USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 1 > Part 20
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Congress concurring with him, laws were enacted restraining the power of the clergy. To relieve, in some measure, the financial embarrassments of the government, the Congress was engaged in a project for converting a portion of the immense revenues of the church to public uses, whereupon well known sounds of a revolution, borne from several quarters, came rattling through the streets of the capital, exciting the furious bigotry of the ignorant and vulgar to arms. Santa Anna had now publicly declared his disapproval of Farias and his policy, and Gen. Bravo had pronounced against the doomed Vice-President in the South."
In the midst of these machinations, in June Col. Austin reached the capital. It was in the midst of a general tumult, aggravated soon afterward, by the first and most appalling epidemic of Asiatic cholera ever known in Mexico, a visitation from which ten thousand deaths occurred in the capital alone. Had Austin fled from the scene his country- men would have approved his course and welcomed him home. But he fled not. He remained at his post, in an atmosphere surcharged with death and wildest tumult, to represent his countrymen in their plea for home government, for the repeal of the edict against the people of his own nationality joining their kindred already in Texas, and for the exercise of that justice which should ever reign in lands of freedom. It was a grand exhibition of personal courage and devotion to duty, as honorable to Stephen F. Austin as it should be gratifying to his countrymen of to-day and of the days to come. This tribute is willingly paid by one who can discriminate between true manhood and the mistakes to which true manhood is at times liable, for Austin subsequently fell into errors of judg- ment in some grave matters. Yet it is only a matter of sur- prise that he did not fall into more.
The proposed constitution for Texas and the memorial, adopted by the convention of 1833, having been forwarded by Col. Austin, from Matamoros, through Gen. Filisola, were
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already in the hands of the government when he arrived at the city of Mexico. Lorenzo De Zavala, still and ever after a staunch Republican, was then Governor of the district embrac- ing the capital and valley of Mexico. He was an ardent friend of Texas and, seconding the efforts of Austin, secured the re- peal of the odious 11th article of Bustamente's decree of April 6th, 1830, quite a boon in the abstract, but of greatly dimin- ished importance if a central despotism was to be established such as it was clearly Santa Anna's intention should be estab- lished. The project for a constitution was submitted to the Congress and by it referred to a committee and there it slept till Austin became restless under hope deferred. He urged his cause before Farias, the acting President, with such vehemence as to wound the national pride of that sturdy Republican, by intimating that if Texas was not released from the grasp of Coahuila and allowed to control her own domestic affairs, the people would be driven, in view of the revolutions transpiring and anarchy existing throughout the nation (the State govern- ment then being torn asunder by the rival Governors and legislatures respectively at Saltillo and Monclova) to or- ganize a State government of their own. But explanations followed and the two men, Farias and Austin, remained friends. Still later, on the 2nd of October, 1833, Austin addressed a communication to the Ayuntamiento of San Antonio de Bexar (wholly composed of Mexicans and from which place Political Chief Musquiz had written him in such bitter denunciation of the convention of 1832), strongly recommended "that all municipalities of Texas should come without delay, to an understanding and organize a local government for Texas, as a State of the Mexican confederation, grounded on the law of the 7th of May, 1824 (provisionally attaching Texas to Coahuila). Things should be prepared with unison and harmony, thus being ready for the time when Congress will refuse their approval." He followed this up with abundant reasons for the course
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recommended. But under what fatuity of mind he could have passed all the American Ayuntamientos at Gonzales, Mina, Matagorda, Brazoria, San Felipe, Liberty and Nacog- doches, and thus unbosomed himself to a Mexican tribunal already pronounced against the plan proposed, is indeed strange.
