Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
STEPHEN F. AUSTIN, ON MEXICANS
THE Texas filibusters strongly captured the imagination of a large part of the people of the southwestern frontier. The survivors of the expeditions spread their tales around, undoubtedly exaggerated, of American heroism, Hispanic cruelty, fortresses taken and lost, dramatic councils of war, and chests of silver coins. The miserable, struggling Spanish towns became cities rich in gold and lovely, dark-eyed women. The soil of the coastal prairies was said to be far superior to that in the United States, and the climate the best in the world. Through these tales shone the shimmering image of a fabulous empire, of broad vistas and plateaus where a man could see for miles, of barbaric Indians and millions of buffalo and cattle hardly less wild. This was country where a man could be a man, and a good man make himself a king. In these years a lasting legend was born.
But, in the year 1820, an era seemed to be closing, rather than great opportunities opening. Anglo-America, after three-quarters of a century of almost incredible growth, had almost everywhere reached what seemed its natural limits. The Southwest beyond the Sabine was Spanish, and was so recognized by formal treaty. The United States, with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, extended to the Rocky Mountains, and, in addition to Texas, Jefferson had claimed the Northwest Pacific, too. But up against the barriers of the mountains and Great Plains, the United States appeared to be entering a period of consolidation. Since 1800, its territory had more than doubled.
While there were still appetites for raw land in the West, there were very real evidences of actual opposition to any new expansion in the northern and eastern States. The question of the extension of chattel slavery in the Union was becoming difficult. The Missouri Compromise, worked out with some trouble, showed that, as President Monroe wrote the aged Thomas Jefferson, "the further acquisition of territory to the west and south involves difficulties of an internal nature which menace the Union itself."
There was a diehard contingent in the South and West, like Henry Clay and Thomas Benton of Missouri, who denounced Monroe and John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, for having signed away American "rights." But after Dr. Long's disastrous expeditions, vocal argument died away. Even Andrew Jackson, who had forced the Administration's hand on Florida by invading it and humiliating the Spanish garrison, stated that "for the present we ought to be content with the Floridas."
But Americans were still pressing west as individuals, and the story of the next two decades was only an outgrowth of processes that had gone on before.
One of the Americans who had emigrated to Missouri when it was a Spanish province was Moses Austin, a Connecticut-born lead mine operator in Virginia. In 1796, Austin's lead mines were played out, but there were reports that rich deposits had been found near St. Genevieve, in Upper Louisiana. Austin, who had the Yankee characteristic of going where the business was, got written permission from the Spanish Minister to the United States to investigate; leading a party of his miners and slaves, he set out for far Missouri. Moses Austin, however, was not a dreamer. He was just past thirty, already successful, and possessed of a keen political instinct.
At St. Louis, Austin halted his group, dressed himself and his men in their finest, then rode into the mud-streeted town. Austin, in a long, blue, scarlet-lined mantle, with lace at his throat and sleeves, and on a fine horse, cut an imposing figure. He deliberately led his procession past the Spanish commandant's house, and this gentleman, convinced Austin was a man of rank, immediately received him with great courtesy. Here began negotiations that ended with Moses Austin being granted a
sitio
, or square league of land, and the lead mines discovered at "Mine A Burton," near St. Genevieve, in January 1797. He was also granted the right to settle thirty families from the United States.
Moses Austin created the first permanent settlement in Washington County, Missouri, erected smelting furnaces, and developed the lead deposits. He was a prominent leader, and regarded as an excellent Spanish subject, when Upper Louisiana entered the United States in 1804. After his return to American citizenship, Austin prospered even more. He became one of the founders and principal stockholders of the Bank of St. Louis.
