AND THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
RALPH G. LOUNSBURY
The Free Negro in Harris County, Texas . Andrew Forest Muir
The Life of General Don Manuel de Mier
y Terán . Ohland Morton
Simms' Michael Bonham ....... William Stanley Hoole
Texas Collection H. Bailey Carroll
Letters and Documents
Affairs of the Association
Book Reviews
Book Notes and Acknowledgments
Contributors
PUBLISHED BY
THE TEXAS STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
AUSTIN, TEXAS
1897—The Oldest Learned Society in Texas—lB97
Herbert Gambrell
George A. Hill, Jr.
ACTING DIRECTOR:
H. Bailey Carroll
PRESIDENT:
L. W. Kemp
VICE-PRESIDENTS
DIRECTOR:
Walter P. Webb
P. I. Nixon
Earl Vandale
COR. SEC. AND TREAS.:
Mrs. Coral Horton Tullís
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL:
President L. W. Kemp
Vice-President George A. Hill, Jr.
Ex-President Harbert Davenport
Vice-President Earl Vandale
Ex-President W. E. Wrather
Vice-President P. I. Nixon
Vice-President Herbert Gambrell
Director Walter P. Webb
State Librarian Fannie Wilcox
Amelia Williams (1943)
Claude Elliott (1944)
Anna Powell (1943)
Fellows
Members
ADINA DE ZAVALA(I94S)
R. L. Biesele (1945)
Frances Donecker (1946)
J. Evetts Haley (1947)
PUBLICATION COMMITTEE:
L. W. Kemp
Eugene C. Barker
Charles W. Hackett
E. W. Winkler
Rudolph L. Biesele
Walter P. Webb J
J. L. Clark
H. Bailey Carroll
Herbert Gambrell
THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
EDITORS:
Walter Prescott Webb
H. Bailey Carroll
ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
Charles W. Hackett
Rudolph L. Biesele
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT:
W. A. Whatley
STUDENT EDITORIAL ASSISTANT:
Andrew Forest Muir
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 H. Bailey Carroll, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
Other correspondence may be addressed to The Texas State Historical Association, Austin,
Texas.
The publication committee and the editors disclaim responsibility for views expressed by
contributors to The Quarterly.
Entered at the post-office, Austin, Texas, as second class mail matter.
by published work, special aptitude for historical investigation may become
Fellows. Thirteen Fellows shall be elected by the Association when first
organized, and the body thus created may thereafter elect additional Fellows
on the nomination of the Executive Committee. The number of Fellows shall
never exceed fifty." The present list of Fellows is as follows:
Asbury, Prof. S. E.
Barker, Prof. Eugene C.
Biesele, Prof. R. L.
Bolton, Prof. Herbert Eugene
Carroll, Prof. H. Bailey
Casis, Prof. Lilia M.
Castañeda, Dr. Carlos E.
Clark, Prof. J. L.
Cox, Prof. I. J.
Crane, Judge R. C.
Curlee, Miss Abigail
Davenport, Mr. Harbert
Dunn, Dr. William Edward
Dobie, Prof. J. Frank
Elliott, Dr. Claude
Emmett, Mr. Chris
Estill, Prof. H. F.
Gambrell, Prof. Herbert P.
Garrett, Dr. Kathryn
Geiser, Prof. S. W.
Hackett, Prof. Chas. W.
Haggard, Mr. J. Villasana
Haley, Mr. J. Evetts
Hill, Mr. George A., Jr.
Holden, Prof. W. C.
Kemp, Mr. L. W.
Miller, Prof. E. T.
Neu, Dr. C. T.
Nixon, Dr. P. I.
Potts, Dr. C. S.
Powell, Dr. Anna
Raymond, Dr. Dora Neill
Richardson, Prof. Rupert N.
Schmitz, Rev. Joseph
Sehoen, Dr. Harold
Shelby, Miss Charmion
Smither, Miss Harriet
Tucker, Mr. Philip 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 Association
as shall pay into its treasury at any one time the sum of one hundred 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:
Arnold, Mr. M. L.
Baker, Mr. Hines H.
Beazley, Miss Julia
Blount, Mrs. Guy
Bobbitt, Mr. R. L.
Buchanan, Mr. A. A.
Carroll, Mr. H. Bailey
Carroll, Mr. J. Speed
Cartwright, Mr. and Mrs. J. I.
Clark, Mr. J. F.
Courchesne, Mr. A.
Cox, Mr. I. J.
Crane, Mr. R. C.
Curlee, Miss Abigail
Davidson, Mr. W. S.
Dealey, Mr. George B.
Deussen, Mr. Alexander
Dilworth, Mr. Thomas G.
Donaldson, Mrs. Nanna Smithwick
Donoghue, Mr. David
Driscoll, Mrs. Clara
Edwards, Mrs. Lillian Owens
Fortman, Mr. Henry F.
Gilbert, Mr. Harvey Wilbarger
Gilbert, Mr. John N.
Gleason, Rev. Joseph M.
Graves, Mr. Ireland
Gutsch, Mr. Milton R.
Hanrick, Mr. R. A.
Harris, Mr. Beverly D.
Hefley, Mr. W. T.
Hutcheson, Judge J. C, Jr.
Hyde, Mr. James H.
Jones, Mr. Roland
Kemp, Mr. L. W.
Magruder, Mrs. Hamilton
Maresh, Dr. Henry R.
Milbry, Mrs. C. H.
Moody, Col. W. L.
Moore, Mrs. John M.
Morehead, Mr. C. R.
Morris, Mr. J. S.
Parten, Mr. J. R.
Pew, Mr. John G.
Powell, Miss Anna
Randall, Dr. Edward
Scarbrough, Mr. and Mrs. Lem
Schmidt, Mr. John
Sinclair, Mr. J. L.
Staiti, Mrs. H. T.
Stone, Mr. Hugh Lamar
Streeter, Mr. Thomas
Tenney, Rev. S. M.
Thompson, Mr. Brooks
Timm, Mr. C. A.
Todd, Mr. Chas. S.
Waggener, Mr. Leslie
Walker, Mr. J. A.
Webb, Mr. Mack
West, Miss Elizabeth
Willacy, Mr. John G.
Williams, Judge O. W.
Williamson, Judge J. D.
Wythe, Mr. George
Young, Mr. Eldon
Kenyon College
PATRONS AND SUSTAINING MEMBERS
Patrons contribute to the work of the Association $500, payable over a
period of five years; Sustaining Members $250. The List of Patrons and
Sustaining Members follows:
Barker, Mr. Eugene C.
Blaffer, Mr. R. L.
Clayton, Mr. W. L.
De Golyer, Mr. E.
Denman, Mr. LeRoy
Francis, Mr. W. H.
Hager, Mr. Dilworth S.
Hill, Mr. George A., Jr.
Hughes, Mr. J. K.
Hutcheson, Mr. Palmer
Karcher, Mr. J. C.
Maercky, Mr. P. George
Perry, Mrs. Hally Bryan
Russ, Mr. Leon F.
Moss, Mr. H. S.
Shepherd, Mr. James L., Jr
Smith, Mr. E. L.
Suman, Mr. John R.
Stark, Mr. H. J. L.
Webb, Mr. W. P.
Weiss, Mr. W. C.
Wheelock, Mr. Lloyd
Wilson, Mr. W. D.
Wrather, Mr. W. E.
American Liberty Oil Company
Houston Oil Company
CONTENTS
Early Texas and the National
Archives Ralph G. Lounsbury - - 203
The Free Negro in Harris County,
Texas Andrew Forest Muir - - 214
Life of General Don Manuel de
Mier Y Terán Ohland Morton - - 239
Simms' Michael Bonham William Stanley Hoole - - 255
Texas Collection H. Bailey Carroll - - 263
Letters and Documents 272
Affairs of the Association 278
Book Reviews: Lewis, Between Sun and Sod; Carroll (ed.),
Guadal P'a: The Journal of Lieutenant L. W. Abert, from
Bent's Fort to St. Louis in 1845; Rister, Land Hunger:
David L. Payne and the Oklahoma Boomers; American
Guide Series, Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State;
Espinosa, Crusaders of the Rio Grande: The Story of Don
Diego de Vargas and the Reconquest and Refounding of
New Mexico; Keech, Pagans Praying; Keech, Children Sing
in New Mexico; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy;
McGinty, Louisiana Redeemed: The Overthrow of Carpet-
bag Rule, 1876-1880; Nixon, Possum Trot. Rural Commu-
nity, South; Llewellyn and Hoebel, The Cheyenne Way.
Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence; Uni-
versidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, No. 3, Julio-Sep-
tiembre, 1941, Filosofia y Letras ----- 279
Book Notes and Acknowledgments
Contributors - 299
THE SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Vol. XLVI JANUARY, 1943 No. 3
EARLY TEXAS AND THE NATIONAL
ARCHIVES
The National Archives as it exists today is the culmination
of a long process of evolution in the concepts and practices of
record preservation in the United States. Need for a depository
for the preservation of non-current records of the Federal Gov-
ernment became evident during the early years of national ex-
istence. Despite the fact that a considerable volume of papers
was accumulating in offices in Washington, and despite the
absence of adequate storage facilities and the consequent loss
of valuable records resulting from fire, dampness, pilfering, and
illegal disposition, no definite policy of preservation was adopted
during the nation's formative years. Even after the Civil War,
when major departments found themselves overwhelmed with
burdensome inactive files, no practical method of caring for non-
current material was adopted, although several projects for the
creation of warehouses or more elaborate depositories were en-
tertained from time to time. About the turn of the century,
however, new impetus was given to the movement for the con-
servation of official records. The initiative came largely from
trained historians and from national, regional and local histori-
cal societies. Among the enthusiastic pioneers in this endeavor
were such scholars as Barker and Winkler in Texas, and among
the organizations which took a lead in the movement was the
Texas State Historical Association. These men and this society,
together with similar individuals and groups throughout the
country, deserve signal recognition for inaugurating a move-
ment of such importance and amplitude. Their efforts led to
the development of what Dr. Solon J. Buck has fittingly termed
"archival consciousness," This awareness of the need to conserve
archival materials first manifested itself in the states, resulting
in the establishment of several depositories, and culminated
eventually in the creation of The National Archives, which first
opened its doors in November, 1935.
Essentially, The National Archives is a depository for non-
current records of the Government of the United States. A large
part of its work, therefore, consists in rendering service to
other Federal agencies; it is called upon constantly to furnish
information to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches
of the Government. At the present time, a most important
function consists of providing data for use by various offices
concerned with national defense, including not only the older
agencies from which many of the records have been obtained,
but also many of the newly created organizations. Therefore,
it will be observed, The National Archives serves a much broader
purpose than those institutions which concentrate upon the ac-
quisition of manuscripts considered to possess historical signifi-
cance, such as many public and private libraries and museums
throughout the country. Consequently, in describing the ma-
terials and facilities for private historical research in The
National Archives, only one aspect of the functions of that
institution will receive consideration here.
The historical investigator will be interested primarily in the
quantity and character of the material available. At present,
The National Archives has custody of a wide variety of Federal
records, approximating 300,000 cubic feet in volume. These
represent non-current files of the Senate, all of the major ex-
ecutive departments, and many independent agencies, both ex-
tant and defunct. The quantity, type, and date of records re-
ceived from these offices vary considerably. In general, the mass
of the material is dated since the establishment of the present
Government in 1789. However, a few files of "pre-Federal"
documents have been acquired; and among the notable groups
of files that were not originally created by agencies of the Gov-
ernment of the United States are remnants of the archives of
the Confederate States of America, which hold many items of
interest to Texans. The bulk of the accessions consists of files
from the Washington headquarters, but records of field offices
comprise a fair proportion of the total.
1 From many of these
records, the scholar may secure a great deal of information
concerning a particular state or region, including a considerable
amount of data relating to Texas. An excellent idea of the con-
tents of the institution may be obtained from the recently pub-
lished Guide
to
Material
in
The
National
Archives,
and its
processed quarterly supplements which appear under the title,
National
Archives
Accessions;
as well as from the Annual
Reports
of the Archivist of the United States.
The prospective searcher will also be interested in learning
of the existence of other and more detailed guides to such a vast
quantity and variety of records. Effective use of archival ma-
terial depends largely upon the existence of adequate finding
mediums by which record groups and series may be identified
readily, and individual items within them located with relative
speed and precision. Some branches of the Government have
been extremely conscientious in caring for their records and in
maintaining efficient keys to their material. Other offices have
been so negligent that not only have their files required restora-
tion and arrangement after transfer, but the preparation of
locating devices has been necessary. Furthermore, some organi-
zations have surrendered large portions of their files to The
National Archives, but have retained indexes because these
often refer to both current and non-current records. Conse-
quently, the quantity and relative completeness or incomplete-
ness of available aids vary greatly when they exist at all. Shelf
lists, inventories, registers of correspondence, index volumes
and cards, and other finding mediums are often accessible.
However, many of these were prepared for use in the office of
origin, and although useful to the searcher familiar with the
functions and administrative procedure of a particular agency,
they are often of slight assistance to the uninstructed investi-
gator. Preparation of registrations of record groups, prelimi-
nary inventories, and other descriptive materials is now one of
the primary functions of The National Archives.
Before turning to a description of material relating to the
early history of Texas, it is fitting to remark that the Lone
Star State possesses many characteristics which distinguish it
from some of its neighbors of the South and West. Not only
is Texas the most "western" of the southern states, but it is
also the most "southern" of the western commonwealths. More-
over, it shares with Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona,
and California a Spanish heritage, which, because of local influ-
ences, has manifested itself in a somewhat different form from
that found elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico and the border.
The individuality of Texas, and the individualism of its inhab-
itants are products of its geographical location and historical
background as a frontier province of New Spain, a border state
of republican Mexico, an independent Republic, and a subse-
quently peripheral community of the Union and the Confed-
eracy. The characteristics which have set off Texas and Texans
a little apart from their fellow Americans were developed in
the early days of Spain, Mexico, and the Republic. That is
probably the reason why historians continue to maintain such
lively interest in this formative period, and it is, therefore,
appropriate to consider pertinent material in The National
Archives.
In presenting this description of material relating to the
history of Texas, discussion has been purposely confined to
those records which cover the period prior to annexation in
December, 1845. In so doing, it is not intended to imply that
there are no later consequential records in The National
Archives, but rather to indicate that thereafter the affairs of
the Lone Star State became so identified with those of the
Union, that items concerning the later period of the common-
wealth's history are too numerous and too dispersed to warrant
description in a paper of this length.
In approaching the records, it is well to recall that the United
States considered Texas a foreign country before 1845; and
therefore that the files which are most prolific in matter per-
tinent to the early phase of the State's development belong to
those branches of the Federal Government which are charged
with the conduct of foreign affairs and national defense. Con-
sequently, the greater volume is scattered throughout the files
of the Departments of State and War and of the Senate of the
United States, although some additional data is to be found in
the files of other agencies.
Many Texas items are found in the records of the United States
Senate, both in. General Records, 1789-1935, and in Executive
Papers, 1789-1901. These relate to the negotiation, ratification,
and enforcement of treaties with Spain, Mexico, and the Re-
public of Texas; delimitation of the frontier, diplomatic and
consular representation, commerce, British and French inter-
ests and activities in Texas, the struggle for independence from
Mexico, the establishment of the Lone Star Republic, and the
subsequent fight for annexation. The files contain numerous
petitions and memorials from individuals, associations, and
state legislatures concerning the Texas question and the policies
of the United States toward Mexico in the years preceding
annexation and the Mexican War. Topically, Senate materials
do not differ essentially from those found in the files of the
executive departments; many documents have been published,
either publicly or privately, and have been consulted by scholars
for many years, but no one has undertaken the task of ascer-
taining what proportion of these papers has been printed, nor
how fully individual documents have been reproduced.
In the records of the Department of State, early Texas ma-
terial is to be found both in the files of its Washington Office
and in those of several of its Foreign Service posts. Records
of departmental headquarters include treaties and conventions,
both concluded and incomplete, with Spain, Mexico, and the
Republic of Texas, concerning peace and friendship, commerce
and navigation, claims, and territorial limits. They contain
diplomatic and consular instructions and despatches, communi-
cations to and from the governments of those countries, a large
number of claims settled under various agreements which give
in detail stories of individual demands by Americans for re-
dress from Mexico in particular, as well as counter-claims filed
against the United States, and boundary papers. Supplementary
material, much of it already familiar to scholars, is found in
the Special Agents Series; Domestic and Miscellaneous Letters;
Orleans and New Mexico Territorial Papers; and a special col-
lection of documents concerning the filibustering expedition of
José Alvarez de Toledo, 1811-1816, which was closely associ-
ated with the Burr conspiracy. Besides the foregoing, diplo-
matic records treating of our relations with Great Britain and
France contain many items pertinent to the early history of
Texas, while occasional references to the Republic are encoun-
tered in Consular Despatches, Havana, for the years 1836-1845.
Among the manuscript maps are a series of drawings made
by Army Engineers for the Department of State, which rep-
resent the original survey of 1838-1840 of the Louisiana-Texas
boundary. They show the Sabine River from its mouth to the
point of intersection with the 32nd parallel and the meridian
boundary extending northward from that point to the Red
River. The scale is one inch to the mile. The manuscripts are
from the files of the Department of State, but printed reduc-
tions, published in Senate
Document
No.
199,
27th Congress,
2nd Session, are also available.
Many documents of the Washington Office of the Department
of State have been published officially or privately, in whole
or in part, and of these a considerable number concern rela-
tions of the United States with Spain, Mexico, and Texas. Gen-
erally, publication has been selective, items and excerpts having
been chosen either to present the attitude of the governments
concerned on questions of mutual interest, or to illustrate the
evolution of American foreign policy in this hemisphere. The
objective of the editor should be kept in mind in using this
published material, and the investigator should by no means
assume that all significant data has appeared in print simply
because citations only to published documents are found in the
works of scholars.
It is well to point out that while editors and historians have
drawn heavily on diplomatic material, they have often under-
emphasized the value of consular instructions and despatches,
except where these impinge obviously upon major questions of
foreign policy. This material is, perhaps, too commonplace to
attract the attention of scholars interested only in the higher
realms of international politics. Nevertheless, these files con-
tain items which are essential sources for studies of an eco-
nomic or social nature, and which are vital for the proper com-
prehension of many phases of American penetration into the
Southwest, as well as for the internal development of Texas
and Mexico. The particular attention of the investigator is
called to consular instructions and despatches of Galveston,
Goliad, Matagorda, Velasco, Santa Fé, Matamoros, Saltillo, Mon-
terey, Tampico, Chihuahua, and Mexico City, which hold a
considerable volume of information concerning the settlement of
Texas, American commercial penetration into Mexico, the Texas
struggle for independence, the Santa Fé expedition of 1841, and
annexation. Not only are the manuscript despatches from these
posts of historical worth, but among the inclosures are numer-
ous early Texas and Mexican imprints which possess great in-
terest and value. Furthermore, the extensive series of Miscel-
laneous Letters for the years 1836 to 1845, contain a large
number of items concerning Texas, among which, for example,
are a few concerning the alleged imprisonment of Davy Crockett
in Mexico. Inadequately indexed, and bound in chronological
order, these documents are too frequently overlooked by search-
ers because of the time and patience required in examining them.
The great group of records of Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State also contains some early Texan material.
A large part of these papers, insofar as they consist of inactive
records of extant diplomatic and consular offices and archival
remains of defunct posts, have been placed in The National
Archives. Pertinent to the early history of Texas are the re-
mains of the files of the United States Legation in that Republic,
1836-1844, consisting of a single volume; the records of the
Galveston Consulate, 1838-1844, two volumes; non-current ma-
terial from the American Embassy and Consulate General at
Mexico City, two groups of considerable bulk; and inactive files
of consulates near the present border, such as Matamoros, Mon-
terey, and Tampico. Unfortunately, some of the records of
other posts in this vicinity do not exist for the early period,
either because of mischance, or because the offices were not
established until after the Mexican War.
Existing records of Foreign Service Posts in Texas and Mex-
ico contain a good deal of interesting data, particularly for the
era of the Texas Republic. Topically, this material does not
differ essentially from that previously described, as it treats
of American penetration into Texas; diplomatic issues arising
between the United States and Mexico relative to commerce,
claims, and the protection of the lives and property of citizens
of the United States and the Lone Star Republic in Mexico; the
Santa Fé expedition of 1841, and consequent negotiations for
release of members taken prisoner; the Texan raid on the Santa
Fé trail in 1843; Indian affairs; and annexation. Although
official despatches and instructions in these series duplicate
documents of the Washington Office, the files of these diplomatic
and consular offices contain a considerable number and variety
of records not encountered elsewhere. In this connection, it
should be borne in mind that these posts carried on extensive
business which was not always reported fully to Washington,
and concerning the conduct of which the Department of State
permitted the exercise of a certain amount of discretion. Many
matters, principally of local interest, and not considered of
sufficient consequence to report to the Department in detail,
are recorded in these files. Correspondence passing between
the legations, the Consulate General, and the consulates in
Mexico and Texas, communications to and from the local
authorities, letters exchanged with business houses, shipmas-
ters, overland traders, and private individuals, all reveal phases
of historical development which are often either unmentioned
or only discussed briefly in formal intra-departmental des-
patches. Among items of particular interest are the applica-
tions of foreign residents and travellers in Mexico for cartas
de
seguridad,
and the lists of applicants, which are found in
the files of the Consulate General, as well as appeals on the
part of relatives and friends of Texan prisoners, that were
received at the Legation and Consulate General in Mexico City,
following capture of the Santa Fé Expedition of 1841. Letters
from American business men reveal the wide ramifications of
their activities, which extended sometimes from the United
States and Texas throughout all of northern Mexico.
The identity of certain series of records of Foreign Service
Posts with diplomatic and consular material in the files of the
Washington Office of the Department of State has led to the
hasty and erroneous conclusion that the files of these posts
contain nothing of historical value. These records have been
ignored to a large degree by conventional historians accustomed
to consult the well arranged and carefully preserved files of
the Department's headquarters. At present, therefore, records
of Foreign Service Posts remain a relatively untapped source,
not only for the early history of Texas, but also for the history
of Mexico and other Latin-American countries. The existence
of the records of the Foreign Service Posts in The National
Archives constitutes an invitation and a challenge to the his-
torian who has the time and patience to explore a virgin field.
Early Texas material in the files of the War Department is
interspersed throughout the records of the offices of the Sec-
retary, the Adjutant-General, the Chief of Engineers, and the
Quartermaster-General. The greater part of these papers re-
late to the defense of the Louisiana frontier, exploration of
the Far West, Indian depredations, border incidents, army ad-
ministration of frontier posts, and the military phase of the
annexation movement. Of particular interest is correspondence
of General James Wilkinson, which also includes a few items
concerning Philip Nolan, in the files of the Office of the Secretary
of War. Furthermore, those interested in the history of western
exploration will be gratified to learn that the official papers of
Zebulon Pike, which were returned by the Mexican Government
to the United States in 1910, are now in The National Archives.
These records, covering his exploits in the Southwest, including
his military and scientific notes made on the upper Arkansas,
and some correspondence, are supplemented by other papers
concerning his detention and release by the Spanish authorities
and his return to the United States. Registers of Contracts
of the Office of Quartermaster-General for the early decades
of the nineteenth century contain a quantity of information
concerning transportation of troops and baggage, procurement
of food, feed, fuel, and other supplies for the military posts
situated along the borders of the United States in Louisiana
and Arkansas. In addition, the files of the Quartermaster-
General contain incoming and outgoing correspondence relative
to subsistence, pay, and transportation of troops in the south-
western border region. Of particular interest are letters di-
rected to posts in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, and those
received from officers stationed at those points. For example,
a letter from Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, to General E. P.
