by James Haley
“Further, I know that some of you of the merchant class are invested in the Mexican economy. To you I say: Imagine the wealth you may gain from a Texas, a land hundreds of thousands of square miles in extent, ransomed from this benighted country; a Texas whose produce is made by a free and eager people and not by the downtrodden peonage of a conquered race. Imagine a Texas populated by our own Americans, perhaps even you among them, a Texas that may well join itself to the union of the United States.
“Finally, I would press upon you that the rights we seek, including the freedoms of our religious consciences and a representative democratic government, are natural rights, so basic that in any circumstance, their denial would be cause to throw off the government that denies them.
“Now therefore, just as these gentlemen who spoke previous to myself—gentlemen with whom I have not in the past always been in political agreement—I appeal for your help. You must understand that the war for Texas independence is not prospective. It has begun. Victories have been won, at Gonzales, at Goliad, and at Concepción. Immediately previous to my coming here to raise support, I was with the army laying siege to the capital city of San Antonio. Our army is not like the Mexican army, populated by conscripts rounded up from the most desperate of the rural peonage, but an army of volunteers, each man of whom brought his own gun and powder and lead and clothing, an army deserving of your support. Word has only lately been received that the Mexican general holding the city, General Cos, has surrendered, and his army has been sent back to Mexico upon their parole, never to return under arms. This means that, as of today, no hostile troops tread on Texas soil!
“To maintain this freedom, then, is to be the genuine contest. The general in chief of our forces, Sam Houston, is firm in his opinion that the real fight is yet to come, that Santa Anna will himself come at the head of a larger army in the spring, and that we must be prepared to meet him and fight him. Gentlemen, every consideration enforces this opinion. There is time to prepare, but prepare we must.
“We ask your aid, but we do not ask your charity. The bonds that you subscribe this day are redeemable in generous allotments of land, and believe me, for no one knows this land better than myself, it is some of the richest and most healthful land on the face of the earth. We ask not your contribution but your investment, upon which you will realize a rich return. You gentlemen gathered here in the Exchange are the financial sinew of New Orleans, and we are confident that you will do your part to vouchsafe the freedom of your fellow Americans in Texas.
“Gentlemen, from here we continue on to Nashville, and Washington, and Philadelphia, and New York. By the time we are done, the success of an independent Texas will be assured, and it may then be but a formality, as the vast majority of our Texans most ardently hope, to welcome her into the Union as your fellow state!”
As he finished, Austin raised his hands in a sort of finial gesture that was his only demonstration of rhetorical style, although there was nothing of stagecraft about it. It was a genuine gesture that grew out of the force of what he had said.
There was a tumult of applause, and Bliven leaned over to Sam’s ear and said, “He speaks very well.”
“He is even more impressive in private conversation. Let the crowd thin down and I will introduce you.”
Bliven was surprised. “You know him, then?”
“Well, of course. Remember, I was in his first arrival of colonists. When we landed, there were no other human beings, save Indians, within a hundred miles.”
They held themselves at the rear of the crowd, and many subscribed to the bonds offered. When they saw that Austin was free, they approached him. He appeared exhausted.
“Why, Mr. Bandy!” They shook hands. “I am as happy to see you as I am surprised. How do you come to be in New Orleans, and in a uniform?”
“General Austin, it is good to see you. I rejoice in your release from prison, but I am distressed to see that the experience has left you in such a condition.”
“Dungeons have that effect.” The bitterness in Austin’s voice was unmistakable. He tugged at Bandy’s standing collar. “But what about this uniform?”
“It is quite simple, General. While you were with the army besieging Béxar, the government was putting together a great many other things, and among these was the beginning of a navy. Now, while I have come to be a fair shot with a musket, my better experience is in the United States Navy, and as a commercial captain. I have come to New Orleans to find a ship and a crew.”
Austin’s face went blank. “My God, but this is outstanding news!”
“Now, when I come back, you will not see me, for I shall be offshore, aiming to intercept your enemies before they can land.”
“Mr. Bandy, I need not tell you that Mexico has the means to amass a considerable fleet of privateers. I hope to goodness you will not be alone in this.”
Sam laughed. “General Austin, our odds will be no taller than what you must face on land. Now I would like for you to meet an old friend of mine, Captain Bliven Putnam, United States Navy. We were midshipmen together during the war against the Barbary pirates. Bliv, this is the man they call the Great Impresario, who led the first American settlers into the wilderness that was Texas. And a more fair or just man I never met.”
Bliven found his grip surprisingly strong for a man as depleted as Austin seemed. “And a very well-spoken man,” he said. “Mr. Austin, your companions provided rhetoric and oratory, but your gravity and reason, as enforced by your experience, left them far behind. Indeed, I was very moved by what you had to say.”
There is a look that comes into a man’s eyes when he sees that he has been perceived, and understood, by an equal mind. “I thank you, Captain. I am pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Bandy’s, for he has been an asset to our colony from the very beginning.”
