Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Now, in September 1819, the new President of Texas set out for Galveston Island to seek assistance from the real power in the region, Jean Lafitte. On the way Long heard that a Spanish army had left Béxar for east Texas, and he sent back orders for his wife to cross over to Louisiana, while his officers were to "concentrate their forces." Then he rushed on to Galveston.

  The Pirate of the Gulf received Long cordially and wished him success. But Lafitte, who had already helped another illegal expedition (some exiled Bonapartists under Generals Lallemand and Rigault, who tried to settle 120 Frenchmen on the Trinity in 1818, but were driven away), absolutely refused to become involved. He told Long coolly that no mixed group of Mexican revolutionists, American land seekers, and republican idealists could win without a large, well-disciplined army, which Long did not have.

  Returning disappointed to Nacogdoches, Long learned that the Spanish General Pérez had defeated his forces, killed his brother, and captured some of his settlers. Nacogdoches itself was deserted, everyone had fled. Long crossed over into the United States, joining his wife and child.

  But James Long had caught the filibuster fever. He made his way to New Orleans, talking of a new expedition. He found supporters to finance him and get him new supplies, and he fell in with Don Felix Trespalacios, a well-known Mexican Republican exile. In 1820, Long and Trespalacios, styling themselves the "Patriot Army," led an expedition by sea against the Texas coast. Mrs. Long, now with two small children, went along.

  At a place called Point Bolivar, the Patriots built a tiny fort. Trespalacios then sailed down to Mexico, to spread revolution, while Dr. Long took some men and marched inland to La Bahia. Once again the old town fell to American invaders. But Royalists quickly surrounded Long's men, and the Patriots were forced to surrender. Long would have been shot, but the political climate of New Spain was now in complete flux. The leaders of the Royalists were going over to the idea of independence, and Long was, after delays, sent south to the City of Mexico.

  In Mexico Long found that the Royal government had fallen; Iturbide was in power, and soon to make himself Emperor; his comrade in arms, Trespalacios, had just been appointed Governor of Texas. Dr. Long created a problem for the new regime, which did not know whether to treat him as a Republican hero or an Anglo-Saxon pirate. In the end he was shot, ostensibly as an accident, though many of his friends claimed Don Felix Trespalacios himself had given the order.

  Jane Wilkinson Long, meanwhile, had remained in the tiny fort at Point Bolivar on Galveston Bay. When news of Long's capture reached there, the small garrison of Patriots voted to go back to New Orleans. All the men sailed away, leaving Jane Long, her two tiny children, and a single Negro girl behind. Mrs. Long was not yet twenty-one years of age.

  The two women and two children survived the winter of 1812 mainly through courage. For some time their only food was oysters the slave girl clawed up from Galveston Bay. Once Indians appeared. Jane Long loaded and touched off one of the small cannon the Patriot Army had abandoned at the fort. The savages sheered away.

  At last, a Mexican messenger rode into this deserted stretch of coast, with news that Dr. Long was dead. The indomitable Jane Long now rode to Béxar, and from Béxar to Monterrey, many hundreds of miles. She was determined to have her husband's killer punished. Finally, she realized that, despite the protestations of sympathy polite Mexicans gave her everywhere, nothing was going to be done. She went back to Mississippi on horseback.

  Years later she returned to Texas and settled at Richmond near the coast. She died in 1880, honored by most of the people of the state as a heroic pioneer.

  The treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States finally ended two decades of hostility, confusion, and bloodshed. As part of the price of acquiring Florida, the United States officially renounced its claim to Texas. Disturbed by the constant intrusion of Americans into Spanish territory, President Madison had ordered American citizens not to enter Texas; however, the fact that Mexico declared independence from Spain, thus destroying the professed rationale of the filibusters, did more to bring the era to its end. Long was the last of the true filibusters in Texas.

  The warlike expeditions, and the Mexican revolution of 1810, had a disastrous effect upon the province. In effect, most of the Spanish progress of the preceding century was destroyed. General Arredondo executed or exiled one thousand people, approximately one-third the Texas Spanish population. In the aftermath of Long's filibuster, royal officers drove away more settlers. Much of the improved farmlands around San Antonio, and in east Texas, went back to waste. Travelers crossing Spanish Texas faced a risk of starvation, and for some years even at Béxar food was scarce. The great problem was underpopulation. There were 30,000 untamed Indians in the province, but fewer than 4,000 Europeans, when the era of the filibusters closed.

  In 1821, the United States Navy forced Jean Lafitte to halt his buccaneering operations in the Gulf. Lafitte abandoned his base on Galveston Island and disappeared from history. Some said he died a few years later on the high seas, at the hands of Spain. There were lasting rumors that Lafitte buried an enormous treasure on one of the sandy islands off the Texas coast. But, like the rest of the filibusters, Lafitte left nothing but romantic and bloody legends behind.

  Chapter 9

  THE EMPRESARIOS

  They are a strange people, and must be studied to be managed. They have high ideas of national dignity, should it be openly attacked, but will sacrifice national dignity, and national interest, too, if it can be done in a "still" way, or so as not to arrest public attention. "Dios castiga el escándalo más que el crimen" (God punishes the exposure more than the crime) is their motto. The maxim influences their morals and their politics. I learned it when I was there in 1822, and I now believe that if I had not always kept it in view, and known the power which "appearances" have on them, even when they know they are deceived, I should never have succeeded to the extent I have done in Americanizing Texas.

  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.