by H. W. Brands
The heart of the colonists’ complaint was that Mexico City was arbitrarily changing the rules upon which they had made life plans. The ban on immigration meant that Texas would remain a frontier society indefinitely. Very few Americans, even among westerners, loved the frontier for its own sake. They migrated to the unsettled regions because they could afford land there, but no sooner did they purchase their plots than they wanted the frontier to look like the settled regions back east. They wanted the markets and services and stability of settled life; many also wanted their land to appreciate in value so that they could sell it at a profit (and perhaps repeat the cycle farther west). Nearly all the Americans in Texas had assumed that more of their compatriots would follow them there, and that the Texas frontier would fill with towns and eventually cities and the rising standard of living towns and cities entailed. By outlawing immigration, the Mexican government overthrew this assumption, and with it the plans of the settlers.
The embargo against slaves threatened less havoc but enough to warrant concern. Austin, like many Americans of his day, was of two minds regarding slavery: he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t figure out how to do without it. (In time much southern rhetoric would celebrate slavery, but in the 1820s this was still a minority view.) Austin accepted slavery as necessary for the development of Texas: most of his colonists were southerners, and many wouldn’t come without their slaves. But he shuddered at the thought that Texas—his Texas—might someday be as slave-ridden as large parts of the American Gulf Coast. “The idea of seeing such a country as this overrun by a slave population almost makes me weep,” he wrote an acquaintance. He had tried to make others share his fear, by raising the specter of a slave rebellion, but without success. “It is in vain to tell a North American that the white population will be destroyed some fifty or eighty years hence by the negroes, and that his daughters will be violated and butchered by them.” As for arguing the morality of slavery with the determined supporters of the institution, that was a hopeless cause. “To say any thing to them as to the justice of slavery, or its demoralizing effects on society, is only to draw down ridicule upon the person who attempts it.” For himself, Austin was happy that the Mexican congress had barred further import of slaves. “Slavery is now most positively prohibited by our Constitution and by a number of laws,” he wrote in June 1830, “and I do hope it may always be so.” All the same, he couldn’t deny that the ban on slavery would complicate the settling of Texas.
On its face, the April 6 law was a disaster for Austin. But he had discovered in nearly a decade in Mexico that laws were only as effective as their enforcement, and he set about ensuring that the enforcement of this law didn’t undo his decade’s work. General Terán, besides being commander for the northeastern states, had been appointed commissioner to implement the new settlement regime in Texas; Austin lobbied the general furiously. He complained that the April 6 law impugned his motives as an empresario, not to mention his loyalty as a citizen of Mexico. “My objects in coming to Texas were sound and pure, the purest,” he told Terán. “I have worked in good faith. My highest ambition has been to win this country from the desert; and to add by this means to the prosperity, wealth, and physical and moral strength of the republic which I have adopted for my own, my rule has been fidelity and gratitude to Mexico.” His colonists stood shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, with him in this regard. And what was the reward to their labors? “To be destroyed!!!”
Austin’s protests bore fruit. Terán interpreted the law to allow Austin to fulfill his pledges to immigrants on the road to Texas. And he winked as Austin stretched the road to Texas far back into the United States—and into the minds of persons he had neither met nor communicated with. Perhaps Terán was persuaded by Austin’s arguments; more likely he reckoned that he needed Austin’s help if he hoped to stem the tide of illegal immigration into Texas. Whatever the reason, he essentially waived the anti-immigrant provision of the April 6 law as it applied to Austin.
Austin was tremendously relieved. In a letter sent east for publication, he explained that the pertinent article of the April 6 law exempted his colony from its strictures against immigration. “No embarrassments can be legally interposed to the immigration of honest and good men of families who are comprehended in my contracts.” Interpreting the statute for the benefit of American readers, he added, “The main object of the law of 6th of April is to keep out turbulent and bad men, vagabonds and slaves, and the true prosperity and happiness of this country requires that all those classes should be forever kept out. The honest and industrious farmer who brings his family has nothing to fear and will be well received and obtain more benefits and privileges than have ever been granted by any government on earth.”
