Moses Austin (1761-`1821) In January 1821, the Spanish government agreed to Austin proposal to let him oversee the settlement of 300 Catholic families from the United States to Texas in exchange for a huge personal grant of Texas lands. (Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 58.)

After Moses’ death, his son, Stephen F. Austin, assumed his father’s contract. By 1825, Stephen Austin had nearly completed the terms of his first contract, and that year the government made a second agreement with him to settle 500 families. Stephen received an additional three grants between 1825 and 1831, but only complied fully with his first contract. He used part of his grants for speculating purposes, as did the other empresarios and even some settlers who sought to turn a profit from the Mexican government’s generosity.

Between 1821 and 1835, a total of forty-one empresario contracts were signed, permitting some 13,500 families to come to Texas. (Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 58, 61-62.)

Land EmpresariosLand Empresarios

The Investigation and Report of Mier Y TeránThe Investigation and Report of Mier Y Terán

In order to evaluate how the national government might best deal with the troubles in Texas, Mexico dispatched Manuel de Mier y Terán, a high-ranking military officer and trained engineer, to the north. Crossing into Texas in 1828, Mier y Terán reported that:

•The province was flooded with Anglo Americans•Nacogdoches had essentially become an American town•Prospects for assimilation of the Anglos into Mexican culture appeared dim•The Anglo settlements generally resisted obeying the colonization laws.

Mier y Terán report spurred the drafting and implementation of the Law of April 6, 1830.

Manuel de Mier y Terán, 1789-1832Manuel de Mier y Terán, 1789-1832Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.

The Law of April 6, 1830

•The Law of April 6, 1830 intended to stop further immigration into Texas from the United States by declaring uncompleted empresario agreements as void, although Mier y Terán let stand as valid those contract belonging to men who had already brought 100 families.

•Future American immigrants must not settle in any territory bordering the United States.

•New presidio were established to check illegal immigration.

•The Law banned further importation of slaves The Law banned further importation of slaves into Texas.into Texas.

Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.

Among Anglos, a radical faction of the Federalists, which has come to be known as the “war party,” emerged from the outrage over the Law of April 6. In the summer of 1832, friction between settler and authorities trying to enforce recently instituted policies regulating commerce in the Gulf ports and the collection of new tariffs reached a high pitch a the military post in Anahuac.

Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn, an Anglo-American adventurer who had joined the Centralist cause in Mexico, arrested the lawyer William Barret Travis when the latter attempted a ruse to secure the release of two runaway slaves that Bradburn had in protective custody. In response to Travis’s arrest, vigilantes gathered to call for his release. When Bradburn refused to surrender his prisoner, the colonists, accustomed to the Anglo-American tradition of the separation of military and civilian law, and to trial by jury, labeled Bradburn a despot.

The Law of April 6, 1830, The Law of April 6, 1830, ResistedResistedCalvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.

In June of 1832, a party of Anglo Texas from around Anahuac and the port town of Brazoria marched on Bradburn’s garrison. A full-scale battle seemed imminent, but while waiting for reinforcements, the Anglos issued a document known as the Turtle Bayou Resolutions on June 13, 1832, which cleverly argued that their actions at Anahuac were not an uprising but a demand for their constitutional rights as Mexican citizens, adding that their cause was in sympathy to that of the Federalist leader, Antonio López de Santa Anna, then attempting to overthrow the Centrists, the party to which Bradburn belonged. Higher military officials avoided further bloodshed at Anahuac by replacing Bradburn and releasing Travis and other whom Bradburn had arrested.

Turtle Bayou Turtle Bayou Resolutions, 1832Resolutions, 1832

Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.

•POPULATION: By 1834, it is estimated that the number of Anglo Americans and their slaves reached over 20,700. This figure might well have represented the doubling of the number of Americans in Texas just sine 1830, which highlights the extent to which the Law of April 6, 1830 was disregarded, both by Anglos and sympathetic Spanish officials.

•LIFE: Life in Texas was rough and rustic. Basic goods such as clothing, blankets, and footwear were not readily available. Many lived off the land, which involved hunting, fishing, planting small gardens and gathering nuts and berries.

