His supreme concept of the colony was expressed as follows:
Instead of a life consumed by cruel anxieties, we shall have conquered at last the right of Freedom from Care, which results from the blessed sentiment of solidarity and which gives to each the consciousness that his individual life is integrant of the social life. It is the right to social life, the right to a harmony between the elements of life, and the being who lives. Each one here feels himself a member of a social body founded for his faith and by his faith, destined soon to realize this in its plenitude, and recognizes himself as an associate and an active agent in a work whose grandeur penetrates him deeper and deeper every day.[32]
With such arrangements and connections in Europe as have been mentioned, and with such a Utopian plan, Considerant asked for and received letters of introduction from various men in Europe and the United States, among whom were H. W. Merrill, Lieut. Major, U.S.A., and J. J. Seibel of the American Consulate in Belgium, and came to establish a colony in Texas.
CHAPTER IV
ATTITUDE OF TEXANS TOWARD THE COLONY
When Victor Prosper Considerant, the founder of La Réunion, came to Texas for the first time in 1852 he evidently met with hospitality from all the people, as his reports show no feeling of having been treated otherwise. In fact, in his writings he frequently refers to the kindly interest in, and attitude of the people toward, his scheme of colonization; especially does he mention Captain Macy of the United States Army, and Major Merrill, Commanding Officer at Fort Worth. However, when he returned to the United States seventeen months after his first trip to Texas, he found conditions considerably changed.[1]
The first overtures he made to men of prominence after his return were very favorable. He says, “The cordial reception and warm support, moreover, which our first overtures have met with from many eminent persons in Washington—senators or representatives from Texas, former governors and etc., with whom I have had recently the honor to converse, tended to strengthen me in my confidence.”[2] But the masses of the people of the South and of Texas, had during these seventeen months which had intervened between the first and second trips, been over-powered with one of those peculiar psychological phenomena which occur quite frequently in a nation. This time it was the Know-Nothing Party.
This party grew up almost overnight and became a strong force in the politics of the nation. The party was a secret organization which had as its principal theories the idea that the government of the United States should be in the hands of “Native Americans,” that no one should be permitted to become a citizen until after a very long period of probation, and that Catholics should be excluded from all offices. The party gained its largest number of votes in 1854 and declined rapidly after that time, being dead in less than three years after its victories in 1854 and 1855. Such an organization, of course, could have very little welcome for a group of French socialists and, in the main, would be openly hostile toward them.
The rather sensitive and alert Considerant quickly sensed the change. He immediately issued a statement concerning the attitude of himself and his colonists in which he stated:
I by no means intend to criticize or to approve this political movement, or to pass judgment upon it in any manner whatever. God forbid that I should follow the example of those new comers who, having scarcely set foot on a great country where they find hospitality, freedom, and an immense field open to their activity, hasten to take part in its internal affairs, mixing themselves up in questions of which they cannot yet understand the first elements, speaking, judging and deciding, right or wrong, on all sorts of subjects, which demand long study and profound knowledge of things in order to be comprehended.
No! my friends and myself, I am authorized to say, are men of common sense. We do not come to America in order to enlist in parties, of which we know neither the principles, the traditions, nor the exciting causes.
It is undoubtedly our earnest desire to attain, as soon as possible, the dignity of American citizens. But we will patiently wait the time when the law shall accord to us this title of nobility (whatever delay it may prescribe us to-day or establish to-morrow). We hold this title in high esteem, sufficiently to understand that the law, before conferring it on foreigners, should require them to become worthy of the privileges; and for ourselves, we do not pretend to see farther than the Americans into their own affairs. So far from aspiring to give them lessons of political conduct, we know that on all questions of this nature they are our superiors and masters, and it is our part to place ourselves on the seat of instruction. We feel ourselves far more urgently called to cultivate the earth, to erect buildings, and to establish various branches of industry, workshops, and schools, than to swell the ranks of any political party, to deposit our votes in the ballot box, or to place ourselves in either a scale of the political balance in the United States, Know-Nothingism, and Anti-Know-Nothingism—American Democracy Whiggism, Abolitionism, Pro-Slaveryism, with all the other isms of the same nature, are as yet to us only words expressing ideas, interests, and principles on which we are not ashamed to confess our ignorance, and to declare our perfect incompetence. All these questions, we think, are essentially American, concerning Americans alone, and in which no foreigner can reasonably take part until after he has been thoroughly Americanized; and,—this is not the work of a day.[3]
He expressed no fear of the consequences that Know-Nothingism would have on his scheme. On the other hand, he analyzed the movement from a political and social viewpoint and said nothing but good would come out of it if it were conducted in a proper way. He had been told that the party had as a cardinal principle the exclusion of all foreigners from the domains of the United States, but through reading and investigation he found out the true position of the party, namely, that it did not particularly desire to exclude foreigners but to increase the time of their residence within the United States before conferring political rights upon them. Their civil rights were not called in question. Considerant believed the causes for the rise of this party to be the following: (1) accumulation of slums in larger cities causing indigent people to become numerous; (2) lowering of wage scales by incoming immigrants; (3) the possibility of these indigent new citizens forming a political block that would destroy American principles of government; (4) fear of the religious affiliations of these immigrants of whom practically all were Roman Catholics.[4]