Texas.--Battle of Madina.--First Introduction of Americans into
Texas.--Usurpation of Bustamente.--Texas owed no Allegiance to the
Usurper.--The good Faith of the United States in the Acquisition of
Louisiana and Texas.--Santa Anna pronounces against Bustamente.--Santa
Anna in Texas.--A Mexican's Denunciation of the Texan War.--His Idea
of our Revolution,--He complains of our grasping Spirit.--The right
of the United States to occupy unsettled Territory.--A few more
Pronunciamientos of Santa Anna.--The Adventures of Santa Anna to the
present Date.
We must resume again the narrative of historical events, in order
better to set forth the condition of the country through which we are
traveling.
Texas is a turning-point in the history of Mexico. Captain Don Alonzo
de Leon, in the year 1689,[15] by command of the Vice-King of New Spain,
took formal possession of Texas, in the name of His Most Catholic
Majesty of Spain. Afterward a few military and missionary settlements
were commenced, with indifferent success, as the Indians were of a less
docile character than those of the southern provinces. They were ever
restive under the yoke of spiritual taskmasters, so that the feeble
missions and presidios had only a sickly existence down to the time of
the breaking out of the civil wars of Mexico.
We have already noticed the statement that, in the year 1819, a Mexican
general routed at the River Madina a party of 3000 men, who were on
their way to join the Mexican insurgents. The above number is somewhat
improbable; say there were 500, which would be about as many as could
well be mustered at that early period for a filibustering expedition at
New Orleans.
In 1820 Moses Austin applied to the Spanish authorities, and obtained
from them the right to settle a certain number of families in Texas. He
died soon after, and his son Stephen obtained a confirmation of the
grant, or, rather, a new grant, from the authorities established at
Mexico under the Federal Constitution of 1824. Under that constitution
Texas was annexed to Coahuila, and, together with it, was formed into
the united state of Coahuila and Texas. From the authorities of this
state divers other Americans obtained grants of land under the
provisions of the colonization law of the Mexican Congress of the year
1824. From this time all things went smoothly on, and the grantees were
busily engaged in introducing the number of families which were
stipulated for in the said law, and in the grants made under it, when
the Spanish armada landed at Tampico.
DOWNFALL OF BUSTAMENTE.
In consequence of the great dangers threatening the country, Congress
had conferred dictatorial powers upon the President of the Republic,
Vincente Guerrero. By virtue of his dictatorship, he had invested the
Vice-president of the Republic, Bustamente, with the command of an army
of reserve, which he established at Jalapa. As soon as the Spanish army
had capitulated to Santa Anna, Bustamente put forth a _pronunciamiento_,
and, marching to the city of Mexico, he deposed the President, whom he
afterward caused to be cruelly put to death. Having now, by means of a
successful military insurrection, possessed himself of the executive
power, he proceeded by violent means to overturn, one by one, the
governments of the individual states. In this war against the states he
was also successful, except in the most distant one, that of Coahuila
and Texas.
Texas clearly owed no allegiance to the usurper Bustamente. It was an
independent state in all respects, excepting those powers it had
conceded to the general government by adopting the Federal
Constitution. The subversion of this Constitution reinstated Texas as
an independent republic. It owed no farther allegiance to Mexico. Texas
might at once have applied for admission into our Union, or have asked
to be annexed to any other foreign state, pleading not only her
inherent right to do so, but the excessive cruelties that Bustamente
inflicted on those state authorities that opposed his usurpations.
The learned and eloquent General Tornel, distinguished alike as a
statesman and a soldier, from whose popular history we have below made
a brief extract, in pleading the cause of his country, charges bad
faith against the United States in the acquisition of both Louisiana
and Texas, but in both arguments he fails to make out a case. By the
treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, France acquired an imperfect title to
Louisiana; by the treaty of Paris in 1803, she conveyed all her title
to the United States. But, before the United States would pay over any
money on account of the treaty of 1803, she required Spain to confirm
the treaty of San Ildefonso by putting France into the actual
possession of Louisiana. This being done, and not till it was done, did
the United States pay over the $15,000,000 stipulated as the purchase
money. The dispute with Spain about boundaries was settled by the
treaty for the acquisition of Florida, in 1819, which established
boundaries that were confirmed in a subsequent treaty with Mexico. Thus
far, certainly, there was no breach of faith.
