USA > Texas > A Twentieth century history of southwest Texas, Volume I > Part 9
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Ygnacio Cassiano was noted for his courage, courtesy, inflexible hon- esty, benevolence and earnest piety. Among the few existing relics of
Governor's Palace.
the old days that did not try but seem to have only amused the strong souls of those brave, real founders of an empire, is the old one-story stone building at the northwest corner of Military Plaza (No. 115) with the Spanish arms of Spain and Austria over the door and the large iron ring on front wall where old Rough and Ready Ygnacio Perez tied his horse many and many a time on returning from forays against In- dians or troublesome filibusters. Men that were old men thirty years ago, who served under Colonel Perez, have often said that he never lost a fight, never gave up a pursuit and "by the help of God and Our Lady" was never wounded, while always in the forefront of battle. The Indians captured were promptly put to work in the fields around the town and when resting were carefully Christianized.
The Cassiano family has in its possession many singular docu- ments : Jose Cassiano's passport signed at Gibralter ; old deeds to prop- erty in New Orleans; bill of sale to him of servants, etc. His exten- sive property here is of public record in the county clerk's office, with his will. The family possesses many relics of the Cordero family- some silver that escaped Santa Anna's troops; a large topaz coming from the days of the Moors in Spain captured in battle from those in- fidels and worn on sword hilt of the eldest son; a volume in vellum parchment over three hundred and fifty years old giving the coats of arıns of all the great families connected by blood with his, etc., all exe- cuted by hand, crests highly illuminated and certified to as correct by Herald at Arms College of Madrid, Spain. Very few families in the United States can show such solid proofs of good descent as the Cas- siano-Perez-Rodriguez family of San Antonio, Texas. Certificates given by high officials of Republic of Texas to Jose Cassiano in 1836, showing his status with the republic in strong, cordial language, are on file at Austin, Texas, in comptroller's office. Mrs. Gertrude Cordero Cassiano died in 1833 and is buried in San Fernando Cathedral, a rare privilege ac- corded on account of her known piety, charity and powerful help to the church in its early efforts here. Her husband and son lie in the Cassiano tomb in San Fernando cemetery. The famous Madame Candelaria. who died a few years ago and who is accredited with seeing from in- side the dreadful capture of the Alamo and of waiting on Colonel Bowie when he was killed, always claimed to the surviving Cassiano family that she was brought from Laredo by "La Brigaviella," the wife of Gobernador Cordero, as a cook, while she (Candelaria) was a voung girl and remembered well the ceremonies attending the death of the governor's wife in 1833.
Jose Cassiano was reared and educated in San Antonio, where he had the advantages of a good education. Early in life he became promi- nent in local politics and although he does not take quite as active a part now as he formerly did he has been for many years a strong figure in the political arena as a champion of Democracy. He was city assessor of San Antonio for one term and for eighteen consecutive years
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filled the office of county collector, being elected again and again- a fact which indicates his unfaltering performance of duty. He was at all times prompt and able in discharging the tasks that devolved upon him in connection with this office, his administration being entirely sat- isfactory to the general public.
Mr. Cassiano was married in San Antonio to Miss Pauline Hafner, who was of German parentage, and they have two sons : Frank Cassiano, who is city clerk of San Antonio; and Jose Cassiano. The father has a very wide and favorable acquaintance in this city in which his entire life has been passed and where he has so directed his efforts as to make him the occasion of signal service and usefulness to his fellow citizens.
CHAPTER XI.
THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO-AUSTIN'S COLONY.
Before entering upon the consideration of the events of the period of permanent colonization, it will be necessary once more to revert to the affairs of Mexico, which we have seen in 1821 to have been de- clared free from the royal power of Spain, and was henceforth to direct its own way. From September, 1821, until the following February the government was in the hands of a junta acting as a regency until the monarchical ruler should be established in power. A national congress succeeded the, junta and continued the regency until May, 1822, when Iturbide, who had led the revolt against Spain, was proclaimed emperor. His reign was short, and after his expulsion in the following March, a provisional congress directed the affairs of the republic for over a year. In 1824 ? federai form of government, patterned after that of the United States (but with Mexican limitations which played no small part in the history of Texas, as will appear), was promulgated and the Republic of Mexico was launched upon its rough journey of time.