•COTTON AND SLAVERY: With slaves and imported technology, some Anglos planted and processed cotton for outside markets, and by 1834, Anglos’ farms may have shipped some 7,000 bales of cotton to New Orleans.

•BARTER AND SMUGGLING: Due to a lack of currency, people bartered to obtain needed commodities and services. Anglos found numerous ways to earn an income, among them smuggling. The tariff laws that exempted Anglo products during the 1820s had not applied to all imports and generally excluded household goods and implements. Taking advantage of this loophole (even in cases where is was legally closed) Anglos brought merchandise illegally into Texas, and some even then shipped the products to more southern Mexican states or west to New Mexico.

•EDUCATION: The foreigners established numerous schools in the 1820s and 1830s, patterning them after schools they had known in the southern United States.

•RELIGION: Although Anglos had agreed to observe the Catholic religion in order to qualify as Mexican citizens, the Church neglected them because of, among other things, a shortage of priests. Hence, many Anglo settlers held illicit church services and religious camp meetings.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 69-71.)

Anglos in Texas, 1821-1836Anglos in Texas, 1821-1836

•Using the guise of contract labor, Anglos had been able to perpetuate slavery despite Mexican disapproval. By 1836, the number of slaves in Texas numbered about 5,000. The institution of slavery arrived in Texas with all its southern trappings, for whites sought to recreate it just as it existed in the United States. As in the South, where society delineated strict roles for the different races, in Texas many Anglos considered blacks a racially inferior people suited to a life of strenuous labor and servitude.

•Anglos considered slaves legal property. Hence slaves could be:

•bought and sold

•hired out

•counted as one’s assets

•used as collateral

•Bequeathed

•To control the slave population, whites followed tried and tested policies, including the liberal use of the lash.

•Slaves attempted to run away when possible, often seeking refuge among the Indian tribes of

East Texas or in the Mexican settlements of the nation’s interior.

Blacks in Texas, 1821-1836Blacks in Texas, 1821-1836

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 71-73.)

Tejanos, 1821-1836Tejanos, 1821-1836•Most Hispanic Texans (Tejanos) lived in the ranching areas of Central and South Texas.

Many of them were the descendants of the first colonizers and presidial soldiers assigned to garrisons through the Spanish period.

•As was the case before Mexico gained independence, Mexican society in Texas continued to be a divided one, the emerging opportunities in commerce, ranching, and politics during the 1820s and 1830s fueling the fragmentation. Government bureaucrats, successful merchants or rancheros, and others who came from prominent families made up a small elite. Among its members were Erasmo and Juan N. Seguín, José Antonio Navarro, Ramón Músquis, and retired soldiers such as José Francisco Ruiz and José María Balmaceda.

•The status of Hispanic women reflected both liberties and restrictions. Women sued for military survivors’ benefits and engaged in the sale of lands, from which some achieved financial standing equal to or surpassing that of some men. But women also suffered from serious disadvantages. Law and tradition barred them from voting or holding political office. Religion discouraged divorce, dooming many to endure unhappy marriages. There was also a double standard: women adulteresses were ostracized while a blind eye was turned to the philandering of men.

•Hispanics supported education through fund-raising drives. Hispanics opened schools in the following communities:

•Béxar

•Laredo (1825)

•Nacogdoches (1828)

•Militia units remained the primary form of defense, as had been common during the period before 1821.

•Catholicism remained the primary religion among the Mexican Texans.(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)

•Those tribes that the Spanish had targeted for conversion had by the 1820s either perished due to wars and (European) diseases, been displaced from their native lands and driving into the western regions, or had integrated successfully into Spanish/Mexican communities.

•Only vestiges of the Coahuiltecans remained by the 1830s 

•In 1824, setters from Austin’s colony launched hostilities against the Karankawas to drive them from their ancestral hunting lands. During the 1830s, the Karankawas numbered less than 800 persons, but desperately clung to survival by preying on Tejano-owned cattle, or, in the case of those who gradually drifted back to their previous homeland, by “hiring out” to Anglo settlers as casual laborers or domestic servants.