“I do not doubt it. Forgive my directness, but your object in New Orleans seems to be to raise money, and I saw the crowd around your table. Were you pleased with the result of your meeting?”
“Enormously gratified,” said Austin. He smiled a little as he spoke, revealing gums drawn back somewhat from the teeth, the look of a man in decline. “When all is counted up, we shall have received pledges of a quarter of a million dollars. Unfortunately, only about ten percent of it was gold and notes placed on the table, but that is still a powerful sum. When placed on account with our factors here, it will purchase a great deal of powder, and lead, and shoes to march in.”
“And for that money,” ventured Bliven, “you must have issued bonds for a vast acreage of your land.”
“We shall have a vast country, Captain,” said Austin. “These fellows here who pledge their money, their interest in the land is mostly speculative. They will sell it in smaller parcels to the hardworking farmers and millers who will come to Texas to make better lives for themselves—the kind of people I want, like Mr. Bandy here. Now, if you will excuse me, I must see further to our business.”
The hall was quiet even to echoing their footfalls when Bliven asked Sam, “Well, did I behave satisfactorily?”
“Wonderfully well, yes.”
“Where to next?”
“Not far. I got us a room upstairs. We will stop at the desk and send back to the boat for your things. The first thing that Mr. Ross will bring you—Mr. Ross, are you listening?—is a change of clothes, for your first stop is in here.” He opened an oaken door beneath a tilted glass transom, and Bliven beheld inside a bathtub full of steaming water and racks of towels.
Bliven laid his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Oh, you are still my friend.”
It was late that night, after a bath and an extraordinary French Creole supper, with Sam already in bed, that Bliven sat by him and said quietly, “Now, Sam, will you at last tell me what in the hell I am doing here?”
Sam gave another deep chuckle. “Well, Captain, the government of the United States has taken
a deep interest in the success of the Texas revolution. There is little they can do on land, short of encouraging people to volunteer. But just between us, and Andy Jackson, and God and maybe Davy Jones, you have been seconded to the Texas Navy. You are to cruise their coast, interrupt enemy commerce, and engage their vessels when possible. For the duration, you are a Texian; no one will know that you or your ship are American.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Sleep on it. You will feel better in the morning.”
Sam Bandy was fast asleep within seconds, leaving Bliven sitting at his bedside with this enormous development to assimilate. “Mr. Ross,” he whispered, “bring me my writing box, will you, please?”
Merchants’ Exchange
New Orleans
November 17th, 1835
My dearest love,
I must say, in lieu of the usual polite salutations, that I am so troubled by the strange nature of our parting a few weeks ago that I must address it directly, as I am confident you would wish me to do.
I was compelled to leave so suddenly at the visit of Captain Miller and in his company that you were left entirely in the dark as to the nature of my assignment, or how long you may expect me to be absent from you—matters upon which you most surely deserve an explanation. Believe me, my love, if it were within my power, I would do so. The fact of the case is, however, that I myself know little of what business I have been sent on, and what little has been communicated to me, I am most strictly adjured to tell no one. Perhaps at its end, if you write it as one of your novels, it should be a mystery in the mold of that strange young Mr. Poe to whom you took such a liking in that recent number of Godey’s that you brought to my notice. However, whether my present errand should be classed among his humor output, or is a product of his darker nature, remains to be seen!
Since I am permitted to tell you nothing substantive as to my duties, my love, I shall tell you two collateral things that you will find interesting. The first, and it has fairly set me reeling, is that for many years I have been sailing the seas, and you have been writing books, and scheming how to win the vote for women and free the slaves, and while we have been thus distracted, our country has become an absolute giant of commerce. From home I was ordered to Pittsburgh, there to board a river boat and descend the Ohio River to the Mississippi, and all the way down the map to New Orleans.
My love, I challenge you, see if you can imagine the busiest street in Boston, on the most commercial day you have been there. Imagine the number of horses and carriages that you see hurrying by. Now, imagine that this street is a river, and the horses and carriages are instead river boats, of all sizes and tonnage, laden with cargo and passengers, coming and going, loading and unloading, money changing hands, people inquiring where they are from and where bound. That is what the Mississippi is like.
When we had descended so far as St. Louis, in Missouri, our vessel had to prowl the levee for a space to tie up, for I counted with my own finger one hundred and ten river boats already docked there. The breadth and strength of this stream can scarcely be described, yet I wonder at the skill of the boat captains that they avoid colliding with one another, there are so many. Several times each day we passed boats coming upstream, and the captains would blow their whistles to greet each other and passengers would wave and halloo across the water as though everyone were the greatest of friends. It was extraordinary.
And there was a further surprise, and I will close with this, for it touches most closely upon your own interests. There are here in New Orleans many, many thousands of Negroes, but unlike what you will assume about the South, as many of them are free as there are slaves. And many of the free blacks are employed in the skilled trades—they are especially esteemed as masons and plasterers. How completely do they refute any argument that those of the black race are not capable of learning a complex trade or sustaining a comfortable living. A large number of them are the same persons that the Colonization Society sent to Haiti years ago, but they determined to flee that murderous isle, settled here, and have prospered beyond what they ever dreamed. Many live in as fine houses as any of the white people, and some have done so well that—I don’t know how to tell you this or how you will take it—they have gone to the market and bought slaves—yes, other Negroes like themselves, to serve them.