Gaines, Fort Jesup, La.; April 25, 1836, refers to a conference
between the Secretary of State and the Mexican Minister in
Washington concerning affairs in Texas and along the border
and admonishes Gaines to make no attempt to seize any terri-
tory in behalf of the United States, but urges him to protect
neutral rights in the struggle between the Texans and Mexi-
cans. There are also a number of letters referring to the move-
ment of troops to the Texas border and their eventual occupa-
tion of the territory of the Republic during the summer and
early fall of 1845, pending completion of the final steps in the
movement of annexation. Another item of interest is a report,
made in 1846, upon the condition of the vessels of the Texan
Navy which were transferred to the United States following
annexation. In War Department files there is an enormous
amount of Mexican War materials, much of which is found in
the records of the Adjutant-General, and which is made acces-
sible through a useful index. Records of the Secretary's Office
and other branches of the Department also hold a considerable
volume of such data.
The files of the Quartermaster-General contain a map of Texas
compiled for the Department of State by Colonel J. J. Abert
and Lieutenant W. H. Emory of the Corps of Topographical
Engineers, which was published in 1844. In addition, there are
several maps depicting the internal development of the Republic
between 1830 and 1844. The earliest is an engraving of 1830,
copyrighted and published by Tanner in Philadelphia, which
shows Texas, Coahuila, and adjacent parts of Mexico and the
United States, including the location of the Austin and DeWitt
colonies. This is comparable with a similar map, copyrighted
in 1835, and published in Tanner's New
American
Atlas
in 1839,
which shows further grants to empresarios,
as well as rectifica-
tions of the Louisiana boundary and the coast line. Both of
Tanner's maps are colored. The latest map, a wax engraving,
copyrighted and published at New York by Breese and Morse
in 1844, shows the incipient county organization of the Republic
just previous to annexation. As finding mediums created by
the War Department usually refer to individuals, military units,
and posts, the investigator should possess a good knowledge of
his field before attempting to use the records of this agency
with any expectation of success. A good understanding of the
administrative history of the War Department and the Army
is most helpful in getting the most out of these materials.
Early Texas materials in the files of other departments is
fugitive in character. The Navy Department's records contain
logs of the San
Bernard,
Austin,
and Wharton,
vessels of the
Texas Navy, 1839-1844. Correspondence between the Treasury
Department and the Collector of Customs at St. Louis includes
a few letters concerning Southwestern commerce. Worthy of
notice in the records of the Department of Justice are opinions
and correspondence of the Attorney-General concerning Texan
affairs, particularly the papers assembled by the Government
of the United States in the 1890's, when litigation was pending
over the northern boundary of the State. This file contains
many documents relating to the early history of Texas under
Spain, Mexico, and the Republic. Furthermore, painstaking
search in the files of the Indian Office, Department of the In-
terior, will reveal some information concerning nomadic tribes
in the vicinity of Texas, as well as extensive data concerning
the aborigines who were settled in nearby Indian Territory. In
addition, the records of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and
Navigation, Department of Commerce, include several enroll-
ments of vessels in the coastwise trade which were effected at
Galveston in 1846. These show that a few merchant ships, which
had sailed previously under the Lone Star Flag, were at this
time enrolled under the navigation laws of the United States.
Much of the material relating to the early history of Texas,
described in this paper, has been known and to some extent
used by scholars for many years. Until recently these materials
were widely dispersed; many were in bad condition, and not con-
veniently accessible. Although some Government files contain-
ing Texas items are still deposited in various buildings in Wash-
ington, a large volume of material of particular interest to
members of the Texas State Historical Association is now con-
centrated for the first time in a single repository, The National
Archives. Furthermore, the keen interest displayed by Texans
in the beginnings of the Lone Star State has resulted in the
adoption of a progressive attitude on the part of scholars and
institutions toward the acquisition of copies of some of these
historical materials. Within the past few years, the University
of Texas has led the way by acquiring extensive microcopies of
documents in The National Archives relating both to the early
and later history of the State. These accessions include not only
much of the material described in these pages but also many
items which treat of subsequent events such as the Mexican
War, the War Between the States, the Confederacy, and Mexi-
can relations. These records offer themselves as the possessors
of secrets still unrevealed, which will constitute the basis for
new chapters in the evolution of our country and of a state
which has played a prominent role in the dramatic story of the
development of the civilization of the new world.
FOOTNOTES:
courts is still scattered throughout the country in various depositories. The
Survey of Federal Archives, conducted under the auspices of The National
Archives and the Work Projects Administration, has accomplished signal
service in locating and describing these materials. Several volumes, descrip-
tive of Federal records in Texas, have been published in processed form.
THE FREE NEGRO IN HARRIS COUNTY
TEXAS
1
Viewed as competition by white labor, patronized by white
benefactors, and forbidden to associate with their kinspeople,
still slaves, free negroes in the South dragged out a miserable
existence. So unsatisfactory was their freedom that they often
voluntarily chose masters and placed themselves in servitude, in
accordance with the legal provisions of most if not all southern
states. Despite their social and economic privation, they never-
theless enjoyed a relative security. To be sure, their legal position
was humble, resembling that of metics in a Greek city, resident
strangers. They could neither hold office, vote, sit on juries, nor
give testimony against any except slaves and other free negroes.
Their offenses against property and persons were penalized
as though committed by slaves, more severely than the same
offenses committed by whites. Despite these restrictions, they
were able to live undisturbed by legal agencies, to receive jus-
tice at the criminal bar, and to assert their freedom against
illegal seizure. Cases drawn from the records of Harris County,
doubtless typical of the South despite its late settlement, fur-
nish proof of these conditions.
Even when it permitted free negroes, Texas strictly regulated
their position. A negro, it first ruled, was one who had as
much as one-fourth negro blood,
2 but later he became one with
as little as one-eighth.
3 Negroes were punished alike, whether
slave or free. While whites were punished with death, impris-
onment in the penitentiary and county jail, forfeiture and sus-
pension of civil and political rights, and pecuniary fines,
4
negroes were punished with death, branding, imprisonment in
the penitentiary, whipping, standing in the pillory, and labor
upon public works.
5 "Insurrection or any attempt to excite
it," by free negroes, "poisoning or attempting to poison, commit-
ting a rape or attempting it on any free white female, assault-
ing a free white person, with intent to kill, or with a weapon
likely to produce death, or maiming a free white person, arson,
murder, burglary" all were punished with death.
6 A free negro
who was convicted of using insulting, abusive, or threatening
language to a white person should receive between twenty-five
and one hundred lashes.
7 He could not play cards or other
games of chance with whites, for the law provided punishment
for whites who so played with their inferiors.
8 A free negro
could not "preach the gospel or ... exhort at any religious
or other meeting" unless at least two slaveholders were present.
9
An act approved on May 11, 1846, forbade a free negro to hire
slaves,
10 though no statute prevented his owning them.
On the other hand, the State insured against the sale of free
persons into slavery, although the intention of the law was
more likely the protection of whites than of negroes.
Every person who shall unlawfully sell any free
person for a slave, or hold any free person as a slave
against his will, knowing the person so sold or held
to be free, shall be punished by confinement to hard
labor in the Penitentiary not less than one year nor
more than ten years, or by fine not exceeding one
thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the county
jail not exceeding one year.
11
While it is doubtful that any convictions were had under this
law, weakened by the clause "knowing the person so sold or
held to be free," it nevertheless provided a theoretical safe-
guard against illegal seizure.
Numerically, free negroes were scarce, though there are no
satisfactory figures giving the exact number in Harris County
at any time. The Houston Morning
Star,
in 1839, guessed that
there were twenty or thirty in Houston, perhaps an over-
estimate.
12 The only official statements are those of the cen-
suses of 1850 and 1860, but the accuracy of these is doubtful.
13
The 1850 census, the first taken by the United States in Texas,
named seven free negroes in Harris County: Dick Ellett, aged
50 years;
14 Emily Routh, 23, Mary J. Routh, 3 months;
15 Abby
Townsend, 14, Stama Townsend, 40, William Townsend, 1;
16
and Charlotte Vince, 38.
17 By 1860, the number had increased
imperceptibly to eight: Fanny McFarland, 58 ;18;
18 Emily Mimms,
30, Ida Mimms, 6, Rose Mimms, 3, Sam Mimms, 4 months;
19
G. Phillips, 60 ;
20 Fanny Sneed, 90 ;
21 and Sally Vince, 50.
22
What became of those listed in 1850 but not in 1860? Perhaps
they died, or moved away, or were not counted, or were counted
as slaves. Whence came those enumerated in 1860 but not in
1850? Perhaps they moved in, or were emancipated during
the decade, or were not counted in 1850, or were counted as
slaves.
All free negroes in the South were either manumitted slaves
or descendants of manumitted slaves. There were, then, but
two ways for free negroes to get to Harris County or to any
other American locality. Either as free negroes they moved there
or they were there emancipated. Legislation in the Republic
and State of Texas, as elsewhere, was concerned first with free
negroes within its jurisdiction at its passage and secondly with
further immigration and emancipation, both by deed and will.
As shall be seen, with but rare exceptions, free negroes were
legislatively forbidden to remain in Texas. Law, however, does
not enforce itself, and for the social historian it is not the
statute that is the more significant but the manner in and
the degree to which the machinery of administration and adju-
dication applied the statutory law in specific instances.
Quite logically the status of free negroes already resident
in Texas was handled legislatively first. Though not returned
by Governor Henry Smith, the ordinance of the General Coun-
cil of the Provisional Government, passed January 5, 1836,
seems, to have had the force of law.
23 It recognized as citizens
those free negroes then in Texas. The Constitution of 1836
altered this by requiring free negroes to secure Congress' per-
mission to remain.
24 President Houston, never a racial bigot,
on June 5, 1837, eased this constitutional prohibition by grant-
ing to those free negroes living in Texas on March 2, 1836, "the
privilege of remaining in any part of the republic so long as
they choose; on the condition of performing all the duties re-
quired of them by law."
25 On February 5, 1840, President
Lamar, more race-conscious than Houston, approved an act,
which repealed all laws contrary to its meaning and spirit and
commanded all free negroes to remove from the Republic be-
fore January 1, 1842.
26 In May he issued a proclamation, in
pursuance of the act, instructing sheriffs and constables to
carry it into effect.
27 Considering that a number of free
negroes had fought in the Texas Army during the Revolution,
President Houston, who succeeded Lamar, on December 21,
1842, remitted for a time the penalty of the act of February
5, 1840, "provided those who wish to obtain the benefit of this
proclamation, apply to the Chief Justice of the County in which
they reside, and make satisfactory proof of their good charac-
ter, and also enter into bond and security, in the penal sum
of five hundred dollars, payable to the President during the
term specified in this proclamation."
28 This remission remained
in effect until February 5, 1845. After that date, it would
appear illegal for any free negro to remain within Texas, unless
the Legislature provided specific relief. No Harris County negro
was so relieved.
Despite all this legislative thundering and executive evasion,
those free negroes already in Texas quietly went their way and
disregarded both Congress and President. Some few, no doubt,
found other places more inviting than Texas. Emily D. West,
who had come out from New York with Colonel James Morgan,
in September, 1835, requested a passport that she might return
to her native state,
29 but she was exceptional. For the most
part, free negroes remained despite the disapproval of the law.
Local executives and magistrates, generally, were not only too
busy with more pressing problems, but they were positively
disinclined to interfere. Chief Justice Isaac N. Moreland signed
every one of the five petitions submitted to Congress by Harris
County free negroes.
30 Some bear the signatures of practically
every man who held political office in Harris County during the
Republic, as well as of several members of the cabinet and the
highest ranking officers of the Army.
31 Occasionally, however,
some attempt was made to enforce the law. On February 28,
1842, the Houston City Council resolved "That the City Marshall
and all other City and County officers be and are hereby re-
quested and required forthwith to enforce the laws of the
Republic against Free Negroes upon all Free Negroes now living
within this corporation."
32 Considering this as the rank im-
pertinence of a body who had no control over them, the Harris
County constabulary certainly disregarded it, and there is no
evidence that the city marshal did otherwise. But one free
negro took advantage of President Houston's remission of pen-
alty. On March 3, 1843, Ann Tucker went before Chief Justice
Moreland, fulfilled all of the provisions of the proclamation,
and was discharged until February 5, 1845.
33 Ann, who had
been in Houston as early as March 5, 1840, when she purchased
a lot from the notorious Pamelia Mann,
34 remained in Houston
until her death, January 1, 1846.
35 Four other free negroes
remained without hindrance, though they apparently did not
comply with the law. Fanny McFarland, who was emancipated
by William McFarland in Texas in 1835,
36 lived in Houston at
least from 1838 to 1866,
37 although she was in Brownsville at
the taking of the 1850 census.
38 She engaged in a number of
real estate transfers and managed to make a profit on her in-
vestment. Despite the refusal of Congress to grant her per-
mission to remain, she stayed until the United States Govern-
ment made her and all negroes citizens. Dick Ellett first came
to Texas in about 1820, but he left before the Revolution. On
March 17, 1836, he returned on the schooner William
Francis
which landed at Copano. When he misplaced his emancipation
papers, William B. Reeves and George Hunter Bringhurst, both
of whom held public offices, made affidavits to his good charac-
ter, but there is no evidence that he entered into bond.
39 Sally
Vince, who maintained her freedom at law, as will be later
pointed out, remained undisturbed, getting into no public records
other than the decennial censuses. Diana Leonard, a washer-
woman in Houston, had come to Texas in 1835, possibly with
Emily D. West, and had spent one year in Colonel James Mor-
gan's service.
40 Congress refused to act on her petition to re-
main, and it is possible that after some time she returned to
the United States.
The numerous legislative bodies of Texas also took precau-
tions against an increase in the free negro population by making
provisions against immigration and emancipation. The General
Council's ordinance of January 5, 1836, which recognized as
citizens free negroes then in Texas, prohibited the immigra-
tion of additional free negroes.
41 The congressional act of Feb-
ruary 5, 1840, also made illegal their immigration and provided
for the selling into slavery those who violated it.
42 These laws
were likewise disregarded, and free negroes not only came to
Texas, but, fearing the loss of their credentials more than the
operation of the law, they boldly filed their emancipation papers
with the county clerk.
Nelson Kavanaugh, who had been emancipated in Richmond,
Kentucky, and had lived as a free man for some time in Clinton,
Mississippi, moved to Texas in the spring of 1837 and plied his
trade as barber in Houston.
43 Congress declined acting on his
petition to remain, and he soon dropped from sight, probably
returning to the United States.
In September, 1837, Robert Bushare, of Attakapas, Louisiana,
brought an ex-slave of his, Palmer Jackson, to Texas in a whale
boat. Jackson lived unmolested in Houston for several months,
and it was not until March, 1838, that he found his freedom
hampered, and that due only to his leaving Houston and going
to Washington County.
44 So long as a free negro remained in a
place in which he was known by whites he was secure, but when
he went beyond the limits of his acquaintance, he was more
than likely to find himself jailed as a runaway slave.
In the spring of 1838, Thomas McAllister presented to Mira-
beau B. Lamar, in Houston, a letter from Samuel A. Roberts,
of Mobile, in which Roberts stated McAllister had been head
waiter in Mobile hotels and steward on the best packet steam-
boats on the Alabama River. Roberts heartily recommended
that Lamar hire McAllister as his factotum.
45 While Lamar did
not do this, neither did he turn McAllister over to the sheriff.
In July of the same year, Henry Tucker immigrated to
Houston and established a barber shop.
46 If the men who signed
his petition to Congress patronized his service, his clientele was
most distinguished, for the names on the petition read as a
register of the cabinet and the military command. Tucker dis-
appeared, but it is possible that Ann Tucker, who made bond,
was his widow.
One master accompanied his manumitted slaves to Texas and
personally appeared before the county clerk to declare on oath
that he had set them free. Eldred Barker, of Natchitoches,
Louisiana, on March 6, 1839, acknowledged before County Clerk
DeWitt Clinton Harris that on November 8, 1837, Rose and her
four children, Henry, Edmon, Clisaan, and Mary had made the
last payment on their freedom; whereupon he had emancipated
them.
47
In 1839, Zilpha Husk, a native of Richmond County, Georgia,
48
who had established her freedom in the circuit court of Autauga
County, Alabama, in November, 1837, was in Houston, receiving
from George B. McLeskey, of Washington County, the revoca-
tion of the apprenticeship of her daughter, Emily, made in
Montgomery, Alabama, November 13, 1837.
49 Emily probably
was as well fitted to take care of herself as the majority of
white women, for there is no reason to assume that McLeskey
had not lived up to his contract and taught Emily to read and
to write and instructed her in "the art of carding spinning weav-
ing and sewing."
50 Zilpha's three petitions to Congress failed to
secure for her permission to remain in Texas,
51 but she re-
mained nevertheless.
But one prosecution clouded this disregard and contempt for
the law. In April, 1839, a number of free negroes, variously
estimated from eight to twenty, was haled before the city
recorder. According to the editor of the Morning
Star,
these
arrests were the first attempts to enforce the ordinance of
January 5, 1836.
52 If we may trust the lack of evidence to
the contrary, they were also the last. Counsel for the defense
denied the competency of the court and argued "that so far
from the free Negroes being prohibited from residing in the
Republic, or the 9th Art. of the Constitution in the slightest
degree strengthening the previous acts of the Convention in
this particular, it was susceptible of being construed into
an
invitation
held
out
to
free
Negroes
to
emigrate
to
the
Republic!
--For," he asked, "how can they petition Congress for permis-
sion to remain, unless they first emigrate to the country?"
53 The
recorder, humbly viewed the jurisdiction of his office and dis-
missed the defendants. On the following day, the city council
enacted an ordinance under which the marshal should arrest,
at the end of thirty days, all free negroes and carry them be-
fore the district judge.
54 Two months later the grand jury ad-
dressed the district judge on the evils of having free negroes
at large.
As a population, they are much worse than useless:
in general, they neither perform any productive labor,
nor exercise reputable callings. With scarcely an ex-
ception, they are addicted to vice and the commission
of petty crime. They are often irresponsible instru-
ments in the hands of white men. But it is chiefly the
mischievous influence which the free Negroes exert
over our slaves, to which the Grand Jurors would in-
vite especial attention. ... A family of free Negroes
commonly presents the impersonation of indolence, ig-
norance and dishonesty. Such a family, unless strictly
and perpetually watched, and kept at a distance, will
render the slaves of the plantations near which they
are situated, dissatisfied, disobedient, restless, thievish
and corrupt. In the towns where the facilities for dis-
honesty by slaves are much greater than in the coun-
try, the presence of free negroes is felt as a very great
evil. In addition to their other vices and petty crimes,
the free Negroes being addicted to Gambling, initiate
the slaves, who supply the means of pursuing it by
stealing from their masters. The Grand Jurors . . .
would likewise mention, that they have been informed
on undoubted authority, that one free Negro at least is
in correspondence with the abolitionists of the north,
if not an emissary of theirs.
55
All of this was a serious charge, but it appears to have been
not entirely true. The law continued to be inoperative, but no
one seems to have suffered unduly, as one would expect if the
accusations were correct.
In 1846, Peter Allen, a barber, moved to Houston. He did
not petition for permission to remain in Texas until 1863, after
he had served as a body servant to an officer of Terry's Regi-
ment during the battles of Woodsonville and Shiloh.
56 The
Legislature refused his request.
As late as 1847, free negroes continued to immigrate. On
March 31st, of that year, George William, vaguely described
as "aged about twenty years height five feet five 1/2 inches, com-
plexion Black, Hair Black & wooley scars none by profession a
Mariner Born in Boston Massachusetts," filed with the county
clerk an instrument signed on May 7, 1845, by Adam P. Pentz,
a notary public in New York City, stating William was "a free-
man and citizen of the United States of America and entitled
to be respected accordingly in person & property at all times
and places both by sea and land in the due prosecution of his
lawful concerns."
57 This was unmitigated abolitionist senti-
ment, but it seems to have passed unnoticed.
The Constitution of 1836 provided that no slaveholder should
emancipate slaves without the consent of Congress, unless he
sent them out of the Republic.
58 This was laid open for modi-
fication but not modified by the Constitution of 1845, which
granted to the Legislature the power to pass laws by which
masters could emancipate their negroes;
59 the Legislature did
not provide any such laws. The 1861 or Confederate Consti-
tution of Texas absolutely forbade emancipation.
No citizen, or other person residing in this State
shall have power by deed or will, to take effect in this
state or out of it, in any manner whatsoever, directly
or indirectly, to emancipate his slave or slaves.
60
Two slaveholders emancipated their negroes by deed, but both
before secession. On January 4, 1847, the writer's great-grand-
mother, Cynthia Annie (Meriwether) Ewing, sold to William
Gammell, Thomas M. Bagby, and Archibald Wynns, for $400,
a negro woman named Lyle. Gammell, Bagby, and Wynns were
to use their efforts to induce the Legislature to authorize them
to emancipate Lyle; in addition to which they agreed "to permit
Said negro Lyle to go hence free and to use her time as her
own on condition of her proper behaviour."
61 Bagby filed the
deed in the county clerk's office at Austin and petitioned the
Legislature for permission to emancipate the negro woman.
62
This the Legislature refused to grant.
On January 24, 1859, Nathaniel Bailey sold freedom to his
forty-year-old female slave, Keziah, and appointed the same
Thomas M. Bagby "to have and take charge of said Negro
woman and to allow her to enjoy the fruits and revenues of
her labor & to exercise just so much control over her as will
be for her own good & in accordance with the laws of the
State."
63 Here we have a clearer statement of what Bagby
was doing. Since the Legislature only reluctantly gave its per-
mission for manumission, so far as official curiosity was con-
cerned, Lyle and Keziah were Bagby's slaves, but in actuality
they were free negroes.
Four Harris County residents emancipated their negroes in
their wills. On January 25, 1837, James Routh, an old and
well-to-do settler on Galveston Bay, made his will, which is
remarkable for its great length if for nothing else. The first
intimation of a philanthropic impulse is a bequest of three
hundred and twenty acres "to my negro woman Sylvia & her
six children, to wit: Sally Ann, Mary Jane, Emily, Jackson,
Isabella and Margaret."
64 Since chattel could not hold title to
property, one is mystified until somewhat later in the lengthy
document, at which point Mr. Routh got to the nub of his
intentions.
I hereby will and bequeath full freedom to my negro
woman, Sylvia & her six children and her further in-
crease . . . nevertheless upon the following condi-
tions: Sally Ann and Mary Jane to be bound to live,
as servents with Ophelia [Mrs. James] Morgan untill
they arrive at the age of twenty one years—the balance
of the children to live with their Mother, Sylvia, to be
supported and protected by her, untill their Guardian
may think proper to bind them out, which is to be
done, untill they shall arrive at the age of twenty one
years, to have their freedom to all intents and purposes,
as far forth as the laws of the country will allow
To Sylvia, I will her full freedom at my death pro-
vided she takes care & protects her children as here-
tofore stated . . . and I wish my executors to en-
devor to have Sylvias children before named, edu-
cated, so far as to read and write, & to pay for the same
out of my Estate and hereby authorize them to appro-
priate three hundred Dollars for that purpose.
I will and bequeath to negro man Jim, at my death
full freedom for his meritorous services, & requeast my
executors to see that he obtain it. ...
And I hereby constitute & appoint my friends Dr.
George M. Patrick and Col. James Morgan my only
executors to this my last Will and testament and con-
stitute them Guardians to Sylvia & her six children,
before named as well as to Jim, whom I have set free
by these presents.
65
Routh died on July 19, 1837.
66 Unfortunately the record does
not reveal what happened between his death and April 14, 1838.
On that date, Colonel Morgan applied to Andrew Briscoe, Chief
Justice of the county, "for commitment of negro slave Silvie
belonging to the estate of said Routh, who he alleged has be-
come unruly and refused to submit to his authority."