On the 10th of December Austin left Mexico for his home in Texas, satisfied that Texas would be denied separate state- hood, and that Santa Anna's pretended Republicanism was fast being laid aside in order that he might bring about the establishment of a dictatorship to be filled by him- self. But, in the meantime, as in view of the antecedent facts, it would seem that ninety-nine hundredths of men of Austin's mind and intelligence would have foreseen, he was betrayed by those he trusted and a certified copy of his letter to the Ayuntamiento of San Antonio was at once dispatched to the acting President, Farias, at the capital. Orders were at once issued for Austin's arrest and return to the capital. He was overtaken and arrested at Monterey - some accounts erroneously say at Saltillo. On the 13th of Feb- ruary, 1834, he was lodged in a dungeon of the old Inquisi- tion, and there, denied light, books, pen, ink and paper, and visits from friends. Here he remained till the 12th of June. He was then transferred to the prison of the Acordada and allowed more liberty in every respect ; in fact rendered as comfortable as one could be in a large airy prison, looking out upon the grand paseo on which the elite, as well as the common people, passed in their daily visits to the Alameda, the great park of the city. He demanded, in every way with- in his power, a trial, conscious that he had committed no crime against the country, the chronic state of which since the close of honest old Guadalupe Victoria's term in April, 1829, had been one of revolution and anarchy. His case was succes- sively submitted to a civil functionary of some sort, then to the Federal district judge and next to the Supreme Court ; but
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each, in turn, disclaimed jurisdiction and he remained simply a victim to politico-military tyranny, without a ray of sun- shine to lighten or lessen the sense of indignation which must have given acuteness to his detestation of tyranny. Only those who have personally witnessed the nonchalant indifference with which many Mexican officials, and official menials under them, view the unmerited outrages heaped upon helpless and innocent victims within their power, can appreciate the agon- izing sense of injustice then animating the bosom of Stephen F. Austin.
CHAPTER XXV.
Attempts at colonization in what is now northwest Texas - Beale's colony on the Rio Grande - Its sad failure - Murder of a party of his colonists - Captivity of women and children by the Comanches - Their final ransom by William Donoho in New Mexico - Their death in Missouri.
Leaving Austin in the Acordada prison, now in the mid- summer of 1834, let us digress for a moment to mention some other matters then transpiring, which merit mention in the history of the times.
In the city of Mexico, antecedent to 1830, there lived Stephen Julian Wilson, an Englishman and naturalized citizen, and Richard Exter, an English merchant who married Maria Dolores Soto, of that city. Exter became a partner in cer- tain colonial contracts with Wilson and died. In 1830 Dr. John Charles Beales, another Englishman, married the widow of Exter and took his place in the contracts. The Wilson- Exter grant covered a large territory now in the Western Pan Handle of Texas, Eastern New Mexico, No Man's Land and Southwest Colorado, in other words lying west of longitude 102°, north of latitude 32° and south of an irregular line parallel to twenty leagues south of the boundary line between Mexico and the United States, which, in that locality, was the Arkansas River. In the spring of 1833 they sent from Santa Fe a surveying party, under Mr. A. Le Grande, as chief, to survey that country. Beginning at the intersection of lati- tude 32° and longitude 102°, a point near the present town of Midland, in Midland County, the party pushed their work in- dustriously north and west of that initial point from June 27th to October 30th, 1833, when the fall of snow along the Obscura mountains, at the base of which they were, compelled an abandonment of the work, which was never resumed. Nor was any other step taken to comply with the colonization
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laws and hence the grant expired at the end of six years from its date. The report of the surveyor, Le Grande, descriptive of the country, has, however, peculiar interest to the people now settled or settling in that country and ante-dates by twenty years the expedition of Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, U. S. Topographical Engineer, who has heretofore been awarded the credit of being the discoverer of the Ke-che-ah-qui-ho-no, or Prairie Dog Town Fork (really the south fork) of Red River.
In 1836, Le Grande held a position in the Texian army, after which his career is unknown. But he and his party crossed and recrossed the river in question many times and delineated it on their map twenty years before Capt. Marcy ever saw it. The survey, with the map and report, was made for a New York company enlisted in the enterprise by Beales.
COLONY OF BEALES IN 1834.
Dr. Beales and Dr. James Grant, a Scotch naturalized citi- zen of Mexico, and in some way associated with John L. Woodbury, had a large colonial grant extending from the Nueces to the Rio Grande, bounded on the south by the Laredo and San Antonio road and extending far up the country; but this was considered in Coahuila and not in Texas. Beales, as empresario, pursued the same illegal and ruinous course adopted by the New York and Galveston Bay Land Company, which had secured a transfer to itself of the grants to Burnet, Zavala and Vehlen. He organized in New York the Rio Grande and Texas Land Company. So reads a certifi- cate of stock now before me. The following is an extract from the certificate:
" No. 407. Capital divided into 800 shares, each contain- ing 10,000 acres, besides surplus lands.