•The Plains Indians (Comanches, Apaches, and Norteños) remained faithful to their traditional lifestyles, relying on a combination of the hunt and small-scale farming. Women tended gardens, cultivating and harvesting corn, pumpkins, and beans, while the Plains warriors sabotaged settlements in an effort to halt the encroachment on their land and to take livestock, especially horses.

•The Caddos of East Texas contended with problems that threatened to unravel their civilization. Alcohol, provided to them by American traders, enfeebled many tribes people almost at the same time outsiders began penetrating long-held Caddo territory. Interlopers included other Native American peoples from the U.S. South as well as Anglo empresarios bearing contracts to establish colonies in Caddo land. By the late 1820s, the Caddos numbered no more than 300 families.

•In 1818-1819, a band of Cherokees, bowing to legal and extralegal pressure by Anglos to abandon their homelands in Georgia and Alabama, arrived in northeastern Texas near Caddo land. They tried to settle near present-day Dallas, but were forced to relocate by the hostile Plains Indians. They eventually settled in and around today’s Van Zandt and Cherokee counties. The Cherokee actively sought to acquire legal title to their new homeland from the Mexican government, but never received anything but vague promises.

Native Americans, 1821-1836Native Americans, 1821-1836

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)

Fundamental to the stability of the republic was an increase in the number of its citizens. Though difficult to determine precisely, the population grew rapidly during the republic’s existence, to about 162,500 in 1848, according to one estimate.

ImmigrationImmigration

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 97-98.)

Peters Colony: Established in 1841 in the upper fringes of the republic, west of a line from the modern-day counties of Grayson and Dallas, empresario W.S. Peters and his associates brought to the colony 10,000 to 12,000 people by the early 1850s. These newcomers to northern Texas had descended primarily from the Ohio Valley and the northeastern United States.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 94.)

Peters Peters ColonyColony

Castroville, a French-speaking community founded by Henri Castro with some 2,134 immigrants, took root on a land grant near the Medina River, west of San Antonio, from 1843 to 1847. (p. 94.)

Empresario Henri Castro, founder of Castroville and other small "buffer" settlements, struggled for years to settle land claims with the Texas government, in spite of his success in bringing European settlers to the Texas frontier. Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/clark/images/castro.html

In 1844, Prince Carl von Solm-Braunfels led Germans to Texas under the auspices of an organization called Adelsverein (Society of Noblemen). In 1845, they founded New Braunsfels in present-day Comal County. (p. 95)

The Texan Constitution of 1836 guaranteed the legality of human property. Slave codes carefully defined the status of blacks as chattel in perpetuity. Further legislation specified various punishments for those found guilty of stealing slaves, encouraging slaves to run away, giving refuge to fugitive slaves, or abetting slave insurrection. With such official support, slavery as an institution expanded briskly. The number of plantations increased, as did the slave population, from 5,000 black personals in 1836, to 38,753 in 1847.

The Growth of SlaveryThe Growth of Slavery

LOOKING FOR LIBERTY: Although a failed escape would bring them severe penalties, many slaves attempted to gain their independence either by joining the East Texas Indians, such as the Cherokees, or crossing the sparsely settled, semi-arid frontier into Mexico. Mexico soon became a haven for runaway slaves; an estimated 3,000 fugitive slaves found refuge in Mexico by the early 1850s.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 97-98.)

In its early years, the republic was a more-or-less undisciplined society in which individualism sometimes was expressed without much inhibition. In many of the republic’s fledgling towns, wild, vulgar, sometimes even violent and brutal behavior flourished, and substantial consumption of alcohol fueled the general lawlessness.

Early nineteenth century Texas was filled with perils for Texan settlers: Indians, Mexican soldiers or bandits, dueling opponents, land-rights disputes, wild animals. This persistent threat of danger fed the population’s general belligerence and the high estimation of manly prowess. However, the very bravado that led people to stand up and fight against their enemies nourished a disorderly society.

