Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
The economy, in the small Anglo communities and trading centers that grew up, was based on barter. The books of an early merchant, the Austrian immigrant George Erath, show an intricate listing of goods balanced against other goods: clothing made in Europe traded for hogs, horses exchanged for corn, an ox for a sow, a feather bed for three cows with calves, a gun for a mare. These items were valued in a dollars-and-cents money of account, but money never changed hands. Local taxes, of which there were a few, were also often paid in kind, at the rate of a cow with calf at $10. Interest rates, when credit was allowed, were enormous. The exports of the colony of farmers were, in Austin's words, "cotton, beef, tallow, pork, lard, mules, etc." All of these went to the United States. The only commerce with Mexico amounted to a little salt, and sometimes horses. The Texans bought anything they needed—and luxuries were almost nonexistent—from the States, usually through New Orleans. Cotton was by far the most important money crop. Ten years after Austin granted his first land, a Mexican official listed Texas exports at $500,000. Cotton accounted for $353,000 of this; furs, hides, and cattle the rest. These figures were probably guesses and too high, but they showed the pattern. This commerce with Europe and the States was hampered by the lack of decent harbors on the Texas coast.
Another indication of the cotton economy was the proportion of whites to blacks in Austin's colony in 1825: 443 slaves and 1,347 whites.
Removed by enormous distances and commercial patterns from the Mexican economy, the region between the Colorado and the Brazos was also outside the Mexican body politic. For some years there was no constitutional provision for Anglo-colonial government—Governor José Felix Trespalacios, Dr. Long's old compatriot, gave the colony local self-government by decree in 1822, and Don Luciano García made it clear to Stephen Austin that the empresario was expected to manage his people and not bother the authorities with their problems. García was friendly, and gave Austin sanction to establish a town or municipality on the Brazos, called San Felipe de Austin. This became the colony's capital.
After 1825 Texas was a department of the State of Coahuila, ruled by a political chief appointed by the Governor. This officer, really a subgovernor, resided at Béxar. The major unit of local government under the Hispanic system was the municipality. A municipality could include several towns and thousands of square miles; in other words, the principal town ruled the countryside. The
ayuntamiento
was the governing council of a municipality, combining the functions of both the North American city council and county commissioners. The chief executive officer of the
ayuntamiento
was the
alcalde
, who was a sort of mayor, judge, and high sheriff, all combined. The
regidores
were members of the council; the
síndico
was something like the present American city attorney. The
alguacil
, appointed by the
alcalde
, was the principal law enforcement officer. Municipalities were divided, if necessary, into precincts or
distritos
, with a presiding commissar, whom Americans preferred to call a justice of the peace.
Austin's colony was unofficially made a municipality, which was divided into two districts, or precincts, the Colorado and the Brazos. Austin allowed two
alcaldes
to be elected; these magistrates were to have real problems struggling with their decisions in the light of Mexican law, of which they were ignorant.
The court system of this government, in American eyes, was impossible. Both the commissar and the
alcalde
could hear cases, but neither was allowed to rule on them. The testimony had to be transmitted to the state capital at Saltillo, a distance of more than four hundred miles. A Mexican magistrate called the
asesor general
then examined the testimony and issued his
dictamen
, or ruling. This then had to be approved by the Mexican Supreme Court. Any error in the written accounts vitiated the whole process, which could go on for years. Only two things made the legal system supportable in Anglo-Texas: there was almost no crime (all observers agree on this), and what little there was the empresario handled outside the courts. San Felipe de Austin never built a
cárcel
, or jail.
In this system, the empresario had enormous powers; Austin was in reality a theoretical despot. He could appoint all his officials if he chose. Since the colony was excused from state and national taxes, church tithes, and customs duties, and was created in Mexican eyes to defend Northern Mexico and itself at its own expense, in its crucial formative years official Mexico had no real interest in it. Austin in his early years was warned repeatedly to govern and defend himself and not to let his colony be a nuisance. For this purpose, the empresario was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Mexican Army, made military and political commander of his colony, and Austin was even permitted to develop and codify his own laws. He did this, following the Mexican Constitution of 1824 so far as he thought wise.