67 Well
might Sylvia have become insubordinate, if Morgan viewed her
as a slave. Briscoe, a slaveholder himself, committed Sylvia to
the county jail "subject to the order and at the expense" of
Morgan.
68 Two days later, Morgan applied for the commit-
ment of Jim who likewise had become unruly; he too was
packed off to jail.
69 At this point Jim disappears forever from
the record, but five years later Sylvia reappears. On November
27, 1843, she petitioned the probate court for letters of guard-
ianship of Sally Ann, Mary Jane, Emily, Jackson, Isabella,
and Margaret.
70 Her request was granted, and title to the three
hundred and twenty acres on Clear Creek passed to her and
her children.
On August 24, 1844, William Smallwood, in his will, emanci-
pated his slave, June, and bequeathed her his entire estate. He
directed his executor to give June "all aid in asserting her rights
under this will."
71 Some years later, on September 27, 1852,
Sarah Noble willed her slave, Becky, to her son, Edwin B., on
condition that he emancipate her at the testator's death.
72
There was no want of justice meted to free negroes
charged with criminal offenses. In fact, it appears that not
one of them was convicted in the Harris County District Court
and but few in the City Recorder's Court. In 1838 the grand
jury indicted Richard Green for retailing goods without a li-
cense
73 but was unable to find a true bill against William White
for the more serious offense of petit larceny.
74 On December
28, 1838, the District Attorney dismissed the charge against
Green.
75 As indicated previously, the free negroes arraigned
before the City Recorder in April, 1839, were discharged for
want of jurisdiction. City Recorder D. W. Babcock, on April 3,
1840, fined Henry Tucker ten dollars and costs for fighting
with a Chinese barber named Price over ownership of some
pictures.
76 On May 18, 1849, the grand jury indicted Edmund
Mitchell, a white man, and Zilpha Husk for fornication.
77 When
a petit jury found Mitchell not guilty,
78 the district attorney
dismissed the case against the negro woman.
79
No evidence of the just treatment of the free negro is more
compelling than his ability to maintain, before slaveholding
judges and juries, cases against whites for illegally holding
him in slavery. The Harris County District Court heard two
civil suits in which negroes charged whites with holding them
in illegal servitude, and in both the negroes were victorious.
At the fall term of court, 1838, Sally Vince filed suit against
Allen Vince (who, with Wilson Strickland, was the chief char-
acter in the recent prodigious litigation in the Montgomery
County District Court and the United States District Court at
Houston over title to the Conroe oil field), charging him with
holding her, a free woman, in slavery. She based her freedom
on a deed executed by William Vince, September 7, 1834, grant-
ing her freedom at his death. Allen Vince's ownership of Sally
was devious. On April 3, 1838, Allen, administrator of William,
in his inventory of the estate, contended that William had
owned but a third interest in Sally.
Allen Vince Administrator of the estate of William
Vince, deceased being duly sworn upon his oath de-
poseth and says, that the Bill of Sale of the above
named negro Sally has by time & accident been lost
or estrayed, but that he is impressed with the belief
that the Bill of Sale was made to his (Allen's) son to
wit, William Vince, Junior but he is now informed
that the said negro belongs jointly to William Vince,
deceased, to himself and to Susan Vince, Now Susan
Summer. . . .
80
When William Vince's property was sold, Allen himself pur-
chased Sally for five hundred dollars; whether two-thirds or
all of her, it is impossible to determine.
81 There is no indication
that Susan Summer was defendant, for the cause is styled
"Sally Vince versus
Allen Vince." On January 7, 1839, the
case went to the jury. Allen Vince's attorneys, Archibald
Wynns and Henry W. Fontaine, moved the court to instruct
the jury "that admitting the deed of manumation for William
Vince to Sally Vince to be true that under the constitution it
affords to the plaintiff no right of freedom."
82 Judge Benjamin
C. Franklin reserved the question for deliberation, and the jury
returned an alternative verdict: if the court gave the instruc-
tion prayed for by the defendant, they found for the defend-
ant; if not, they found for the plaintiff. Whereupon, Judge
Franklin delivered his opinion.
The only question presented for the consideration of
the Court is as to the effect of a deed of manumation
did the deed become operative from the moment of its
execution and delivery, so as to vest any right in Sally?
—the words of the Deed are "have this seventh day
of September Anno Domini eighteen hundred and
thirty four Liberated Manumited and after my death
set free a certain female slave named Sally, at this
time aged about twenty three years—I the said William
Vince having the entire order control, management and
command over the services
of the said female slave
for certain considerations me hereunto moving do
hereby bind myself my heirs executors administrators
& assigns that after my death for faithful services and
obedient and submissive conduct have
her the afore-
said Negro slave named Sally free from all obligation
to any . . . other person whomsoever"--This same rule
of construction must be applied to the deed of manuma-
tion,--that would be applied to any other Deed, by
these rule we find that the freedom
of the negro Sally
--is a remainder limited to a person in being & apper-
tained upon a particular estate (the life estate reserved
by Wm Vince) the termination of which is absolute
and certain, and which does not depend upon any con-
tingency
So that the execution of the Deed of Manumation,
vested the right of liberty in the negro Sally but post-
poned only the enjoyment and not the right Suppose
that ten days after the execution of the deed of manu-
mation when the master was at liberty to manumit his
slave, William Vince had died, would not the negro
girl to all intents and purposes [be] free? Certainly
and she would have derived her right
to
liberty
from
the deed, and taken possession of [and] entered upon
the enjoyment of the previously acquired right
as the
necessary effect of the deed upon the death of Vince.
What a man has once conveyed by deed he cannot
affect by any subsequent conveyance and in the present
case had Vince sold the negroe Sally after executing
the deed of manumation the sale would have had no
force for he could not divest by any act of his a vested
right to freedom.
The manumation having taken effect before the adop-
tion of this constitution, the plaintiff was not at that
time holden as a slave bona fide the property of William
Vince
Wm. Vince having departed this life the only obsta-
cle entervining between the right of Liberty & the en-
joyment has been removed and the court is of opinion
that she is free . . . and that Allen Vince the defendant
has no right or property to the said Negro Sally--
and it is ordered that she go hence free and liberated
from all custody or control by the said Allen Vince
and recover of him all costs in this behalf ex-
pended. . . .
83
Some years later a similar case with identical results was
tried in the same court. On May 4, 1847, the law firm of Peter
W. Gray and Abner Cooke, Jr., filed a petition in which Emeline
stated that she was a free woman of color and a citizen of
Tennessee. She represented to the court that her mother, Rhoda,
was free at the time of her (Emeline's) birth and was yet free,
but that on or about December 20, 1846, in Houston, Jesse P.
Bowles "with force and arms assaulted your petition [er] and
then and there took, imposed and restrained her and her children
[James and William] of their liberty, and held her & them in
servitude from said day to the commencement of this suit
against the laws of the land and the will of petitioner."
84 Five
weeks later Emeline amended her petition. "And your peti-
tioner further shows that living under the charge & custody
of the said Bolls she is very much restricted in her movements
and has not an opportunity to consult with her Lawyers &
take their advice as to the means necessary to protect her
rights and has therefore left that matter to her Sister Lucy
Thompson [of New Orleans] who is aiding her to establish
her freedom and came to Texas for that purpose." Judge C. W.
Buckley, on the same day, enjoined Bowles and those acting
under his direction, counsel, or authority from removing the
plaintiffs outside the jurisdiction of the court, upon Emeline's
making bond of two hundred dollars. In his answer to the
petition, Bowles stated that his late mother, Elizabeth, whose
administrator he was, had bought Emeline and held her as a
slave until her (his mother's) death.
In July both parties became active in gathering evidence.
Bowles' attorney applied to the court for a commission to take
the testimony of Philip M. Cuney, of Austin County. The in-
terrogatories inquired whether Cuney had seen Emeline in
James B. Beckham's possession and whether she had acquiesced
in this possession. Gray and Cooke propounded a series of
cross-interrogatories, asking whether Emeline were in the pos-
session of a Mrs. Seip, of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, and
whether Mrs. Seip sent her off with Beckham when Rhoda
established her freedom in Tennessee.
Have you not been a negroe proprietor for many
years? Are you not well acquainted with the way
negroes are managed by their masters & overseers?--
And have they not the means to make their negroes
acquiesce
in being sold whether they will or not? . . .
Was it not just such conduct as might have been
looked for from a negroe woman like Emmeline, under
the power of an overseer, without friends at hand and
ignorant of her rights [?]
The record contains neither a commission for the interroga-
tories nor Cuney's answers, but this is not conclusive that the
one was not granted nor the other returned.
Toward the latter part of the next month, Gray and Cooke
propounded interrogatories to a number of people in Alexandria,
seat of Rapides Parish. Of James T. Flint, husband of Mrs.
Seip's sister, Susan, John Curtis, and Coleman W. Calvit, they
asked about Mrs. Seip's parents, about Emeline's age, color,
and husband, and about the circumstances of Emeline's leaving
the Seips. The last question Mr. Flint refused to answer,
stating that he was the Seips' attorney who had been con-
sulted professionally in the matter. He stated, however, that
Mrs. Seip was the daughter of Thomas and Martha Martin,
of Nashville, Tennessee. Emeline, he added, was a "likely"
mulattress. She had two children, and he had heard that a
slave belonging to Mrs. S. K. Johnston passed for her husband.
Curtis affirmed Flint's evidence and stated that Emeline was
about twenty-two years old. To the third question he replied
that Beckham took Emeline to Texas in the fall or winter.
Calvit did not make a deposition, or if he did the record has
not survived.
Of Mrs. Flint, attorneys Gray and Cooke inquired in what
manner Mrs. Seip got Emeline and the name of Emeline's
mother. Mrs. Flint answered that Emeline belonged to her
father, and that from his estate Mrs, Seip received Emeline,
whom she took to Louisiana in 1839. She added that Emeline
was the daughter of Rhoda who belonged to her father from
her earliest recollection to her father's death.
Gray and Cooke also interrogated Dr. and Mrs. Seip, asking
especially whether they sent Emeline off with Beckham, whether
they gave him a bill of sale, whether he sold her, and whether
he gave them any of the money he received for her. Either the
Seips did not answer or the record has been misplaced.
In December the case was continued to the spring term of
court.
85 Bowles' attorneys propounded interrogatories to Rob-
ert Chappell, of Washington County, after whom the town of
Chapel Hill was named. He answered that he had seen
Emeline in Houston in November and December, 1846, and
that she had told him "she was willing to be sold" and "that
Beckham had come honestly by her."
Bowles' attorneys requested the plaintiff to produce the orig-
inal bill of sale for Rhoda executed by Donelson Caffery to
Thomas Martin subsequent to her return from Pennsylvania,
or they would prove its content by parol. In May the case
was continued until fall.
86
On November 24, 1848, the case at last went to trial. J. J.
Cain, John F. Crawford, John Dickinson, William J. Hutchins,
and E. B. Noble were summoned as witnesses. Since there is
no transcript of the oral evidence, one cannot even surmise to
what they testified. In addition to this verbal testimony and
the answers to the interrogatories, there were depositions from
Washington Jackson and Mrs. Ellen Kirkman, but these are
not now with the papers of the case. One knows they were
offered as evidence, for the defense attorneys objected to their
introduction on the technical point that Jackson and Mrs. Kirk
man "were sworn by the Commissioner who took their deposi-
tion to testify in a cause pending between Emeline a free
woman of color Plff and Isaac P. Bowles defendant--and that
said witnesses were not sworn to testify in the aforesaid suit
in which Emeline a free woman of color is Plff and Jesse P.
Bowles defendant." Judge Buckley overruled the objection and
permitted the testimony to go to the jury. The next day, Gray
and Cooke prayed the court
to charge the Jury that if they believe from the testi-
money that Rhoda the mother of plff was sent by her
master to the state of Pennsylvania after the year 1788
with
the
intent
&
purpose
that
she
should
thereby
be-
come
free,
and was so carried with the consent of her
master to that State, that the said Rhoda by that act
became free.
That if they believe from the evidence that Rhoda
the mother of plff was carried voluntarily & with her
master's consent to Pennsylvania after the year 1788
and remained in that state six months or more, that
the said Rhoda became free
That if the Jury believe from the evidence that the
plaintiff is the daughter of a woman who was free at
the time of her birth then the plaintiff was born free:
and can assert her claim to freedom in the Courts of
this state
The defense excepted to this charge.
The jury, many of them slaveholders, among whom was An-
drew Briscoe, retired and returned the same day with the ver-
dict: "We the Jury find for the Plaintiff Emeline that she and
her children are free as claimed by her, and assess her dam-
ages at one dollar." Whereupon, the Court adjudged Emeline
and her children free persons of color and charged them to
"go hence free from the service of defendant & all others."
Emeline went forth free and so disappears from the record.
From the depositions that are available, one is at a loss to
determine precisely on what grounds the jury found for Eme-
line, when the evidence seems more to indicate that she was a
slave. If there were additional evidence, now lost, it must have
been potent to have counteracted in the minds of the slave-
holding jury the testimony of the Flints and others. That the
jurors could objectively consider this unknown evidence is a
refutation of the abolitionist's insistence that a negro could not
secure justice in a Southern court. In this case, certainly, a
negro received not only justice but also what appears to be
mercy as well.
Though Washington Jackson's deposition is not available in
the present papers of the case, it is extant in the attic of the
Davidson County Courthouse at Nashville, Tennessee (in which
the writer, innocent of daylight-saving-time, was locked one
September afternoon in 1940), one of the papers in the case of
Rhoda, George, Margaret, and Matilda versus
Mrs. Patsy Mar-
tin.
87 Jackson deposed:
I owned her [Rhoda] several years; I lived in Phila-
delphia & Natchez during that period; the said woman
was employed on a plantation in Attakapas Louisiana,
owned by me and in which Mr Donelson Caffrey
[Caffery] had a nominal interest; Caffrey had several
children by this woman Rhoda and [Caffery] being
about to marry, I relinquished my interest in her and
her children to him for the sole purpose and distinct
understanding of having her and them emancipated:
and according to said agreement, I took Rhoda and her
children three in number, named according to the best
of my recollection William, James, &
Lucy to Phila-
delphia Pennsylvania, with me by sea, from New Or-
leans, Louisiana, for the purpose of their emanci-
pation. With a view to this emancipation I took for
the woman and her said three children a nominal price;
perhaps one third of their value. I arrived in Philadel-
phia from two to three weeks after leaving New Or-
leans. I think that this was early in the year 1816.
I
have little doubt that we reached Philadelphia before
the 1st of May of that year. Afterwards in that year I
often saw the woman at the house
of my sister Mrs.
Ellen Kirkman in Philadelphia. After Rhoda had been
in Philadelphia, sometime, not being able to support
herself, free of expense, she was sent by Caffrey's re-
quest, to his friend Thomas Martin who lived near
Nashville Tennessee for the purpose of having the boys
bound to trades, and that the mother should live with
him [Martin] and work for her own and their support.
Martin was a particular friend of Caffrey and knew the
relation which had existed between him and Rhoda, and
Caffrey relied upon his taking care of her and her chil-
dren and doing justice to them. They had lived neigh-
bors in Attakapas on adjoining plantations.
This evidence, buttressed by Mrs. Kirkman's, probably to the
same effect, was conclusive enough to cause two Southern juries,
in widely separated Nashville and Houston, to return freedom to
seven free negroes held in duress. One may speculate whether
Mrs. Kirkman was an abolitionist, but Washington Jackson was
certainly not one. He had been a slaveholder in two large planta-
tion areas, Natchez and Attakapas. In the latter place he
raised sugar; seven years' work on such a plantation, accord-
ing to abolitionists, killed even the stoutest negroes. At the
time of the deposition, he was living in New Orleans, in which
there were more than enough free negroes to prove one way
or another the quality of this anomalous class. In the light of
Jackson's deposition, the decision of the court seems no more
than just.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War the Texas
Legislature, following those of other Southern States, reversed
the tradition of English law and provided means for free ne-
groes voluntarily to enter permanent and irrevocable slavery.
On January 28, 1858, Governor Hardin Richard Runnels signed
an act allowing free negroes over fourteen years of age to peti-
tion the district courts for permission to be bound in slavery
to masters of their own choosing. The district court was in-
structed to examine separately the free negro applicant, the
master whom he had chosen, and the two who had witnessed
the free negro's petition. The district attorney should repre-
sent the petitioner at the court hearing. Upon finding no evi-
dence of coercion or fraud and determining the good character
of the selected master, the court should adjudge the petitioner
a slave. The person thus enslaved should not be subject to any
liens made or judgments rendered prior to his enslavement, thus
making more secure the relation between voluntary slave and
selected master.
88 Free negroes all over Texas took the oppor-
tunity of exchanging the dubious and unsatisfactory liberty of
free people of color for the restriction and security of slavery.
On May 3, 1861, the Harris County District Court heard the
petition of Bob Allen, who had selected as master William
Thomas Neil. Upon examination of Allen, Neil, and the two
witnesses, Robert Page Boyce and William Ferguson, the Court
adjudged Allen a slave.
89
The Civil War brought another class of free negroes, negroes
in the United States Army and Navy captured by the Confed-
erates. A number of such prisoners of war, who had been cap-
tured at the Confederates' taking of Galveston, January 1, 1863,
were brought to Houston, together with other prisoners.
90 These
negroes were the source of some trepidation on the part of the
city fathers. On June 8, 1864, Mayor William Anders com-
plained to General J. B. Magruder, commanding the District
of Texas:
The board of aldermen of city of Houston, by resolu-
tions passed at their last regular meeting, have in-
structed me to communicate to you the fact that the
negroes and persons of color, some thirty in number,
captured by the forces under your command from the
enemy and considered as prisoners of war are now go-
ing at large within the city of Houston, mixing and
associating with our slave population, contrary to the
laws of the State of Texas and to the laws of the Con-
federate States; and they further instructed me to re-
quest you that these persons be ordered by you to be
removed from our midst to work on the fortifications,
or that they be turned over to the civil authorities
and to be sent to the penitentiary under the State
law. In complying with the wishes of the board of
aldermen, I beg leave to remark that the same mat-
ter was laid before you by me in the beginning of this
year, that an order was promptly issued from your
headquarters ordering the negroes spoken of to be
confined. Subsequently, however, that order was modi-
fied and partially revoked, and the "Yankee negroes"
are now freely ambulating within our city. Numerous
complaints of our best citizens have been made to the
authorities, and it seems that the whole community is
alarmed. The most evil influence is exerted by those
negroes, who, most of them, are intelligent, shrewd,
and capable to read and write, and try to obtain a mas-
tery over our slave population. It is true a portion
of those negroes are employed by the city and are
guarded, but they are not under the exclusive control
of the city. They are frequently sent for by officers
to do special work, and so the city cannot be responsi-
ble for their conduct. Most of them, however, are em-
ployed as body servants to different officers, and thus
enjoy the very best opportunity to obtain information
and communicating the same to our negroes.
General, the matter laid before you is of the greatest
importance to the welfare not only of this city, but to
the country at large, and I deem it my solemn duty
to request you to give it your immediate attention.
The board of aldermen do not desire anything else but
that the negroes alluded to be restrained from associ-
ating with our home negroes. Whether they are made
to work on the fortifications or be sent to the peniten-
tiary does not concern them. They desire them placed
in such position as the law provides and where they
can exert no influence injurious to the best interests of
this community.
91
Busily engaged in the prosecution of a war, General Magruder
did not personally answer, but on June 10th, his Assistant Ad-
jutant-General, E. P. Turner, replied tartly to the city's in-
terference.
I have the honor to reply to your communication of
8th instant in reference to the captured negroes now
in Houston, and by direction of Maj. Gen. J. B.
Magruder, commanding, &c., to say that they are pris-
oners of war. Some, whose conduct has not been con-
spicuously correct, are under strict guard, others are
in charge of officers under surveillance, but of these
latter none are to have any privileges except those who
have behaved well. Some have been confined closely
by the commanding general within a few days. He will
give the subject his early attention and make such
arrangements as will prevent any injury to the slaves
of this city. It is entirely beyond the power of the city
and State authorities to say how, where, or on what
work these negroes shall be employed, or in what man-
ner the commanding general may treat prisoners of
war so long as he does not violate the laws of the city
or State. It is, in the estimation of the commanding
general, gratuitous on the part of the city authorities
to request him to put prisoners of war to work on the
fortifications, and whether they do anything for offi-
cers or not, since there is no State or municipal law
on the subject, and does not come properly within the
province of the city authorities to comment upon, he
is the sole judge of such service.
92
A year and nine days later, General Gordon Granger, U. S. A., in
command of the army of occupation, arrived in Galveston and
issued his famous General Order No. 3, which emancipated all
negroes in Texas.
93
The mass of evidence here adduced indicates that though
legislative enactments relative to the free negroes and emanci-
pation were harsh, judges and administrative officials were lib-
eral to the point of dereliction. Free negroes immigrated and
were emancipated, sued and were sued, and went about in their
subservient and humble condition without jeopardizing their
own freedom or inciting slaves to rebellion.
FOOTNOTES:
see Harold Schoen's "The Free Negro in the Republic of Texas," in the
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXIX, 292-308; XL, 26-34, 85-113,
169-199, 267-289; XLI, 83-108. The principal defects of this work are its
limitation to the Republic and its failure to utilize county archives. It is
undoubtedly a mistake to view admission of Texas into the United States
as a legitimate terminus for any other than purely political and diplomatic
studies. County archives, collections of prosaic legal documents, portray
the free negro in a more normal and domestic light than that indicated in
the proceedings of Congress.
(Galveston: Printed at the News Office, 1857), p. 7.
Book Co., 1898), IV, 1115. A supplement to the penal code prohibited the
marriage of a white with one descended from negro ancestry to the third
generation, that is one-eighth negro. Ibid., pp. 1036-37.
and free negroes to assemble for "balls," unless the mayor specifically
granted his permission. Morning Star (Houston), March 4, 1841, p. 3,
col. 1.
could be multiplied, but one will do. According to the printed summaries
of the 1850 census, there were nine free negroes in Calhoun County. J. D.
B. DeBow, Statistical View of the United States . . . (Washington:
Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer, 1854), p. 308. When one examines the orig-
inal schedules, one finds that though the nine were listed as free negroes,
they actually were Mexicans. 1850 Census, Texas, Schedule 1, Calhoun
County (Microfilm in Archives, University of Texas Library), Families
43, 167, 176, 181, 182. While some free negroes were no doubt born in
Mexico, when one finds a situation in which every person born in Mexico
is regarded and listed as a free negro, the fallacy is apparent.
University of Texas Library), Family 641.
Archives, Texas State Library, Austin), II, 47-48.
Petitions of Zilpha Husk, Nelson Kavanaugh, Diana Leonard, Fanny Mc-
Farland, and Henry Tucker.
tions. Some few were of the first importance in the Republic: Augustus
Chapman Allen, Robert Barr, Hamilton P. Bee, Asa Brigham, William G.
Cooke, Lorenzo de Zavala, Jr., Alexander Ewing, George Washington
Hockley, Memucan Hunt, Felix Huston, Albert Sidney Johnston, William
Miller Shepherd, and Ashbel Smith. Seventy-three of the remaining 227
signers held, without counting reelection and reappointment, 142 offices in
Harris County, Houston, and Harrisburg, during the period of the Republic
that is within two or three years of the dates of the petitions.
tary's Office, Houston), A, 148.
ton), I (letter of alphabet), 60. The dates given are correct, although the
original transcription contains two obvious errors. As a rule, county clerks
numbered their volumes from A through Z, inclusive, and then numerically
beginning at one. The chief justice heard testimony relative to another free
negro, but the negro did not make bond. On August 4, 1842, District Judge
Benjamin C. Franklin made an affidavit before Chief Justice Algernon P.