Yet in private moments Austin appreciated that damage had been done. Not all the settlers had the same confidence in the Mexican government he did, and although Terán was construing the law casually for now, he might change his mind—or be replaced. Besides, the mere fact that the Mexican government could overturn established policy on immigration raised serious doubts regarding the future of Texas. Only with difficulty had Austin managed to convince many of his colonists of the good faith of the government in Mexico City; with the April law, the convincing became much harder.
And there was a deeper problem: Austin’s own confidence in Mexico had been shaken. “I will die sooner than violate my duty to this government, and if it would let me work I would make Texas the best state that belongs to this nation,” he wrote a friend. “But, my dear sir, the truth is that the Mexicans cannot sustain a republic. The present form must fall, and what is then to become of Texas? We are too weak to set up for ourselves, unless under the protection of our powerful neighbor; and the protection which the strong affords the weak is much to be feared.”
Yet Austin wanted to believe that the situation would improve. The critical issues were numbers and time. “If we had population, our course would be a very plain one. . . . I am in hopes the federal system may stand a few years longer, and that by that time we shall get in some thousands of Swiss, Germans, etc., and North Americans.” In the short term there was definite cause for optimism. “The emigration is still uninterrupted to my colony, and there will be a great accession of strength this fall.”
Had Austin known everyone who was coming that season, he might have thought differently. William Barret Travis was a generation younger than Austin (and Sam Houston and Santa Anna), having been born in 1809. But the South Carolina native found enough trouble in twenty years to fill forty, including bad luck in love that matched the woes of Houston. Travis grew up in frontier Alabama and taught school briefly—just long enough to meet the pupil who became his wife and to discover that he couldn’t survive on a teacher’s pay. An attorney in Claiborne, on the Alabama River, agreed to tutor him, and within a year Travis was ready to practice on his own. To supplement his income he acquired a newspaper, the weekly Claiborne Herald. In an era when papers were often the organs of political parties, Travis’s Herald asserted its independence on its masthead: “Thou Shalt Not Muzzle The Ox That Treadeth Out The Corn.”
This ox was hungry, though, and before long Travis had trouble feeding it. (In the process he discovered why papers were attached to parties: the parties provided reliable business.) The Herald’s circulation lagged, and the poor circulation discouraged the advertising nearly every newspaper needs to cover costs.
To make matters worse, the paper distracted him from his law practice. Sundry civil suits and the odd criminal case brought him modest but irregular fees, and although he took his practice on the road to adjacent counties, his neighbors weren’t sufficiently litigious or criminal to keep him busy. The law practice broke about even financially, but with the paper losing money Travis fell further behind each month.
This did nothing good for his marriage, which like many teenage matches suffered growing pains. Rosanna Cato was barely sixteen—and Travis only nineteen—when they wed. This wasn’t unusual in t
hat era, when the de facto alternative to early marriage was often illegitimate children, but neither did it make for blissful unions. As Travis and Rosanna grew up, they grew apart, despite—or perhaps because of—the son who arrived only several months after the wedding. Travis’s ambition didn’t help matters, especially as it remained frustrated, and his debts compounded his frustration and the tension building at home. The expected arrival of a second child aggravated the situation further, leaving both parties feeling overburdened and underappreciated. Suspicions of infidelity arose, reflecting, besides youthful passion and marital grief, the time Travis was spending on the road. Village busybodies whispered that the child Rosanna was carrying was another man’s.
By the beginning of 1831, Travis’s predicament had grown insupportable. His creditors were hounding him; the walls of the home he shared with Rosanna were closing in on him; her baby—and his? or some other man’s?—would be arriving shortly. Travis’s moment of truth came in March, when he failed to fend off the combined legal assault of several creditors. With the sheriff on the way and debtors’ prison looming, Travis fled Claiborne, abandoning Rosanna (who apparently wasn’t brokenhearted to see him go), their small son, her unborn child, his law practice, his newspaper, and his debts, and headed west.
