Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
Under President Lamar, a series of wars or campaigns began against the Indians. Militia, regular Texas army forces, and local bands called "ranging companies" were employed; in one campaign in east Texas, more than 1,000 soldiers were mobilized.
Texas put heavy pressure upon the Penatekas, or southern Comanches, in the San Antonio region, but the main blow fell against the border Indians who still occupied large fringes of territory between the Comanches and the whites. These were broken, dominated, and forced back. Above all, the Cherokees and several other "immigrant" tribes, who had moved into east Texas after being dispossessed in the United States, were attacked and driven either into Oklahoma or Arkansas.
The campaigns against the Comanches were justifiable, for Comanches had begun raiding Anglo-Texan settlements. The moves against the inoffensive Cherokees, however, were more in the nature of a land-grab. The mass evictions of the remaining agricultural Indians in east Texas were carried out for the same reasons, and with the same injustice, as they had been done under the Jackson Administration to the east.
In these operations, a large number of whites, and many more Indians were killed; the warfare was bitter, bloody, and brutal all along the borders of Anglo-Texas.
However, these wars expelled virtually all the immigrant Indians from the United States and opened up all east Texas to white settlement. They pushed the Comanches back in the area north of Bexar and bought a period of peace along the frontier. As the historian Richardson wrote, the justice of Lamar's campaigns "may be questioned, but their effectiveness is beyond dispute."
These Indian wars cost the Texas treasury $2,500,000, however, and Lamar, like Houston, was unable to negotiate any respectable loan. Lamar proposed to found a Bank of Texas, but there was no money to fund it. More and more paper money was printed, more than $3,000,000 in "red back" notes, which soon fell to around a dime on the dollar.
Lamar did try to make peace with Mexico. At this time France was blockading Mexican ports in an attempt to collect the claims of French citizens, and the old Federalist–Centralist quarrel caused civil strife in several Mexican states. But Lamar's offer of $5,000,000 for recognition and acceptance of the Rio Grande boundary was not accepted. Mexico, however, kept negotiations alive during 1839 and 1840 for one reason: the small Texas navy, under Edwin Moore, was now at sea, and a threat to Mexican commerce. Great Britain then agreed to mediate between the two powers, and signed a treaty with Texas to that effect. But despite British pressure on Mexico, Mexico refused to negotiate seriously. James Webb, the Texas emissary, was not even received. At this point, in 1841, Lamar resolved to reopen the war.
Lamar signed an alliance with the Mexican state of Yucatán, which was for some months engaged in a civil war with the Supreme Government. This conflict dribbled away as Yucatán rejoined Mexico, but now hostilities had been taken up again. Lamar, who talked openly of a Republic of Texas that reached to the Pacific Ocean, dispatched an expedition to the Upper Rio Grande, to take possession of Sante Fe. There was a considerable belief in Texas that the Mexican inhabitants of New Mexico would welcome it.
Instead, this expedition, after marching across 1,300 miles of burning plains, suffering Indian attacks, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, was easily captured by the Mexican army when it reached New Mexico. The survivors of the 300-odd soldiers who left Texas were brutally chained and marched deep into Mexico. They were held in the Mexican fortress of Perote until April 1842. The Spanish had learned some centuries earlier that troops could not march at will across the High Plains; now, the Texans, who had never explored the region, had to learn their own lessons, painfully. The province of New Mexico was weak enough; the Texas government had claimed everything east of the Rio Grande—but the territory was effectively beyond reach.
It was also easier, in the south, to declared the war reopened with Mexico than to carry the war to it.
Lamar's influence defeated a plan to settle 8,000 French colonists along the Rio Grande in the south. These people were to be imported to form a buffer, much as Mexicans had imported Americans to place a wall between themselves and the Indians. The scheme, however, would have created a semiautonomous French state within lands claimed by Texas. Sam Houston favored it; but Lamar, perhaps clearer-sighted, felt the all-important unity of Anglo-Texas would be breached. Meanwhile, the declared hostilities languished, since there were no Texans in contact with, or within 300 miles of, the southern Rio Grande.
