Texan

“ French traders went there with fancy goods from New Orleans, and Spanish Dons from the wealthy cities of Central Mexico came there to buy. From the villages of Connecticut, from the woods of Tennessee, and the lagoons of the Mississippi, adventurous Americans entered the Spanish-Texan Territory at Nacogdoches, going through the land buying horses, and lending their stout hearts and ready rifles to every effort for freedom which the Texans made. ”

“ The Texans themselves so greatly fear the deadly influence of this climate that, during the torrid heat of summer, rich persons emigrate by hundreds to the mainland, so that the town, which becomes almost suddenly deserted by this momentary departure, assumes a look of sad desolation which is painful to behold. ”

“ AUSTIN.
(1842-1861.) 1. “THE REPUBLIC IS NO MORE.”
From 1842 to 1844 the Texan Congress held its meetings at Washington on the Brazos—the spot where, a few short years before, the declaration of independence had been adopted.
The nation born amid the gloom and uncertainty of that stormy time now stood forth proud in the consciousness of growing strength, free and full of hope for the coming years.
An armistice was signed with Mexico (1843) which left the Republic at peace. The Indians under the wise rule of the “Big White Chief,” Houston, made but few outbreaks. ”

“ I traveled one day through Northern Alabama and Western Tennessee with a Texan, who had been North, begging merchants to give him credit again, and help him on his legs.
“I tell you, you don’t none o’ you know anything about the meanness of the Yankees. I’ve been among them—I understand ’em. Why, do you know, a little thing a Texas store-keeper’d throw in ’thout thinking to tell you of ’t, one o’ them New York fellers’ll make you out a bill for, and ten to one he’ll reckon in the interest till paid.” ”

“ To the Texans the proposal is like an invitation to a ball or frontier fandango. Excitement is the breath of their life, and a fight with Mexicans their joy; a pursuit of these their supremest delight. ”

“ Men yelled at horses as they hitched them to the wagons. Pedestrians, hurrying with their tickets toward the saloons, dodged from under the feet of cowboys' horses, and the flat became a tangle of wagons with shouting drivers.
Alice Marcum stood upon the edge of the lumber-pile with the wind whipping her skirts about her silk stockings as the Texan, saddle over his arm, glanced up and waved, a gauntleted hand. ”

“ Where the gauntlet and the gage are caught up ’neath burning skies,”— The Texan Marseillaise: By James Haines, of Texas. (W. G. S. from the Southern Confederacy.)
“Sons of the South, arouse for battle!
Gird on your armor for the fight!”— Texas and Virginia: Air, “Annie Laurie.” By Capt. P. M. Salor. (Alsb.)
“The Texas boys are valiant, their courage none deny,
And for their country’s freedom they lay them down and die.”— Texas Land! Air, “My Maryland.” ”

“ Ordinary soldiers would have hesitated about following the Mexicans into the forest, but all of the Texans were expert in woodcraft, and thought they could keep out of an ambuscade as well in the woods as out of it. ”

“ From the time that father began to talk of joining Peters's colony, I spent a good portion of my time learning all that was possible concerning this republic, the people of which were eager to come into the United States. I found, as any one can who will make diligent search, the most interesting stories not only about hunting, but about the early troubles between Texas and Mexico, the Texans' fight for independence, and the many Indian raids. ”

“ The population of Texas does not amount to seventy thousand souls, among whom there are twenty-five different forms of religion. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are scoundrels, who have there sought a refuge against the offended laws of their country. They are not only a curse and a check to civilization, but they reflect dishonour upon the remaining third portion of the Texans, who have come from distant climes for the honest purposes of trade and agriculture. ”

“ The federal constitution, established for the Republic of Mexico, and which Texas, as a part of that Republic, had sworn to support, had been trampled on by him, and Texas, in his eyes, and in the eyes of all mankind, was justified in rebelling against him. Whether the Texans acted consistently with a true policy at the time, in declaring their independence, he should not discuss, nor should he decide; but as a man and an American, he should be rejoiced to see them successful in maintaining their liberties, and he trusted in God they would be so. ”