Although Austin knew better than to act as a petty potentate, his duties and responsibilities were still enormous. He delegated such local government as seemed needed to the
alcaldes, alguaciles
, and
comisarios
his settlements chose to elect; his settlers, unable to pronounce these Arabic-derived titles, stubbornly called their officials mayors, sheriffs, and justices of the peace. Austin's real function was to deal with the state and national Mexican governments, which were often unsympathetic and remained foreign. He had to stand between these and his Anglo-Saxon planters, who might be self-reliant, hardy, and law-abiding, but were also usually prejudiced, stubborn, ignorant of the true situation, violently jealous of what they considered inherent American rights, and determined to find fault with anyone in authority, particularly the empresario. Austin had to pass on every settler; he was responsible to the state for every colonist. The Baron de Bastrop merely signed his name to the land titles; Austin had to see to the surveying and all the details. The
alcaldes
whom the people elected carried out rules and regulations, civil and criminal, that Austin drafted first. His power and position were resented fiercely by many colonists who came begging land.
At one stage the settlers revolted against the twelve-and-a-half-cents-per-acre fee Austin was supposed to collect, not because it was unfair or exorbitant, but because it was making Austin "rich at their expense." The subgovernor remitted this fee, and henceforth charged colonists only a small, set title price. Austin received a part of this, but his potential profits were enormously reduced.
Austin's efforts for his colony, meanwhile, as one observer wrote, "could not be exaggerated." He was the greatest colonial proprietor in North American history. But he was also something more. He was a politician of exquisite skill, who seemed to understand almost any kind of mind he came in contact with—Mexican, planter, or the various frontier types. He found out people's weaknesses and worked on them, with the utter pragmatism the Anglo-American frontier mentality called forth. Austin had no ideology, and he was entirely sincere; otherwise he could not have survived an incredible succession of Mexican Royalists, Imperialists, Republicans, and dictators. He began in Missouri as a businessman, but he became something immensely more important: he was a visionary, capitalist, developer, and Father of his People, all in one. Somewhere along the line, Austin lost interest in his personal fortune and developed an obsession to "redeem Texas from its wilderness state by means of the plow alone, in spreading over it North American population, enterprise, and intelligence." Austin had no notion—not for many years—of taking the land away from Mexico. What his Mexican colleagues, totally lacking in such instincts, could never comprehend was his sincere and boundless joy at the destruction of the wilderness. Each crashing tree along the Brazos gave Austin pleasure; each mud-paved town hammered together in the middle of nowhere instilled in him a sense of destiny fulfilled. In this, Stephen Austin was not unusual. Destroying nature and creating civilization as they knew it was already a fetish in North American minds. Austin merely had more vision and far more ability than most. The wilderness, beautiful but economically barren, was an offense in Anglo-American eyes. Only when the land was tamed and all the resources of Nature put to man's use would Nature's plan be complete.
In all, there were twenty-six empresarios in colonial Texas. Austin was immeasurably the greatest, not because he was the first, or most powerful, but because he saw his role as something more than merely selling land.
Don Estévan Austin, as he was called, was essentially a civilized man, and a civilizer. He was never a frontier hero. He was slender, rather handsome, charismatic, especially to Latins, and very much the gentleman. He was really the creator of Anglo-Texas, but he was not to be the Texans' greatest hero. Austin was not a man on horseback. He was appalled by conflict and preferred to save his people by more devious ways than war.
Austin never married; he devoted his life to his cause. He took on hundreds of informal tasks beyond his position as empresario. Prospective colonists were put up at his house, and shown about, at his expense. Planters called on him to act as a collection agency, and also as their agents for commercial transactions in the United States. Men badgered him for loans, and to settle personal disputes. Parents in the South wrote him continually to find, or look out for, strayed, lost, or emigrating offspring. Austin carried all these burdens voluntarily and well.
