FOOTNOTES
[1] Texas Missions were established by Franciscan monks as follows: In 1690, that of San Francisco on the Lavaca River, at Fort St. Louis (see "[La Salle's Colony]"); St. John the Baptist was founded on the Rio Grande, same year. In 1714, those of San Bernard and Adaes, fifteen miles west of Natchitoches. In 1715, Mission Dolores, west of the Sabine; one near Nacodoches, and another near the present town of San Augustine. The mission and fortress of San Antonio de Valero was soon after founded near the present city of San Antonio. In 1721, one was located at the crossing of the Neches; another on the Bay of St. Bernard, called Our Lady of Loretto; and a third, called La Bahia (the Bay), at the lower crossing of River San Antonio. In 1730, the Church of San Fernando, San Antonio, was founded; in 1731, the mission of La Purissima Concepcion, near the same place. All these missions were secularized in the latter part of the eighteenth century.—Baker, Texas Scrap-Book.
[2] The Alamo (Spanish for poplar-tree), was a chapel used in connection with the Mission San Antonio de Valero. Here one hundred and forty-four Texan revolutionists, under W. Barrett Travis, were besieged (1836) by superior Mexican forces under Santa Anna. The insurgents held out ten days, when the Alamo was stormed, and all of its brave defenders put to death. David Crockett of Tennessee was among the slain. The event has been commemorated by a shaft bearing the legend: "Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none."
[3] San Jacinto is a small village near Galveston Bay. The decisive battle was fought April 21, 1836.
[4] James K. Polk, of Tennessee. His nomination was the first public news ever sent by telegraph in the United States. Morse's new line was just completed between Baltimore and Washington.
INTERLUDE.—NEW POLITICAL IDEAS.
"Truth crushed to earth will rise again."—Bryant.
As yet any direct attack upon slavery was unpopular in the North. The two antagonistic ideas of limiting or extending it were now running a neck-and-neck race for controlling power; but attachment for the Union itself was stronger at the North than at the South, whose people had been taught to consider it a compact to be kept only during the pleasure of the several States, or so long as their interests were promoted by it. This doctrine was never taught in the North. The prevailing sentiment there was attachment for the Union, "one and indivisible;" while the South, under different teachings, was weighing its worth in the balance with slavery.
One new and potent element, however, had come into the controversy. At the North a little band of men pledged to work for the immediate emancipation of the slave, and deeply in earnest, had begun a warfare that ere long was to shake the Union to its foundations. Though few in numbers, they were both hated and feared. At the North they were called fanatics, at the South abolitionists. At the North they were mobbed, at the South a reward offered for their heads. The North apologized for them, the South demanded they should be put down. But though they were thus held up to public detestation, as enemies of the Union, by both sections, these men felt that they stood for a great and holy principle, which surely must triumph in the end. It made them strong. It made them respected. They were led by William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts, whose name is now spoken in the land with as much honor as it once was with bitter scorn and hatred.
Slavery was to be openly attacked through the printing-press, the platform, and the right of petition. The two first agencies would reach the people, and the last their representatives in Congress. Garrison declared in his paper "The Liberator," that he would be heard; and he was heard, though not till he had been dragged through the streets of Boston with a halter round his neck. In Congress, as the outcome of this agitation, John Quincy Adams presented many petitions, praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the nation's capital, the District of Columbia. He was assailed with a storm of indignation. Congress would not receive the petitions. They continued to come in by the hundred, some bearing thousands of names. All were refused a hearing. The venerable Adams,—"the Old Man Eloquent,"—then in his sixty-fifth year, was declared an incendiary unworthy of a seat in the Capitol, and a resolution to expel him was even introduced; but his brave stand for the right of petition made a hundred friends for the anti-slavery cause where one had been before.