“ The feelings of the outraged Texans and of our Western citizens, who sympathise most warmly with them, are such that we arc assured no half-way measures will content them if occasion be given our armies once to pass the Rio Grande. ”

“ As the dust cloud lifted the Texan stood beside him, one foot still in the stirrup, slashing right and left across the struggling brute's ears with his braided quirt. The outlaw leaped to his feet with the cowboy in the saddle and the crowd went wild. Then with the enthusiasm at its height, the man jerked at his hackamore knot, and the next moment the horse's head was free and the rider rode "on his balance" without the sustaining grip on the hackamore rope to hold him firm in his saddle. The sudden loosening of the rawhide thongs gave the outlaw new life. ”

“ We’ve got to clean up Austin, or Austin’s goin’ to take all Texas away from the Texans.
“Them folks don’t want you to git the first herd north, ma’am. They’ll drive that theirselves when they git things all fixed fer hit.” ”

“ I, who now write of it long after, can truthfully affirm that never in the history of human kind has there been a grander exhibition of man’s courage than was that day given at El Salado. The men who exemplified it were of no particular nation. As a matter of course, the main body of the Texans were of American birth, but among them were also Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, French, and Germans—even some who spoke Spanish, the language of their captors, now their judges, and about to become their executioners. ”

“ It has appeared in print various times, once in the form of a German novel, Die Tochter Tehuans, printed at Fredericksburg, and my correspondence files indicate an extensive popularity of the legend. The Indians no doubt had an awe for the mountain that they expressed in narrative detail; the early Texans heard these accounts; then the descendants of those early Texans invented a story in which the Spaniard played a part to fit the legendary atmosphere of the mountain. ”

“ Around the church itself were the Texans under Hood, stalwart, sunburned men who could ride like Comanches, some of whom when lads had been present at San Jacinto, when the Texans struck with such terrible might and success for liberty.
“Are we winning? ”

“ The water came above the man's knees as the animal fought for footing. The Texan leaned far out and, grasping the bridle, drew him in to the bank and quirted him to the top. Then, as the three watched, he headed his own horse upward. Scarcely had the animal come clear of the water when the eager watchers saw that something was wrong.
"De cinch—she bus'!" cried the half-breed excitedly. "Dat dam' Purdy cut de cinch an' A'm trade Tex mine for ride de outlaw, an' we trade back. Voila!" As the man talked, he jerked the coiled rope from his saddle and rushed to the edge. ”

“ WYNN, AFTON. "Pioneer Folk Ways," in Straight Texas, Texas Folklore Society Publication XIII, 1937.
10. Fighting Texians
THE TEXAS PEOPLE belong to a fighting tradition that the majority of them are proud of. The footholds that the Spaniards and Mexicans held in Texas were maintained by virtue of fighting, irrespective of missionary baptizing. The purpose of the Anglo-American colonizer Stephen F. Austin to "redeem Texas from the wilderness" was accomplished only by fighting. The Texans bought their liberty with blood and maintained it for nine years as a republic with blood. ”

“ The European traveller who visits for the first time Texas, and all the coasts of Southern America generally, experiences a feeling of indefinable sorrow at the sight of these gloomy and sinister shores, which have witnessed so many accidents, and against which the dark waves of the Pacific break with mysterious murmurs. ”

“ It is a fight for Protestant freedom, at my own door. I am not going to be denied.”
“Your duty is at home, Richard. You can help with your prayers and purse. You could not leave your plantation now without serious loss, and you have many to think for besides yourself.”
Of the final success of the Texans no one doubted. Their cry for help had been answered from the New England hills and all down the valley of the Mississippi, and along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the coasts of Florida. In fact, the first settlers of Texas had been young men from the oldest northern colonies. ”

