, to take all the
measures possible to prevent his escape. I have warned the com-
mandant of that presidio, ordering him to re-organize the garri-
son and giving him the proper instructions so that throwing out
advance parties and spies he can be on the alert.
July 6, 1817.
No. 28.
I am sending you the enclosed petition of the chaplain of the
presidio of Bahia, Presbyter José Antonio Valdes so that in view
thereof you may make whatever decision is satisfactory to you.
July 9, 1817.
No. 30.
Juan de Castañeda, Captain of the Presidio of Bahia, has cap-
tured two Lipan Indians, father and son. The first named is
blind. The second presented himself in the aforesaid presidio
armed with bows and arrows. Upon being sent before Castañeda
for examination (since there was no interpreter) the Indian told
him by signs that he had left his father at a certain spot as he
was blind. Therefore, a guard was sent with the son to the afore-
said spot to find the father. Captain Castañeda has sent them
to me. I have been unable to make any examination of them
whatsoever as I have no interpreter who can speak the language
of this nation. I am sending them to the governor of Coahuila
in order that lie may send them on to you at the general head-
quarters of Monterrey.
July 12 1817.
No. 31.
The paymaster, Francisco Collantes, is absent from this capi-
tal. He has not deigned to write me concerning the orders he
has received from you. Neither do I now know his whereabouts
nor the point to which he has gone, I have been unable to secure
much information. I need and which the paymaster should fur-
nish me in order that I may report to you. One of these things is
what is to be done with the sequestered goods taken from the rebels.
On this point I may say to you that the greater part of the houses
have been ruined as a result of the terrible storm in this place
at the end of last month. Some of those that were not ruined
will have to be taken down to avoid greater damages. So bad is
the case that I have not the words with which to describe to you
the sad situation this settlement is in and that, too, when I was
so anxious to have it prosper.
While I have been waiting for the powder that you were good
enough to report to me was being sent by relay, it has been neces-
sary for me to take active steps to try to repair the old powder
house and have it ready for the powder since there is no other
place to store it where it will not be rained on and ruined. This
powder house up to this time has been in good condition as a
storehouse but it has been ruined, even the stones that formed a
fort and likewise the doors and other portions are no longer there.
I have, therefore, been compelled to lay hands upon the stone
from one of the fallen buildings that belonged to the rebels. There
are no quarters where a dozen soldiers could be placed and, as
soon as the powder house is finished, I think I will try to build
a room near the main guard house. To this end I hope you will
tell me whether or not I can take away from the owner a house
located at that point and which suits me very well, and give him
in return another house, one of those that have been sequestered,
in case the owner of the first consents. But to do all this I need
help, which I do not have, particularly troops, for, having re-
inforced Bahia with fifty-five men, the troops that are left have
not the absolute necessities for making frequent sallies against
the infamous Lipans who constantly trouble us. We have not
troops with which to form even a party of fifty men. To this
must be added the necessity of guarding (and that, too, with no
small number) the people who go out to get sand, to haul lime,
and to cut wood for the necessary construction. Therefore I must
have the number of troops I asked you for on June 23 last, in
my letter No. 14, for, although I am not ignorant of the many
grave duties that must occupy your attention at this time, I hope
you will do me the justice to realize that my petitions are born
of my desires to place this province in the best possible condition,
if not in a flourishing state.
July 12, 1817.
FOOTNOTES:
The Quarterly, XXXIX, 232.
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES
The
Texas
Rangers.
A
Century
of
Frontier
Defense.
By Walter
Prescott Webb. Pages xv, 584. (Boston and New York:
Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1935.)
"A Texas Ranger
could ride like a Mexican, trail like an
Indian, shoot like a Tennesseean, and fight like a devil." This
terse description is the central theme of Webb's book. With his
skill at simplification he shows how these traits were evolved in
the clash in Texas between the Anglo-Americans and the Mexi-
cans and Indians whom they sought to overcome or displace. It
was necessary that the Texan learn from his adversaries; cour-
ageous and resourceful though he was, he had to adjust his equip-
ment and fighting tactics to conform to his new environment.
He had to adopt the plainscraft of the Comanche, the horseman-
ship of the Mexican, and add to these certain innate or acquired
qualities which his enemies did not possess. Among the things
the Texans learned was that they had to fight. They could not
surrender to the Indians, neither would the Mexicans show mercy
to a vanquished foe.