Thompson that Richard Robertson, a free man, came to Texas on the brig
Henry, in April, 1835, under the protection of David B. Macomb. Thompson
added to the affidavit the statement that Robertson plied "his trade of
Engineer" in Houston. Ibid., H, 197-98.
Pamelia Mann, was charged with stabbing Ann Tucker, but as all of the
witnesses were negroes, the Recorder discharged Brown. Weekly Times
(Houston), April 9, 1840, p. 2, col. 4.
Houston), G, 290.
1840.
621; Q, 151; I (numeral), 132; II, 68, 337.
Family 207.
25, 1838, and two without dates.
(Austin: Texas State Library, 1927), V, 172.
and two without dates. On September 13, 1842, Tucker announced that he
had "again opened a BARBER-SHOP." Morning Star (Houston), January
3, 1843, p. 1, col. 1.
common. On January 19, 1839, Nelly Norris bound her son, Thomas, about
nine years old, to Stephen S. Tomkins. Ibid., E, 43. Again on July 29, 1840,
Nelly bound Thomas to Benjamin F. Tankersley. Ibid., F, 393-94.
and two undated.
Houston), B, 172-73. The punctuation and capitalization follow the copy in
the Morning Star, June 3, 1839, p. 2, cols. 2-3.
someone interested in a free woman named Martha, daughter of Violet
Hamlet, filed the will of Merrit M. Coates, dated October 2, 1823, in which
Coates emancipated Violet and her son Carter. Samuel May Williams stated
that Coates had kept Violet as his wife. Ibid., H, 515. On January 3, 1838,
Chief Justice Briscoe appointed his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jane Harris,
guardian of Martha, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the deceased Violet.
Probate Records of Harris County, A, 332. On January 10, 1844, John W.
Moore made an affidavit that Martha, then the wife of Peter Towns, had
been considered a free negro since 1827, when Coates apparently died. Deed
Records, I (letter of the alphabet), 204. Lucille, a free woman, on May 6,
1851, filed a deed of emancipation from R. C. Ballard, of Natchez, Mississippi,
dated March 3, 1847. Ibid., O, 586. On February 4, 1854, Maria filed the
emancipation deed from Isaac D. Hamilton, of Crawford County, Arkansas,
dated February 26, 1841. Ibid., R, 44-45.
type, the writer has found another case of manumission by deed. On August
6, 1847, James Cocke emancipated his slave Tom Jefferson, who was born
in Washington County, Mississippi, in about 1838. Ibid., M (letter of
alphabet), 217-18.
E, 144-45. Petition of Citizens of Houston, undated. Memorials and Petitions.
County Clerk's Office, Houston), p. 92.
will occurred on December 24, 1855, when John Sowell signed a will which
granted freedom to Anderson or Henderson who served "in sickness and in
health all of his life." The will was filed January 18, 1856. Deed Records,
S, 237-38.
or Tamer and Abby, her daughter, "to be released from the illegal detention
by one Robert Walker." Judge A. B. Shelby adjudged them free people of
color. Tamer, who came from New Orleans, was born in about 1792 and her
daughter in about 1825. Deed Records of Harris County, N, 564. On Febru-
ary 11, 1850, Charles Shearn returned freedom to a free negro held in
duress, without the formality of a judicial hearing. He purchased Dick on
March 2, 1847, at a sale of the effects of Samuel Childs, deceased. When
he learned that Dick had been born free in Alexandria, Virginia, and had
merely accompanied Childs to Texas, Shearn released his claim on Dick
and started him on his way back to Virginia. Ibid., p. 338.
Clerk's Office, Houston), File 1674. Unless otherwise indicated, the infor-
mation presented and the documents quoted are from original documents
in this file.
Office, Nashville), unnumbered file. In April, 1844, Rhoda and three of her
children charged that on January 1, 1844, Mrs. Martin "with force and
arms, assaulted the plaintiffs, and them then and there took and imprisoned,
and restrained them of their liberty, and held them in servitude from said
day to the commencement of this suit, against the law of the land, and the
will of the plaintiffs." On September 21, 1846, a jury found that Rhoda and
her three children were not slaves but free persons of color. See also
Minutes of the Davidson County Circuit Court (MSS. in Circuit Clerk's
Office, Nashville), 0, 363; P, 40, 137, 307, 471, 476, 478, 483.
Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1899), Series II, Volume VII, 214-15.
this period obscures the board's reaction to this letter.
LIFE OF GENERAL DON MANUEL
DE MIER Y TERÁN
On the day following the triumphal entry of the ejército
trigarante into Mexico City, Iturbide selected a provisional
governing junta to assume control. This junta, as its first
official act, issued a declaration of independence from Spain.
It then nominated a regency of five, with Iturbide as president,
to administer the government temporarily. O'Donojú, the vice-
roy, who was a member of the regency, died shortly, and with
his death the last shadow of viceregal authority disappeared
from Mexico.
One of the first important duties of the junta was to formulate
plans for the assembling of a national congress. The Treaty of
Córdoba provided that the elections to congress should be con-
ducted in the manner prescribed by the Spanish constitution,
but Iturbide laid before the junta a proposal whereby certain
classes and professions should choose their own deputies. It
further provided that all provinces that were entitled to send
four or more members should send one churchman, one mili-
tary deputy, and one magistrate or lawyer. This proposal,
which was adopted without any material changes, did not make
nativity or residence in the province represented a require-
ment for the military deputy.
63
When news of the Plan of Iguala reached Central America,
the province of Chiapas, a dependency of Guatemala, followed
the example of New Spain and declared its independence. In
separating from Spain, Chiapas decided to cast its fortunes with
63Noticioso General
(Mexico), November 12, 1821, pp. 3-4.
those of New Spain. When this news reached Iturbide in
Mexico City, he dispatched Manuel de Mier y Terán to Chiapas
as military commandant to supervise the organization of the
province. Mier y Terán arrived in Chiapas on October 19, 1821,
and by October 24 had made a preliminary survey and was
ready to report.
64 He was convinced that the inhabitants of
Chiapas were sincere in their desire for annexation; their
trade and commerce we're largely with Mexican towns rather
than with those of Guatemala, from which they were remotely
removed.
The provinces of all Central America were in a confused
political state during this period; Mier y Terán saw the need
for troops, and made a request for military aid. Guatemala,
of which Chiapas was a former province, was divided on
whether to unite with Mexico or to set up an independent
government; the conflict of opinion was so pronounced that a
state of anarchy developed there. To preserve order, Iturbide
sent a small force under Vicente Filisola, in November, 1821.
65
Soon after Filisola's arrival, elections were held and the re-
sults show a big majority in favor of annexation to Mexico.
66
Nicaragua declared its independence from Spain and Guatemala
on September 28, 1821, and asked to unite with Mexico. Mier
y Terán, acting as Iturbide's special agent, tentatively accepted
this request by signing the proclamations of the provincial
junta of Nicaragua and the ayuntamiento of León. This con-
cluded his work in Central America and he returned to Mexico
early in 1822. From Oaxaca he sent copies of the proclama-
tions to Mexico City for official confirmation.
67
The provisional governing junta of Mexico, January 16, 1822,
acted favorably upon the application of Chiapas for admission
and provided that arrangements should be made immediately
for the selection of six deputies to the Constituent Congress.
68
The paucity of documents makes it difficult to follow Mier y
Terán closely in Central America, but from what we know, it
can be assumed that he made friends and that his services
were appreciated. He was selected as the military deputy from
Chiapas to the first Constituent Congress, and the little town
of Terán, located about two-and-a-half miles from the capital,
Tuxtla, is named in his memory.
69
Soon after the January elections, the deputies to the Con-
stituent Congress began to arrive in the capital. The Central
American deputies could not possibly arrive by the time set
for the opening of the Congress, and substitutes were ap-
pointed to serve until their arrival. The first Mexican Con-
stituent Congress was inaugurated on February 24, 1822. It
was soon discovered that this assembly held three political
groups. The Bourbonists rigidly supported the Plan of Iguala
and advocated that Mexico become a constitutional monarchy
with a prince of the House of Bourbon as king. The Iturbidists
declared for a constitutional monarchy with Iturbide on the
throne. The republicans advocated a federal republic, which
meant that they ignored the plan of Iguala. The Spanish
Cortes, by decree of February 13, 1822, declared the Treaty
of Córdoba null and void so far as the Spanish government
and its subjects were concerned; when this news reached Mexico
the Bourbonists, as a political faction, disappeared; they merged
into one or the other of the two remaining groups and hence-
forth the struggle was confined to these two parties.
Five of the six deputies from Chiapas arrived at the time
the friction between the Iturbidists and the republicans was
developing. Soon after the opening of the session of April 11,
1822, Manuel de Mier y Terán and his five colleagues were
seated.
70
The old insurgents who were deputies in the Constituent
Congress formed themselves into a bloc and made war openly
on Iturbide from the very beginning of the sessions. Only
Nicolás Bravo, Ignacio Rayón, and Mier y Terán, of the old
leaders, refused to unite with any political groups. Mier y
Terán had been away from the capital city since October, 1821,
and possibly felt that he should become better acquainted with
the situation before committing himself. Not once did he pub-
licly indicate that his preference was for either of the major
political groups. His speeches show that he devoted his time
to a serious study of Mexico's political and economic problems
and left the factional strife to others.
By May, the republican element in Congress was gaining
strength and measures had been adopted aimed at the curtail-
ment of the power of Iturbide. Early in the month, at the in-
stance of the Minister of War, the committee on military mat-
ters introduced a bill providing for the augmentation of the
standing army, even though there was not enough money to
pay the troops already enlisted. A long discussion of the
measure resulted in no definite action; three consecutive ses-
sions were devoted exclusively to an attempt to put it through
in the face of violent opposition. The vague wording of the
bill impeded its progress almost as much as the opposition.
On May 17, Mier y Terán, who up to this time had appar-
ently shown no interest in the measure, proposed that it be
referred to a committee for study.
71 No attention was paid
to this plea for sensible action and after a long and angry
discussion, Congress decreed that the standing army should
be reduced from 39,500 to 20,000 men, and introduced meas-
ures designed further to strip Iturbide of power. One of these
was to the effect that no member of the regency should hold
military command. Matters now reached a crisis; on the eve-
ning of May 18 a mob, led by a few soldiers, went through
the streets of Mexico City proclaiming Iturbide emperor. The
following day Congress met early, but its deliberations were
constantly interrupted by crowds in the gallery. A small group
of deputies, of whom Mier y Terán was one, men who were
neither friends nor enemies of Iturbide, brought forth a com-
promise measure. They stated that, as individuals, they were
not opposed to Iturbide as emperor, but that as deputies from
provinces other than Mexico, they felt that the people of other
parts of the country should be given an opportunity to ex-
press themselves. Their proposal was that Iturbide should
become sole regent pending an expression of the will of the
people, and that his powers be purely executive. They further
proposed that a clearly defined distinction be made between
the executive and the legislature. Even the reading of the
measure was interrupted by the crowds and pressure became
so great that Congress yielded.
72 On May 21, Iturbide took the
oath prescribed by Congress and the date of his coronation
was set for July 21.
On April 29, 1822, Stephen F. Austin, the founder of Texas,
arrived in Mexico City in the interest of his colonization grant.
Governor Antonio Martinez of the Department of Texas
73 had
recommended his trip as being the most effective means of
obtaining action on his proposed colonization of Texas. A gen-
eral colonization bill had been considered by the provisional
governing junta; it had been transferred to the Constituent
Congress and assigned to a committee of which Mier y Terán
was a member. On June 5, during a debate on the bill, Mier
y Terán indicated that he thought the business of colonization
was an urgent one and that the bill was of such importance
that its discussion and approval should not be unnecessarily
delayed.
74 The committee reported on July 16, but the bill did
not appear until August 20. The political disturbances and the
unsettled state of affairs in general delayed final action for
nearly five months, and it was not until January 7, 1823, that
the bill became a law.
75
Austin remained in Mexico City almost a year. During that
time Mier y Terán was a deputy in the Constituent Congress
and for a while at least a member of the Committee on Coloni-
zation. It is reasonable to suppose that the two became ac-
quainted at this time.
76 One may also assume that Mier y
Terán's interest in Texas began with his service on the Coloni-
zation Committee.
One of the tasks of the Constituent Congress was to provide
Mexico with a constitution, but no definite progress was made
before Iturbide was proclaimed emperor. In the meantime, the
Spanish Constitution of 1812, with only the slight modifica-
tions that were necessary for an independent country, was
technically in force. The government, during its early period,
was constituted in strict accord with its provisions. Article
130 of the Spanish Constitution was designed to prevent mem-
bers of the Cortes from granting pensions or military honors
to themselves while in office.
77 Several deputies in the Mexican
Congress, anxious to become recipients of military honors and
distinctions, introduced a measure designed to repeal Article
130. There was a long discussion of the measure on July 13,
and two days later the subject was again forced upon a Con-
gress which should have been busy with more important mat-
ters. Mier y Terán doubtless had been preparing for just such
an occasion; his speech in opposition not only settled the mat-
ter, but brought Congress back to the business of the day.
78
Iturbide was crowned in a stately ceremonial on July 25,
1822. A brief period of harmony between him and the repub-
lican element in Congress followed, during which time it was
hoped that Mexico might soon be provided with an efficient
government and take her place among the nations of the world.
In Congress there was a National Manifesto Committee, but
neither it nor the emperor had taken any steps officially to
inform the other nations of the world of the recent signifi-
cant events in Mexican history. Mier y Terán held himself
aloof from any factional conflict, but was always anxious and
ready to get on with the business of the Congress and the
nation. A slight note of impatience can be detected in his
address of August 19 demanding that the negligence of the
Manifesto Committee be amended.
79 His proposal was opened
to discussion and approved by the Congress, and was ordered
to the National Manifesto Committee for action and report.
Political events prevented its ever returning to the floor for
further action.
In August, 1822, a revolution was planned with a view to
declaring Iturbide's election as emperor unconstitutional and
to proclaim a republic. Several of the deputies in Congress
and a number of army officers were implicated in the con-
spiracy. Among the deputies was Father Servando Mier, who
had taken part in the Mina expedition. He and fourteen other
deputies were arrested; there was insufficient evidence to con-
vict them, but they were detained in prison. This attack on
the legislative power alienated the entire Congress and that
body became openly defiant of the emperor.
80 On August 29
the rumor spread that Congress was to be dissolved and an
absolute monarchy established; this, of course, threw the as-
sembly into an uproar. Mier y Terán urged moderation and,
above all, a strict adherence to the constitution. He pleaded
with the deputies and asked them not to let their bitterness
influence them to take any radical action which they might
later have cause to regret.
81 He compared those who would
ignore both the Constitution and the emperor and take matters
into their own hands to a rash pilot who during a furious storm
would throw overboard the compass, even a defective one, which
might guide him to safety.
82
Friends of Iturbide introduced plans to establish military
tribunals and reduce the membership of Congress to seventy
deputies, both of which were rejected; one concession was made
in a proposal that the emperor be given the veto power. He
demanded, however, that he have the right to veto each article
of the Constitution which was in the process of formation.
The deputies immediately rejected this proposal, and Iturbide
committed the fatal blunder of forcibly dissolving Congress
by imperial decree on October 31. In its place he established
a Junta Nacional Instituyente made up of forty-five members
of the dissolved Congress. This body was to continue work
on the Constitution, pass laws regulating the army, provide
revenue for the depleted treasury, and make plans for the
election of a new congress.
83 Mier y Terán was not one of
the select forty-five and was not politically active again until
March, 1823, when the dissolved Congress reassembled.
The arbitrary action of Iturbide reacted in the form of a
republican armed movement under Antonio López de Santa
Anna. Santa Anna's Plan of Vera Cruz, announced December
6, 1822, provided for the nullification of Iturbide's election as
emperor, proclaimed popular sovereignty, and made provisions
for reassembling Congress. In January, 1823, Guadalupe Vic-
toria and a number of the old republicans joined Santa Anna,
and on February 1 they enunciated their program against the
government in the Plan of Casa Mata. Among those who joined
Santa Anna was General Echávarri, who had been sent by
Iturbide to lead a force of troops against the revolutionists.
The Plan of Casa Mata announced a political program which
called for the abolition of the empire, the establishment of a
republic, the convocation of a Constituent Congress, and the
framing of a constitution.
84 The movement spread rapidly,
and by March 7 fifty-eight members of the old Congress, in-
cluding those of the junta instituyente, had gathered at the
capital. On March 19 Iturbide abdicated and offered to go
into voluntary exile. By March 29 a quorum had assembled
in Congress, and on the last day of the month that body ap-
pointed Nicolás Bravo, Guadalupe Victoria, and Pedro Celestino
Negrete to act in an executive capacity for the government.
During the first session of the Constituent Congress, Mier
y Terán had been busy serving on committees and studying
the problems of government. He took advantage of the time
while the Junta Instituyente was in session to improve his
position by reading and discussing political ideas with those
about him. He did not participate in the Santa Anna revo-
lution, but on one occasion was called upon to quell some dis-
turbances in the suburbs of Mexico City occasioned by the
enunciation of the Plan of Casa Mata.
85 On March 29 he ap-
peared in the Congress and was present at the time of the
selection of the plural executive. The bill providing for the
establishment of the triumvirate used the term Junta Guber-
nativa. Mier y Terán objected to this term on the grounds
that the word junta implied a meeting of several individuals
in which power was not concentrated. He, therefore, proposed
that the name Supremo Gobierno del Estado or Supremo Poder
be used instead. A long discussion ensued in which Bustamante,
Father Mier, and Tarrazo participated. It was finally decided
that the executive should be known by the name of Supremo
Poder Ejecutivo.
86
Early in April, Congress took up the matter of Iturbide's
abdication. A committee reported that since his election had
been accomplished by violence, his abdication should not be
accepted, as such action would imply that he had had a right
to the crown. Congress decreed that Iturbide should be sent
to Italy, and that as long as he remained in that country he
should receive an annual pension of 25,000 pesos.
87 The Plan
of Iguala and the Treaty of Córdoba were declared null and
void, and the right of the nation to govern itself was emphat-
ically asserted. The measures concerning the Plan of Iguala
and the Treaty of Córdoba were included in a bill introduced
by Músquiz of Mexico. In the midst of the discussion, Rodriguez
of San Luís Potosí called for a modification of the terms. He
was not in favor of doing away with the three guarantees
and some other provisions of the Plan of Iguala, but only the
form of government provided for by the treaty and the invita-
tion of a Bourbon to the throne. Músquiz agreed to edit his
bill in line with these suggestions. Mier y Terán stated that
he had never been in favor of the monarchial form of gov-
ment provided for in the Plan of Iguala and the Treaty of
Córdoba, nor of the proposed invitation of a Bourbon to the
throne, but he was of the opinion that this point was unim-
portant, and one must surely be insane to believe that, against
the expressed will of the nation and the aversion it had shown
to the Bourbons, they should ever again reign in Mexico, and
more so when no one then thought of a monarchy. Besides,
he added, none of them was fit to occupy the throne of Mexico,
which had already failed to support one [Iturbide] who carried
enough prestige for it.
88
Much of Mexico's unrest in the early years of independence
was caused by a lack of finances and a stable economic program.
It was only natural under such circumstances that the thoughts
of those in power should turn to paper money. An act of
the junta instituyente late in 1822 had ordered the printing
of notes up to 4,000,000 pesos. After January 1, 1823, one-
third of all public salaries was to be paid in this money, which
was also made legal tender in the same proportion in all com-
mercial and retail transactions for amounts over three pesos.
89
There was much dissatisfaction with this paper money and
many merchants and employees refused to accept it in exchange
for goods or services. On April 5 a bill was introduced by
Mier y Terán and two others aiming at the reduction of the
amount of the government notes in circulation. One article of
the proposed measure, providing that no individual should be
forced to accept them for any part of his accounts, was the
subject of a long and heated debate in the sessions of April 7
and 9. Mier y Terán defended the article, which failed to
secure the approval of Congress. His ideas expressed in this
defense show a knowledge of the principles of political economy;
he left the legal side of the discussion for others.
90
Mier y Terán was possessed of a healthy intellectual curiosity,
and his speeches in Congress reveal an intimate knowledge of
a wide range of subjects. He often spoke extemporaneously,
but most of his speeches show forethought and preparation;
his work in Congress brought out his best talents. It is inter-
esting to note that except on rare occasions he paid no attention
whatever to military matters. His speeches were more of the
type one would expect from the scholar and student of world
affairs than from the soldier. His speech on the freedom of the
press clearly expresses his liberal ideas. He believed that there
should be absolutely no fetters on an individual's expression
of opinion. To impose restrictions would imply that harm
might result from mere words on the part of the enemies of
the government, and he believed that America's peculiar pos-
session, republican government, could not be harmed were all
writers to unite for that purpose.
91
From the very beginning of its session's the Constituent
Congress observed the custom of electing new officers each
month. Unless the 25th fell on Sunday or a holiday, this date
was the one on which the new officers assumed their duties. In
the choice of officers on June 24, 1823, Mier y Terán was elected
president by forty-one of sixty-five votes cast. He assumed the
duties of his office at the opening of the session, June 25.
92
The overthrow of Iturbide had left the reins of power in the
hands of the republicans, who, unfortunately, were divided
among themselves. Some of them advocated a centralist form
of government, while the others desired a federal form. The
federalists and former supporters of Iturbide were able to
force Congress to declare itself in favor of the federal system
and to issue a call for a Constituent Congress, which assem-
bled on November 7, 1823. Meanwhile, the provinces of Central
America had decided to establish a confederation separate and
apart from Mexico. Chiapas, by the proclamation of "el
Plan
de
Chiapa
Libre,"
dated at Comitán, October 26, withdrew
from Mexico. The Chiapanecan delegates in Mexico City were
instructed to withdraw from the assembly, and Congress was
officially notified. On the closing day of the old Constituent
Congress, October 30, Mier y Terán, as his final act in the
capacity of a deputy, served as a member of a committee
selected to notify the poder ejecutivo that Congress was about
to close its sessions.
93
In the new Congress which assembled in November the fed-
eralists were in the majority. Their leader was Miguel Ramos
Arizpe, who had represented Coahuila in the Spanish Cortes
which framed the Constitution of 1812. His principal oppo-
nent was Father Servando Mier, protagonist of centralism,
and possibly the outstanding intellect of the assembly. Father
Mier maintained that the provinces of Mexico were already
united, and to divide them, creating them sovereign states, was
to court continuous division. The arguments of Arizpe pre-
vailed, however, and his Acta Constitutiva was adopted and
published January 31, 1824. It remained in force until the
completed federal constitution was promulgated on October 4,
1824.
94
A special act of Congress in September, 1823, provided for
the establishment of a general military staff. Mier y Terán
Was given a place on the staff and was promoted to the rank
of adjutant-general, February 18, 1824. He had, a few days
previously, been married to Señorita Doña María Josefa Velasco
de Teruel; the two established their home in Mexico City and
he, through his military connections, was able to keep in close
communication with the officials of the government.
A spirit of revolt against the general government developed in
Jalisco early in 1824, and the poder ejecutivo sent José Joaquín
Herrera, Minister of War and Navy, to that place as military
commandant to maintain order; Mier y Terán's military record
during the revolution, his record in Congress, and his recog-
nized ability as an organizer, made him the logical choice of
the poder ejecutivo to fill the vacancy thus created. On Feb-
ruary 14, 1824, Congress reorganized the national army and
created a permanent co'rps of artillery consisting of three
brigades, two of infantry and one of cavalry; it also estab-
lished in Mexico City the National School of Artillery.
95 In
addition to his duties in the War Office, Mier y Terán added
those of director and inspector-general of the artillery brigades
and administrative director of the School of Artillery. He was
promoted to the rank of brigadier-general.