“ There is little doubt that in this design they received encouragement from many men holding high places in the United States.
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION.
The ferment in Texas increased, and, on the 2d of March, 1836, a convention declared Texas independent. Santa Anna, president of the Mexican Republic, crossed the Rio Grande with a large force and advanced to San Antonio, where less than 200 Texans had taken refuge in a mission-house known as the Alamo, with their flag, consisting of a single star, floating defiantly above it. ”

“ When I sought my berth that night, the third of the journey, we were still speeding across the boundless Indian prairies; but when I awoke, next morning, the beautiful plains, with vast herds of cattle feeding on them, and covered with flowers of every color, proclaimed our entrance into Texas. Diagonally across this grandest of States we drew a southward-trending line, and the thousand pictures that danced before our eyes—that appeared, vanished, and were replaced by others, which in turn waltzed away into space—were seen through the crystal plate of a hotel-car window. ”

“ He held two articles of belief which no man might dispute without getting sight of the knife in his bootleg or the revolver on his hip. One was that Texas was the biggest and best State in the Union; and the other, that the cow business was no longer fit for a gentleman to follow. He lounged on a bench beside the door and told me tales of the range and the round-up, of herds of cattle stampeded by the smell of water, of long rides in blinding sand storms, of the taking in of the tenderfoot, of centipedes and side-winders, of Indian fights and narrow escapes. ”

“ In our Republic's life that period is not a great way off. And in that hour Texas will need men—I am speaking now to the young men—to the bright-eyed boys of Texas. In that hour your State will need men, not, oh! not the paid politicians of the present, who seek office for its gold, and not its glory; who trade in honor and traffic in eminence! But she will need statesmen in her councils and warriors on her battle-fields. She will want the mighty in intellect, the grand in soul; more than that—the pure in heart. Do you want an example? Look at the Texas veterans! ”

“ Whatever may be the course of Texas, the ambition of her people should be that she should take no step except after calm deliberation. A past history, in which courage, wisdom, and patriotism united to found a Republic and a State, is in our keeping. Let the record of no rash action blur its pages. If after passing through two revolutions another is upon us, let the same prudence mark our course as when we merged from an independent nation into one of the States of the Union. ”

“ I believe in my heart that the young men of Texas are worthy of the glorious burden borne by them. Listen not to the serpent hiss of him who would counsel State or national division. He that would wish to dim and divide the splendor of the Lone Star's beams is as little a patriot as one who would seek to shatter the constellation of which Texas is the brightest member. ”

“ The settlers in Texas went to live under the form of government which they had left behind in the United States—a government which extends so many guarantees for life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and which their American and English ancestors had vindicated for so many hundred years. ”

“ For Texas, the beautiful flower state, blessed with turf and blessed with pines, has still the stern commencements of American life before it—that rapid, fierce process of civilization which begins with cards and whisky and murder, which finds its first protection in the "Vigilantes" who hold their grim tribunals under the roadside trees, but which suddenly one day wrenches itself, as it were, from its bad, lawless past, and takes its first firm step on the high road to order and prosperity and the world's respect. ”

“ At that remote period Texas belonged, if not de facto, still de jure, to Mexico. Marvellously situated on the Mexican Gulf, endowed with a temperate climate and a fertile soil, which, if tickled with a spade, laughs with a harvest, Texas is assuredly one of the richest countries in the New World. ”

“ But for the fact that many others have told the story of how Texas won her independence, how she flourished or decayed as a free republic during ten years, and how she was finally annexed to the United States, I would be glad to tell more of these things to you. They [152] could not fail to be entertaining as well as instructive, for they show how a people with a true purpose before them overcame the many obstacles which confronted them and finally made Texas what she is to-day, one of the brightest stars in the blue field of Old Glory. ”

“ When the war between the states began to stir the hearts of the people of the South, after a brief delay, Texas, that great empire with more than two hundred and sixty-six thousand square miles, but thinly populated area, caught the patriotic spirit of the hour, and cast herself, body and soul, into the struggle of the Southland for liberty and independence. ”