A violent feud involving the so-called “Regulators” and “Moderators” erupted in East Texas over land titles in the late 1830s. In 1840, there was a series of public shootings and murders, and a reign of terror spread over Shelby Country until President Houston sent the militia in to the lawlessness.

Individualism, Individualism, Manly Manly

Prowess, Prowess, Disorder and Disorder and

ViolenceViolence

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 99.)

THE KARANKAWAS:THE KARANKAWAS: Debilitated by sickness, alcoholism, and malnutrition, the Karankawas seemed unable to stop Debilitated by sickness, alcoholism, and malnutrition, the Karankawas seemed unable to stop the encroachment or the attacks leveled against them by the settlers. By the mid 1840s, the Karankawas teetered the encroachment or the attacks leveled against them by the settlers. By the mid 1840s, the Karankawas teetered near extinction as a recognizable tribe.near extinction as a recognizable tribe.

 

THE CADDO:THE CADDO: The Caddo saw only a slight interlude from their own misery of poverty and displacement. Lamar’s The Caddo saw only a slight interlude from their own misery of poverty and displacement. Lamar’s plan to expel Indians had led Caddos to retreat into Oklahoma, but Houston’s re-election as president had proven plan to expel Indians had led Caddos to retreat into Oklahoma, but Houston’s re-election as president had proven fortuitous, and they had returned to Texas and established themselves along the northwestern stretches of the fortuitous, and they had returned to Texas and established themselves along the northwestern stretches of the Brazos River.Brazos River.

 

THE CHEROKEE:THE CHEROKEE: With the election of Lamar, Cherokee hopes for becoming recognized landowners vanished. With the election of Lamar, Cherokee hopes for becoming recognized landowners vanished. Despite Duwali’s logical argument outlining the Cherokees’ legitimate claims to the East Texas lands promised them Despite Duwali’s logical argument outlining the Cherokees’ legitimate claims to the East Texas lands promised them by Houston, Lamar pressed his demand for their removal, either the Cherokees would leave peacefully or they by Houston, Lamar pressed his demand for their removal, either the Cherokees would leave peacefully or they would be forcibly evicted. The Indians chose to resist, and at the Battle of Neches, in present-day Van Zandt would be forcibly evicted. The Indians chose to resist, and at the Battle of Neches, in present-day Van Zandt County, regular troops and two volunteer companies defeated the Cherokees and killed Duwali on July 16, 1839.County, regular troops and two volunteer companies defeated the Cherokees and killed Duwali on July 16, 1839.

 

THE COMANCHES:THE COMANCHES: The Comanches had no real tribal government: principally functioning as nomadic, autonomous The Comanches had no real tribal government: principally functioning as nomadic, autonomous bands, agreements reached with one group meant little to the majority of the Comanche people. bands, agreements reached with one group meant little to the majority of the Comanche people.

After a series of raids and counter-raids against each other, both Texans and Comanches seemed ripe for a truce in After a series of raids and counter-raids against each other, both Texans and Comanches seemed ripe for a truce in 1840. In March, Comanches met with Texas at the Council House in San Antonio to negotiate for the release of 1840. In March, Comanches met with Texas at the Council House in San Antonio to negotiate for the release of captured white women and children. The Comanches brought with them a young white prisoner by the name of captured white women and children. The Comanches brought with them a young white prisoner by the name of Matilda Lockhart, but they had purposely left the remainder of their white captives behind. Texas authorities, who Matilda Lockhart, but they had purposely left the remainder of their white captives behind. Texas authorities, who had panned to take the Comanche chiefs into custody and ransom them for the return of all the whites, attacked the had panned to take the Comanche chiefs into custody and ransom them for the return of all the whites, attacked the Comanche negotiators. Most of the Indians present were killed, as were several Texans. The Comanche retaliated Comanche negotiators. Most of the Indians present were killed, as were several Texans. The Comanche retaliated by torturing their prisoners to death. They also attached and plundered the Texan towns of Victoria and Linnville. by torturing their prisoners to death. They also attached and plundered the Texan towns of Victoria and Linnville. But Texas Rangers under Ben McCulloch gave chase, and upon engaging the Indians they served them two But Texas Rangers under Ben McCulloch gave chase, and upon engaging the Indians they served them two punishing defeats. punishing defeats.