After his first three hundred patents were used up, he applied for and got more. His colony was gradually enlarged, beginning in 1825. In ten years, Austin located more than 1,500 American families, and these became the heart of Anglo-Texas. In a single decade, these people chopped more wood, cleared more land, broke more soil, raised more crops, had more children, and built more towns than the Spanish had in three hundred years.
The various laws and decrees that permitted Austin to open Texas for colonization applied only to him. But on August 18, 1824, the Republic of Mexico, continuing Spanish practice, issued a general colonization law. This national law had four key provisions:
Public lands were remanded to the Mexican States for administration.
State land codes must conform to the Constitution.
No person could acquire more than eleven leagues (48,708 acres) for colonization.
No foreigner was to be granted land; immigrants must become citizens.
The Republican Constitution of 1824 was federalist in concept, a strong break with Spanish centralist tradition. Austin himself had something to do with this, as he recommended certain key provisions to important men in Mexico. A federal Act of May 1824, made the former Spanish provinces into supposedly sovereign states, on paper at least, on the North American order. Coahuila and Texas were incorporated into one state, with its capital at Saltillo. The act provided that Texas might become a state when its population grew sufficiently; the Mexican mood at that time was to grant the northern colony a definite measure of independence within the greater nation. The legislature of Coahuila in 1825 passed a colonization law for Texas, in conformance with the federal enabling act. The provisions of this law were that Texas was to be opened to Roman Catholics who could prove Christian belief, morality, and good habits. Immigration could be by individuals, or through empresarios. New empresarios were commissioned with territories bordering Austin's. They could continue to grant up to one
sitio
per family, and they were to receive five
sitios
and five
labores
of land for every 100 families settled, up to a limit of 800.
Native-born Mexicans could simply buy up to eleven
sitios
for a small fee. The decrees remitting state taxes, church tithes, and customs duties were continued.
The year 1825 saw an explosion in empresarios and immigration into Texas. Twenty-five empresario commissions were granted in all, but only a few of these had any permanent effects. Although native Mexicans could acquire land in Texas under much more favorable circumstances than Americans, and the relaxation of taxes and tithes applied to them also, very few families went north. The push to this still wild frontier came almost entirely from the United States, with a few families arriving from Europe.
Next to Stephen F. Austin in importance as an empresario was Green DeWitt of Missouri. DeWitt had gone to Mexico at about the same time as Austin, for the same reasons. His contract was authorized in April 1825, for 400 families to be located south of Austin's colony, on the Guadalupe, San Marcos, and Lavaca rivers. DeWitt laid out Gonzales, his headquarters town, named for the current Governor of Coahuila, a few months later. However, in July 1826, a serious Indian attack pushed the Gonzales settlers down toward the coast. This drew them into conflict with Martín de León, who had in peculiar circumstances been granted empresario lands that overlapped the Missourian's.
De León originally was commissioned not by Coahuila but by the provincial government of Texas at Béxar in 1824. He settled between 100 and 200 families, almost all Mexican, along the lower Guadalupe River. This area was shortly afterward granted to DeWitt, but De León proved belligerent in defending his position.
De León's Mexican birth counted heavily for him, and the Governor of Coahuila confirmed the fact that he should be given first choice under the law. De León laid out his small capital, Victoria, while DeWitt's people, led by James Kerr, a Missouri state senator, returned west of the Colorado to Gonzales. By 1828 Kerr and DeWitt had Gonzales firmly established, with blockhouses and a small fort. DeWitt was able to issue and have confirmed 166 land titles, but most of his allotted lands remained vacant. The Gonzales settlers felt they had been treated unfairly by De León, and by the law. There was hostility between Gonzales and Victoria, which might have resulted in feuds and war. Austin himself took on the role of peacemaker, and his efforts finally damped the quarrel. José Antonio Navarro, through Austin's help, confirmed the Gonzales colony's holdings in 1831.