On the night of January 3d, 1832, the garrison of Vera Cruz _pronounced_
against the usurping government of Bustamente, which was then suffering
dreadfully from the want of funds. A delegation was sent the same night
to Santa Anna, who had been in retirement at his estate of _Manga de
Clavo_ since the murder of his friend, President Guerrero. This fourth
insurrection was prosecuted with varying success for several months,
but was finally terminated by the capitulation of Bustamente at Puebla,
and the recalling of Pedraza from banishment in the United States, to
serve out the few months that remained of his term of office as
President.
In 1832 Santa Anna was elected successor to Pedraza as President of the
Federal Republic of Mexico. Texas had now of right the option of
returning into the family of Mexican States, or of maintaining her
separate existence; but she was under no obligation to return, for, the
confederacy having been once broken up, it was optional with the only
member that had not submitted to the usurper to re-enter this
unreliable family, or to continue outside. This election was not long
open; for, by the _pronunciamiento_ of Toluca (1835), the Federal
Constitution was again abolished, and Santa Anna became dictator in
fact, if not in name. The clergy were at the bottom of this last
revolution, and they demanded, as the price of their support, the
extirpation of heresy from the territory of the Republic. This meant
the indiscriminate slaughter of all Texans. Santa Anna, who, in all his
previous wars, had never shown a disposition to be cruel to the
vanquished, was so dazzled with the prospects before him as to be
willing to make the slaughter of the Alamo and of Fannin's division an
offering to a priesthood who were plotting for the restoration of the
Inquisition. The battle of San Jacinto was, in its consequences, more
disastrous to the designs of the ecclesiastical party than even to
Santa Anna himself.
MEXICAN VIEW OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
Let me stop in my narrative of events to translate a Mexican's eloquent
denunciation of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is from the pen of General
Tornel, a most uncompromising enemy of that race and of its religion.
Thus he opens his account of the Texan difficulty:
"In order to understand what we to-day (1852) are, and what we to-day
value, it is indispensable to discover, and to perpetuate the history
of one of the greatest scandals of the age--all of its antecedents, all
of its consequences, all that can aid in coming to knowledge of this
greatest act of injustice of which the Mexican nation has been the
victim.
"Those who cross the sea change their skies, but not their nature. The
Anglo-Saxons abandoned their country from physical and moral
necessities, and on account of their political and religious quarrels.
Transporting themselves to the virgin forests of America, they brought
with them the characteristics of Northmen; they were distinguished for
sobriety, laboriousness, and industry; for ardor in their enterprises;
for constancy, and for that spirit of adventure which subjugates all by
the right of conquest. They leveled all obstacles by the vigor of their
arm and the sweat of their brow, and from their successes has arisen
the hope of acquiring every thing by the inspiration of their talents
and the force of their genius.
"The English, of whom John Cabot was a compatriot, came by the northern
route [to America], and discovered an immense country, whose rivers are
the grandest, whose forests appear to be antediluvian, whose lakes
would be called seas in Europe; with harbors on an extensive coast
which rival the greatest in the world. It has a soil suited to every
purpose of agriculture. In short, it has facilities for all
enterprises, and for raising the material of a productive commerce
sufficient to establish advantageous relations with the Old World, and
for creating an independent society; for supplying its necessities; for
making its condition enviable; for rivaling the power, the influence,
and the destinies of its parent country.
"The country which they discovered they found scarcely inhabited,
although here and there wandered some tribes without social
organization, without government, without the power of concentration,
even to the extent which numbers give to savages. They [the colonists]
early learned that they could establish their dominion without
resistance, and that they could extend it as far as they could open the
country with the ax of the active colonist, who considered himself the
heir of undiscovered wealth, which would result from an inevitable
destiny. The colonies which were established along the coast, and those
which were formed in the interior, increased, as increases the gentle
rill in its onward course by uniting with other rills and with rivers,
until, becoming one vast torrent, it precipitates itself into the
ocean. The colonies of Tyre, of Carthage, or Rome were never comparable
with the Anglo-American colonies, who appropriated to themselves, in
less than a century, regions more extended than the half of Europe.
"The observer of the providential destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in
America notices that the emancipation of the thirteen American
colonies, which constituted so many states and an independent nation,
instead of being the result of the alleged political grievances, was
rather the impulsive force of expansion, which encountered insuperable
obstacles while the states were colonies subordinate to a European
nation. They were retarded in their advances by relations and
compromises with other nations. The Anglo-Saxon, when translated to the
wilds of America, needed only a stopping-place in order to found a
peculiar and exclusive polity, which should enable him to march ever
onward in his aggressions and usurping institutions.