96
From March until October, 1824, Lucas Alamán, Minister
of Relations, and Mier y Terán, Minister of War and Navy,
had the chief influence in the administration of the government.
They were intimate friends and entertained the same views
on public policy. Their friendship was of a lasting nature and
continued until the death of Mier y Terán in 1832. Alamán
encouraged the Minister of War in his plans to organize and
discipline the army and to establish fortresses at strategic places
along the coasts of Mexico. He considered Mier y Terán a
man of profound penetration and stated that he was one of the
most intelligent men he had ever known.
97
Without doubt Mier y Terán had liberal ideas; this is proved
both by his speeches and actions. Nevertheless, he was always
on the side of constituted and recognized authority. Under the
empire he was loyal to Iturbide; under the poder ejecutivo he
conformed to the letter of the Acta Constitutiva, although many
of the provisions concerning the regulation of the army were
copied verbatim from the Spanish Constitution and were not
adaptable to American conditions. Particularly was this true
of the military penal code which he urged Congress to reform.
98
He considered a competent military staff made up of trained
men the essential factor in the creation of an efficient defensive
organization, and he used the one established by law in Sep-
tember, 1823, as the basis for the national military structure.
During the fight for freedom from Spain, Mier y Terán had
occasion to note that Mexico had very few trained engineers
and artillerymen. Since these were his particular fields, he
began training young men in both these branches in the
School of Artillery. He realized that the cost of repairing old
arms and equipment was amounting to more than would the
purchase price of new supplies. As rapidly as finances would
permit, he discarded the old and replaced it with new. While
his few months in office did not suffice for him to put all his
plans into operation, he had, by the end of the year 1824,
equipped 20,000 officers and men with new uniforms, and had
purchased guns and field equipment for 7,500 of them. He
emphasized rigid discipline always, and insisted on military
precision, neatness in person and dress, and cleanliness of
equipment in both men and officers. He provided the cavalry
with 3,000 young horses and made a beginning toward out-
fitting this department with new saddles and other necessary
supplies. He favored and fostered the growth of a strong
militia for national defense, and whenever possible, furnished
arms and ammunition to local companies desiring to organize.
His natural bent for economical administration brought about
a wholesale reduction of the number of presidial companies.
Most of those in the Chihuahua region were abolished as an
unnecessary expense.
In 1824 the Mexican navy consisted of twelve vessels, eight
on the Gulf coast and four on the Pacific. There were one
brigantine, two schooners, seven sloops, and two auxiliary
barges. The Navy office maintained a department at Vera
Cruz and a dockyard at San Blas. Mier y Terán formulated
and presented to Congress an elaborate program of defense
which proposed the placing of a large number of men-of-war
off both coasts, increasing the number of officers and enlisted
men, and the construction of fortresses and arsenals with am-
munition and armament factories. He had the dockyard moved
from San Blas to Acapulco; in his report to Congress he pointed
out the inaccessibility of San Blas, its small harbor, and the
unhealthy climate of the region during more than half the
year.
99
The Constituent Congress, which had assembled on November
7, 1823, worked for nearly a year on a constitution. Finally,
on October 4, 1824, it published the completed document. The
instrument provided for the Federal Republic of the United
States of Mexico. The powers of government were divided into
three distinct branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial.
Roman Catholicism was the officially adopted religion. Guada-
lupe Victoria was elected president and Nicolás Bravo vice-
president. They were inaugurated October 10, 1824.
Ill feeling had existed between Victoria and Mier y Terán
since the incident at the siege of Oaxaca in 1812. Victoria
kept the other members of the ministry which had served under
the poder ejecutivo, but he was not long in ridding himself
of the Minister of War and Navy. He sent Miér y Terán away
from Mexico City on various pretexts, and finally on December
18, 1824, he commissioned him to explore the coast of Vera
Cruz and make recommendations for fortress sites. When the
survey had been completed the president selected him to serve
with Alamán to draw up a treaty of friendship, commerce, and
navigation with England, and when this task was finished, he
assumed the active directorship of the School of Artillery. He
worked in this capacity at the capital city until September,
1827, when Victoria named him head of a commission to survey
the boundary between the United States and Mexico, and inci-
dentally to inspect general conditions in Texas.
100
In May, 1825, Victoria nominated Mier y Terán to be min-
ister plenipotentiary to England, but the senate failed to ap-
prove the nomination. Some of the members of that body, in-
duced possibly by personal feelings, raked up revolutionary
stories concerning" the arrest of Rosains, and especially the
dissolution of the Congress at Tehuacán in 1815 and the sur-
render of Cerro Colorado in 1817. José María Alpuche, parish
priest and senator from Tabasco, was particularly malicious
in his remarks during the discussion of the proposed appoint-
ment.
101 A heated exchange in the public press between Alpuche
and Mier y Terán followed.
102
From January, 1825, until September, 1827, Mier y Terán,
although he was a brigadier-general in the regular army and ac-
tive director of the School of Artillery, lived a quiet and retired
life. He took no part in governmental affairs, but occupied
himself principally with scientific pursuits and the study of
mathematics. He acquired an enviable reputation as an engi-
neer and military instructor, and remained a member of the
Military Staff of Mexico.
103 It was during this time that he
wrote his two Manifestaciones
referred to earlier in this study.
Rosains, whom Mier y Terán had arrested in 1815, had written
his Relación,
an account of the revolution quite derogatory to
the reputation of the commander of Cerro Colorado; Mier y
Terán felt called upon to defend himself and a battle of words
between the two followed. The historian and statesman, Lucas
Alamán, and the editor, V. Agüeros, show that Mier y Terán
proved himself to be quite as effective with the pen as with
the sword and that Rosains was the loser in this contest.
104
Rosains began his attacks in 1823, but it was not until 1825
that his vilifications became so daring as to attract the atten-
tion of the general public. Apparently these unwarranted at-
tacks on Mier y Terán were a part of the general wave of
criticism which followed his nomination as minister plenipo-
tentiary to England.
105
FOOTNOTES:
October 24, 1821, in M. Romero, Bosquejo Histórico de la Agregación de
Chiapas y Soconusco, Colección de Documentos Oficiales, I, 67-69.
Ibid., I, 71-72.
Ibid., II, 98-101.
Aniversario de la Unión de Chiapas á México, 27; Expediente del General
de División, D. Manuel de Mier y Terán, Secretaría de Guerra y Marina,
Mexico.
of May 19, see pages 279-302.
See E. C. Barker, "The Government of Austin's Colony," in The South -
western Historical Quarterly, XXI, 223-224.
Austin's sojourn in Mexico City during the period of its discussion and
passage, see E. C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin, 49-72.
referring to Mier y Terán, said, ". . . he says if there is no mistake in
the name, he has a speaking acquaintance with you and holds you in high
regard." The Austin Papers, E. C. Barker, ed., II, 32.
a strict adherent of constitutional laws are found on pages 116, 136, and
158.
1821 a 1857, II, 13-15.,
described is given by Walter Edgar Hancock, The Career of General
Antonio López de Santa Anna, 1794-1833, MS, The University of Texas
Library (Doctoral dissertation, 1933).
102, 105.
him with the members of his family aboard an English armed merchant-
man bound for Italy. In the spring of 1824, the ex-emperor informed the
Mexican government that Spain was planning a reconquest and asked to
be allowed to come home and fight again. Congress, however, passed a
decree in April proscribing and outlawing the former ruler of Mexico.
Iturbide, ignorant of this, but without waiting for an answer to his request,
landed at Soto la Marina, July 15. General Felipe de la Garza, military
commandant of Tamaulipas, instead of carrying out orders to execute the
proscribed ex-emperor on sight, referred the matter to the state congress
of Tamaulipas. This body passed sentence of death and Iturbide was
executed at Padilla, July 19. His remains were buried in the old roofless
church of that town. El Drama de Padilla, Una Rectificación Histórica,
1-15. In 1838, the remains of Iturbide were disinterred and removed to the
cathedral in Mexico City. L. Alamán, Historia de Méjico, IV, 856. San
Antonio de Padilla was, in 1824, the capital of Tamaulipas. It is located
about forty miles northeast of the present capital, Victoria. An unfeeling
ministry, composed of Alamán, Llave, Arrillaga, and Mier y Terán, se-
verely reprimanded Garza for delaying the execution until after the state
congress of Tamaulipas had taken action. This ministry issued an official
document of censure on July 28. Mier y Terán to Garza, Mexico, July 28,
1824, in Apuntes para la Historia del Congreso Constituyente de las
Tamaulipas, 19; J. M. Bocanegra, Memorias, I, 322.
II, 419.
American Historical Review, XVIII, 164-182. There is evidence to show
that the Acta Constituiva was influenced to some extent by Stephen F.
Austin. In May, 1824, Austin submitted to Arizpe an outline of federal
government which he had condensed and adapted from the Constitution of
the United States. E. C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin, 84-85.
1824, Sección 6, Caja 7, Expediente 122; Calendario Manual y Guía de
Forasteros de México para el Año 1828, pp. 181, 183; El Sol, February 16,
1824; J. A. Mateos, Historia Parlamentaria, II, 684.
although he was away from Mexico City most of the time after November,
1827. On January 5, 1827, President Victoria reappointed him director
and inspector-general of the Artillery Corps, clearly stating that the ap-
pointment was interino, but he also held this post until his death. Expe-
diente del General de División, D. Manuel de Mier y Terán, in Archivo de
la Secretaria de Guerra y Marina. See also, M. de Mier y Terán, Segunda
Manifestación, 125-126; Calendario Manual y Guía . . . 1828, p. 183; and
Mariano Galván Rivera, Calendario Manual y Guía . . . 1832, p. 196.
597, footnote (1), 597; L. Alamán, Historia de Méjico, V, 807.
de la Guerra, 4. This memoir was presented to the Chamber of Deputies
on January 5, 1825, and to the Senate, January 7. Águila Mejicana
(Mexico), January 9, 1825; J. A. Mateos, Historia Parlamentaria, III, 15-16.
Appendix I.
Mier y Terán told Alamán that Victoria sent him on a useless expedition
to the coast of Vera Cruz at a cost of more than twenty thousand pesos to
the Mexican government, and that the boundary commission, equally use-
less, was going to cost sixty thousand. Yet Victoria dared not dismiss
him outright. N. Zamacois, Historia de Méjico, XI, 613-614; J. M. Tornel
y Mendivil, Breve Reseña Histórica de la Nación Mexicana, 171-172; L.
Alamán, Historia de Méjico, V, Appendix, 106.
edition, II, 194-195.
d'affaires, was living in Mexico City at this time and was personally-
acquainted with Mier y Terán; M. S. Lamego, "La Vida Militar del General
de División, D. Manuel de Mier y Terán," in Boletín de Ingenieros Militares,
III, 39. Mier y Terán served in the Corps of Military Engineers from
November 9, 1821, until February 18, 1824.
Rosains," in Biografías, 388.
and June 8, 1825, and M. de Mier y Terán, Manifestación, 31 pp., 1825,
and Segunda Manifestación, 126 pp., 1825.
SIMMS' MICHAEL BONHAM
A "FORGOTTEN" DRAMA OF THE TEXAS REVOLUTION
One of the least known, but in several respects one of the
most intriguing literary efforts to grow out of the siege of San
Antonio, the Alamo, and Texas' fight for independence, is Wil-
liam Gilmore Simms' drama, Michael
Bonham,
or
The
Fall
of
Béxar.
Only four copies of the play, which appeared in paper-
back form in 1852 under the imprint of Macfarlane & Fergusson
of Richmond, have been located,
1 though as a serial it doubt-
less had some contemporary following in the columns of the
Southern
Literary
Messenger.
2
Simms was a prolific author and a dominating figure in
Southern American literature throughout a large part of the
last century. During the forty-five years between 1825 and 1870
he published at least eighty volumes of fiction, poetry, drama,
geography, biography, and miscellanies.
3 In addition, he con-
tributed to many periodicals, was active as a lecturer, served
as literary advisor to a group of younger writers which in-
cluded Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne, and as a
magazine editor had a remarkable career.
4
Only three or four of Simms' works, however, were in the
field of drama,
5 and only one of his plays was ever produced.
6
This was Michael
Bonham,
presented at the Charleston Theatre
on the nights of March 26, 27, 28, 1855, with a cast which in-
cluded Joseph E. Eagle as Bonham, Frank Rea as Crockett,
John Sloan as Sparrow, Mrs. John Sloan as Donna Olivia, and
Kate Saxon as Donna Maria.
7 The play was generously re-
ceived as "melodramatic in character," original "both in the
plot and characters" and "effective situations." Commenting
editorially on the first performance, the Charleston
Mercury
stated:
We do not even remember ever having seen a play
received with more marked signs of favor. ... It
abounds in scenes of pathos and passion arranged to
give the highest stage effect, and we feel confident in
the prediction that it will increase in popularity with
its repetition, and greatly add to the reputation of its
author, Mr. Simms.
8
The Charleston
Courier,
which had the day before published a
long synopsis of the play and an appeal for "a generous and
intelligent auditory," declared that
The new drama of Michael
Bonham
--the production
of our versatile and gifted Simms--was produced last
evening to a large audience, whose interested attention
throughout, no less than their frequent demonstrations
of applause, testified their gratification at this offering
from the pen of one who has ministered to Southern
readers in all the moods of authorship.
9
The Charleston
Evening
News
devoted an entire editorial
column to the first performance of Michael
Bonham,
saying
that Simms had admirably "blended two of the passions, love
and revenge, with the action of the play," but added that the
author had suffered by "too great nearness
to the period in
which he writes." The critic continued,
The dialogue is spiritual and natural. This is a char-
acteristic of Mr. Simms in all his works of fiction and
invention, in which dialogue is introduced. The col-
loquy interchanged by his characters is almost inva-
riably dramatic. In Michael
Bonham
his verse has an
ease of movement and mellifluous flow, harmony of
numbers being another of Simms' peculiarities. The
poetry of passion pervades several of the passages, in
which the animation of dialogue enters. On the whole
this drama will prove an acquisition to the stage, in
the class to which it belongs, being capable of scenic
effect, having rapidity of movement, a well constructed
plot, not dividing the interest by unnecessary compli-
cations, and possessing scenes and situations that form
striking dramatic pictures.
10
The major fault found by the News'
critic was in the role of
Sparrow, the "comic relief." A punster in general modelled
after Falstaff, he is included only "to produce diversity. . . .
[His] language is the unmitigated expression of grossness with-
out piquancy
to give it flavor. He is an excrescence which ought
to undergo the process of excision." The Courier
had earlier
(March 26) commented on Sparrow as "a huge feeder and
wit ... a dramatic distillation of Capt. Porgy, a great fa-
vorite with all who have enjoyed his acquaintance through the
introduction of the novelist of the Carolina revolution."
11
In spite of these tributes, by few, if any, standards could
Michael
Bonham
be judged a first-rate drama. Simms himself
in an introductory comment admitted that "the tale . . . was
originally prepared with a view to performance. Subsequently,
however, I have persuaded myself that it would be read better
as a story." Trent remarks that "when read in the closet the
play seems to be the work of a precocious youth of eighteen
rather than of a practical writer and constant student and
spectator of the drama."
12 When read today it is slow and dull.
Its chief appeal is the interesting way in which the author
altered historical facts, and, particularly, in the liberties he took
with the prototype of his chief personage.
The plot of the play is as follows: Michael Bonham, second
in command of the Texan army, disguised as a Mexican cavalier,
and Davy Crockett, disguised as a mule driver, gain entrance
into the walls of Béxar. Bonham, under the name of Don
Amador, asks Don Esteban de Monteneros, the Mexican Gov-
ernor, for his daughter, Donna Olivia. Don Esteban, however,
has made plans for Donna Olivia to marry Don Pedro de
Zavalo, but believes Don Amador a wise choice for his niece,
Donna Maria de Pacheco. The Governor plans a masked ball
to work out the stratagem. Before the ball, however, Donna
Maria discovers that Don Amador and the mule driver are
Texans and threatens to reveal their identities unless Don
Amador promises to marry her. Bonham begs for an hour in
which to make his decision. Meanwhile, Donna Olivia has also
penetrated the disguises. She tells Bonham that she still loves
him and will marry him. The battle for Béxar begins; Bonham
kills Don Pedro. The Texans rout the enemy and capture the
palace and the Governor, who gives his daughter to Bonham.
Donna Maria, seeing that she has been outwitted, asks Bonham
and Donna Olivia to forgive her. But as Donna Olivia em-
braces her, Donna Maria quickly attempts to stab her. When
they try to disarm Donna Maria, she knifes herself and dies,
saying that she loved Bonham to the end.
There was of course no "Michael" Bonham. The only Bonham
associated with the Texas Revolution was the adventuresome
James Butler Bonham,
13 of Edgefield, South Carolina, who died
in the Alamo. He had come to Texas at the request of William
Barret Travis, another Carolinian, his schoolmate and boyhood
friend.
14 In 1855, when Simms' play was produced, James had
been dead nineteen years.
But very much alive was the well-known Milledge Luke Bon-
ham--brother of James
15--who had served in the South Carolina
legislature from 1840 to 1844, had been lieutenant-colonel in
the 12th Infantry, U. S. Army, under Captain Winfield Scott
Hancock in the Mexican War--and had been cited for conspic-
uous service by General Franklin Pierce. For one year after
the war he had filled the post of military governor of one of
the conquered Mexican provinces; and, upon his return to Caro-
lina in 1848, he had been elected solicitor of the southern dis-
trict of South Carolina, which position he held until 1857.
16
There can be no question, therefore, of the fact that Milledge
Luke Bonham was an important figure in the South in the
1850's. James had fought the Mexicans in 1836, Milledge in
1848; the former was dead, the latter alive--and, doubtless,
the story of Milledge's heroic services in the Mexican War was
fresher in the minds of most Carolinians than that of his
brother James' sacrifices in the Alamo. Under the aegis of
"poetic license"--Simms states that he took "some liberties"
with the historical facts . . . "but the history will suffer
little from my freedoms, while, I believe, the story gains by
them"--the author, it appears, tempted readers, perhaps un-
consciously, to associate with his play the name of Milledge,
one of the state's most affluent citizens, as well as (if not rather
than) James, the dead hero of the Alamo.
To accuse Simms of purposely attempting to misguide even
by insinuation would be quite unfair; nor would available evi-
dence substantiate such a charge. In the drama Michael is a
companion-in-arms of Ben Milam and Davy Crockett, but in
real life James was companion-in-arms of Davy Crockett but
not of Ben Milam, for Milam fell at the siege of Bexar a month
or two before James got to the Alamo. Whereas James entered
the Alamo never to return, Michael comes through the siege
unharmed to win the Mexican governor's daughter's hand in
matrimony. To be sure, the name "Michael" is more suggestive
of Milledge than of James--but this evidence is not strong
enough, even though the author acknowledges in his foreword
that he took "some liberties."
William Peterfield Trent, Simms' only biographer, was com-
pletely taken in by the confusion and believed without question,
when he did his work for the American
Men
of
Letters
series
in 1892, that the playwright's hero was Milledge--not James.
He states that "the hero of the play was then [1855] living in
Carolina" and that "General [sic] Milledge L. Bonham, the
hero, was a well-known man." In another place he refers to
Milledge as a "crusader" who "more recently . . . had served
with distinction in the Mexican War, and it was probably this
fact which suggested to Simms the propriety of writing his
drama." And later he adds "how the original of the romantic
hero could have been flattered at finding himself carried through
a series of duels and cut-throat adventures is hard to conceive."
17
No evidence has been found to support the theory that Charles-
tonians who saw the play were misled, as was Simms' biog-
rapher. There could have been doubt in the minds of some
people as to which Bonham the prototype of the hero really
was, but this is unlikely--especially if they remembered their
history and did not allow Milledge's valor of more recent
date to supplant that of James. None of the Charleston papers
(Courier,
Mercury,
or Evening
News)
mentions either Milledge
or James in their notices.
18 The theatrical critic of the Courier
in a review based on a reading of the play, indicated that he
knew which man was being portrayed, but he failed to mention
James by name:
Of the hero, Bonham,
who gives name to the piece,
we need say little. He is too well known as one, and a
most conspicuous one ... an associate of Travis
and
Bowie
and Crockett,
and the small but hardy band
of crusaders who first planted near the "Great River"
of the American Spaniards, the lone star flag. . .
19
The press had reported James's death in 1836, two decades
before,
20 and the supposition is that his gallant end in the
Alamo was known to all. However, Milledge's name had been
currently before the public, and, when one recalls that to last-
century Carolinians Texas was extremely far away and her
history vague, one may rightly expect and condone some con-
fusion. To those who were clear about James's search for re-
inforcements and his subsequent heroic dash back into the
Alamo, the drama itself must have held fuller significance. For
example, Travis, who does not appear in the play, is mentioned
in the last act as follows:
Davis:
'Tis Travis. He takes command. Bonham is
to leave us; to take dispatches to Sam Houston. . . .
They say that Santa Anna is marching down upon
us with twenty thousand men.
Crockett:
We must stand a siege then?
21
Here again, however, the author succeeded in juggling the facts
and it is possible that the allusion to James' chivalric search
for aid for the besieged Texans might have passed unnoticed.
Furthermore, James actually took no part in the siege of Béxar
from December 5 to 9, 1835, as Simms would have it in the
play. On those days the Texas revolutionists were wresting
the city from General Cos and his Mexican forces. He did not
arrive until a month or two after the Texans had captured the
Alamo, January or February, 1836
22 at which time he joined
his friend Travis and the garrison in the Alamo. Santa Anna
did not capture the fort and massacre all the defenders until
March 6. In other words, the action of Simms' play, so far as
Bonham is concerned, should not have begun until three months
after its end.
It is not known whether Milledge Bonham ever saw the play
presented; most probably he did not. There can be no doubt,
however, of his having been pleased with the idea: Major
M. C. M. Hammond, a friend of Simms, wrote him, "Saw
Bonham (M.L.) yesterday. His vanity is flattered. He was
gratified at your success, of which I told him."
23 In all fair-
ness it must be conceded that Milledge's vanity was flattered
because of his family pride, not, as Trent believed, because of
any belief that the public was seeing in Michael the hero of
the Mexican War. Especially so, when he had lent James the
money to go to Texas and, in 1838, had visited Texas at the
expense of $500 of James' estate "to ascertain all he could of
his brother's last days, and settle up his estate."
24 Milledge was
too famous in his own right to need to bask in reflected glory.
When the play was presented in the Charleston Theatre,
Simms was, as Trent records, "so nervously interested in the
success" that he could not be persuaded to attend the perform-
ances. He did, however, keep account of the attendances and
hoped that he would make "some much-needed money."
25 In a
letter to Hammond he declared himself "slightly chagrined at
the fact that the audience did not call for the author." Ham-
mond replied that he had never heard of an author's being called
in Charleston, but that the audience had paid him "the very
highest compliment known to them, and quite unusual, too, that
of encoring scenes!
A song might do. But scenes! it is surely
a rara
avis."
26
Unhappily for Simms, Michael
Bonham
was not a success
and, after the three performances in Charleston, was forgotten.
Its principal claims for attention now lie in its rarity, in the
erroneous interpretation Trent gave it in what for almost fifty
years has been the only biography of the author, in the confu-
sion which could possibly have arisen concerning the prototype
of the chief character, in the fact that it was the only one of
Simms' dramas ever produced, and in its appeal as an "un-
known" item of Texas history.
FOOTNOTES:
of the City of Boston, Harvard University Library, and Yale University
Library. Inquiries sent to sixty Texas libraries, and to many outstanding
libraries throughout the United States, failed to locate another copy. North
Texas State Teachers College Library (Denton) has a copy on microfilm.
arate publication, which bears John R. Thompson's name as "publisher," is
doubtless a reprint from the Messenger.
