Many planters, with their slaves, have emigrated thither to escape their creditors from the border States, and the republic has been lavish of grants of land to men of capital and influence, to induce them to settle within its limits. My informant considered the state of society to be as bad as it well could be, and continue to exist. The white inhabitants are living not only in fear of hostile Indians, but in fear of each other.
From a late letter of a friend in America, I make the following extract relative to the present condition of Texas.
"To give thee some adequate idea of the importance of that beautiful republic of Texas, which Lord Palmerston and the late Whig government of England took under their especial protection, I will just refer to the statistics of the late election of its President. The successful candidate, General Houston, a man notorious for his open contempt for all the decencies of civilized society,—brutal, brawling, profane, and licentious,—received somewhat rising five thousand votes: his competitor, Judge Burnet, between two and three thousand,—a vote smaller by thousands than that of our little county of Essex, in Massachusetts. Late accounts from Texas inform us that gangs of organized desperadoes, under the names of moderators and regulators, are traversing its territory, perpetrating the most brutal outrages. In one instance they seized a respectable citizen who dared to express his dissatisfaction with their proceedings, hurried him into the forest, and deliberately dug his grave before his eyes, intending to bury him alive! The miserable victim, horrified by the prospect of such a fate, broke away from his tormentors, and attempted to escape, but was shot down and instantly killed! Such a congregation as Texas presents was never, I suspect, known, save in that city into which the Macedonian monarch gathered and garnered, in one scoundrel community, the vagabond rascality of his kingdom.
"Thou would'st be amused to read an article, which has made its appearance in the Houston Telegraph—a Texian paper—in which the editor says, 'that while we deeply commiserate the situation of our sister republic, in regard to the political scourge of abolitionism, it is pleasing to reflect that our country enjoys a complete immunity from its effects. Indeed we may with safety declare, that throughout the whole extent of our country, not a single abolitionist can be found.' He goes on to say that this induces many of the southern planters to emigrate to Texas, who, he remarks, 'will necessarily look to Texas, as the Hebrews did to the promised land, for a refuge and home.' It will thus be seen that Texas is the promised land of the patriarchal slave-holders of the southern States. When hunted from every other quarter of the globe by the inexorable spirit of abolition, when even Cuba and Brazil cease to afford them an asylum—when slave-holding shall be every where else as odious and detestable as midnight larceny, or highway robbery,—Texas alone, uninfected and secure, is to open its gates of refuge to the persecuted Calhouns and McDuffies, and their northern allies in church and state—the San Marino of slavery, dissevered from the world's fanaticism—isolated and apart, like the floating air-island of Dean Swift."
The following extract from a recent New York paper gives an equally deplorable representation of the society in Texas.
"The pestilent influence of the recent horrible murders on the Arkansas, and other United States' rivers, has caused the practice of lynching to break forth with renewed fury in Texas, where it had apparently slept for the previous year. And we find recorded in the Texas papers nearly a dozen of these murders that have occurred, and undoubtedly there have been more than as many more. In Shelby county two citizens have been shot down, and several houses burned by a party of outlaws. In Red River two men have been hanged as horse-thieves, without judge or jury. In Washington county one man has been shot down, under the pretence that he was a murderer. In Austin county two men were killed, and two hostile parties were in arms for several days, taking the law into their own hands. In Jefferson county two men have been killed, and the house of one of them burnt to the ground by a party of self-styled 'regulators.' And all this in the space of a year."
Several of my fellow-passengers were from Cuba, and some of them slave-holders by their own admission. With one or two of those who could speak English, I had much conversation on the abolition of slavery. They concurred with apparent sincerity in the desire that the slave trade might be effectually suppressed. They seemed to consider that this trade was promoted by the mother country as one means of preventing the colony from aspiring to independence. They admitted the abstract injustice of slavery, and one remarked, that a difference of the color of the skin was a misfortune, not a crime. They were not, however, disposed to entertain a thought of emancipation, without being fully compensated for their slaves.
I had again the pleasure of observing on this voyage, the benefits of the change of system with regard to the supply of wines and spirits, each passenger paying for what he consumes, instead of his fare including the privilege of drinking ad libitum. One of the stewards told me the quantity consumed was little more than one-tenth as much as under the former system.
I cannot conclude my narrative more gratefully to my own feelings than by a tribute to the upright and conscientious officer who commanded the vessel. On the first day of the week, the only one we spent at sea, the passengers, and as many of the servants as could conveniently attend, assembled morning and evening in the saloon, for the purpose of religious worship. Lord Frederick Fitzclarence, one of the passengers, officiating as a minister of the English Establishment; and every evening a similar opportunity was offered in the fore cabin to all who were inclined to be present. The captain firmly resisted the introduction of cards on the first day of the week, and in his whole conduct manifested an anxiety not only for the temporal comfort and safety, but for the spiritual interests of those under his care. Would that all captains of vessels, invested as they are with such authority and influence over the passengers and crews, were like-minded with my friend Captain McKellar.
I disembarked at Liverpool early in the morning on the 14th of Eighth month, (August,) 1841.