Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 61

It was a rising class of capitalists from Coahuila and Texas who, along with Stephen F. Austin, had convinced Guerrero to excuse their state from the antislavery law. Leaders of this coalition were the statesmen from Parras and Monclova in Coahuila, José María Viesca and his brother Agustín. In the 1820s, the Viesca faction belonged to the liberal Federalist party struggling to maintain control in Mexican politics. Their leaders at the national level were revolutionary veterans such as Guadalupe Victoria, Lorenzo de Zavala, and Vicente Guerrero, as well as intellectuals like Valentín Gómez Farías. Their antagonists were members of the Centralist faction, who were usually conservatives bent on securing the traditional power of the military and the Catholic Church.

According to Tijerina, the Viesca faction was committed to achieving economic prosperity through the state colonization program of 1825 and other means. Through legislation, they obtained exemptions from taxes on cotton, foreign imports, and domestic items for use by colonists and residents of Coahuila and Texas. They granted citizenship and special concessions to many Anglo Americans, among them the entrepreneur James Bowie, who acquired a textile‐mill permit. These liberals posited that slave labor was necessary for the economic advancement of the state.

Meanwhile, Stephen F. Austin’s plan for developing the cotton industry in Texas paralleled the ambitions of the liberal Coahuiltejanos, who, seeing their own prosperity in the cultivation of cotton, worked strenuously to have slavery legitimized. An early victory came in a decree passed on May 5, 1828, that validated contracts of servitude made in foreign countries by immigrants to Coahuila and Tejas. Sponsored by the Texas delegate José Antonio Navarro (Figure 3.3), the new law provided for Anglo American colonists to bring slaves into Texas as permanently indentured servants. Support for passing this legislation was generated by the same coalition of Coahuiltejanos and Anglos that had mobilized in 1829 to have Texas exempted from the Guerrero decree.

Figure 3.3 José Antonio Navarro. Painting by Dee Hernández. University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections, Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio (MS 362: 68‐465).