The Georgia Historical Quarterly, XIX, 47-54 (March, 1935).
The Partisan was produced in Philadelphia several times between 1846-
1851 as The Swamp Fox (Steed), or Marion and His Merry Men (by H. H.
Paul). The Yemassee, based on Simms' novel of the same name, was played
at the Bowery Theatre (New York City), August 17, 1835, and in Charles-
ton, January 6, 7,1845. Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand, attributed
to Simms by A. H. Wilson (A History of the Philadelphia Theatre, 1835 -
1855, Philadelphia, 1935), was the work of Charles Robert Maturin.
known in theatrical circles of the day. See George C. D. Odell, Annals of
the New York Stage (New York, 1931), VI, VII.
fat, philosophic partisan" who appears in all but one of the author's Revo-
lutionary romances, and here compared to Sparrow, has been discussed by
Hampton M. Jarrell, "Falstaff and Simms' Porgy," American Literature,
III, 204-212 (May, 1931).
The Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1931.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXV, 128 (October, 1931).
born in 1807; Milledge Luke, the eighth and youngest child, was born in
1813. Ibid., p. 125.
elected to Congress on the States Rights Democrat ticket, a post he held
until his state seceded in 1860. In 1861 he became brigadier-general in the
Confederate Army. He resigned his commission the next year and was
elected to the Confederate Congress. He was governor of South Carolina,
1862-1864; and in 1865 he was reappointed brigadier-general and served
with Joseph E. Johnston. He died in 1890.
calls Bonham "General," he did not actually hold that rank until 1861.
Fall of the Alamo, and refers to it as Mike Bonham: A Texan Drama in
Five Acts.
of the siege and the action passes in Scene X to "An Apartment in the
Alamo, splendidly prepared and lighted brilliantly." There the Governor
gives his daughter to Michael Bonham.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXV, 129.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXV, 128, 132.
of the Ladies Calhoun Monument Association"; the third was probably the
author's benefit, though no proof of this fact has been found. See the
Evening News, March 28, and the Mercury, March 29, 1855.
TEXAS COLLECTION
The Texas Collection for October carried the notice of Pro-
fessor Webb's appointment as Harmsworth Professor of Amer-
ican History in Oxford University and the statement that I
would serve as editor of The
Quarterly
and the Texas Collection
during his absence. He asked for me from the members of
the Association the same spirit of cooperation that had been
given him, and in assuming these duties I could ask for nothing
more. There are no new policies to announce for the Associa-
tion, The
Quarterly,
or the Texas Collection. I should like,
however, to call attention to Professor Webb's statement in
the July Texas Collection, in which he refers to the fact that
the Texas Collection seems to render its greatest service when
presented as a series of edited contributions rather than as a
column written exclusively by the editor. I trust that during
the coming year the membership will be particularly alert for
items relating to Texas history and will send in such notices
for insertion in this department.
Although some cynics, pedagogues, and "practical" business-
men have in recent years cried themselves hoarse in denouncing
history, the mother of all the social sciences is today well on
her way to reclaiming her birthright and resuming her honored
place in the nation's household.
With the opening of the war, with crisis heaped upon crisis,
with American fighting men dying on fronts throughout the
world, the call came quickly from both the Army and the Navy
for men who could serve on the morale front--for historians.
Sane leaders called for historians who could give some perspec-
tive to the national peril. It was the simple facts of American-
ism--of patriotism--that were called for. Why were we fight-
ing? For what did we fight? Why was America worth fighting
for?
Almost simultaneously with the knowledge that the national
structure was threatened with conflagration came the quick
realization that the building and the way of life it housed must
be preserved. Immediately it became important to know how
the structure was built--materials and plan--that it might be
best and zealously preserved.
Suddenly we saw millions of Americans who needed not just
additional techniques in tightening a bolt or in impressing a
boss (former practical studies) but who had a deep sense of
the responsibility resting upon them as citizens. Suddenly
Americans and Texans needed to know why they were citizens
and freemen. And that answer was in our history. No longer
did our forebears--the Mother of America and Uncle Sam--
seem so base and utterly impractical as when so recently be-
leaguered by Mr. Henry Ford and the pedagogical administra-
tive experts. The National Association of Manufacturers called
upon the NEA at Denver, not for the teaching of techniques,
but for more history teaching.
The Board of Regents of The University of Texas recently
made one year of American history prerequisite to receiving
any degree from the University. It is probably not too much
to ask of college graduates that they should know the history
and traditions of the nation in which they are to live.
The
Junior
Historian
for November, 1942, is dedicated to
Captain E. C. De Montel of Wichita Falls, who donated the
publication costs for this number. A brief biographical sketch
of Captain De Montel and the De Montel family in Texas is
included in this number of the magazine. Mr. De Montel will
be remembered by many members of the Association as the
general chairman of the 1941 celebration of the centennial of
the Texan Santa Fe Expedition. The lead article in the Novem-
ber Junior
Historian
is "Thomas Bugbee," written by Wallace
Ryle of Wichita Falls High School. Other articles and contribu-
tors include the following: "Texas Is Worth Fighting For,"
by Thomas Fox; "A Youthful Chronicler of the Texas Frontier,"
by Hattie Lee Stanley; "'Dead Eye' Dick," by Sally Ann Kiel;
"A Letter to Texas," by Renn Lawrence; and "Meet the Folks,"
an editorial by Llerena Friend, the sponsor of the Wichita Falls
Chapter of Junior Historians.
Mrs. Ralph S. Mackay, 2083 Sixteenth Avenue, San Francisco,
California, sends to the office a picture of an old daguerreotype
in her possession which is labelled: "Old College Building in
Texas." Mrs. Mackay would like this picture identified by some
member of the Association. The picture shows the building to
have been of stone, two stories in height, with double doors
on both floors, twelve windows on the front of the building--
that is, three windows on either side of the two doors--and a
cupola directly above the doors. Mrs. Mackay's daguerreotype
has pinned to it a notation that the picture was taken by
W. Cowles. Any member who would like to see the picture,
with a view to possible identification, may receive same by
writing to the office.
Daniel H. Knox of Alameda, California, writes as follows:
"I have a diary written by my great grandfather, James Milam,
of a trip he took to the 'Province of Texas' in the winter of
1830 to visit his brother, Ben R. Milam, then living on a farm
on Lake Comfort, near Elims Prairie, giving details of his
route and the difficulties of travel in those days. I also have
a copy of a will of Ben Milam dated in 1824, reciting that he
is a retired colonel of the Republic of Mexico, and that he
leaves six square miles of his land and his mining interests
to General Arthur Wavell. Is the General Arthur Wavell
mentioned in the will any relation to the General Wavell in
the present British army?"
Miss Lois Antoinette Garver has written a master's thesis
at the University on Ben Milam. Those having special infor-
mation on Milam or the Wavell genealogy are asked to write
directly to Mr. Knox.
"The Marines like Texans because they do better at officer
candidates' bootcamp in Quantico, Virginia, than men from
any other state," said Captain W. P. Burke, Jr., in charge of
a Marine recruiting party in Austin on October 30, 1942.
Mr. J. S. Ibbotson, Librarian of the Rosenberg Library at
Galveston, Texas, writes to Dr. Webb a letter of congratulation
upon his appointment to Oxford, in the course of which he
says: "Although you are probably not aware of the influence
which you have exerted in this community, it is owing to your
inspired writing that the former Galveston Historical Society is
now being reorganized. To you and your colleagues at the Uni-
versity who have contributed to this revival of interest, we wish
to express our gratitude."
A. R. Kelly, Chief of Archaeologic Sites of the National Park
Service of the Department of Interior, writes from 931 West
Woodard Street, Denison, Texas, to say that the National Park
Service will be interested in preserving archaeological and his-
torical materials and sites from the area to be inundated by
the waters of the Denison Dam. Mr. Kelly will appreciate
receiving information regarding old trails and landmarks with-
in the area which has now been acquired by the United States
Government.
The following inquiry has been received from John Hix of
"Strange As It Seems" fame:
In doing research work for "Strange As It Seems,"
my nationally syndicated newspaper feature, I came
across an interesting item which I would like to use
for publication. I wonder if you will be good enough
to verify this information for me.
The item to which I refer states that Governor Hogg,
on his deathbed, asked that instead of a stone or marble
shaft on his grave, a pecan tree be planted at the head
and a walnut tree at the foot. He asked that the pecans
and walnuts borne by these trees should be given to
Texans so they might plant them and make Texas "a
land of trees." The article goes on to say the first nuts
were saved in 1926 and planted in nursery rows, and the
same thing has been done every year since, with the
saplings distributed as soon as they were big enough
for transplanting.
Are the above facts correct? Are the original two
trees still alive? Has there been any estimate made
of how many trees have been planted? Would it be
possible for me to have a picture of Governor Hogg's
grave and the trees? A good clear snap-shot will be
sufficient.
Any courtesy you can extend in response to this
request will be sincerely appreciated.
Information should be directed to John Hix, 6362 Hollywood
Boulevard, Hollywood, California.
In response to Dr. S. W. Geiser's comments on John A. Veatch
in the October "Texas Collection," Mr. J. H. Minton of Hemp-
hill, Texas, has made a valuable contribution regarding the
Veatch lands and heirs.
The challenging new book Men
At
War:
An
Anthology
of
the
Best
War
Stones
of
All
Time,
edited by Ernest Hemingway,
could not have been done without giving due recognition to
Texas writers and episodes of Texas history. Colonel John W.
Thomason is represented with four selections, Marquis James
has two, while Ensign Gay, hero of Midway, has one. From
Thomason's beloved Texan character Praxiteles Swan comes
the following inspiration:
"Things were going bad for the South. The battles
were getting bloodier and endless. Food and materials
were scarce. Their losses were great. They weren't
getting anywhere. A captured Union officer had con-
verse with Praxiteles Swan. 'Why don't you quit and
go home? What you fighting for, anyway?' Praxiteles
straightened up and his voice grew big. 'A man's bound
to fight,' he declared, 'for what he believes in. He's
bound to keep on fighting--that part of it's with him.
But whether he wins or not--that's with God. I reckon
we'll keep on fighting, while there's any of us left--'"
"It was four in the morning. All was quiet behind
the walls of the Alamo. Suddenly there was a sound
of bugles and the savage air of Degüello, the Mexican
Cutthroat Song, burst forth. It was Santa Anna mak-
ing his charge! But when he reached the Alamo, the
Texans were ready--the Cutthroat Song had warned
them."
So are we now warned again by a cutthroat chorus that
sounds this time around the world. Included in James' "Degüe-
llo" is the most heroic document in all American history--
Travis' letter from the Alamo.
The following letter from a distressed member of the Asso-
ciation is self-explanatory. This person first thought that in
the matters detailed in her letter she was dealing with a rep-
resentative of the Texas State Historical Association. We have
had two enraged Texans enter our office demanding the return
of sums $500 and $300 respectively. These men were much
surprised to find that they were in the wrong office. The Asso-
ciation does not deal in portraits--has never had any connection
with portraits except to present to The University of Texas
the portrait of Dr. Eugene C. Barker. The Association's pro-
gram for Texas history is only as stated in The
Quarterly,
and our officers and officials are listed on page two of the cover.
--- , Texas
September 12, 1942
As a representative of the Texas and Historical
-- a Mr. X-- on February 21, 1941, called on my
mother (Mrs.-- --) and me in regard to a portrait
of my father (Dr.-- -- deceased) which he said
would be hung in the Building at ----. He had a
list of deceased prominent men, some of whom I had
known and, of course, my father's name thereupon.
These names had been selected because of their promi-
nence, character, and had done much in shaping the
destiny of our state. A contract for the painting of
portraits had been made with Mr. ---,---
Street,--- , Texas. No set price for each portrait was
requested but left up to person concerned as to what
they wished. Mother gave him a check for $300.
Several weeks later he called again and stated that
a memorial plaque had to be under each portrait. A
tribute to my father written by a close friend was re-
quested of which Mr.--- ,--- , Texas, wrote.
With an elapse of another few weeks, Mr. X
called again, and his mission this time revealed that
the tribute would be engraved on parchment and had
to be sent to England, as this kind of work wasn't done
here in the United States. Two of these would be made
--one to be hung under the portrait in a gold frame
in keeping with said portrait, and the other sent to
Mother. The cost of this was $43.50. Up to present
date neither have been received.
In July (this year) I wrote to him (Mr. X--) at
-- Street, --, Texas, requesting return of portrait,
since matters as represented had not been carried out.
This was completely ignored by him, thus I wrote
Mr. -- and asked if he could be instumental in getting
action for me, and immediately I received a letter from
Mr. X -- stating the portrait was being sent prepaid,
by express and would be received about time of arrival
of his letter. However, it failed to show up, so again
wrote him, but no response. On August 12 he called
in person with portrait and unfortunately Mother and
I were out of the city, and my aunt received it. When
I returned I discovered that the original frame of
which I paid for had been taken off and replaced with
a less expensive one. I immediately wrote requesting
him kindly to send to me and this one would be re-
turned. So far no answer or action.
I'll appreciate your kindness of advice in regard to
what procedure can be taken to stick a crook like this.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. -- --
Miss Bernice Mezzetti, who became known to many of the
members of the Association through her services as a secretary
in the Association's office in 1940-1941, has been appointed by
the Board of Regents of the University as Research Assistant
in Texas History. Miss Mezzetti began her work on November
1. She will devote her time mostly to the preliminary work
on The
Handbook
of
Texas.
All persons interested in Texas
history are invited to submit topics which should be included
in this encyclopedia of Texas history.
The summer 1942 Southwest
Review,
published by the Uni-
versity Press of Southern Methodist University, contains two
articles which should interest most of the readers of The
Quarterly:
J. Frank Dobie's "The Alamo's Immortalization of
Words" and John Chapman's "Fort Griffin." Dobie's article
will make a special appeal to our junior membership.
Joe Ogle, who wrote the prize-winning Junior Historian radio
script last year for the Garland Junior Historians, is now
employed in the Texas Collection of The University of Texas
Library. Ogle reports that he is having a grand time "lux-
uriating" among the Texas books.
Mrs. Estelle G. Nelson of Calamus, Iowa, who is writing a
novel of Norwegian pioneer life in Texas, was a visitor in
the Association office in October. Mrs. Nelson found the files
of The
Quarterly
quite helpful in providing fact and back-
ground for her literary enterprise. Concerning The
Quarterly
she writes: "I was groping about for source material con-
cerning the settlement of the early Norwegians in Texas until
I found a citation to The
Southwestern
Historical
Quarterly.
I immediately contacted the Association. Your office has been
of great assistance. The
Quarterly
records contain valuable
information, written in a concise, interesting style, and I am
proud to be a member of the Association. I now look forward
to receiving each copy of The
Quarterly.
Professor Samuel E. Asbury of Texas Agricultural and Me-
chanical College, College Station, writes in appreciation of the
"escape valve" function of the Texas Collection, saying:
I have recently become interested in a new Texas
history subject. It is the "White Man's Union" of
Grimes County. If you have some Grimes County his-
tory students wanting a topic for an M. A. thesis, put
them on this subject. My own interest is in getting
some participants in the Union's creation to write real
accounts, not to be published in their own lifetime, so
they can say what they want to say without being shot
at. The whole matter is still dynamite.
The subject suggested should intrigue a large number of
Texans. In view of the hazards suggested probably only vol-
unteers should be used in the thesis writing.
The October, 1942, number of The
American
Historical
Re
-
view
lists two members of the Association as recipients of
grants-in-aid from the Social Science Research Council (South-
ern Division).
(1) Rudolph Leopold Biesele, The University of
Texas, for the completion of a study of the life and
career of Barnard E. Bee, with particular emphasis
on the political history of Texas, 1836-1846.
(2) Lester Fields Sheffy, West Texas State College,
for the completion of a history of the colonization of
West Texas.
F. F. Latta, 2104 B Street, Bakersfield, California, makes
the following inquiry:
For a number of years I have been trying to complete
work concerning the outlaws known as the Dalton
Gang, who were well known in this portion of Cali-
fornia. Littleton Dalton, an older and law-abiding
brother of the Dalton boys who comprised the gang,
aided me for several years, but passed away a few years
ago aged about 82. I am assembling the only accurate
account known of the operations of the gang and need
all data available concerning the robbery of the bank
at Longview, probably sometime in 1894, for which
Mason Frakes (known as Bill Dalton) Dalton was
blamed.
Are there newspaper files containing accounts of the
robbery? Are there any of the robbed bank force still
living and, if so, who and where are they?
If there are newspaper accounts, I would like to know
the probable cost of having them typed or of having
them photostated. I would also like to know if anyone
was indicted for the Longview robbery and if so, who?
Are there any photographs relative to the robbery?
Could you suggest anyone who might be able to furnish
any of the data I have suggested?
I would appreciate receiving any information you
might be able to furnish or locate through your publi-
cations.
Persons having information relative to Mr. Latta's inquiries
should write directly to him.
T. C. Richardson, Associate Editor, Farm
and
Ranch,
Dallas,
Texas, writes that he has just undertaken "an interesting and
exciting task"--the preparation of the manuscript for a book
for the University of Oklahoma Press, to be entitled Cattle
Trails
and
the
Men
Who
Made
Them.
Such a study, of course,
involves history, geology, geography, biography, and an attempt
to interpret the social and economic heritage from the time of
the cavalier era. Editor Richardson will appreciate very much
any assistance that members of the Association can give him
on the above topics and in the way of source material. Mr.
Richardson published "Cattle Trails of Texas" in one of the
early numbers of The
Texas
Geographic
Magazine.
Suggestions
and source material should be sent directly to Mr. Richardson
at the above address.
LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS
DR. JOHN SIBLEY AND THE LOUISIANA-TEXAS
FRONTIER, 1803-1814
Natchitoches Augt. 7th 1808.
Sir
A Considerable Agitation has lately been excited in this part
of the Country by a General Delvimere [Octaviano D'Alvimar]
32
of the Army of the Emperor of France
33 & passing along on his
way to Nacogdoches, he was near this Town but did not come
through it, he informed Several Gentlemen who saw him (Some
of whom Said they had known him in France) that the Emperor
had made an entire New Arrangement of the Government of the
Spanish Provinces in America, that he had Appointed the Mar-
quis St. Simon Vice King of Mexico, & all the Governors were
Changed; together with the Governor of Havannah & Pensacola,
when he passed through this Neighbourhood he wore a Plain
dress: but put on the Uniform of a French Dragoon as Soon
as he Crossed the Sabine & Immediately assumed Some Au-
thority, he was at Pensacola & at Batton Rouge. There are
I believe a large Majority of the old French Inhabitants of this
Territory whose Spirits are much exhilarated with what they
believe so fair a Prospect of being United to the French gov-
ernment. I Shall hear in a few days what reception the General
met with at Nacogdoches & St. Antonio & the Probable effects
his visit may produce. We have nothing worth no-
ticing Amongst the Indians in this quarter. The Alibamis who
committed the Murder & Robery at Oppolousas [Opelousas]
have been tried & Condemned to be hanged, the time was ap-
pointed for their execution the day before yesterday. I sepose
it was done.
I shall make An Attempt to have the Conchetta who killed
ONeal in this Neighbourhood last Summer taken & tried; he
disappeared for a while but is now at their Village on the Sabine
& Threatens to do more Mischief. I hear Nothing that is to
be depended on about Any movements amongst the Spanish
Troops in our Neighbourhood. Several persons from the Spanish
dominions have lately informed me, that there are some ap-
pearances of a disposition Amongst the People towards Mexico
to throw off their dependance on Spain in Europe.
I am making Arrangements to remove my family from Carolina
to this place.
34 I hope I shall not be disappointed by any par-
ticular political Situation of Our Country; The population and
improvements of this Territory are very much retarded, by the
slow progress of the Land Office Commissioner in deciding upon
the Claims to Land by Individuals.
The Troops and Inhabitants here are generally healthy &
there never was on Red River a fairer prospect of Good Crops,
of every thing that is here Cultivated. I received a
Letter from my Son George dated at Washington after he re-
turned from Carolina.
35 I have not heard from him since. I
sepose he is now at or near St. Louis, he has expressed to me
in Strong terms your kindness to him, for which I beg you to
Accept my thanks, as you have his gratitude. I am
not yet Satisfied about the Titles of the Bayou Pierre Lands;
but have Conditionally Concluded upon a purchase. I expect
soon to be Satisfactorily informed on every point. The tract
I am in treaty for is Large enough & Good Enough & Cheap
Enough. The harmony of the Garrison
36 here has
lately been much Interrupted by a disagreement between Cap-
tains Cooper & Wolstencraft which has extended amongst Some
of the Citizens. The decision of a Court Martial which is now
Setting will probably determine who is most in the Wrong,
for myself I am Satisfied, that the process Agt Cooper might
with some propriety be denominated persecution instead of
prosecution.
I cannot be persuaded that the Interest of the United States
would in anywise Suffer if both our Civil & Military lists Con-
tained fewer old Countrymen. If one has been Appointed to
Any place within the United States whose place Could not have
been better Supplied by One of Our Own Citizens it has not
been within my knowledge. I do not believe that all the Acts
of Governor Claiborne put together, Since he has been Govr
of this Territory has, or ever will Compensate for the Mischief
he has done to this & Rapides District by his appointing [John
C. Carr] an Irishman
37 Judge of the former & Philip Ribelt
[Reibelt] a Judge
38 in the latter District, & [Bartholomew]
Shamburgh, Colonel of the Militia of both.
39 The Corruptions
of these appointments have done More to alienate the people
from the Govt. of the United States than can almost be Con-
ceived; before Ribelt [Reibelt] was dismissed from office he
almost Ruined the Parish he was judge of, I am Creditably
Informed that Ten Thousand Dollars would not Indemnify the
people for the wrongs he Committed. Some heavy judgments
have been rendered Against him in the Superior Court for Mal
Practise in office other Suits are hanging Over him, he has I
am lately informed Ran Away into the Dominions of Spain, &
left his Securities to be ruined, after making Oath that him
& his wife
40 were never married. I think it is a great Mercy to
me in particular that he did not Arrive here as Factor; for he
was to have been Our Parish Judge. If he had Come. Although
we are but little bettered in a Judge; but it appears we shall
not long have him to Complain of, prosecutions that will remove
him are about being Commenced. I never knew an appointing
officer so truly unfortunate in his nominations as Governor
Claiborne has been.
I
am
Sir with great respect
Your Obt. Humble Servant
John Sibley
Geni. Henry Dearborn
Natchitoches Sept 7th 1808.
Sir
On the 5th of August last two Men Arrived here from the
Conchetta Village on the Sabine & informed one that Siache the
Creek Indian who Murdered ONeal (from N. Carolina) a few
miles from this place in June 1807 was then at the Village, &
that he said he knew his fate if the Americans Caught him,
but before he was Caught by them he intended to kill a few
more of them, that he had Secreeted himself for some days
near the Fort [Claiborne] at Natchitoches to get An Oppor-
tunity of Killing one American Soldier; but never Could find
one alone, & that he hoped yet to have an opportunity of Killing
me, in Consequence of this information I had a Conversation
with Lieut. Shortridge of the Natchitoches Troop House & it
was Concluded for him to Select twelve men of the Company &
proceed privately to the Village and take the Murderer if they
Could, the Party set off the next night well mounted & well
Armed and Arrived in the Village undiscovered; & were treated
Civilly by the Indians who they there found, but the Murderer
had left the place three days before & was gone to the Acco-
kesaws [Arkokisa] in the Dominion of Spain, the chief of the
Village was not at home; but he Came home a Short time after
Mr Shortridge & party left the Village, Persued & Overtook
them about Six Miles, where they had stop'd, they had a friendly
Conversation together, the Chief discovered no disposition to
oppose their taking the Murderer if he had been there. Ac-
knowledged he was a bad man, that he had Several times felt
his Own life in danger from him & finally promised that he
could use his endeavour to have him taken & Sent in.