The government provided for the erection of states, and the for- merly separate provinces of Coahuila and Texas were united as one state, with a state constitution of its own and its general government to be directed by a congress of twelve members, Texas having a repre- sentation of two, with a governor elected by popular vote. The scheme was such that the central government at Mexico was held to be the source of constitutional rights and political privileges, and with the head of authority maintained as a despotism through most of the years it was hardly possible that republican principles could thrive in the separate states.
And here we may summarize the most important fact of Mexi- can history throughout the period in which it concerns Texas. On the formation of the Mexican republic two parties at once sprang up- with their dominating ideals in a measure similar to those governing the parties in the United States during the first decades; namely, cen- tralization of power on the one hand, and on the other free develop- ment of republican institutions with as little interference as possible by constituted authority. In Mexico, however, the parties-of a con- stituent character both more volatile and restive than in the United States-fell into the control of self-seeking leaders, who when defeated at the hustings hesitated not to shed blood and overturn all semblance of constituted government in order to gain their ends. One party seems no sooner to have established itself in power than it began to overstep the limitations of the constitution of 1824 and reach out after imperial prerogatives. The drift throughout these years was toward cen- tralization of all power at Mexico and the turning of the states into
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C
Stephen A. Austin
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departments of administration. The annals of the time abound in revo- lution and counter-revolution, and the tedious narrative has no place here. The principal character of the vicissitudes and wranglings of the time was the Santa Anna known so odiously to Texas history. He was concerned in most of the intrigues and revolts, continually paving the way for his own pre-eminence and the overthrow of the constitution and the formation of a central and imperial government. In the end he was victorious, became president, then dictator, abolished the con- stitution of 1824, and with vainglorious and overweening self-suffi- ciency and complacency reached out to crush the aggressive and insur- gent province on the north which alone held out for the constitution of 1824, and awoke a hornet's nest of freedom which stung its would-be conqueror into inglorious submission and made itself forever free from arbitrary and despotic interference.
Moses and Stephen Austin.
The story of the colonization of Texas has one great central name, and the Austins-father and son-are the real founders and fathers of Texas as we know it to-day. Moses Austin was born in Connecticut in 1764, was married at the age of twenty, and soon afterward em- barked in mercantile business in Richmond, Virginia, with his brother Stephen, and they soon became interested in lead mining and smelting in that state. Financial reverses came, and to recoup his fortunes Moses Austin, in 1797, obtained a large grant of land in French Louisiana, in southern Missouri, where he laid the foundation of a prosperous colony and himself acquired wealth and influence. The failure in 1818 of the Bank of St. Louis, in which he was a large stockholder, bank- rupted him and he surrendered all his property to his creditors. Thus, in his fifty-fifth year, he was again at the bottom of the ladder, but with spirit undaunted by adversity and ready for any bold enterprise that might present itself.
By the treaty of 1819 the possession of Texas by Spain was fixed as between that country and the United States. With such confirma- tion of her claims, Spain felt justified in relaxing the former exclusive policy in regard to immigrants from across the eastern border, thus al- lowing Texas opportunity for natural development. Hence Austin con- ceived the idea of planting a large colony on the fertile soil of Texas.