Like everyone else in Alabama, Travis had heard of Texas—heard how easy it was to start a new life there and how hard it was for American creditors and sheriffs to follow deadbeats and criminals across the Sabine. And so to Texas he turned his face, traversing the Alabama River, the Mississippi, and the Sabine before reaching San Felipe in April or May. He promptly applied to Austin for a grant of land. As befit one who wished to shed an embarrassing past, he lied about his age and marital status, saying he was twenty-two (he was twenty-one) and single. He didn’t have to lie about his intentions regarding the quarter league Austin awarded him (for a down payment of ten dollars), for although Austin much preferred actual farmers, so many speculators had taken up his offer of cheap land that one more rated scant notice on that account.
Travis did rate notice for his ambition. Despite his failure at the bar back home, he intended to practice law in Texas and make the name for himself he had failed to earn in Claiborne. San Felipe had more attorneys than it needed, so Travis headed south to Anahuac, near the mouth of the Trinity River at the head of Galveston Bay. Formerly Perry’s Point, the town had been rechristened when the Mexican government, following the recommendation of General Terán, established a garrison there. The function of the garrison was to prevent illegal immigration from the United States, to ensure collection of the customs duties owed on imports, and to remind inhabitants and visitors that Texas belonged to Mexico. Customs houses generate work for lawyers, as merchants and collectors haggle over what is subject to tariffs and at what rates; Travis thought he could break into the Texas bar at Anahuac.
He had bigger plans as well. Hardly had he discovered a place to live in Anahuac than he decided he wanted to be the American consul there. As this required support from influential politicians in Washington, Travis asked Austin to recommend him to Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston’s old friend and now a senator from Missouri. Austin had to confess to Benton that “my personal acquaintance with Mr. T. is very short and limited,” but Travis seemed a capable fellow. “He has been recommended to me by persons of respectability, and I can with full confidence say that he has acquired the esteem and respect of the better part of the people in the section of the country where he resides. . . . I have my self no hesitation in recommending him.”
But before Benton and the American Congress could act on Austin’s recommendation, Travis was distracted by local politics. As the sharpest point of contact between the Mexican government and the immigrants to Texas, Anahuac became a focus of immigrant discontent. Austin’s original grant had exempted his colony from customs duties for seven years; during that period the Texans grew used to a customs-less life, and many expected their exemption to be made permanent. The Mexican government had other ideas, especially in the mood that produced the April 6 law, and it insisted on payment after the exemption ran out. The colonists, and the merchants who supplied their wants, responded with the age-old tactic of customs resisters: smuggling. This raised the stakes for both sides, as government agents seized ships and cargoes, and the smugglers bribed and occasionally shot their way past the revenuers.
To instill respect for Mexican authority, the government appointed Colonel Juan Bradburn to head the garrison at Anahuac. There was logic to the appointment, as Bradburn was an American (born John Bradburn in Virginia) who had become even more Mexicanized than Stephen Austin. Bradburn fought during the Mexican war of independence on the side of the rebels; when the rebels won he joined the Mexican army and married a Mexican heiress. In 1831 he remained a devoted Mexican patriot. This was what annoyed the Americans with whom he had to deal at Anahuac—this and the fact that he was an intemperate, belligerent man. (The Mexican patriotism of Austin bothered many of the Americans, too, but Austin had compensating gifts of tact and patience, besides being the one who distributed the land.) When Bradburn showed that he would be even tougher on the Americans than Mexican-born officers like Terán, trouble developed.