Lamar's second great success, besides quelling the Indians, was that his exercise of Texan sovereignty secured some foreign recognition. During Houston's administration, Great Britain failed to acknowledge Texas, for three reasons: Texas was proclaimed Negro slave territory, and sentiment in Britain was opposed to slavery; British interests had heavy investments in Mexico, which Lord Palmerston hesitated to alienate; and finally, the British government supposed Texas would soon enter the United States. Ironically, Lamar's aggressions and the simultaneous withdrawal of the annexation petition quickened European interest and strengthened the acceptance of Texan sovereignty. Lamar was acting like the ruler of an Anglo-Saxon republic, as both the French and British governments understood one. In 1839, assisted by French exasperation with Mexican debts, Texas signed a treaty of recognition with France. In 1840, a treaty with The Netherlands followed. Late the same year, Palmerston became convinced Texas might be here to stay. Three British–Texas treaties were signed: recognition, commerce and navigation, and, as a Texas concession, a convention permitting the Royal Navy to suppress slave-running on the Texas coast. This last was a sop to British antislavery opinion. Very few blacks were being brought in by sea; they were being purchased or imported from the United States.
At the close of Lamar's presidency, Britain, France, Belgium, and The Netherlands had recognized, or had commercial treaties, with the Republic of Texas. None of these nations, however, was willing to grant a loan to Mirabeau Lamar.
The capital of Texas had been moved to the town of Houston, then just being laid out, in the last days of 1836. But Houston provided no better site than the old Columbia. In 1839, a commission appointed to study the question of a new site selected a location on the Colorado, almost in the center of the claimed territory of the country. Lamar moved his government to this place, which was named Austin. By 1840 this new capital held almost nine hundred people, but the location, whatever the long-term political implications, had great disadvantages. Austin lay far beyond the frontier of Anglo settlement, 70-odd miles north of San Antonio, and it was on the edge of Comanche country. The combination of being remote from Anglo-Texas and near the Indians made many members of the Texas government unwilling even to travel there; they lacked the President's compulsion to look and go West.
As Lamar neared the end of his term, in 1841, his expenditures and wars had revived the old Peace party, the conservative planter class. Their candidate was Sam Houston, who was now remarried, a member of the Baptist Church, and a firm advocate of governmental economy in all things. The campaign, in Texas style, however, was fought not on ideology but on the issues of which candidate was the greatest coward, drunkard, or public thief. On these terms, the War party candidate, the former President David G. Burnet, was defeated easily by the hero of San Jacinto, who, after an interim, could legally be President again. Edward Burleson, another war hero, was elected Vice-President, on an independent ticket.
President Houston brought a planter congress in with him, and this 6th Texas Congress turned off the public tap. In a series of acts dozens of offices were abolished, salaries of officials were reduced to mere honoraria, the army was reduced to a few companies of Rangers, and the Texas navy, an expensive proposition, was ordered sold. Commodore Moore, who protested the ignominious auction of the four ships that had served Texas so well, both in war and diplomacy, was first declared a pirate and then dishonorably discharged by President Houston. However, the navy was never sold. The citizens of Galveston, who had fallen in love with the Lone Star flag on the high seas, held mass meetings. When the ships put into port, citizens threw armed guards around them, and the orders of the Republic could only have been carried out with bloodshed. For three years this impasse remained. When Texas, in 1845, became a state, the Lone Star ensign was replaced by the Stars and Stripes; the navy was transferred intact to the service of the United States.
Houston's congress repealed all Lamar's currency and banking laws. The issuance of new money was tightly controlled; only about $200,000 was printed, in "exchequer bills." In his second three-year term, Houston spent less than $600,000, and government accounts began to resemble those of a retail store. Thus, in some measure, passed the glory of Lamar's Republic.
Houston, if he had not been the undeniable hero of San Jacinto, would have been branded as an Indian-lover. He had tried to save the Cherokees, and he had a generic sympathy with all Indians. In return, most tribes respected Houston. He was able to sign treaties with the Wacos, Tawakonis, and southern Comanches. These tribes now continued to provide a buffer between the settlers and the more warlike bands on the Great Plains, and for some years Indian warfare ceased. Houston's success here, however, was caused more by the fact that white settlement had not yet filled the vacuum Lamar's campaigns had made than by any Texan acceptance of Indian rights.
