Texas

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Imagine such an extent of territory open to new settlers! A republic nearly eight times as large as the state of New York, nine times as large as the state of Ohio, and six times as large as all New England put together!
There was no longer any surprise in my mind that the people who made up the government of Texas would be willing to give six hundred and forty acres to every man with a family who would settle there, when, within their boundaries, they had more than two hundred million acres. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Burnt Prairie. On the great plain of Texas, about a hundred miles southward from the old Spanish town of San Antonio de Bejar, the noonday sun is shedding his beams from a sky of cerulean brightness. Under the golden light appears a group of objects, but little in unison with the landscape around them: since they betoken the presence of human beings, in a spot where there is no sign of human habitation. ”

“ A purer patriot never trod Texan soil. Amiable, enlightened, excellent, he was respected and beloved by the colonists, and ever will his incorruptible virtues and unsullied fame be treasured by the people of Texas. The stories of his sufferings in his long imprisonment reached Texas, and a deep sensation was produced everywhere. ”

“ Its beautiful site, overlooking the city, is this summer to be crowned with its comely edifice, which, beyond the outer shell, is to await the incoming of funds for its completion. This trip has resulted with me in a profound impression as to the need of this institution and as to the grand sweep of its future usefulness. Nothing better can be done for the Freedmen of Texas. This empire, stretching a thousand miles on the Rio Grande and eight hundred miles eastward to the Sabine, calls mightily for such an institute to train those who shall be the teachers of her sable children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the physical world Time is accounted the destroyer; though in the moral, it is oft the restorer. Nowhere has it effected greater changes than in Texas—during the last decade—and especially in the settlements of the Nueces and Leona.
Plantations have sprung up, where late the chapparal thickly covered the earth; and cities stand, where the wild steed once roamed over a pathless prairie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Texas pioneers inherited the Spanish sitios and porciones of land, the leagues and labors, marked off by varas and pasos, they inherited too from the Spaniard and his Mexican successor something of the lure of ungained treasure. The imagination that images a cave in the Llano hills filled with five hundred jack loads of silver bullion is hardly so audacious as that which pictured the Seven Cities shining with their jeweled portals in the sun and peopled mostly by goldsmiths ”

“ And then a sweet gentleness stole into his eyes, as his better spirit spoke to him in a soft voice: ‘Ah, Strap, hast thou not glory enough? Hast thou not knocked down many times nearly every man in Texas ... even the great Austin and the mighty king Tuleahcahoma? ”

“ I have travelled nearly five hundred miles across Texas, and am now enabled to judge pretty correctly of the soil and resources of the country, and I have no hesitancy in pronouncing it the finest country, for its extent, upon the globe; for the greater portion of it is richer and more healthy than West Tennessee. There can be no doubt that the country east of the river Grand, of the North, would sustain a population of ten millions of souls. My opinion is that Texas, by her members in Convention, will, by 1st of April, declare all that country as Texas proper, and form a State Constitution. ”

“ The fame of Texas as a stock-growing country went abroad in the land, and soon after her admission to the Union, unto her were turned the eyes of many young men born and reared in the older Southern States, who were poor in this world's goods, but were ambitious to make for themselves a home and a fortune. Many of this class went to Texas, then a new and comparatively thin and unsettled country, and began in humblest manner, perhaps for nominal wages, to lay the foundation for future wealth and success. ”

“ So many bad men of Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." ”

“ It is much to be lamented that Texas had not been populated by a more deserving class of individuals; it might have been, even by this time, a country of importance and wealth; but it has from the commencement been the resort of every vagabond and scoundrel who could not venture to remain in the United States; and, unfortunately, the Texan character was fixed and established, as a community wholly destitute of principle or probity, before the emigration of more respectable settlers had commenced. ”

“ The designation of Texas as a department of the Mexican confederacy so called, was highly obnoxious to the President, and consequently the conduct of the commissioners was, at once, disapproved. For this, you are now, sir, pleased to express, through your subaltern, your indignation at the perfidious conduct of the people of Texas.
I regret much that you have given this complexion to the affairs of the two countries. When men, by chance or Providence, have been elevated to the rule of nations, and entrusted with the protection of the best interests of the people. ”