And now, my love, I must close, for we set sail tomorrow. I believe I would be giving away nothing secret to say that I arrived in New Orleans to find a ship waiting for me, and I am to open my orders only after the pilot has taken us down past the mouth of the river.
If what I have seen of our Western section is representative of what happens when unsettled wilderness is brought under the aegis of our mighty country, then I must tell you it is a result profoundly to be desired. Do you remember in our youth, how provoked you were at President Jefferson for purchasing Louisiana from Napoleon, when he had no constitutional authority to do so? Well, now I have seen the result of that transaction, and I stand amazed that his vision so far exceeded ours.
And finally, and it all but breaks my fingers to have to write it, this realization has further put me in mind that even as it was Jefferson who made Louisiana American, it was Jackson who kept it American with his signal victory here in 1815. Of his crude character and unscrupulous methods I concede nothing, but if we look at the results, if we judge only the forecast of his policies, both in the conquest of the Floridas and his defense of this place to prevent it falling to the British—then I can no longer say that he has done only bad things. Perhaps there is a degree to which I have been unjust.
Farewell, my love. Whatever my mission shall prove to be, I promise you I shall effect it with the greatest speed humanly possible, that I may return to my home and my wife, who I know has suffered much from my long absences.
Your loving husband,
Bliven Putnam
Capt. USN
4
New Orleans
They awoke with the light, Bliven and Sam in the bed and Ross in the cot brought in for him. They breakfasted in the Exchange’s dining room, brisk and noisy by the time they sat down to some fashion of coddled eggs in a lemon cream sauce that was new to Bliven. When he remarked on their excellence, Sam’s mouth was full, but he nodded until he swallowed. “I am not often in New Orleans, but I am ever alert for an excuse to come here. I swear, it is like having the whole world contained in one city. Even the coffee”—he hefted his cup—“Martinique such as I used to procure when I had a ship.”
“In those days you would send us some, every Christmas,” recalled Bliven. “We have mourned its absence. It is expensive when we can find it, even though Boston lies at the opposite end of the trade route from the West Indies. I wonder that it should cost so much when the shipping is so direct.”
“Oh, you don’t want to tell a Texan how expensive things are. Now Galveston is like the infant child of New Orleans, pretty much a tiny village by American standards, but ships dock there from all over the world. But unless you live right there in town, my God, the freight rates to ship anything beyond there are ruinous. For those of us who live in the interior—and that is the great majority, mind—the game has been to achieve self-sufficiency as quick as we can get there.”
“Yes, tell me about your life. Have you remarried?”
Sam hesitated. “No . . . well, not exactly.”
“What!” Bliven’s astonishment caused Sam to shake his head and hold up his hand. “I’m sorry, Sam, I won’t pry.”
“No, no, it is all right. It’s just the craziest thing you ever heard of. It was like this. When I and several others got to Texas with General Austin back in 1821, we heard that the Mexicans had succeeded in throwing out the Spanish, so his settlement contract with the Spanish government was no good anymore. Austin had to go to Mexico City to try and rescue everything—the poor man had to teach himself Spanish on the journey—and he wa
s gone over a year while we poked around the land, sort of looking to see where we wanted to live. When he finally came back, the terms of the contract they gave him were such that a married man got several times the land a single person did. Well, there was this widow woman in our group, she wasn’t too much older than me, and we got along all right, so we agreed to marry up, as by doing so we would get more than four thousand acres of prime land.”
Bliven shrugged. “In your place I might well have done the same.”
“Well, this is where it gets all crazy. In order to get the land, all of us had to become Catholic, but then in the revolution the Catholic Church sided with Spain, so they lost all their say or standing in the new country. So there we were, stuck being Catholic, and not a single priest in the whole territory to marry people, or hold church, or mass, or whatever they call it. Well, Austin struck up a system to let people who wanted to get married put up a bond as a promise to do it, if a priest ever showed up, and then they were allowed to live together. So, that’s what we did. We got our land, and we stuck it out for three years, but we didn’t agree on much. She wanted out and I wanted her gone, but the law is different there and she legally owned half the place, and so I had to buy her out. I repaid the bond, but I still had to pay her off, which took a few years, and then she took off to parts unknown. I honestly don’t know if we are still married, or if we ever were, so you see now why I answered your question that I am not exactly married.”
“Heavens. Where are your sons?”
“Pssh! They went wild as wolves as soon as they got to Texas. Sam Junior finally went back to South Carolina; he got it into his head that he could get our old place back. David—”
Bliven smiled gently. “Named for me.”
“You may wish otherwise. Once he started growing some hair, he fell in with a bad sort. Austin lost control of most who came to Texas, and now the place is just thick with squatters and fugitives and hard types on the run from the law in the United States.”
