The Author of "Dorothy Fox."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
A PIVOTAL POINT
We are but beginning to understand what this America of ours is to do for the Old World. If we consider it under the figure of a vast steamship journeying to the relief of the mother nations, surely the beef and the flour, the cotton and the corn, even the inventions, with which it is freighted, form the least portion of its immeasurable cargo of supplies. Now, imagining our republic to be such a vessel, if Alaska be the stern and Florida the prow turned toward the other hemisphere for the peaceful conquest thereof, then must New York on the left hand and Texas upon the right be, in the days to come, the great paddle-wheels which shall drive it onward—New York not more so in a commercial than Texas in an agricultural sense. But it is with Texas only that we have here to do, and this in order to detail certain things hitherto unpublished which may not be without their use to the Humes and Motleys, the Froudes and Macaulays, of our nation in the wonderful future.
It is well to bear in mind from the outset that Texas is by far the largest of the States. To get even an idea of this, place within its boundaries New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania: even then you must pack into the crevices between these two or three granite boulders each of the size of Massachusetts to make a solid territory as large as Texas. As to that, however, Alaska is vast, and so is Sahara. If you set out upon a journey south and south-westward, beginning at the Potomac, and visit every Southern State in its order upon the map, you will find—and that almost immediately upon your arrival in Texas—that you have reached that State of them all which surpasses the others as much in prosperity as it does in dimensions. Near as Texas is to the equator, the oxygen of its abnormal growth is perceived by the newcomer in almost his first breath. There is a combination of causes for this. The Puritan who landed on Plymouth Rock gave character to, and transmitted himself down, the after ages of New England history; and the same is true of the influence of the Connecticut Austin who in 1820 began the settlement of Texas. The lapse of two centuries may have given a more earthward direction to the old energy, but the energy itself is there; and, somehow, the character and history of this larger New England of the West have been along the same line. Everything has helped forward the prosperity of the State. General health, moderate taxation, fertility of soil, astonishing diversity of product, cheap and rapid construction of railroads along lines both of latitude and longitude, immeasurable reserves of alternate sections of land held sacred for education,—these are some of the causes which are attracting an immigration of about a hundred thousand a year to a realm so vast that the two millions already there seem but pioneers of the coming hosts.
But that which strikes the stranger most is the seemingly small proportion of negroes to whites in comparison with other Southern States; and this is becoming more marked every year. In one thing the population seems to be unanimous, and that is that Texas shall remain, vast as it is, one undivided State, a recent legislature having set apart three millions of acres toward the construction of a new capitol at Austin which shall be worthy of that one of the United States which is also, and in itself, an empire so much larger than Germany that to bring the balance to a level you must cast into the scale with it Jamaica, Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Greece. There is the momentum as of its enormous bulk in the prosperity of Texas; and not a man of us, however wide awake he is, but is a Rip Van Winkle as to what it is coming to be.
But all this is said in order to something else. Heaven knows that the history of Texas was romantic enough during the era of the mysterious Aztec, then of the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Mexican, and after that of the original and unadulterated Texan of the battles of '36, and yet there is a page, unprinted hitherto, of its annals, in connection with the Confederacy, which is, in some senses, the most interesting of all. To appreciate it one must remember that, unlike any other State, Texas was once a republic which had won its independence with its own sword. Of its own free will it deliberately abdicated its nationality as such to become one of the United States. When the fever of Secession set in, of all the Southern States it was, on account both of its size and strategic location, the most important. An anecdote in regard to Mr. Lincoln may illustrate this. One of the early settlers of Texas was a gentleman whom I will designate as Mr. S——. There is hardly a citizen of the State but will know who is meant, so long and thoroughly has he been recognized over its broad domain for his indomitable energy, sagacity and magnificent success, as well as for an integrity and high sense of honor unimpeached by any. Except as he was compelled by the very qualities of his clear-headed character to be a Union man during the rebellion, Mr. S—— has never meddled in politics, and no man stands higher to-day in the estimation of the best men in Texas than he. As a Union man he was obliged to absent himself from the State during the war, and was in Washington in 1864. As soon as Mr. Lincoln knew of his arrival he sent for him, and held three different interviews with him in regard to Texas. During these conversations the President dwelt at length and with the utmost energy upon the necessity, in a military sense, of Texas to the Federal cause. "If we held Texas," he said, "we should not only outflank the Confederacy by land, but by water also;" and he developed the statement in all its details. "Go back," he entreated Mr. S——, "and say to your State that if it will return to the Union the slaves will not be interfered with."
"But the Emancipation Proclamation has been issued," Mr. S—— exclaimed.