Mexico threw off her allegiance to Spain in 1821. Not till then did the Spaniards in Mexico abandon their policy of excluding all foreigners from their soil; but the example set them by the United States, with the feeling born of freedom from the Spanish yoke, brought about a change of policy in this regard, and Americans were invited to settle in Texas on the most generous terms. No stronger instance is found of the influence exerted by free institutions from without upon the hereditary prejudices of a whole people. It confessed a failure nobly.
When Texas was thus thrown open to emigration her settlements were few and scattered. Habitual timidity or indolence had restricted them to the neighborhood of fortified posts or missions.[1] The chief ones were San Antonio, Goliad, Refugio and Nacodoches, and around these small parcels of land had been brought under cultivation. But the missions themselves, which had formed the groundwork of Spanish occupation, were fallen into irremediable decay. The Indians who had been gathered into them by the monks had dwindled away until the missions were mostly depopulated. Here, as in California, experience had shown that the natives could not exist under the shadow of the whites. Civilization wasted them away.
SAN ANTONIO.
To induce settlers to come into Texas, they were offered exemption from all taxes for the space of ten years.
Among the first to avail themselves of these offers was Stephen F. Austin, of Durham, Conn. Acting under a grant of lands made by the Mexican authorities to his father, Austin began a settlement on the Brazos in 1821, which later became the capital of the State, of which he was the foremost founder.
Emigration poured in from the Lower Mississippi Valley,—from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi,—and even the older States contributed to swell the tide. The law forbade slavery, but many brought negroes with them and held them in spite of it. Many were adventurers who held law in little estimation, or found in Texas a convenient asylum from the pursuit of their creditors. Others were poor people whom the liberal offers of the Mexican Government lured from their homes in the hope of bettering their condition. Though sound at the heart, in no long time Texas had won for itself an unenviable name throughout the Union as the chosen home of lawless men, through its worst elements rising to the top.
Our Government had long coveted Texas, and had made two unsuccessful attempts to buy it of Mexico, considering it as an integral part of Old Louisiana, to which we had a sort of right by the prior discovery of La Salle.
Texas, which the Spaniards had weakly settled and feebly governed, declared herself independent of Mexico in 1835. When this revolt took place there were more Americans than people of Spanish blood in Texas, so bringing over to the Texan cause the warm sympathy and active aid of a large part of the American people.