“ The Father of Texas was but forty-three years old. His life had been noble, useful, and unselfish, and his death was a public loss. His body was conveyed in the steamer Yellowstone to Peach Point on the Brazos, near Columbia. There, in the presence of the President and his cabinet, the officers of the army and navy, and a large concourse of citizens, he was buried with military honors. ”

“ If the human beings in Texas are its citizens and constitute its State, the constitution of Texas is their creation and the legislature of Texas is the creature of that constitution. From the Texans, through the creation which is their constitution, that legislature derives its every power over the human beings in Texas and cannot have any such power except by grant from those human beings themselves. ”

“ Mount and party a royal welcome to Texas. Such amenities are invaluable, and would tend to wipe out the lingering bitterness of the past, more closely connect the American people in common brotherhood, and place Texas in the true light before the world as among the most patriotic and liberal States in the Union.
I would suggest that you confer with Governor Sayers and Major Littlefield (who resides at Austin, one of the officers of the Association of Terry’s Texas Rangers) as to the action to be taken. ”

“ After a long and somewhat stormy series of negotiations, Texas, first visited by La Salle in his vain quest for the mouth of the Mississippi, and afterward colonized by the Spanish from Mexico, was ceded to the all-powerful American republic, and, being rapidly settled by enterprising emigrants from the East, it soon in its turn formed the starting-point for new expeditions westward. ”

“ The history of the discovery of Texas has been in dispute. Yielding credit to authorities possessed of the best means of giving true information, it will be admitted that early Spanish navigators first discovered Texas, landed on its coast, and laid claim to the country. Previously to 1595 they established settlements on both sides of the Rio Grande. This was nearly one hundred years before La Salle, the French navigator, then in search of the mouth of the Mississippi, was carried by errors of reckoning out of his course, and landed on Matagorda Bay, February 18, 1685. ”

“ The great object and desire of Texas is the establishment of a permanent and satisfactory peace with her enemy, and for this purpose the good offices of these powers have been asked and obtained, and the object sought for, through their intervention, appears now on the eve of being realized. ”

“ Texas, like a beautiful damsel, has many charms and attractions, but is not entirely faultless. Indeed, there is no such place as a perfect elysium on earth. And those who have formed their opinion of the country from some of the many late publications concerning it, will feel some disappointment on their arrival. ”

“ Texas is an exceptional case, and forms no precedent, and cannot be adduced as invalidating the general rule. Omitting Texas, the simple fact is, the States acquire all their sovereign powers by being States in the Union, instead of losing or surrendering them. ”

“ But there are those who, conceding all this to be true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas is the Nueces instead of the Rio Grande, and that therefore in marching our Army to the east bank of the latter river we passed the Texan line and invaded the territory of Mexico. A simple statement of facts known to exist will conclusively refute such an assumption. Texas, as ceded to the United States by France in 1803, has been always claimed as extending west to the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo. ”

“ Texas is different from most other southern states, where pride of family is very strong. In Texas, a few years ago, it was not considered good form to dig into a man’s antecedents or family record, as you were liable to come across the bar sinister in the shape of a noose at the end of a rope. ”

“ The lands destined for its reception, which are the richest, and most advantageously situated in all Texas, are now granted to settlers, principally from the United States; the only persons who have examined the country, or indeed, it may almost be said, ever visited it, except momentarily. ”

“ Last, and greatest, of the lately rebellious States, is Texas. Every variety of soil can be found there, from the richest alluvial deposits along the river bottoms, down to the deserts in the northwestern part of the State, where a wolf could not make an honest living. All the grains of the Northern States can be produced. Cotton, tobacco, and sugar-cane are raised in large quantities, and the agricultural capabilities of Texas are very great. Being a new State, its system of internal communications is not good. Texas has the reputation of being the finest grazing region in the Southwest. ”