A Report has since Got in Circulation & made the most of by
Certain Characters who are enemies of the Govt of the United
States: that the Party Committed at the Village Great Outrage,
put the Women &
Children in fear, & that the Indians were
greatly exasperated, I have made strict enquiry into it, &
believe
the report entirely unfounded & false. Mr Shortridge is a Sober
discreet Sensible Man, in whom I have the highest Confidence,
he is a friend to our Govt & of course is disliked & dislikes our
Militia Colonel [Shamburgh] & Parish Judge [Carr]
41 who with
almost every other foreigner here either in or out of the Army
have formed themselves into an opposition Band. Carr the Judge
I believe has formerly been a Musician for a Company of Play-
ers. In our Indian affairs I know of Nothing Else
Amiss except the Panis & Caddos Complain very much of re-
peated depredations being Committed upon them by the Osages.
I am Sorry that a Supply of Goods for the Indian factory
here Could not have come on, private traders since the Em-
bargo
42 refuse to take their Skins in exchange for the Goods
they want, & there is very little left in the factory; Should a
Supply not come on Soon the Indians will be Considerably dis-
satisfied.
In my last I mentioned I believe a General Delvimere [D'Alyi-
mar] having passed this place toward Nacogdoches, An emis-
sary of Buoneparte [Napoleon Bonaparte], the Genl. did not
meet with a Welcome Reception, he was detained at Nacog-
doches about a Month, not suffered to Advance or retreat, And
was at length Conducted towards St. Antonio under a Military
Guard; it may be said a Prisoner; the News of the Peace be-
tween Spain & England & the Massacre at Madrid had not
Reached Nacogdoches About ten days Ago when Delvimere
[D'Alvimar] left it
43 Don Manuel Salcedo Son of
the late Governor of Orleans left this place for Nacogdoches
this Morning, he Spent about four days here he landed at Bed-
ford in Massachusetts in May last from Spain Came to Provi-
dence & to New Haven in a Stage, from there to New York by
Water from New York and Philada [Philadelphia] in a stage,
from thence to Pittsburgh &
down the Ohio & Mississippi to
Natches, from Natches here by land, he is Governor of the
Province of Taxus [Texas]
44 & will live at St. Antonio, he has
with him his wife & One child, a Priest, a Young Lady besides
Domesticks; he is about 35 years of Age, A modest unassuming
man & appears to have Sense enough to govern Such people
As he will find there, he Says On his Arrival he shall Send
every Frenchman Out of the Province & shall begin with Del-
vimere [D'Alvimar] If he finds him, he Dined yesterday with
Col. Freeman
45 & one day with me, he speaks highly of what
he Saw of the United States, has a high Idea of Our Popula-
tion, Wealth, & General prosperity & was every where treated
Civilly & Particularly so in [manuscript torn] but was not
known as a Spanish Governor [manuscript torn] he regretted
not being Able to Visit Washington, he Says he met with
General Moreau
46 in Philadelphia who informed him of General
Delvimere [D'Alvimar] having Gone into Spain's Dominion &
(I understood) Advised him to Arrive at his post As Soon As
possible, he has left here behind him all his family Some of them
Are Indisposed and are under my Care. It is prob-
able I think, the fate of these Spanish Provinces are fixed, from
the events in Europe. If the Govt in Spain is Anihilated they
must Attempt Independence, or as much as they Can be of
England, to whom they will probably look to for protection, &
who will endeavour to Monopolise the benefits of their Com-
merce & Mines; it Seems to me to present to the United States
new difficulties a Short time will determine the Necessity of
the Military Posts in this quarter being Augmented Or Other-
wise. I should be very Glad to be Authorised to
receive Forty Swords & Pistols from those deposited here for
the Use of our Independent Volunteer Company of those here
under my Command. I will be Accountable for the Swords &
Pistols. The Govt of the United States may Always Rely on
the Services of this Company when wanted on short notice.
The troops here are uncommonly healthy there are at this
time but twelve men at this Post unfit for duty, & most of these
were from some Simple hurt or Boils & we have no disorders
that appear to be the Effect of Climate but slight intermitients
& but few of those.
I am
Sir with very Great Esteem
Your Obt. Hble. Servant
John Sibley.
General Dearborn.
FOOTNOTES:
Mexico by way of Texas to promote a revolution against Spanish sovereign-
ty and to furnish plans for Napoleon's control of Spanish America. Lucas
Alamán, Historia de Méjico (México, 1849-1852), I, 296-297; Viceroy
Venegas to Bardaxe, September 30, 1810, Correspondencia de los Virreyes,
1810-1811, MS., II, doc. 27, A. G. N.
he settled in Louisiana. G. P. Whittington, "Doctor John Sibley of Natchi-
toches, 1757-1837," The Louisiana Historical Quarterly, X, 467-468.
who died October 25, 1790. Ibid.
place of nativity was given as "England, last from Kentucky." Clarence
Edwin Carter, Territorial Papers of the United States, Orleans Territory,
IX, 835.
the appointment for Reibelt because he had sympathy for him and his
family. Reibelt, he said, was a good republican, a research scholar of talent,
"but not a man to make his way in the world." Clarence Edwin Carter,
Territorial Papers of the United States, Orleans Territory, IX, 563, 671,
728, 729, 746, 749, 808.
having been born in "Germany, but for many years an officer in the Army
of the United States." Also, he appears on the roster of Claiborne's Civil
Appointments in the Territory of Orleans as justice of the peace at Natchi-
toches, December 7, 1805, and June 30, 1808. Ibid., IX, 600, 796, 838.
amiable women living," and "a very interesting female." Ibid., IX, 681, 687.
man. Ibid., IX, 835, 838.
world except to bonded coastwise trade. No American or foreign vessel
engaged in foreign commerce could enter or leave our ports.
York, 1930), 408-410, 489.
stationed at New Orleans serving in His Majesty's army as captain of
infantry, and had also exercised the duties of governor for his father,
Don Juan Manuel Salcedo, Governor of Louisiana, who was often incapaci-
tated. In San Antonio on November 7, 1808, Salcedo took the oath of office
as governor of Texas; but he did not become acting governor, as he was to
make a survey of Texas. Cordero remained active as governor until he was
replaced by Bernardo Bonavia in the spring of 1809. Bonavia was sent to
fortify Texas against the intrigues of French agents and the United States;
and was to formulate a program of defense in a conference at San Antonio
with Governor Cordero of Coahuila and acting governor of Texas, Governor
Herrera of Nuevo León, in command of military forces in Texas, and Gov-
ernor Salcedo. Therefore, it was not until October, 1810, that Salcedo
became the full-fledged governor, upon the retirement of Bonavia to Du-
rango. J. Villasana Haggard, "The Counter-Revolution of Béxar," The
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XLIII, 222-223, note 3; Provincias
Internas, Vol. 201, pp. 149-171, 183-191, 203-205, 228-234, B. L.
exiled by Napoleon, had arrived in New Orleans and was secretly negoti-
ating with Vicente Folch, commandant of West Florida; that they antici-
pated a revolution in Spain, and the dethronement of the Spanish king, and
that he believed they planned to establish a separate government in Mexico.
W. C. C. Claiborne, Letter Books, IV, 142, 148-149, 155-156.
AFFAIRS OF THE ASSOCIATION
By action of the Executive Council the title "Recording
Secretary and Librarian" has been changed to "Director." This
substitution involves no change in duties.
This year's annual meeting of the Association will be held
in Austin on April 23 and 24. The meeting for 1943 will be
a joint meeting with the Texas Folklore Society. At the
present writing the folklore group plans to start its meeting
on the night of Thursday, April 22. Our program will begin
as usual on Friday morning and will be continued through
Saturday afternoon. Members who have papers on Texas sub-
jects which they would like to present at the meeting are asked
to write in and give information as to topic and content, so
that the program committee may be able at an early date to
prepare a final spring program.
It is expected that attendance will be somewhat reduced at
the April meeting, but there seems to be no valid reason at
this time for cancellation. The Federal Government recommends
that activities such as ours should be carried on with the
exception that meetings should not be scheduled in the con-
gested Atlantic Seaboard area.
A questionnaire has been sent to all the Junior Historian
sponsors asking whether or not a meeting should be scheduled
in April for the young people. All sponsors replying have been
unanimous in saying that it would be impossible under existing
circumstances to send even one delegate. Unless circumstances
should change, therefore, no Junior Historian program will be
scheduled for the coming meeting. In case a change in plans
seems advisable, all Junior Historian sponsors will be notified
immediately. The Writing Contest will, however, be held as
usual, and the winners announced at the meeting.
A short book auction will be held on Friday afternoon, and
members are requested immediately to send in their book
donation for the coming auction.
BOOK REVIEWS
Between
Sun
and
Sod.
By Willie Newbury Lewis.
Clarendon, Texas: The Clarendon Press, 1938. Pp. xv, 244. Thirty
illustrations by H. D. Bugbee. No index. $2.75.
Willie Newbury Lewis, in Between
Sun
and
Sod,
undertook
the prodigious task of chronicling- the regional history of the
Panhandle of Texas from the wilderness days when it was
inhabited only by "lobo-wolves, coyotes, jack-rabbits" and In-
dians to the time of the disappearance of the frontier. The
buffalo-hunter, the stockman and cattle kingdom, the free grass
empire, the teacher ("a good bull whacker gone wrong"), the
preacher, the doctor, the railroad, and the agriculturist are all
described and paraded before the reader in somewhat orthodox
fashion and in about the chronological order prescribed by
Frederick Jackson Turner approximately fifty years ago.
The author's keen appreciation and personal knowledge of
the vast Panhandle and of the people who dwelt there are proved
by numerous descriptive passages throughout the book. For
example, this description of the land prior to the coming of
the white man:
Year followed year in unbelievable contrast and the
seasons completed their cycle with scorching suns and
blinding snows, avalanching rivers and gentle rains,
dust-filled tempests and cooling zephyrs. In spring there
were myriads of flowers and in autumn long, perfect
days, gray and red and gold with the frost-bitten foliage
of sage and scrub-oak and cottonwood, to dull the mem-
ory of that which had gone before and with certainty
would follow after.
Equally interesting is the description of the frontier preacher
who was engaged in saving the souls of sinners, but "whose
powers of salesmanship made failure impossible, whether the
product happened to be stock in life after death or acreage in
realm more earthly," and who, "convinced by his own oratory
of the reality of the mirage city [Clarendon] which arose be-
fore him on the horizon of his desires," came to think and to
tell prospective buyers that some day steamboats would follow
the deep, wide waters of Salt Fork and dock at his town which
lived mostly in his own imagination. The author's conception
of the frontier causes of the quarrel between the cattlemen and
the proverbial nesters reveals more than a superficial under-
standing of the West. She explains: "It was the spiritual con-
flict of opposing cultures; the one evolved from a gentle back-
ground of forest and stream, security, central government,
recognized traditions and plodding ways; the other from the
freedom of spaces, the power and pride of fleet horses, spec-
tacular gestures, and over-sized men armed with a gun."
Although the author insists that every precaution was taken
to make Between
Sun
and
Sod
"correct to the slightest detail,"
one may well be skeptical about some of the stories which she
included within its covers. The story of Quanah Parker and
his followers who, according to the author, "right up to the
fort they rode, wheeling their mounts to kick at the doors;"
and that of the Dutchman who, as he looked into the face of
his deceased wife, said, "Doc, I believe it would have been
easier for me to give up my best span of mules than that old
woman," certainly belong in this category.
The book has a very nice format, it is singularly free from
typographical errors, the print is readable, and the style is
lively enough. It contains much that is old, and yet its teeming
wealth of new anecdotal and descriptive material makes it
eminently worth reading.
Southwest Texas State Teachers College.
Claude Elliott.
Guadal P'a: The Journal of Lieutenant J. W. Abert, from Bent's
Fort to St. Louis in 1845. With Introduction and Notes
by H. Bailey Carroll.
Canyon, Texas: Panhandle Plains Historical Society, 1941. Pp. 121.
Maps and index. $3.50.
When one first gets this volume in hand, he is struck pleasantly
by the title, a happy selection, which is Kiowa for "South Fork
of the Canadian." Really the South Fork is
the Canadian, and
the journal of Abert records, diary fashion, day by day, an
exploration (Aug. 9--Nov. 12, 1845) or "survey of the Canadian
from its source to its junction with the Arkansas, taking in
our route the Purgatory and the heads of the Washita, called
by the Indians Buffalo Creek or Cut-nose Creek." Translated
into terms of a modern map, the party journeyed from near
the mouth of Purgatory Creek on the Arkansas River in Col-
orado southwest to Ratón Pass in New Mexico, thence curving
eastward across the corner of New Mexico, straight west
through the Panhandle of Texas and middle-busting Oklahoma
west to east, on to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and thence north-
ward to St. Louis.
Let's look a little deeper. First, as to intrinsic interest in
the journal itself: the time will come when every fragment of
genuine record concerning that romantic period in North Amer-
ica when there was
still
a
frontier
will be treasured as so many
grains of gold. We of this generation are still too near it to
appreciate fully its tremendous significance to generations which
will succeed the present one on this continent. Since Henry
George in the early seventies forecast the social and political
implications of the vanishing frontier, writer after writer has
taken up the theme and elaborated one phase after another of
the central idea, until there is a literature concerning it that
would fill a library of ordinary size. A leading American fascist
in a book recently off the press takes up the argument and
assures us that democracy dies as the frontier recedes, and
that we had now just as well pattern our social and political
institutions after those of the so-called totalitarian states.
Surely the introduction of the white man with a wheel into
America was a more revolutionary event than the recent intro-
duction of the white man with an airplane propeller into darkest
Africa will prove to be. Never again, unless we set foot on
another planet, will the human race have such an adventure
as the white man had in filling the vast vacuum of the Western
World with a culture that had ripened for three thousand years
around the edges of the European peninsula.
So even such comparatively microscopic incidents in the
Great March as the present work records are of great and
growing importance. Abert came along at the tail end of the
trail-blazer period, but he came with a West Point education,
engineering experience, the eye of an artist, and a keen interest
in science. Moreover, he came as a mature youth, or, shall we
say, as a young man--anyway, the trip occupied nearly four
months of his twenty-fifth year.
If you are interested in birds, snakes, game animals, flowers,
trees, geology, Indians or folklore, you will pick up some inter-
esting scraps of information from these pages which will make
the reading of the book worthwhile, to say nothing of the
interest in the narrative itself.
In the Introduction, the editor gives us a succinct and very
readable account of Abert's life, as well as interesting obser-
vations on the place in history of this journal and of others of
similar character. There are several hundred footnotes in the
volume--indeed, in several places the footnotes threaten to
crowd the text off the page, as in Furness' Variorum edition of
Shakespeare. Of these notes, we like best those devoted to the
trail itself, identifying the route by present-day names of vari-
ous locations, and the rather full notes on the several tribes of
Indians mentioned in the text. We do not care much for the
botanical notes or those on the fauna, which are mostly routine,
and we only wish that the editor had gathered these together
in a few general references, devoting the space thus saved to
an elaboration of the excellent trail notes and to the meaty
results of his apparently quite thorough study of the literature
on the Indian tribes. The note on the term "El Llano Estacado,"
for instance, is full, scholarly and convincing; and the brief
references to pioneer characters (scouts, guides, comancheros)
increase interest in the text.
Abert himself was an artist with an eye for the picturesque:
he thinks and talks in pictures. He was evidently an unpracticed
writer, but now and then you sense in him the undeveloped
master of descriptive style. For instance, such gems as this
occur:
"we met an old [buffalo] bull, which appeared
quite reluctant to move out of our road: at last he
took shelter in bushes within a few rods of our line
of march. He looked old and was so gaunt that his
skin hung upon him like wet drapery upon a skeleton."
And there are many others. This work of the 1845 West
Pointer is neatly cemented by the editor into the great struc-
ture of pioneer history, and we believe that it will keep its
place. The editing is finely and, we believe, finally done.
The University of Texas,
Roy Bedichek.
Land Hunger: David L. Payne and the Oklahoma Boomers.
By Carl Coke Rister.
Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1942. Pp. xiii, 215.
Illustrations and map. $2.75.
Nearly everyone in the Southwest has heard or read of the
"Oklahoma Run" of 1889, but few are aware of the decade-long
campaign of "Boomer" activities which culminated in "Har-
rison's Hoss Race." Still less is known--except his name--of
the man now popularly called the "Father of Oklahoma," Cap-
tain David L. Payne. In this book the author portrays the
period and its principal actors vividly, comprehensively, and
objectively, in his characteristic readable style. It fills a gap
in the scholarly treatment of Southwestern history, and is
based on the study of more than 1,000 documents, 300 con-
temporary newspaper articles, and other source material, much
of which has never before been used.
Payne, like Moses, was never permitted to occupy his Prom-
ised Land, and less than a thousand of those who bore the
expense and hardships of the organized campaign to open
Oklahoma to settlement eventually secured a home therein.
Even W. T. Couch, who finished what Payne had begun and
who was a mo're admirable character, lost his claim by a legal
technicality, as did Payne's companion, "Ma" Haines and her
son. This is remindful of Daniel Boone and George Rogers
Clark, who gave Kentucky and the Old Northwest to the young
nation, but were robbed of their meed when statute law fol-
lowed their pioneering. Speaking of the Boomer leaders, they
"won for others what they could not enjoy themselves," says
the author. Today the claims staked out by Payne and Mrs.
Haines are "in the heart of Oklahoma city's great oil field."
Though many still living remember the Boomer era, and
doubtless a few 89'ers still survive, the present generation can
scarcely visualize the raw frontier of the '70's and '80's, much
less understand the psychology of land hunger or the grim
determination which actuated the Boomers. Ironically enough,
"some of them had spent more of their own means than a 160-
acre Kansas or Texas farm would have cost," says Rister, but
"the average Boomer felt that he had been amply repaid . . .
for ... he had caused Oklahoma to be opened to thousands of
homeless people."
Dave Payne was a product of his times and environment, anc
a baffling study in contrasts of strength and weakness--high
ability as a leader and personal irresponsibility. He resorted
to every trick of the demagogue and promoter to keep mem-
berships in his colony pouring in, but circumspectly based his
campaign on his concept of the law. So sure of his legal grounds
that he repeatedly tried to force the issue into the courts, he
did not quit when Judge Isaac Parker decided adversely. To
his followers he was a selfless leader; to others he was an
opportunist and deadbeat, the "drunken idol of deluded fol-
lowers."
Dr. Rister has recorded the facts; the reader can form his
own judgment. Like many another historical personage "he
was good, he was bad, even as you and I," and whether better
or worse than his adversaries, his life work changed the history
of Oklahoma and affected all the neighboring states.
Though neither gold nor silver existed, the Oklahoma Boomer
movement attracted intense and widespread interest, causing
a population movement comparable to the California gold rush
of '49 in its consequences, and far surpassing the more recent
Pike's Peak and Black Hills episodes. Its history again illus-
trates the inherent inertia of government, the perennial con-
flict between special interests and the masses, and the intricate
processes of intrigue, political and financial, by which such
conflicts are finally resolved or compromised.
Farm and Ranch, Dallas, Texas.
T. C. Richardson.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941. Pp. xxvi, 442. Illus-
trations, maps, chronology, selected reading list. $2.50.
Among the considerable number of literary projects conceived
and carried out by the Work Projects Administration perhaps
the best known to the general reader is the "American Guide
Series." This project includes "Guides" to all the forty-eight
states. Oklahoma
is the last to appear. It was compiled under
the direction of Angie Debo and John M. Askison. There is a
foreword by W. B. Bizzell, a sketch entitled "The Spirit of
Oklahoma" by the inimitable Edward Everett Dale, and an
abridged survey of "Literature" by Kenneth C. Kaufman. There
are ten, road and state maps which lend material aid in inter-
preting the text, sixty-four pages of carefully chosen illustra-
tions, and a detailed description of sixteen tours, the latter
making up the major portion of the book. There is an adequate
index.
This book treats the history, geography, industrial life, and
the people of Oklahoma. It pays tribute to the Indians of the
Five Civilized Tribes, who during the past century set up their
independent nations, and who contributed much to the culture
of present-day Oklahoma. One may view the whole historical
panorama of the West when he reads Oklahoma history--Span-
ish exploration, Indian troubles, the cattle kingdom, mining,
oil, agriculture, and now, defense industries--in miniature, but
just as real.
The University of Oklahoma Press, in keeping with its high
standards of craftsmanship, has produced in Oklahoma
a beau-
tiful book.
Edinburg Junior College.
Ohland Morton.
Crusaders of the Rio Grande: The Story of Don Diego de Vargas
and the Reconquest and Refounding of New Mexico. By
J. Manuel Espinosa, Ph. D.
Chicago: Institute of Jesuit History, 1942. Pp. xx, 410. $4.00.
The subtitle fortunately corrects the erroneous impression
created by the general title of this interesting, readable, and
scholarly study of a remarkable character in the colorful history
of the Southwest, long neglected by American students. The
Rio Grande stretches from Colorado to the south tip end of
Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. Although it is true that the bulk
of the pueblos of New Mexico is grouped along the Rio Grande
from El Paso to Taos, it is also equally true that, along that
river, south of El Paso, there were other groups of Indian
pueblos and nations, particularly in the vicinities of Presidio,
Eagle Pass, Laredo, and Reynosa, which were conquered, Chris-
tianized, and civilized at different times by different conquista-
dors to whom the term "crusader" applies equally well.
But in spite of the ill-chosen general title, the young author
of this book has made a real contribution in presenting for the
first time a unified, well-documented, orderly, and readable
narrative of the life and achievements of Diego de Vargas.
He has skillfully caught the spirit of the great conquistador
of New Mexico; he has set the man and his work in the proper
frame and background; and he has adroitly pointed out the
inextricable relations that existed between Church and state
in the advance of the frontier and the work of Christianizing
and civilizing the native populations of newly conquered ter-
ritories.
In the prologue he has traced the general outline of the
events that led to the discovery, conquest, and occupation of
New Mexico, the causes for the great pueblo revolt of 1680,
and the circumstances that resulted in the undertaking of the
reconquest by de Vargas at the close of the seventeenth century.
In this thorough but brief summary, the expedition of Espejo
is omitted. It could and should have been given at least passing
mention along with the others. The prologue is followed by
a biographical sketch of Diego de Vargas, the successful leader
of the reconquest and reoccupation of New Mexico. It is here
that his enterprise, his love of adventure, his ability as an
organizer, his undaunted will, and his unflinching courage are
brought out. These were the qualities that were to carry him
to success in spite of the numerous physical and official obstacles
that confronted him.
The dramatic episode of the battle of Santa Fe and the
heroic defence of the brave band of Spaniards under de Vargas
are vividly portrayed. Slowly the rebellious pueblos were
finally brought under subjection with firmness and moderation.
This rare quality accounted in a large measure for the success
of de Vargas in ultimately subduing the entire province and
in reestablishing a semblance of law and order. The ad
interim
administration of Governor Cubelo and the triumphal return
of de Vargas are well told.
The author has made use of documentary sources in the
archives of Santa Fe, Mexico, Spain, the Library of Congress,
and numerous other depositories to a larger extent than any
other previous student of this period of New Mexican history.
He has used his sources with mature and discriminating judg-
ment and has woven the details of a dramatic episode into a
most readable narrative. The bibliography and the index add
to the usability of this fundamental study of a decisive and
transcendental event in the history of the advance of the Spanish
frontier in the Southwest at the close of the seventeenth cen-
tury. The maps are helpful, with the exception of the first,
labeled "The Northern Frontier of New Spain in the Seven-
teenth Century", in which the settlement made by La Salle is
indicated, but the missions established by the Spaniards in
East Texas, among the Asinai Confederacy in the years 1690-93,
are omitted.