He laid his plans conjointly with his son Stephen, and while the father went to San Antonio to gain the proper authority for his en- terprise, the son began assembling the persons and means for carrying out the project. It was in no spirit of the filibuster or adventurer that Moses Austin entered upon his undertaking. As he meant his colony should contain the elements of permanence and prosperity, so he de- sired that it might have proper legal authority. Arrived at San An- tonio, he obtained audience with the governor, Martinez, who, how- ever, rebuffed him and his proposals and ordered him to leave the province at once. Dejected, he was about to start home when he met an old friend, the Baron de Bastrop. The Baron was high in favor with the governor, and learning of Austin's mission and the apparent frustration of his hopes he at once procured a second interview and
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led the governor to look more favorably upon the plan. The details of the scheme of colonization were forwarded, under the governor's au- thority and recommendation that they be approved, to the central gov- ernment, and with the first step of his undertaking accomplished Aus- tin set out for Missouri. The journey was a severe one, and the hard- ships and exposure to which he was subjected so undermined his health that in June, 1821, his dauntless spirit was calmed in death. Not, how- ever, before his last great enterprise was in a fair way to accomplish- ment, for just a few days before his death news had come that his plan had been approved and that commissioners would be sent to Louisiana to confer upon the establishment of the colony. The project for which the father had given his life was not destined to fail but be carried out in all fullness and succcess by the equally noble and enterprising son.
Even before learning of his father's death, Stephen Austin set out to meet the Spanish commissioners at Natchitoches, and thence was conducted to San Antonio, where the governor gave him permission to survey the lands along the Colorado and Brazos rivers and select a suitable site for his colony. The colony plan approved by the Spanish government gave permission to Austin to bring in three hundred fami- lies ; each head of family was to have 640 acres, his wife 320, 100 for each child, and 80 for each slave; all settlers must subscribe to the tenets of the Catholic religion, must be of good moral character, and give allegiance to the Spanish government ; each settler to pay to Austin twelve and a half cents an acre for his land, with liberal time limit; and Austin to have full charge of affairs in the colony until its legal status could be recognized by the central government.
On his return to Louisiana Austin published the details of his en- terprise and made energetic preparations to introduce the first quota of settlers. As agriculture was to be the foundation of the colony, the attractions of the project appealed to a more thrifty and stable class of people than had the earlier and more romantic expeditions, and the settlers who flocked to Austin's standard were of a truly representative grade of hardy colonizer. In December, 1821, Austin brought his first party to the lower Brazos river, going by the overland route, while a schconer with supplies .and other immigrants followed. But the ves- sei failed to reach the proper rendezvous, and on a second voyage in the following year it was wrecked. One shipload of supplies for the colony was pillaged by the Indians, and thus the settlers were put to sore straits at the very beginning. The supplies were necessary for proper beginnings of stable agriculture, and it was with difficulty that game sufficient for the company could be procured. The Indians were also troublesome, and two years passed before Austin's colony was an assured success. Such hardships would have scattered or 'exterminated a colony of the Spanish or French type or one of shiftless adventurers, but the followers of Austin were of sterner stuff, and this germ of Texas was not to be destroyed.
After Austin had settled his people, he set out for San Antonio to make report to the governor. There, in March, 1822, he learned for the first time of the successful culmination of the independence move- ment, and that his royal permit would have to be reaffirmed by the new
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Mexican republic. Here was another Sisyphus task, but it was a char- acteristic of Austin that he never flinched from any undertaking nec- essary to the success of his colony. With only one companion and in disguise, to protect himself from the banditti who infested all roads, he made the long journey to the capital. There his petition was pre- sented to the junta which held the regency during the first days of in- dependence. Several other men were in the city to present petitions similar to Austin's and the congress delayed until it could draw up a general law. Before this could be done, Iturbide was proclaimed em- peror, who appointed a committee to legislate proper measures for the Texas colonics. A general colonization law was passed in January, 1823, and an imperial decree shortly afterward confirmed Austin's grant. But just as he was ready to return with this good news to his colony, occurred the fall of Iturbide from power, and all imperial acts were disavowed. Thus Austin had to await the action of the provis- ional congress, which finally suspended the general law but by special decree confirmed Austin's grant, making its practical provisions con- form to the imperial decree of January, 1823. Thus Austin obtained a special charter, as it were, for his enterprise, while other Texas col- onies were undertaken subject to a general system, to be described later.