Houston's most serious war was a feud that broke out in east Texas between newcomers and early squatters near the old Neutral Ground. This region dissolved in lawlessness and anarchy. After several notorious public shootings and murders, between the "Regulators" and "Moderators"—names carried all the way from Appalachia—Houston turned out the militia and put the Republic back in control. Many private feuds, growing out of these times, went on. Lasting feuds, by 1844, had become a feature of Texas life; they were to mar the politics of the state throughout the century.
However, Mirabeau Lamar had succeeded at last in arousing Mexico, and Houston inherited the minor whirlwind the Buonaparte of Texas had stirred up. Santa Anna had bided his time and was again President of Mexico. Fired by the belief that Mexico, to keep any international belief in its sovereignty over Texas and to prevent further raids like the one on Santa Fe, had to do something, Santa Anna sent an expedition north across the Rio Grande, in the spring of 1842. This was not an attempt to reconquer Texas; it was a show of force. The Mexican army easily captured San Antonio, Refugio, and Goliad—this time unopposed.
The new invasion re-created the scenes of the Runaway Scrape in these outermost parts of what was then called West Texas. Houston moved the government from Austin to his namesake, Houston, but citizens of Austin prevented removal of the archives, in a farce that came to be called the Archive War. The Mexicans retired south after only a few days; no damage was done; but the Texas militia swarmed again toward San Antonio. However, Sam Houston had no intention of reliving the grim and deadly days of '36. He did send agents to the United States to seek assistance—this fitted with his long-range plans—but he vigorously vetoed his Congress's declaration of war, on the grounds that the financial measures provided to support it were inadequate.
Santa Anna refused to let the war die. Again, in September 1842, General Adrian Woll with a thousand men reentered San Antonio. Woll caught the Texas district court in session, and this time he took 67 Texans prisoners. These included all male Anglo citizens in the town. Again, however, the Mexicans only remained a few days, then retreated with their captives. Two brushes were fought with Texas militia. In one fight, at the Salado, Matthew Caldwell and John C. Hays shot up the Mexicans badly in a brushy bottom, forcing Woll to back off with about one hundred dead. Woll's force caught another group of Texans, about fifty men under Captain Dawson, in the open. In this battle the Mexicans prudently remained beyond rifle range and killed all but 15 of Dawson's force with artillery fire. The survivors were added to the bag taken at San Antonio.
Houston was now forced to call for volunteers; he ordered a descent upon the Rio Grande. Houston still did not intend to make war, but he had to do something to allay public opinion. By November 1842, 750 men were assembled in San Antonio. This army marched to Laredo, north of the Rio Grande but a Mexican town, and captured it on December 8. Here, some of the men left the army and went home. Somervell, the Texan general, marched south along the river for a few miles as a demonstration, then ordered the army back to Gonzales. He was working under Houston's orders, and even the army suspected he did not intend to make war.
Some 300 men were infuriated by this retreat and refused to go. They elected a new colonel, Fisher, and crossed the border, taking the town of Mier. Here, after a desperate battle, the force was rounded up by the Mexican General Ampudia, on December 26. The captives were started for Mexico City; they tried a break, and in retaliation, after the typical lottery, they were decimated—one man in ten was shot. Those left were incarcerated in Perote prison, with the survivors of the expedition to Santa Fe. After some months, they were released, largely due to the efforts of Waddy Thompson, Texas's old friend in the U.S. Congress, who was now U.S. Minister to Mexico.
Another expedition, authorized by Houston, under Snively attempted to raid the commerce passing between Missouri and Santa Fe. This march provoked a serious incident with the United States. The Mexican mule trains were guarded by United States troops, on soil claimed both by the Republic of Texas and the United States. Although the attack did take place on Texas soil, Snively's men were captured and disarmed by the United States Army, and sent ingloriously home. On Houston's protest, reimbursement for the arms was made.