Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 60

Anglos, whether they had entered Texas legally or illegally (most of those fleeing debts or the law in the United States arrived in Texas independently rather than under the guidance of an empresario), began to worry the Mexican government. For one thing, many of the Anglos were not taking their Mexican nationality seriously. Although some of the Anglo newcomers had built homes in the predominately Tejano settlements and ranchos of San Antonio and Goliad, most preferred living a good distance away from Comanche hunting grounds, in the hope of avoiding Indian attacks. Concentrated in the eastern sections of Texas, they lived a semiautonomous life, conducting their affairs in ways that made the Mexican government uneasy: squatting on unoccupied lands; engaging in forbidden transactions with commercial establishments in New Orleans; applying American practices to local situations; speculating with their properties; working slaves in the cotton lands around the Brazos and Colorado Rivers; and otherwise disregarding the conditions (and oath) under which they had been allowed to settle. Their decidedly independent attitude manifested itself at Nacogdoches as early as 1826, when the empresario Haden Edwards proclaimed the independence of the region, his so‐called Fredonian Republic. For months, disputes had developed between the old settlers in Nacogdoches and Edwards’s colonists over land titles; a break from Mexico, thought Benjamin Edwards (Haden’s brother and the actual leader of the insurrection), would resolve the conflict in favor of the newcomers. But the armed revolt collapsed when more successful, foreign‐born colonists denounced the affair and Austin led his colony’s militia, along with Mexican officials, to Nacogdoches to suppress it. Nonetheless, the episode heightened concerns in Mexico that further American immigration might dissolve Mexico’s hold on Texas. Meanwhile, in Texas, immigrants became distrustful of a government that had just voided an empresario contract without due process of law.

In order to evaluate how the national government might best deal with the troubles in Texas, Mexican officials dispatched Manuel de Mier y Terán, a high‐ranking military officer and trained engineer, to the north. Crossing into Texas in 1828, Mier y Terán reported that the province was flooded with Anglo Americans, that Nacogdoches had essentially become an American town, that prospects for assimilation of the Anglos into Mexican culture appeared dim, and that the Anglo settlements generally resisted obeying the colonization laws. Once back in Mexico, his concerns over American immigrant loyalty mounted, and his fear that Mexico might indeed lose Texas to the newcomers intensified. Mier y Terán’s recommendations spurred the drafting and implementation of the new law of April 6, 1830.

The Law of April 6, 1830, intended to stop further immigration into Texas from the United States by declaring uncompleted empresario agreements as void, although Mier y Terán let stand as valid those contracts belonging to men who had already brought in one hundred families. Thus, Americans could still immigrate to Texas legally but only into the colonies of Austin or DeWitt: the only two empresario grants that met the general’s requirement, neither of which was filled to capacity. Furthermore, future American immigrants must not settle in any territory bordering the United States. New presidios, garrisoned by convicts serving out their prison sentences through military service, were established to check any such illegal immigration. Finally, the new law banned the further importation of slaves into Texas.

Actually, on September 15, 1829, President Vicente Guerrero had issued a directive abolishing slavery throughout the nation. (Guerrero’s gesture notwithstanding, slavery in Mexico would continue until the 1850s, though never as a legal institution.) Concerned about an immigration policy that seemed to be going astray, Guerrero had sought to dissuade Anglos from further colonization altogether by depriving them of their enslaved workforce. Political resistance from various quarters in Coahuila and Texas, however, ended up persuading Guerrero to exempt Texas from his national emancipation decree. Now, only seven months later, the Law of April 6, 1830, reinstated the ban on bringing human chattel into Texas–a point not lost on the American immigrants.