In October 1844, Houston successfully negotiated a treaty of peace and commerce with the Comanches and other In October 1844, Houston successfully negotiated a treaty of peace and commerce with the Comanches and other western tribes. This produced a time of relative tranquility for the republic. However, the Indians’ marauding never western tribes. This produced a time of relative tranquility for the republic. However, the Indians’ marauding never stopped completely.stopped completely.

 

 

THE INDIANSTHE INDIANS

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 100-102.)

Juan SeguínJuan SeguínTEJANOS:TEJANOS: After Texas Independence, Tejanos faced a After Texas Independence, Tejanos faced a departure from their traditional way of life and departure from their traditional way of life and confronted white hostility. They were at a numerical confronted white hostility. They were at a numerical disadvantage, business was conduced in a different disadvantage, business was conduced in a different language, and they were not completely familiar with language, and they were not completely familiar with the new form of politics. Despite guarantees in the the new form of politics. Despite guarantees in the Constitution of 1836, Tejanos seemed defenseless Constitution of 1836, Tejanos seemed defenseless against a people who freely expressed their dislike for against a people who freely expressed their dislike for them. Many Mexican families were banished from them. Many Mexican families were banished from homes they had known for generations. homes they had known for generations.

  

According to Juan Seguín, who served as mayor of San According to Juan Seguín, who served as mayor of San Antonio in 1841-1842, Béxareños came to him seeking Antonio in 1841-1842, Béxareños came to him seeking protection from harassment by white antagonists. protection from harassment by white antagonists. “Could I leave them defenseless, exposed to the “Could I leave them defenseless, exposed to the assaults of foreigners, who on the pretext that they assaults of foreigners, who on the pretext that they were Mexican, treated them worse than brutes?” he were Mexican, treated them worse than brutes?” he asked. By the summer of 1842, Seguín had become a asked. By the summer of 1842, Seguín had become a refugee in Mexico, seeking to flee the enmity of whites refugee in Mexico, seeking to flee the enmity of whites who considered him an accomplice on Mexican efforts who considered him an accomplice on Mexican efforts to reconquer Texas.to reconquer Texas.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 102.)

Without the congress’s consent, President Lamar in 1841 dispatched 320 men for an expansionist expedition to New Mexico. The Texans arrived in New Mexico only to be intercepted by soldiers who subdued them without difficulty. The invaders quickly realized that the people of Santa Fe did not welcome their proposal of annexation, and the Texans were escorted all the way to Mexico City, where they were imprisoned. Back in Texas, the congress censured Lamar for the blunder and might have commenced impeachment proceedings against him had his three-year term not been drawing to a close.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 107.)

MEXICO TWICE SEIZES SAN ANTONIO BACKMEXICO TWICE SEIZES SAN ANTONIO BACK

Mexico responded daringly to the Santa Fe Expedition. In February 1842, President Santa Anna ordered General Rafael Vásquez to take San Antonio. Vásquez occupied San Antonio for 2 days that March. Then General Adrián Woll reoccupied San Antonio on behalf of Mexico again, taking 60 prisoners before retreating upon the arrival of Texan volunteers. In response, Houston commanded General Alexander Somervell to lead an expedition of about 750 men toward the Rio Grande. Its mission was to patrol the border to prevent further invasions.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 107.)

U.S. President James Knox Polk, in a speech before Congress, April 1846:

“Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood on American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities exist and that the two nations are at war.”

 

A few days later, Congress approved a resolution declaring war on Mexico.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 110.)

The loss of Texas and the war with the United States contributed more to Mexico’s impoverishment, its apparent sterility, its xenophobia, its lack of self-esteem, and its general demoralization than any other event of the nineteenth century. (Meyer, Sherman and Deeds, p. 317)