Then the first great national panic, or depression, as it was later called, struck the United States. The problem was related to the closing of the United States Bank, but the underlying cause was land speculation. All frontier banks followed a pattern: they loaned money extensively to land speculators (usually having it printed, too) who were engaged in selling public lands to emigrants moving west. The loans, and the money issues, were thus covered only by the value of undeveloped land. For a while, prosperity and inflation ensued, which in 1818 was followed by a crash. Land values, especially speculative land values, fell. Banks everywhere collapsed, including the Bank of St. Louis. Moses Austin, at the age of fifty-four, was wiped out. He was where he had started twenty years before.
The Arkansas country was opening up to the south, but Moses Austin was not a settler or cotton planter. He was an empresario and businessman. It was perfectly natural that a dream grew in him that once again he could repeat his former career, by following the Spanish frontier. After discussing the question with his son, Stephen, Austin set out, this time alone, for Texas. He rode 800 miles, and entered San Antonio de Béxar in the fall of 1820.
He entered a town still quivering from the reverberations of James Long's last filibuster. General Arredondo, the Commandant of the eastern internal provinces, or Interior, had made a career in Texas of stamping out Anglo-Americans. Arredondo was convinced, rightly, that his major troubles in Texas came from Anglo-Saxon filibusters, not local revolutionaries. He had recently given Texas Governor Martínez the most explicit orders that no
Norteamericanos
be permitted to enter Texas on any pretext, with the hint that any failure to follow them might have serious consequences for Martínez. Arredondo, the man who had captured and killed the rebel Hidalgo and destroyed the Republican Army of the North, was a power unto himself in northern New Spain. He reported not to the Viceroy, Apodaca, but to the King.
Under these circumstances, Moses Austin's unannounced arrival at Béxar caused consternation at the governor's palace. Austin called on the Governor, and tried to talk to him in French. When Austin admitted he was an American, Martínez refused to converse any longer, nor would he look at the papers Austin carried proving he had been a citizen of Spain. Martínez's orders were unequivocal: Austin was to leave Béxar and recross the Sabine. If he remained overnight in Béxar, he would be placed under arrest.
Utterly dejected, the aging Austin left the palace and crossed the plaza to his horse. What now occurred was a genuine accident that changed history. Austin met an old friend.
Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, as he was known in Texas, was a Hollander who had once been in the Prussian service. He had emigrated from Europe during the turmoil of the French Revolution, and Carondelet, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, gave him a land grant. He founded the towns of Bastrop and Mer Rouge in Louisiana, but when Napoleon reacquired the territory, he crossed over into Texas. Bastrop preferred to remain a citizen of Spain.
At San Antonio, the Baron de Bastrop was very poor, living in a single adobe room. But he had the claim and appearance of gentility, and, under Spain, this counted more than wealth. He was welcome at the governor's palace, and because he was a staunch Royalist, even Arredondo liked him. And, back in Spanish Louisiana, he had known Don Moses Austin very well, especially as a gentleman and loyal subject of the King of Spain.
Almost as important, Bastrop immediately understood what Austin wanted; from his Louisiana experience, he prepared to argue both for the American and for the feasibility of letting him bring Anglo-Americans to Texas. Bastrop readily agreed to serve as Austin's agent. Within a week, he obtained a petition approved by Martínez and the
ayuntamiento
, or governing council, of Béxar, to Arredondo and the provincial council at Monterrey, requesting permission for Austin to settle three hundred families in Texas.
Bastrop used three arguments, besides his own and Austin's vouched-for reliability:
The Indian danger in Texas would never be ended until the country between Béxar and the Sabine was colonized. The Comanches were riding into Béxar and acting as if they owned it.
After several centuries, no Spaniards or Mexicans were coming to Texas; in fact, more were leaving it.
Anglo-Saxon colonization, properly handled, had been a success in Louisiana. Here, as there, there was no other way to put people on the land.
On January 17, 1821, General Arredondo notified Governor Martínez that the petition in the name of Moses Austin had been granted, with the full approval of all councils. Arredondo had become convinced of two things, both military in nature. A band of American colonists in Texas might create a buffer between the Spanish settlements and the Indians, and the right sort of North Americans, loyal to the Crown, would prevent future filibusters. The Royalist authorities felt that colonists who were also landowners and slaveholders—"the right sort"—would hardly be revolutionaries, because they would have an immense stake in the land. In these assumptions, so far as they went, Arredondo was not mistaken.