"The United States of America lost no time in making themselves
powerful; a nation rich in its industry, enviable in its commerce,
respectable in its social organization, which are so favorable to the
advancement of the condition of man. When the government had regulated,
with great prudence and wisdom, the interior system of the states, it
placed itself upon the watch for the compromised circumstances of
embarrassed European states that possessed colonies on the American
continent. Some of these colonies were contiguous to the limits which
the United States had acquired definitely by the treaty of peace of
1783. In order to augment, at the expense of her neighbors, her
possessions, already immense, and not yet well populated, she set about
acquiring territory by astuteness, by cunning, by violence, and also by
justifiable means, when such were available. Spain first, and Mexico
afterward, have been her victims; and to-day these rich and powerful
states display the spoils, for such they are in reality, which they
have wrested from us. Such are the people that already rival those
nations of Europe whose territories are the most extensive, and whose
commerce is spread over all the seas."
WEAKNESS OF THE SPANISH TITLE.
My limits will not permit me to follow General Tornel through his
statement of the manner in which Louisiana, Florida, and Texas were
acquired, and to notice his complaints of the injustice committed by
the Americans in all these acquisitions. He loses sight of the fact
that Spain had no title to her possessions in America but that of
discovery, and that very doubtful claim had not, in a period of 300
years, been strengthened by actual settlement. Three or four
dilapidated mud forts, and as many more feeble missions, constituted
the sum total of the Spanish possession of Texas; and settlements
scarcely worthy of the name in the other northern departments
constituted all the title that Spain could put forth to those
countries; while the right of Mexico was as much weaker, as Mexico was
a weaker power than Spain, and morally incapable of settling the
disputed territory. The claim of the United States was the necessity
for land in which to settle her population, which was so rapidly
augmenting by foreign immigration. Once in ten years she requires a
portion of the wild land nominally belonging to Mexico, and once in ten
years she must take it.
SANTA ANNA.
In 1836, while Santa Anna was a prisoner in Texas, Bustamente, then in
banishment in Europe, was elected President by the same party that had
chosen Santa Anna as Dictator. In 1838, the government having incurred
the hostility of France, Vera Cruz was blockaded for several months,
during which time a night foray was made into the town by a party of
French sailors, headed by the Prince de Joinville. On their return,
they were pursued by Santa Anna to the Mole, where they stopped farther
pursuit by discharging a cannon, which deprived Santa Anna of one of
his legs, and effectually wiped out the recollections of his
unfortunate Texan campaign. In 1841, the government being no longer
able to raise funds at two per cent. a month, the Minister of War,
Valencia, pronounced against Bustamente in the citadel of Mexico. The
result was, that Santa Anna was again elevated to supreme power,
according to the plan of Tacubaya, and the interpretation he put on
that plan. In 1843 a slight change was made in the Constitution, but he
remained in power until 1845, when, having left the capital to put down
the insurrection of Paredes, Congress declared against him. Herrera was
appointed President, and Santa Anna was imprisoned for a while in the
castle of Perote, and finally banished from the country. In 1847 he was
recalled by the Federal party, with the consent of President Polk, and
became the chief support of the war, notwithstanding his totally
inadequate means for organizing a successful defense. When the defense
could no longer be protracted, he left the city by night, and retired
to the West Indies, and afterward to Carthagena, where he remained
until he was recalled in 1852, and again restored to supreme authority.
We may sum up the politico-military life of Santa Anna by saying that
he has been engaged in eight _pronunciamientos_. Five of these have
been made by himself; three by others, for his benefit. Twice he has
been chosen President by the Federal party of the Federal Republic of
Mexico. Three times he has been made President by the Central, or
Ecclesiastical party. He has been twice banished from Mexico, and each
time recalled again and placed at the head of affairs. He has twice
been taken prisoner, when his captors held long consultations upon the
propriety of putting him to death. He has, in turn, been the candidate
of all parties, and has served all parties faithfully in turn, but most
faithfully of all he has served himself. Actively engaged through life
as a politician and a soldier, he has found time to readjust the whole
complicated system of Mexican laws, and, in a series of volumes of
autocratic decrees, he has drawn from that chaotic mass a new system of
jurisprudence, that will stand as a monument of his genius as long as
the Mexican nation shall continue.
[15] _Breva Resena Historica_, by Gen. Tornel. Mexico, 1852.
p. 135.