By the final agreement, which Austin obtained in April, 1823, the general plan of the royal decree was followed, but a different method of land distribution was adopted: Each agriculturist was to have a labor (about 177 acres), each stock-raiser to have a sitio (about forty- four hundred acres), and where both occupations were followed the settler could have a labor and a sitio. Austin was to have fifteen sitios and two labors for each group of two hundred families he should in- troduce.
In August, 1823, Austin returned to his colony to find it almost dissipated, all the new recruits having settled about Nacogdoches. But his success in obtaining confirmation of the grant and his energetic prosecution of affairs soon turned the tide in his favor, and by the fol- lowing year the stipulated number of three hundred families had ar- rived and the colony was in a way to permanent growth and pros- perity. The lands were surveyed and assigned according to law, and the capital of the settlement was located on the Brazos river and given the name of San Felipe de Austin (which is not to be confounded with the later city of Austin on the Colorado). The limits of the colony were undefined, and the settlers took up lands over a broad territory, and Austin later obtained permission to settle five hundred additional families on vacant lands. The colony grew rapidly and soon became the center of development and enterprise for all Texas.
Austin's position was no sinecure, even after he had settled all the legal provisions of his colony. The government was practically in his hands for some years, and the tact, ability and energy with which he directed affairs make still greater his right to the title of Father of Texas. His colonists were in the main independent, aggressive, vig- orcus Americans, abiding by the fundamental rules of civilization, but not submissive to any restraints and quick to suspect imposition. Their
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opposition was especially loud and continued against the payment of the twelve and a half cents an acre for the land, although they had enrolled themselves as settlers fully aware of this condition. They claimed that Austin was speculating on their efforts, and furthermore that, when Austin allowed certain poorer settlers their land free, he was discriminating. The result was that he had to forego his just claim to these fees, and from the sale of lands received only a small per cent of his original investment. It was likewise his duty to organize the militia of the colony, and to provide for protection from without as well as civil administration within. After five years he was relieved of many of these duties by a select council. He had borne with wonder- ful patience all the cabalous and open dissatisfaction and grumbling of the meantime, and with such wisdom steered his enterprise that in the end he retained the respect of all and remained to the close of his life the best beloved man in Texas.
Austin's was the first permanently successful colony and was the central and strongest pillar which upheld the structure of Texas. But around it were built up, in the course of a few years, many others, his- torically of less importance than the first, but gradually coalescing to form the homogeneous, strong and enduring body politic which could in the end not only stand alone but also resist all the force that could be' hurled against it from without. These colonies, which in a few years covered, by virtue of title at least, nearly all the territory which we now know as Texas, were the fruit of the empresario system, by which Texas colonization was exploited with both good and bad results dur- ing the period of Mexican domination.
As has been stated, Austin obtained a special grant for his colony, but at the same time others were petitioning for privilege to make set- tlements, and when the federal republic became firmly established it passed a general law, in August, 1824, providing, among other things, limits to the amount of land to be held by each individual and also that preference should be given Mexicans in the distribution of land. and that further regulations should be enacted by each state of the re- public. In March, 1825, Coahuila and Texas formulated provisions concerning immigration, inviting persons of Christian and moral char- acter to take up land in the state; that five sitios and five labors of land should be granted the empresario for each hundred families he should introduce, and that, within six years, he must bring in at least one hundred and not more than eight hundred families; that the colonists should not be taxed for the first ten years. The allotments of land were practically the same as to Austin's colonists.
As soon as this law was passed enterprising men sought for grants and in a few years all the available land was apportioned out. But Aus- tin was the only one who full completed his contract with the Mexi- can government. The others started out big with promise, but failed in the performance. Accordingly the great agitation of the subject and many grants brought only a comparatively few settlers, but the classes that did come were permanent and formed a substantial nucleus for future growth. Many individuals, attracted by the fertility of soil, came in of their own initiative, thus increasing the number and strength
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of the different settlements. But throughout, Austin's colony held its supremacy in both numbers and stability.