(Wm. Jessop Ward) is entitled to one share in the estate
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and funds of the Rio Grande and Texas Land Company, transferable only on the books of the company. New York, July 11, 1834.
ISAAC A. JOHNSON, Trustee. J. C. BEALES, Empresario.
SAMUEL SAWYER, Secretary."
Having selected a site for a settlement on Los Moras Creek, twelve miles above its junction with the Rio Grande and perhaps twenty-five or thirty miles above the present town of Eagle Pass, Beales undertook to occupy it.
On the 10th of November, 1833, on the schooner Amos Wright, Capt. Monroe, Dr. Beales, with fifty-nine souls, mostly English, sailed from New York, destined for Copano, on Aransas Bay, Texas, and thence by ox-carts for Los Moras. After a very stormy passage they pitched their tents at Copano from December 12th to 15th. At that time there was but one shanty at the place.
On the 3d of January, 1834, having procured Mexican carts and Mexican oxen to draw their wagons ( brought from New York) the party began a long, weary and somewhat dangerous march to their final destination. Omitting many interesting incidents, it can only be said that they passed the mission of Refugio, Goliad, Seguin's rancho and San Antonio, halting at each place, and reached and crossed the Nueces into the lands of the intended colony on the 28th of February, 1834. Waving the flags of Great Britain and Mexico, Mr. Little carved on a large tree in Spanish: "The first colonists for the village of Dolores passed here February 28, 1834." The name of Dolores was conferred on their intended town as an honor to Mrs. Beales. On the fifth of March, they crossed the Rio Grande opposite and five miles from the town of El Presidio Rio Grande. On the 12th having traveled several days north on its west side, they recrossed the river on to the colony lands and, on the afternoon of the 16th, arrived at Dolores.
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A town was laid out and allotments of land made. All went to work with alacrity. Mr. Egerton, who had done sur- veying in the locality before, continued his work and the future looked bright. On the 20th, the whole party celebrated the thirtieth birthday of their leader, John Charles Beales, born in England, March 20th, 1804. On the same day the Mexican Commissioner, Don Fortunato Soto, arrived from Monclova, empowered to issue titles to the colonists. On the 25th they elected J. C. Beales Alclade, W. H. Egerton and V. Pepin, Regidors, and E. Ludecuz, Sindico.
On the 29th Dr. Beales, accompanied by Thomas H. O. S. Addicks (afterwards long a resident of San Antonio), and one or two Mexicans, left on business for Matamoros and did not soon return.
Time hurried apace. The new crops, at first hopeful, parched for want of rain and they had no irrigation. Despondency seized many and some began to seek homes and food in San Fernando, Santa Rosa and other towns sixty to a hundred miles distant in Mexico. Later in June, 1836, Mr. Power and eight others, said to be the last to leave, went to San Fernando. So far the facts stated are condensed from Beales' diary and the statements of his countryman, Kennedy, in his work on Texas. But there was a bloody finale to this attempt at colonization, the facts of which have never been published or known in Texas except to the author of this history, and imperfectly, by tradition, to Mr. Wm. B. Donoho, of Clarksville, Texas ( who was born in Santa Fe a year after their occurrence ), and possibly to others through him.