The distinctive characteristics of the Texas Ranger force were
developed by 1835. They were "an irregular body; they were
mounted; they furnished their own horses and arms; they had
no surgeon, no flag, none of the paraphernalia of the regular
service. They were distinct from the regular army and also
from the militia." Thenceforth until 1935, when the organiza-
tion was all but legislated out of existence, the Rangers main-
tained this system and practice. The scope of their service has
been wide and varied. They have served as a State police force;
for several decades they fought marauding Indian bands and
patrolled the frontier settlements in an effort--not very success-
ful--to make secure life and property among the pioneers; and
repeatedly they have been called upon to defend the settlements
near the Mexican border against assaults of bandits and guerrilla
bands. They have never been discreet in their tactics or partic-
ular as to the place where they fought. On at least one occasion
they made an extended campaign into Indian Territory and they
repeatedly invaded Mexico. During the last fifty years the or-
ganization has served as a mobile force available for service at
any place where aggravated crime or vice has made its presence
necessary. In the eighties fence cutters received the special at-
tion of the Rangers; during that and later decades horse and
cow thieves learned to fear them more and more; from 1910 to
1920 disturbances along the Mexican border received their atten-
tion; and during more recent years they directed their efforts
against bank robbers and professional killers.
As a history of frontier defense a book on the Rangers neces-
sarily has its limitations. It does not include the work of the
United States troops who, in spite of their blunders, rendered
substantial service in this connection. It seems the author be-
lieved the story of the Rangers constituted within itself a subject
broad enough for one book and he has, therefore, given little
attention to the Federal forces. Indeed his chief problem must
have been that of elimination. From hundreds of episodes he
has selected those which seemed most significant. From thou-
sands of documents he has culled incidents, facts and comments
that illustrate the work and reveal the spirit of this superb organ-
ization. Of detail there is sufficient but it has been selected so
wisely and presented so skilfully the reader is never tired. There
are passages, such, for instance, as the account of the Rangers in
the Mexican War, that might well serve as models of narrative
and description,--history writing that is both a science and an art.
Although the work is based principally on official sources, it is
seasoned with delightful excerpts from memoirs, saga, and tra-
dition. The illustrative quotations that precede each chapter
both reveal the spirit of the organization and constitute a rich
collection of frontier writings and vernacular.
The most impressive quality of the book is its rich store of
biographical information, glimpses of the leaders of this organ-
ization as it parades through the century. These men do not
conform to any pattern; each is made after his own mold. Cour-
age and resourcefulness are about the only common character-
istics. There is boyish Jack Hays, "a shade of melancholy in
his features," who never wore a uniform; droll Big Foot Wallace,
of giant stature and childlike heart; Ben McCulloch, calm and
without fear; Samuel H. Walker, short, slender, spare, and
slouchy, with mild blue eyes and classic face; L. H. McNelly,
with features effeminate and "the soft voice of a timid Metho-
dist preacher," who with thirty men tried to start a war with
Mexico; "Mervyn," the Ranger writer, whose prose would not have
brought discredit to O. Henry; John B. Jones, the pacificator,
whose strongest drink was black coffee, which he loved not so well
as buttermilk; G. W. Arrington, stubborn and unyielding; Ira
Aten, original, audacious, and droll; and Frank Hamer, who seems
to have inherited the courage and efficiency of the intrepid lead-
ers who preceded him.
Wisely conceived, well organized, profusely illustrated, and
beautifully written, the book is a fitting monument to a great
institution.
Hardin-Simmons University,
Abilene, Texas.
Rupert N. Richardson.
Manifest
Destiny:
A
Study
of
Nationalist
Expansionism
in
American
History.
By Albert K. Weinberg. (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Press. 1935. Pp. xii, 559. $4.50.)
Professor Weinberg endeavors to give a history of the ideology
of American territorial expansion and expansionism in its vari-
ous aspects, with critical analysis of its contents. The professed
altruism of a rather small part of the aggressive expansionist
ideology leads the author, in his Introduction, to remark, as if of
the whole: "The inverted character of international morality is
most striking in the ideology supporting territorial expansion"--
inverted, i.
e.,
in reference to personal morality. Some readers
will probably consider unwarranted the author's distinction be-
tween "international" and "individual" morality and his assump-
tion of "the inverted character of international morality." For
nations are but the individuals who form them; morality is gen-
erally considered something higher and more inclusive than "law,"
whether customary or statutory, and yet even international law
does not sanction open, undisguised aggression of one state upon
another. The author rightly discovers aggressiveness and im-
perialism in many phases of American expansion, and to identify
American imperialism with "international morality." Consider-
ing the fact that American statesmen, when in the act of adding
aggressively to our territory at a neighbor's expense, have repeat-
edly sought to conceal their aggression in channels of secret in-
trigue (and publicly to deny it) or, where concealment was im-
possible, to carry it on openly but under the garb of false pro-
fessions (alleging idealistic motives), it may well be wondered if
they were conscious of the "morality" of their aggressive policy.