Travis was in the thick of it. One of his first clients was a Louisiana slaveholder named Logan, two of whose slaves had escaped to Texas. Logan hired Travis to recover them. In the 1850s the question of escaped slaves would be a rock on which the American union broke; in the 1830s the same question commenced the fracturing of the Mexican federation. Though slavery was illegal in Mexico, the state and federal governments tolerated a subterfuge by which immigrants from the United States, before entering Texas, compelled their slaves to sign long-term indentures. The affected blacks—many of whom had no idea what they were signing, or even that the laws in Mexico were different from those in the United States—were technically not slaves but in practice were as bound as ever. The fact that Mexico City was far away abetted the Texas slaveholders in their fraud, as did the fact that, in this form, the bound service of blacks didn’t differ much from the bound service of Mexico’s many (largely Indian) peons. The result was a flourishing slave system in everything but name—and often even in name. A traveler to Texas in 1831 was surprised at how openly slavery was practiced. Describing visits to various houses between Brazoria and San Felipe, he wrote, “At some of these houses, as in many of those in Texas generally, we found one or more negroes, held as slaves, although the laws of Mexico forbid it. The blacks are ignorant; the whites are generally in favor of slavery and ready to sustain the master in his usurped authority; the province is so distant from the capital, and had been for some time so little attended to by the government, that the laws on this subject were ineffectual. Negroes are even publicly sold.”
Juan Bradburn, despite his Virginia roots, took the Mexican ban on slavery seriously and attempted to enforce it. But what the ban meant for runaways from the United States was uncertain, which was why Logan had engaged Travis. Travis applied to Bradburn to recover the two slaves, claiming they were contraband to whom the Mexican law didn’t apply. Bradburn rejected the application. The runaways, he said, weren’t contraband but free men. Besides, he added, they had joined the Mexican army and requested Mexican citizenship.
Had Bradburn been more diplomatic, he might not have provoked the reaction he did. But had he been more diplomatic, he wouldn’t have been commanding a hardship post on a lonely frontier. His troops didn’t want to be there, either; many were convicts sent to Texas to serve out their time. When they behaved the way convicts, not to mention conscripts generally, often do—they became drunk, insulted civilians, started fights, and reportedly raped at least one woman—Bradburn refused to rein them in, adopting the attitude that the Americans got no worse than they deserved. Needless to say, the Americans detested him all the more.
Travis caught on to how unpopular Bradburn was, and he pushed the bounds of legal propriety. He spread a rumor that a band of Louisiana v
igilantes was coming to Anahuac to recapture the runaways. Bradburn summoned the garrison to repel the assault, and held the troops in readiness for several days, only to discover—to his chagrin and anger—that there were no vigilantes and no threat. Apparently Travis laughed too hard and gave himself away; Bradburn ordered him arrested.
By the mere fact of his arrest, Travis became a celebrity among the many Americans who deemed Bradburn a despot. A man who shared Travis’s cell, Patrick Jack, had been arrested for raising an unauthorized militia, ostensibly against Indians but actually against Bradburn. Bradburn feared that the militia would attempt to free the prisoners, so he moved them from the ordinary guardhouse to an empty brick kiln. Word of their plight spread through Anahuac and north toward San Felipe and Nacogdoches. Bradburn tried to intimidate sympathizers by making additional arrests, but these merely caused the popular anger to spread even faster. A company of thirty armed colonists from Brazoria rode toward Anahuac to free the prisoners; by the time they reached the garrison town they numbered more than a hundred.
Bradburn reinforced the kiln-prison with cannons and threatened to shoot Travis and Jack in the event of attack. Travis for the first time felt the thrill of mortal danger, and discovered in himself a willingness to risk death for principle and glory. A witness recalled him shouting from captivity that the attackers should blaze away with no care for him.
But the crisis took a different turn. A band of soldiers sent out by Bradburn was captured by the insurgents, who used these hostages to bargain for the release of Bradburn’s prisoners. Bradburn agreed to the deal but reneged after getting his soldiers back, leaving Travis and Jack in chains (and shooting up the American part of Anahuac to underscore his disdain). Meanwhile some of the insurgents went to Brazoria for a pair of cannons dumped there by a ship that got stuck in the sand; while bringing them out, the insurgents traded fatal fire with Mexican troops.