On the 10th of March, 1836, just two years after their ar- rival at Dolores, a group of the last colonists to leave the place, utterly disheartened and admonished of the necessity of seeking homes elsewhere by the murder of several of their number in a little rancho some miles away, formed a party to endeavor to return to the coast and to England. They got together sufficient carts and started, without a road, to San
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Patricio or some other point in that portion of the coast- country. The party consisted of eleven men, of whom Mr. Horn had a wife and two little sons, John, then aged over six, and Joseph, aged over four years, and Mr. Harris, a wife and an infant that had been born at Dolores. One of the men was a young German. They struck the Nueces near the San Antonio and Laredo road, crossing the road and remain- ing in the vicinity several days, but concealed themselves as much as they could, for fear of falling in with some of Santa Anna's invading army, of whom they had as great dread as of the wild Indians. Their camp was a mile or so from the road and in a secluded spot, but they heard Mexican troops passing to and fro, probably supply trains and re-in- forcements. They resumed their march on the morning of April 2d, 1836, on a trail supposed to lead to San Patricio. Early in the afternoon they encamped at a large lake, con- taining many fine fish. Soon afterward, while the men were variously occupied or asleep, and none on guard, they were suddenly surprised and attacked by fifty or sixty mounted Comanches who, meeting no resistance, speedily killed the eleven men, made captives of the women and children, plun- dered the camp and moved to their main camp in the vicinity, the whole party numbering four hundred warriors. They killed the infant of Mrs. Harris the next morning. This was a month to a day after the killing of Dr. James Grant and party near the Agua Dulce, farther down the country, by the Mexican dragoons under Urrea (yet to be narrated ), twenty- seven days after the fall of the Alamo, five days after the massacre of Fannin's men at Goliad, and nineteen days be- fore the battle of San Jacinto - at that moment of terrible desolation when there was not an American west of the Brazos River, when the Mexicans were in the utmost confusion, and in a wild spot in the wilderness, far from any road. The ladies were both entire strangers in the country, and neither, after being carried into captivity on the upper plains, ever
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saw Texas again; and thus it was that no one ( Americans, Mexicans, or their former associates at Dolores, ) ever received tidings of the terrible tragedy.
The Indians traveled south, came upon the dead bodies of Dr. Grant and his companions and farther on killed and plundered a number of Mexicans, after which they traveled up the country at their leisure for about two months, when they arrived among the principal camps in the regions of the upper Arkansas. The two ladies were in separate bands and so Mrs. Horn was separated from her two little sons. Their captivity was of the most cruel character ever practiced by those wild barbarians. The fate of the two children is unknown. But there then lived in Santa Fe a Missouri mer- chant and trader named William Donoho, one of those great- hearted, sympathetic inen, who honor humanity. His daugh- ter, born in 1835, and his son, William B., now of Clarkesvile, Texas, born in 1837, were the first American natives of the ancient town of Sante Fe, the name of which ( " holy faith") lost none of its symbolic character by having as one of its residents such a man as the father. Through the efforts, direct and indirect, and the purse of this noble man, first Mrs. Rachel Plummer ( captured at Parker's fort, Texas, May 19th, 1836), next Mrs. Harris, and lastly Mrs. Horn were ransomed and restored - Mrs. Plummer to her kindred in Texas, the other two"to civilization in Missouri, where, from the brutal treatment they had undergone, both soon succumbed to death ; but Mrs. Horn lived long enough to record in fifty-nine closely written pages, a full and thrilling sketch of her life from birth to her safe arrival in Missouri, where her soul overflowed in gratitude to her deliverer, his kindred and others for sympathizing kindness to herself and sister in sorrow.
In 1839, Mr. William Donoho removed to Clarksville, Texas, where he became widely known. He died there in 1845, lamented as a true son of Kentucky. His estimable widow died in 1885 .. The son survives.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Division of Texas into three Departments - Henry Smith first American Political Chief - Rival State Governments in Coahuila - Corrupt Sales of Public Lands - Texas allowed a Superior Judge and three District Judges - Thomas J. Chambers and David G. Burnet - First murmurings of the Revolution - Severe trials of Col. Austin - Visit of Almonte to Texas.
It must be borne in mind that in 1832 Texas was divided into two departments, Bexar and Nacogdoches, each entitled to its Political Chief, an officer, under the Mexican system, virtually a Governor in his district. Henry Ruez, an old Swiss resident of Nacogdoches, was appointed chief of that department and served till superseded by the American provisional government established in November, 1835.
On the erection of Brazoria into a municipality distinct from that of San Felipe, late in 1832, Henry Smith, a native of Kentucky, resident in the district since the beginning of 1827, was elected its first Alcalde. He was a man of good education, superior intellect, comprehensive in cast of mind, and a bold champion of popular rights under any and all circumstances, instinctively opposing all subterfuges and acting on the inherent right of all men to freely express their opinions on matters affecting the public welfare. He was a first-class surveyor. He had surveyed in the wilderness, and was elected the first Alcalde of the " Cradle of Texian Liberty," because of his ability, his nerve and his unimpeach- able integrity. He was destined to become the first American Political Chief and, still later, the first American Governor of Texas. Other important events crowd into the year 1833. in March, the seat of government, by legislative act, was re- moved from Saltillo to Monclova. This led to a revolution
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and the installation of a rival Governor and legislature at Saltillo in July, 1834, leaving the people of Texas really without a government. They recognized, however, the rightful government at Monclova, the legislature of which, in its controlling majority, proved to be venal and corrupt, squandering to dishonest speculators eleven hundred leagues of land in one transaction and four hundred leagues in an- other, in so shameless a manner that the constitution of the Republic of Texas, adopted March 17th, 1836, declared the pretended sales and grants to be absolutely null and void, and so they remained. The constitution mentions by name John T. Mason 1 of New York, as chief beneficiary in this whole- sale squandering of the public domain ; but he seems to have had associates, members of an organized company in New York, of which Anthony Dey and Wm. H. Summer were active managers.