It seems rather doubtful.
Professor Weinberg cautions against the "superficial" tendency
to view as hypocritical the "altruistic" arguments used by Ameri-
cans in some cases to justify their expansion at the expense of
their neighbors. He tells us also that national growth, like bio-
logical growth, may be viewed as commendable. From the ex-
panding nation's point of view at least this may be true enough.
It seems to the reviewer that in most episodes in our expansion
involving aggression upon our neighbors no altruism was seri-
ously alleged, and that in cases where altruism was alleged the
sincerity of the profession (sometimes very plainly an after-
thought) by no means is ever above doubt. Though some read-
ers may dislike the apologetic tone of Professor Weinberg's work,
perhaps this tone is after all but a small matter.
The author has brought together, under logical divisions, a vast
array of expansionist ideology from the mouths and pens of
American expansionists of every time and circumstance of our
national history. While the work is not a factual survey of Ameri-
can expansionist diplomacy, it is supplementary in that it shows
American public opinion and, according to the author, the ideo-
logical "springs of action." Materialistic readers will probably
dissent from the importance which the author attaches to the
"Manifest Destiny" ideology as effective cause of expansion, and
continue to seek the basic causes and motives for expansion in
economic and sociological factors, viewing the accompanying
ideology as largely though not entirely mere epiphenomena, an
ineffectual froth, a rationalization of our expansionist cravings in
the day of our national adolescence--now of interest chiefly be-
cause of its appeal to the patriotic, rationalizing, and cynical parts
of our minds.
The value of the study in any readers mind will depend on the
reader's view as to the true status and importance of ideas in
human life, i.
e.,
their relation to action.
Richard R. Stenberg.
Dictionary
of
American
Biography.
Edited by Dumas Malone
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.) Volumes XVII
and XVIII, extending alphabetically from William Joyce
Sewell to William Petit Trowbridge, 1293 pages.
These volumes will be reviewed in a subsequent issue.
The
Father
of
Texas:
A
Life
of
Stephen
F.
Austin
for
Young
People.
By Eugene C. Barker. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill Company. Pages xiii, 11-248. Illustrated. Price,
$1.75.)
This volume will be reviewed in a subsequent issue.
JOINT MEETING OF THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIA-
TION AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL
ASSOCIATION
The Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Texas State Historical Asso-
ciation and the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Mississippi Valley
Historical Association will be held in Austin, Texas, April 15, 16, 17,
and 18, 1936, upon the invitation of the University of Texas.
The Mississippi Valley Association headquarters will be located at the
Driskill Hotel. Members will find the registration table on the mezzanine
floor. According to the rules of the Association, a registration fee of
fifty cents will be charged.
The University of Texas will tender a complimentary luncheon to the
members of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association on Thursday
April 16, in the Union Building, University of Texas Campus. Admis-
sion will be by ticket, which may be secured at the registration table.
Annual Dinner, Thursday, April 16, 6:30 o'clock-Crystal Ball Room,
Driskill Hotel. Tickets, $1.00.
Joint Dinner of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the
Texas State Historical Association, Friday, April 17, 7:30 o'clock, Crystal
Ball Room, Driskill Hotel. Tickets, $1.00.
After the Joint Dinner of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association
and the Texas State Historical Association on Friday evening a recep-
tion will be held at the Governor's Mansion
Instead of a formal meeting for Friday morning, a trip to San Antonio
has been planned at 8:00 o'clock and members of the Association will leave Austin
promptly at 8:00 o'clock and drive to San Antonio, where local busses
will be used for a sight-seeing trip around the Mission Loop, to the
Alamo, and to the old Governor's Palace. After the sight-seeing trip, a
subscription luncheon and the business meeting will be held at the Orig-
nal Mexican Restaurant. This arrangement will allow ample time for
the members to return to Austin for the afternoon session at 4:30
Announcements concerning transportation and other details will be made
later.
Headquarters will be maintained at the Driskill Hotel. Single room
with bath, $2.00, $2.50 and $3.00; double room with a double bed and a
bath, $2.50 and $3.00; double room with twin beds and a bath, $2.00
per person.