The University of Texas.
C. E. Castañeda.
Pagans Praying. By Roy A. Keech.
Clarendon, Texas: The Clarendon Press, 1940. Pp. 95. Illustrations
by Pop-Chalee. $2.00.
In the foreword of this small book, Acee Blue Eagle says:
"I feel that these poems are an important contribution to art,
for Mr. Keech has given artistic interpretation to the cultural
phase of Indian activity. He has prepared for his readers an
insight into Indian expressions of culture which will help
greatly in altering the general conception of the red man as a
blood-thirsty savage, content with a haphazard existence."
Admitting that he is an ethnologist by avocation, the author
acknowledges in the introduction his indebtedness to Dr. Edgar
Lee Hewett, to Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander and to Mr. Kenneth
M. Chapman for his interest in Indians, Indian culture, and
Indian lore. Keech also did "original research in the folk tales,
vocabulary, customs, and ceremonies of Zuñi" in the pueblo
of Zuñi, New Mexico. Keech bases his descriptions of most of
the Indian ceremonies on actual observation, but a few of the
descriptions are based on "sources other than personal knowl-
edge, because no white man has ever been permitted to observe
these rites." Another comment in the introduction, which
shows the author's dissatisfaction with Christian missionaries,
is: "If they [the missionaries] had only been able to see--
to understand--that the worship of the Great Spirit is a far
more noble expression than our worship of the same God; if
they could have strengthened the Indians' belief in Him; weak-
ened his belief in his minor gods, missionaries could have done
a great deal of good." One wonders what the reaction of
Indian missionaries to this charge is.
Thirty-one poems compose this book. Fifteen of them are
about dances, such as the eagle dance, the rainbow dance, the
buffalo dance, and the rain dance. The book opens with the
"Sunrise Prayer" and closes with a "Pueblo Indian Soliloquy."
On the lighter side, because of the "Asides on the Visitors"--
two-line wisecracks between the four-line verses of the poem
--is "Green Corn Ceremony at Santo Domingo," the longest
in the group. Keech seems to have caught the spirit of Indian
life.
The University of Texas.
R. L. BIESELE.
Children Sing in New Mexico. By Roy A. Keech.
Clarendon, Texas: The Clarendon Press, 1941. Music by J. S. Mac-
Kay and illustrations by H. D. Bugbee. $1.00.
In his introduction the author says: "Let all of the children
of all of the Americas sing these songs!" In that at this time
the western hemisphere needs something to tie its peoples
together, the suggestion is a good one. That this tying together
has been overlooked for a long time is unfortunate; to assist
the movement in a fashion like the one suggested in this little
song book will mean something in the direction of creating a
situation that will help the people of the Americas to under-
stand one another.
This little book--its pages are not numbered--contains twelve
poems. The words in English appear with the musical score;
the words in Spanish are on the pages facing the musical score.
The burro, the cow pony, the horny toad, and the cat among the
animals, the tamale man, the Navajo weaver, and Pueblo Indian
children among the familiar human beings of New Mexico,
and the Indian drum, the fiesta dress, four for tea, cowboy
chaps, and the manger scene are the subjects of the poems. The
subjects of the poems should appeal to little children, and the
music should accentuate the message of the poems.
The University of Texas.
R. L. BIESELE.
Louisiana in the Confederacy. By Jefferson Davis Bragg.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1941. Pp. ix, 341.
$3.00.
The title of this book is mildly misleading, for the study
covers the whole state, whether Confederate or Federal, during
the Civil War. The first chapter deals with Louisiana politics,
December, 1859-January, 1861. Chapters II and III discuss the
political, military and economic problems, January, 1861-April,
1862, resulting from secession and war. Chapter IV describes
the fall of New Orleans and the regime of General Butler.
Chapter V is concerned with Confederate defense preparations
and the campaigns of 1863-1864. Chapter VI discusses Con-
federate state politics, 1861-1863, and Confederate state finances,
1862-1865. Chapter VII, the longest in the book, deals with
"Social and Economic Affairs," 1862-1865, chiefly Confederate.
Chapter VIII analyzes Louisiana's "Relations with the Con-
federacy," 1861-1865. Chapter IX is devoted to "Union Poli-
tics in New Orleans," 1862-1865. Chapter X, the last, tells
the events of January-June, 1865.
This is a solid, factual book, based upon conscientious use
of the sources, and competently put together. The emphasis
is upon documents and data, not upon interpretation nor color.
Professor Bragg handles controversial questions with caution,
and he is rather chary of generalization. His text is liberally
strewn with quotations from the sources. A few of the quota-
tions this reviewer finds downright dull; but the better ones
lend a needed vividness to the story.
The greater part of the book comes from three extended
and fertile sets of sources, viz., certain newspapers (New Orleans
Crescent,
Picayune,
and True
Delta;
Shreveport News
and
South-Western)
,
the printed state records (chiefly acts and
journals), and the Official
Records
of
the
Union
and
Confed
-
erate
Armies.
These have been supplemented by a reasonably
exhaustive use of other sources and secondary works. For the
region of Federal occupation known material is abundant; and
there should be in the records of the War and Treasury De-
partments a mass of manuscripts that no one, including Pro-
fessor Bragg, has yet used. For Confederate Louisiana, in
which Professor Bragg is especially interested, sources are
comparatively scarce. State archives for the war years, notably
rich in Alabama and Mississippi, are largely wanting for
Louisiana. On certain problems of Confederate Louisiana Pro-
fessor Bragg's diligent work in both printed and manuscript
sources has turned up ample information. On other problems
he has not found much beyond acts of the legislature. What
gave rise to the acts, and how they worked, remain obscure.
An example is the militia system, which obviously worked
badly. Professor Bragg details repeated changes in the system;
but he can tell us little about the militia in the flesh.
In summarizing documents Professor Bragg has not adhered
to the customary rules governing the use of quotation marks.
The reviewer has checked a dozen summaries and has found in
each case a passage of more than three words reproduced from
the document without quotation marks. In the summary of
a single document on pp. 124-25 there are ten such passages,
one of them running to eighteen words.
Errors of fact caught by the reviewer are few and trifling.
In general the level of accuracy is high. Format and typography
are up to the usual fine standard of the publishers. The only
obtrusive typographical error is a misplaced line on p. 2. The
index is adequate.
The freshness of the book lies in the systematic coverage of
the political, economic and social problems of Confederate
Louisiana. Some of the other topics dealt with--e. g., secession,
the Federal regime in lower Louisiana, and the principal mili-
tary campaigns--were already fairly well known. It was none-
theless a real service to put together known as well as unknown
in a balanced story of Louisiana during the war.
The University of Texas.
Barnes F. Lathrop.
Louisiana Redeemed: The Overthrow of Carpetbag Rule, 1876-
1880. By Garnie W. McGinty.
The historian's interest in the sordid and the drab seems
unending. Several scholars have preceded Professor McGinty
with monographs on reconstruction in Louisiana. John R.
Ficklen's inadequate study of a generation ago carried the
story to the state's readmission to the Union in 1868. Ella
Lonn's scholarly treatise is devoted to the period from 1868
to 1877. W. M. Caskey, using sources unavailable to his prede-
cessors, supersedes Ficklen particularly on political develop-
ments in the region dominated by Federal troops. But he was
little concerned with social and economic conditions and that
part of the state held by the Confederates. Moreover, he con-
cluded his study with the overthrow of the civil government
by the military in 1867, an event which in his opinion terminated
the restoration program. Fanny Z. Lovell Bone and numerous
others have studied the Hayes-Tilden contest in Louisiana with
care and discrimination. Professor McGinty's opportunity, there-
fore, lay in the period beginning in March, 1877.
In a brief introductory chapter, based largely on original
sources, the author surveys the period from 1862 to 1876. With
the latter date his study proper begins. Devoting somewhat
more than a third of his volume to the crucial contest of 1876,
he shows that the Democratic-Conservative party with a defi-
nite program and under the leadership of Francis T. Nicholls,
a Confederate hero, presented the opposition's Returning Board
with the uncommonly difficult problem of making the choice
of the Republican ticket seem plausible in the face of a Demo-
cratic majority of 6000 to 9000 votes. Thoroughly partisan
in motive and character, the canvassers rejected enough polls
to enable the carpetbaggers to claim the victory. Congressional
Radicals supported the Board's contention that under state
law its decisions were final. Anxious to support Hayes's claims
to the presidency, Grant, in Professor McGinty's opinion, pur-
sued a devious course. Certainly the President supported the
deal by which Stephen B. Packard was sacrificed in the interest
of the national ticket. The author passed up an excellent
opportunity to comment on the conclusions of Haworth, Ecken-
rode, Nevins and others.
Though the author charges the successful Democratic guber-
natorial candidate with being irresolute, he presents as good
evidence that Nicholls was a practical, cautious and determined
if a somewhat opportunistic executive. Pious by nature, he
seems to have resorted to bribery from necessity. His efforts
to make public office a public trust, carry out the deal granting
amnesty to carpetbaggers, maintain the state's credit, admin-
ister the government economically and crush the Lottery Com-
pany aroused the hostility of leaders trained only in opposition
technique, ravenous for spoils and vengeance and eager to re-
pudiate debts extravagantly or fraudulently incurred.
The Constitution of 1879 affords some indication of what
the restoration of home rule meant. It reduced governmental
expenses and taxes, scaled down the public debt and the prin-
cipal on it, reformed the judiciary and "elevated the white
man to the level of the darkey."
The author is weakest in his treatment of social, economic
and intellectual topics. Some data of only relative significance
are presented irrelatively. Here, too, the continuity of his
thought and the organization of his material are least satis-
factory.
In common with the great majority of historians, Professor
McGinty's mastery of the science of collecting data is superior
to the art with which he displays his findings. His literary
style lacks conciseness and clarity. To "mister" the deceased,
introduce characters without their full names or initials and
quote substantive rather than illustrative matter excessively
detracts. Had the author not relied chiefly on a wide range
of pertinent primary sources, he might be criticized more
severely for omitting some significant secondary works from
his bibliography and for including some of slight value. The
maps and graphs are inferior to those in Lonn.
Louisiana State Normal College.
Ottis Clark Skipper.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1941. Pp. xi, 192. Illus-
trations. $2.50.
Here is a case study of one small hamlet used as a description
of the entire rural South; based on the theory that if you know
well enough what has happened in one typical spot, you need
only enlarge that picture to display what has happened to an
entire region.
Possum Trot is the natal hamlet of the author, located in the
rolling country of northern Alabama. Obviously such a ham-
let cannot represent with any great accuracy the sort of social
arrangements which prevail in the plantation areas or in the
mountainous farming districts. It does have the advantage of
falling somewhere between these two types, but that does not
mean that it combines the virtues and vices of the others. It is
also true that Possum Trot is representative of a large portion
of the agrarian culture of the South.
As a native of Lickskillet, some hundreds of miles to the
west on the Louisiana-Texas state line, this reviewer finds him-
self at home in the pages of Possum
Trot.
The people depicted
by Nixon also walked the lanes and footpaths around Lick-
skillet; they speak the same language, use the same expressions;
they do and feel the same things in very much the same ways;
and they have suffered much the same fate. Hence it seems to
me that, restricted to the small, one-family-farm, poor soil,
upland cotton growing South, the book deserves the epithet of
"authentic."
Nixon grew out of his native surroundings, but very evidently
retained an affection for them and for the folk who still inhabit
this and similar areas. He is greatly concerned with what may
be done to improve their fortunes in the future. Here, too,
the reviewer shares his hopes, probably because of similarity
of background.
There may be some doubt, however, as to the feasibility of
the plans advanced for the revitalization of the culture in which
we grew up. A judicious admixture of industry, building on
the war plants being scattered through the region, and culti-
vation of the tourist trade would certainly do much to bring
needed prosperity to the region; and both seem attainable goals.
But Nixon seems to see the Better South of the future as
Possum Trot writ large; a region in which stout yeomen would
divide their time between diversified farming and industrial
work. In this way, he believes, the spiritual values of the sort
envisioned by Jefferson might be re-attained and perpetuated.
Perhaps he is right, but it is also possible that such a system
might encourage a type of industry which would depend for
its profits on the necessity for part-time farmers, or their sons
and daughters, to work for almost any wage offered them and
thus encourage the "carpetbaggers of industry" he joins in
decrying. But, apart from this, it seems fairly certain that
the war emergency will encourage the mechanization of farm-
ing wherever machinery can be used and, thus, will do much
to complete the destruction of the type of agriculture he thinks
must be preserved. There arises a suspicion that Nixon is
thinking in terms dictated by his love of his birthplace.
There is a second portion of the book in which the author
discusses the South as a region, rather than in terms of Possum
Trot. Here he offers his solutions, mentioned above, and also
explains the peculiar politics of the South in terms of its tra-
ditions and present-day culture. In a final chapter he gives
recognition to the many writers and students who have con-
cerned themselves with the description of the region and with
plans for its improvement. This second portion of the book
attains a breadth which is impossible in the portion built on
the one rural hamlet.
The work combines a yearning for the past with a desire to
plan intelligently for the future--a combination which may
not contain such contradictory elements as a glance would
indicate. Certainly most social scientists would agree that the
South must plan gradually and cannot break drastically with
its traditions.
The University of Texas.
Harry Estill Moore.
The Cheyenne Way. Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Juris-
prudence.
By K. N. Llewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941. Pages xiii, 360. $3.00.
A lawyer and an anthropologist have collaborated to present
an outstanding analysis of law-ways among a primitive people,
the Cheyenne Indians of the North American Plains. In addi-
tion, and of greater importance and of wider appeal than the
specific Cheyenne material, is the stress placed upon the com-
parative significance of the data.
Here is no tedious compendium of ethnographic fact with a
few concluding pages of interpretive content, but a book at
least four-fifths of which is analytical and comparative. Nor,
on the other hand, does this emphasis represent speculative,
arm-chair theorizing. A select body of case material is pre-
sented as evidence and a larger body of material given in
reference. Although the cases are trouble-situations, a surpris-
ingly complete picture is presented of Cheyenne life-ways. This
is significant, for it indicates the impossibility of segregating
or isolating any single phase of an integrated, functioning
culture. Another specialist making a study of Cheyenne life
but interested in the economic situation, or another in the
religious life, or a third in the functioning of kinship systems,
would similarly see the culture as a whole and with emphasis
on his particular point of view. As the authors admit, data
are influenced by the investigator's methodological interests,
Here is Cheyenne culture through a legal lens.
This book should be pleasing to social scientists in general
and social anthropologists in particular. Cheyenne life-ways
are considered as a phase, or better, as a development of human
culture, not as some peculiar, early, primitive stage of develop-
ment. The authors' enthusiasm for the Cheyenne juristic method
is ever apparent:
Their [Cheyenne cases] juristic beauty is beauty
for eyes familiar with other cultures and the juristic
problems of other civilizations, (p. 33)
There is evidence which indicates that any order of
a military society chief had to be obeyed if the order
had been issued. The authority of the office was su-
preme. Nevertheless, one sees the Cheyennes always
struggling to keep officialdom within bounds, because
the dictatorial tendency of egotistic officials was dan-
gerous to Cheyenne principles of freedom. Yet an
authoritative officialdom was needed and sought by the
Cheyennes to hold in check the impetuous individualism
which Cheyenne military practice nourished and which
the Cheyenne sense of order feared. The discrimination
which western medieval Europe found so difficult to
work into clarity, that between the office and its occu-
pant, the Cheyenne legal genius felt and marked
throughout. Their method, however, was not the mod-
ern American method of limiting the powers of the
office. It was, instead, one of developing machinery for
anticipatory pressure on the officer, (p. 104)
By man's bad fortune, skill in juristic method has
not as yet been reduced to readily communicable form.
But even on that, it may be that the Cheyenne way can
offer some suggestions, (p. 309)
It is good, then, to have a culture--such as Cheyenne
--open a line of inquiry which offers hope of discover-
ing a clearer understanding of the true working of such
certainty as exists in our own law systems. (p. 335)
With the Cheyenne material as a background and with some
reference to Comanche, Icelandic and data from other groups,
the last fifth of the book deals with "a general theory of the
natu're and function of law-stuff and of the law-jobs with which
any group is faced in the process of becoming and remaining
a group. The theory applies to groups of any size or com-
plexity." (p. 273.) Whatever the merits of this theory, and
the argument is most convincing, what is of importance is
the recognition of the tremendous value of data from pre-
literate peoples for comparative studies in order eventually to
achieve a better understanding of the nature of human society.
With more studies of this type anthropology may receive its
rightful recognition as the basic discipline of the social sciences.
Perhaps the standard set by this book may be achieved only
by similar collaborations.
The University of Texas.
J. Gilbert McAllister.
Filosofia
y
Letras,
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.
No. 3, Julio-Septiembre, 1941.
The third number of this scholarly review published by the
School of Philosophy and Letters of the National University
of Mexico contains significant articles. These are grouped un-
der three separate headings: Philosophy, Literature, and His-
tory. In the first of these is included an article on "Los Valores
Estéticos" (Aesthetic Values) by the well known Mexican phi-
losopher, Antonio Caso, in which he analyzes the aesthetic ele-
ments of literature. Oswaldo Robles writes on "Un Esquema
de Ontología Tomista" (An Outline of Thomist Metaphysics),
in which he reviews the fundamentals of Thomist philosophy.
In the section on literature there is a detailed and illuminat-
ing study by the distinguished Mexican humanist Alfonso Reyes
on "Hermes o la Comunicación humana" (Hermes, or Human
Communication), in which he discusses the relation of speech
to writing as a means of communicating thought and sentiment.
Señora Jesusa Alfau de Solalinde, who with her husband,
Antonio Garcia Solalinde (deceased), spent half a year in The
University of Texas in 1928, contributes a remarkable study
on the ideas of the much discussed contemporary Spanish phi-
losopher, Ortega y Gasset, concerning mediaeval Spain. In "Las
Ideas de Ortega y Gasset sobre la Edad Media," she refutes
the assertion of the Spanish philosopher that most of the evils
of modern Spain are traceable to the absence of feudalism in
Castile. The thesis is daring and stimulating, and Sra. Solalinde
displays a deep and thorough knowledge of the middle ages in
Spain. J. Ramírez Cabanas, a student of colonial Mexico, con-
tributes an article on "Los Macehuales" to this section in which
he discusses the various meanings of this Aztec word, which
originally appears to have meant "vassal" in New Spain.
The University of Texas.
C. E. Castañeda.
BOOK NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Texas State Historical Association acknowledges the
receipt of The
Cooley
Genealogy.
This covers the descendants
of Ensign Benjamin Cooley, an early settler of Springfield and
Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and other members of the family
in America.
The preparation was the work of Mortimer Elwyn Cooley
in collaboration with Lyman Edgar Cooley and Ernest Linwood
Cooley. It was compiled by Vivien Bullock Keatley.
The University of Texas.
Another work on genealogy has been received recently from
Mrs. Evelyn Jeanette Miller Ownbey of Chicago. Part I in-
cludes the following families: Rankin, Clendenin, and Huston,
with material on the Eckles and Creighs. Part II covers the
families of Massie, Hart, Dabney (d'Aubigne), Barret, Lee,
and the allied families of Winston and Chiswell.
The book is entitled What
Does
America
Mean
to
You?
History
and
Genealogy.
A number of photographs of old homes
and burial places is included. Historical narrative is inter-
spersed with the genealogical material.
Coral H. Tullis.
The University of Texas.
With the publication of Max Savelle's book, The
Foundations
of
American
Civilization
(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1942;
pp. xvi, 773; $3.90), another interesting guide for an advanced
college course in the colonial period of American history has
made its appearance. The author, who teaches in Stanford
University, has four "reasons for writing a new survey of
American colonial history;" namely, to include a history of the
British West Indies for a better understanding of the history
of the western hemisphere, to give more consideration to "the
diplomatic aspects of early American history," to "include . . .
a broader and more thoroughgoing treatment of economic and
social phenomena," and "to attempt a somewhat interpretive
treatment of forces and conditions that contributed to the ori-
gins of our American civilization." A glance at the table of
contents reveals the full extent to which Professor Savelle has
carried out his four aims.
The University of Texas.
R. L. Biesele.
Coral H. Tullís.
CONTRIBUTORS
Andrew
Forest
Muir,
"The Free Negro in Harris County,
Texas," pp. 214-238, is a native Texan, descendant of Texans
since 1837. Muir holds both B. A. and M. A. from The Rice
Institute and is at present the holder of a University Fellow-
ship in The University of Texas, where he is a candidate for
the Ph. D. in history. He has been a student editorial assistant
on The
Quarterly
since last year. He published an account of
the first three Episcopal priests in Texas in The
Historical
Magazine
of
the
Episcopal
Church
for September, 1940. His
major interest lies in the Southern field of American history.
William
Stanley
Hoole,
Simms' Michael
Bonham:
"A 'For-
gotten' Drama of the Texas Revolution," pp. 255-262, is, like the
author about whom he writes, a native South Carolinian, his
folks having emigrated from England to the Low Country in the
early 1700's. He attended the same high school, St. John's Acad-
emy, as did his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, and
received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Wofford Col-
lege. After attending Columbia University and the University of
South Carolina, he received his doctorate in American Literature
from Duke University in 1934. At present he is Librarian at
North Texas State Teachers College. Hoole is author of A
Check-
List
of
Charleston
Periodicals
(Duke University Press, 1936),
and A
History
of
Charleston
Theatres,
1800-1875,
written under
a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Although this is his
first contribution to The
Quarterly,
Hoole has published in the
Southwest
Review,
American
Literature,
Studies
in
Philology,
School
and
Society,
The
Library
Quarterly,
in Kansas, Georgia,
and North Carolina historical quarterlies, and numerous other
periodicals. At present he is working on a book on Samuel
Adams Hammett, better known as Philip Paxton, author of
Piney
Woods
Tavern;
or
Sam
Slick
in
Texas
and A
Stray
Yankee
in
Texas.
As a personal characterization he writes: "My idea
of heaven is plenty of Southern history, literature, candied
yams and turnip greens. I reckon five years in Texas doesn't en-
title me to be a Tex-I-an, but by the Lord and the Statute of
Limitations I've been, here long enough to feel and brag like a
Texan--and that pretty nearly makes me one."
Ralph
Greenlee
Lounsbury,
"
Early Texas and The National
Archives," pp. 203-213, was born in Chicago, but has lived
most of his adult life in the East. He has, however, traveled
extensively throughout the United States, Canada, and Latin
America, and maintains a great affection for the Southwest,
where he has spent considerable time. His activities have been
varied, salesman in Puerto Rico and Peru for an American
firm, "expert" and "commercial agent" of the Bureau of For-
eign and Domestic Commerce engaged in trade promotional
activities with foreign countries in Washington and New Or-
leans, instructor in history at Yale, and instructor and assistant
professor of history at New York University. He is a graduate
of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in the class
of 1918, and a doctor of philosophy of Yale, 1928. He is the
author of The
British
Fishery
at
Newfoundland,
1634-1763,
and several articles and reviews pertaining to British-American
and Hispanic American affairs. The
American
Archivist
for
October, 1942, carried an article of his: "Historical Resume of
the Public Archives of the State of São Paulo, Brazil." Until
recently he has been Consultant in Latin American History at
The National Archives. He was a featured speaker at the
Association's annual meeting in 1941 and has been one of our
valued members for several years--in fact, since the time he
asked, "Say, can you get into this organization if you happen
not to have been born in Texas?"
How to cite:
Volume 46, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v046/n3/issue.html
[Accessed Thu Mar 18 3:18:11 CDT 2010]