In the spring of 1833 the legislature at Monclova passed a law creating a judicial system for Texas. There were to be three districts - Bexar, Brazos and Nacogdoches - with a judge in each, and one superior judge, with appellate jurisdic- tion, for the whole country. Thomas J. Chambers was ap- pointed superior judge, but never held court ; yet both a letter from Col. Austin and the records of the General Land office show that he received thirty leagues (132,840 acres) of land as one year's salary, this being one of the lesser items
1 John T. Mason, under the administration of President Andrew Jackson, was Secretary of the Territory of Michigan, while Gen. Lewis Cass was Governor, both by Jackson's appointment. In 1832, when Cass became Sec- retary of War, Mason was rightfully entitled, for the time being, to act as Governor, but he resigned and proceeded to the city of Mexico in quest of some grand land scheme. Thereupon President Jackson appointed his son, Stevens T. Mason, of Kentucky, as Secretary, who so deported himself, first as Secretary and next as Governor of the Territory, that on the admission of Michigan as a State, he was elected its first Governor. He was the author of the first school law of Michigan, said to have been the most thorough ever adopted in one act. The father and son were respectively natives of Virginia and Kentucky.
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charged against the State government in squandering the public domain. David G. Burnet was appointed judge of the district embracing the newly created department of the Brazos. He promptly organized his court and held several sessions for the dispatch of business prior to the revolution of 1835. The names of the other two district judges are not remembered, but neither ever held court, and Burnet affirmed afterwards that he never received any compensation for his services. It will be seen, therefore, that this judiciary act, enacted so short a time before the revolution, was virtually non-effective.
Another squandering law of the legislature of 1834 was the appropriation of four hundred leagues of land (engineered through by schemers and speculators) for the avowed pur- pose of being equitably distributed in bounties to soldiers for defending the country against Indians. But it was charged that in enrolling the bill, after passage, its language was so interpolated as to authorize the government to sell the land, which it did for insignificant sums.
The real truth was that the Coahuilian majority in the leg- islature ( at first ten to two, and later nine to three members, allowed to Texas), believing that a separation would soon take place, determined to make all they could out of the public domain of Texas. The whole of Coahuila, torn asunder by rival Governors, legislatures and seats of government, was in anarchy. The rivals finally submitted their claims to Santa Anna, then prosecuting his schemes for supreme power, who decided in favor of Monclova and its Governor temporarily until a new election could be held, which did not take place till early in 1835, when Augustine Viesca was elected Gov- ernor, soon, as we shall see, to be expelled by Santa Anna's minions. The department of Brazos (the third and last under Mexican domination ) having been created early in 1834, in July of that year Henry Smith, ex-Alcalde of Bra- zoria, was appointed its Political Chief, the first American
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to be so honored in the history of Texas. Having declined a re-election as Alcalde at the close of 1833, Mr. Smith was succeeded on the first of January, 1834, by Edwin Waller, as Alcalde, and Wm. H. Wharton and Henry S. Brown as his associates in constituting the municipal court or Ayunta- miento, and of this body Henry Smith was made secretary, to be promoted in July to the Political Chieftaincy, as stated. This body (Messrs. Waller, Wharton and Brown ) immediately issued a printed address to the people, reviewing, in an able and dispassionate manner, the condition of the country. at home and the position of Texas at the city of Mexico, as represented up to the 16th of the preceding October, says the address : " In letters from our agent, Stephen F. Austin, in whom they manifest great confidence and for whom great respect. They urge moderation and no decisive action till the mission of Col. Austin shall find solution in the action of the general government."
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