Stephen F. Austin Hotel, all rooms with private baths, Single room,
$2.00., $2.50 and $3.00; double room, $4.00, $5.00 and $6.00.
Texan Hotel, single room, $1.50 without bath; $2.00 with shower; $2.50
with tub.
The railroads are offering a regular ten-day round-trip rate of 1⅓ fare,
which amounts to about two cents per mile each way.
Dinner and business meeting of Executive Council and Members of
Texas State Historical Association. Tickets, 75 cents.
The Greater Southwest
Chairman: Ralph P. Bieber, Washington University
General Edmund P. Games and the Texan Revolution
James W. Silver, Southwestern College
A Federal Experiment in Plains Indian Relations, 1835-1845
Carl C. Rister, University of Oklahoma
Owens and Aull in the Santa Fe Trade
Lewis Atherton, Wentworth Military Academy
Luncheon
Tendered by the University of Texas in honor of the members of the
Mississippi Valley Historical Association
Presiding: Eugene C. Barker, University of Texas
Revolutionary Racketeering on the Texan Frontier
Problems in Expansion
Chairman: Kirke Mechem, Kansas State Historical Society
Louisiana and the Annexation of Texas
James E. Winston, Sophie Newcomb College
The Emigrant Aid Company in National Politics
Samuel A. Johnson, State Teachers College, Emporia, Kansas
Frontier Newspapers of Kansas and Nebraska
Everett Dick, Union College
Room 14, Geology Building, University of Texas
The South and the West in the Sixties and Seventies
The South and Problems of Post-War Finance
George L. Anderson, Colorado College
The Crime of 1873
Sears F. Riepma, Western Reserve University
A Reconsideration of the Pendleton Plan
Crystal Ball Room, Driskill Hotel
Annual Dinner of the Association
Presiding: Harry Yandell Benedict, President of the University of Texas
Presidential Address: Pioneer Stage-Coach Travel
Louis Pelzer, University of Iowa, President of the
Party leaves promptly for trip to San Antonio
Sight-seeing tour of San Antonio, 10:30-12:30
Luncheon and Business Meeting at Original Mexican Restaurant,
The Trans-Mississippi West during the Civil War
Chairman: James G. Randall, University of Illinois
Disaffection in Texas during the Civil War
Robert P. Felgar, State Teachers College, Jacksonville, Alabama
The Civil War Agricultural New Deal
Earl D. Ross, Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts
Railroads in the Indian Territory, 1860-1870
M. L. Wardell, University of Oklahoma
Recent American History
Chairman: E. Merton Coulter, Louisian State University
Ben Tillman's View of the Negro
Francis B. Simkins, State Teachers College, Farmville, Virginia
Political Control of Isthmian Transit, 1860-1885
George F. Howe, University of Cincinnati
The Income Tax and the American Mind, 1860-1900
Elmer Ellis, University of Missouri
Crystal Ball Room, Driskill Hotel
Joint Dinner of the Texas State Historical Association and the
Mississippi Valley Historical Association
Presiding: W. E. Wrather, President of the Texas State Historical
Association
The Texan Revolution
William C. Binkley, Vanderbilt University
Following this program, a reception will be held at the
Governor's Mansion, in Austin
The West in Historical Fiction
Chairman: J. Frank Dobie, University of Texas
Westward Expansion in Historical Fiction
Ernest E. Leisy, Southern Methodist University
John C. Duval's "Strictly True" Narratives of Early Texas
Rebecca W. Smith, Texas Christian University
Flash-backs to Eldorado: California in Fiction
Lucy L. Hazard, Mills College
Joint meeting of the Teachers' Section and the National Council
for the Social Studies
Revision of the Content of American History Courses for High Schools
Chairman: Hattie M. Anderson, West Texas State Teachers College
The Civil War: A Problem of Perspective
James L. Sellers, University of Nebraska
Permanency of the Influence of Spanish Culture in the United States
Alfred B. Thomas, University of Oklahoma
The Importance of the Great Plains in the Expansion to the West
Rupert N. Richardson, Hardin-Simmons University
Discussion: Jonas Viles, University of Missouri
Ralph Steen, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas
Walter P. Webb, University of Texas
George P. Hammond, University of New Mexico
It is hoped that members of the Texas State Historical Association,
who come to Austin in their own automobiles, will assist in taking the
out-of-State visitors to San Antonio, since transportation must depend
mostly upon private cars.
How to cite:
Volume 39, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n4/issue.html
[Accessed Sun Nov 8 4:57:03 CST 2009]