The principal empresario grants lying in the region of Southwest Texas, and covering a large portion of the country that forms the ter- ritorial basis of this history, were:
In 1825 Green Dewitt obtained a contract by which he was to set- tle 300 families in the district southwest of Austin's grant.
Martin de Leon, in the same year, contracted to found a villa of 150 families, by name Victoria, on the Guadalupe.
In 1826 James Powers contracted for the settlement of 200 fami- lies north of the Nueces river and south of Leon's grant.
McMullen and McGloin's grant, in 1826, comprised the region north of the Nueces and comprising portions of the present San Pat- ricio, Refugio, McMullen and other counties. T These contractors in- duced the -large immigration of Irish colonists that settled in that por- tion of the state.
Texas was becoming a much different country from what it had been before 1821. Broad areas could be found devoted to agriculture and stock-raising, and the many natural resources were being rapidly developed. The increase of population during the first ten years was not phenomenal, but was steady, being estimated at ten thousand in 1827, and twenty thousand in 1830-four times what it was when Moses Austin journeyed across the country in the fall of 1820.
Thus Texas, after the vicissitudes of two centuries, is permanently prospering and growing. But its waxing strength and lustiness cause alarm in its nominal owners, and lest it become uncontrollable they seek betimes to shackle its power and cut off its nutriment. In the fol- lowing pages it will be well to discover the causes which finally led Texas to seek separation from the Mexican federation.
CHAPTER XII.
RELATIONS WITH MEXICO-FREDONIAN WAR-EARLY REVOLTS AGAINST THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT.
Thus during the second decade of the nineteenth century we see an American civilization growing up on the soil of and along side of a Latin-American nation. The leopard cannot change its spots, nor can inherent racial characteristics be remade in a few years. The oil and the water of the Mexican and the American populations would not mingle. Again we see the manifest destiny of Texas. The Americans were streaming in and occupying its lands for homes, and setting up an institutional and social structure quite inharmonious with the gov- ernment system of which it was nominally a part. Let it be granted as axiomatic that these two nationalities could never coalesce, and what could have been done to prevent this Americanization of Texas? Clearly in but one way-make Texas an integral part of Mexico, thoroughly systematized with her laws and institutions, with the Mexican element of population ever in the ascendancy over all others combined, with a military and legal strength plus that of public opinion able to counten- ance and uphold governmental acts-in short, to Mexicanize Texas. But alas for Mexico; it was with difficulty that she, during these years, could keep her own ship of state clear from the rocks of anarchy, and certainly quite unable to care for her derelict across the Rio Grande. It is no part of history to enter upon the moral grounds of American occupation, and to say whether rightly or wrongly Texas became a seat of foreign colonization and later entirely dispossessed from its mother nation. Civilization has never progressed according to a code of ethics or the high moral theories which govern utopias. The simple resumé of the matter is that aggressive Americans came upon this land of promise, planted there homes and towns, enjoyed for a time the pur- suit of welfare, liberty and happiness according to their own standards, and when those to whom they paid their small measure of national al- legiance made bold to curb their unrestricted freedom, these self-as- sertive Texans simply tore loose the husk of Mexican authority and chose to grow and ripen in the direct rays of liberty and independence.
In the above paragraph there is hinted the general cause that led to the Texas revolution. But the more immediate reasons form a much longer story. Indeed, sporadic and disconnected are at first the out- bursts of the pre-revolutionary discontent, and there may be said to have been two minor revolutionary rumblings and commotions before the final and complete upheaval.
There was basis for trouble in the earliest provisions for coloniza- tion. The favors granted to the inhabitants of Mexico allowing them priority in selection of. claims were certain to cause grumbling if noth-
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