Moses Austin never saw his grant. He rode out of Béxar for Missouri in January 1821. He had to cross some of the wildest country on the entire frontier. Austin ran out of food; he was robbed; he caught cold, and his health broke. He reached Missouri only in time to die, but with the knowledge that he had a Royal Commission to settle three hundred families in Texas, and was once again an important man. He begged his son Stephen to carry on when he was gone.
Stephen F. Austin needed no urging. In the failure of the St. Louis Bank, he saw his own career damaged, if not destroyed. Young Austin, at twenty-seven, was, both in political instinct and education, a cut above the public figures of the frontier. After Missouri had become U.S. territory, in 1804, he had spent four years in the best private schools in Connecticut; later, he had graduated from Transylvania College in Kentucky. In his teens he was elected to the Territorial Legislature of Missouri, won the admiration of Thomas Hart (Old Bullion) Benton, and became a director of his father's bank. While his father went to Texas to plead with the authorities, Austin staked out some land in Arkansas, separated from Missouri when the former territory became a state. He was appointed a territorial circuit judge, but he had no capital, and he also now had a great dislike for the land system of the United States.
While the Spanish system, such as it was, rewarded colonization, the public lands of the United States were sold strictly for revenue. This system fostered speculation, and land speculation had ruined the Austin bank. Stephen Austin saw that a man without money, but with an official grant, had a much better chance to succeed in Spanish territory than on American soil.
Austin rode to Natchitoches, where he met the Spanish commissioners, Juan de Veramendi and Erasmo Seguín. The commissioners quickly acknowledged him as the heir to his father's grant, which Martínez at Béxar also confirmed. Martínez gave Austin the formal papers from Monterrey, and the resolution of the Provincial Council, which read in part:
. . . Therefore, if to the first and principal requisite of being Catholics, or agreeing to become so, before entering Spanish territory they also add that of accrediting their good character and habits . . . and taking the necessary oath to be obedient in all things to the government, to take up arms in its defense against all kinds of enemies, and to be faithful to the King, and to observe the political institution of the Spanish monarchy, the most flattering hopes may be formed that [Texas] will receive an important augmentation in agriculture, industry, and arts by the new immigrants, who will introduce them.
To this Martínez added a letter of his own:
I shall also expect from the prudence which your actions demonstrate, and for your own peace and prosperity, that all the families you introduce shall be honest and industrious, in order that idleness and vice may not pervert the good and meritorious who are worthy of Spanish esteem and the protection of this government, which will be extended to them in proportion to the moral virtue displayed by them.
Stephen F. Austin and the Spanish authorities had a clear understanding on two matters: one, that the American colonists would be substantial, law-abiding people; and two, that the requirement of the Roman Catholic religion would not be enforced. Neither Austin made any secret of the fact that they were Protestants, and Stephen Austin never ceased to be one, as a Mexican official. The understanding with Martínez and other officials was verbal; very soon Austin began to learn the subtle intricacies of keeping up appearances while the law was fractured. Austin did enforce the requirements of character on his colony but not religion. As the settler Linn reported, not one-tenth of the American immigrants ever adopted the Catholic faith; the few who did, did so for either politics or appearances. When the American colonization began, in fact, the Church itself was extremely weak in Texas. There were only three churches—at Béxar, La Bahía, and Nacogdoches; in 1840 Father Odin, who became the first Catholic bishop, wrote in his diary that confessions had not been held anywhere for fourteen years. The major functions of the few clergy were baptisms, marriages, and burials of the dead, for which, in the Mexican manner, "exorbitant fees were charged." Many of the Spanish and Mexican officials,
pro forma
Catholics, were in fact members of the Masonic order.