The settlement of the boundary dispute between the United States and
Texas on February 22, 1819, by fixing the Sabine river as the boundary,
met with strong opposition in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, as
well as Eastern Texas. The American settlers had contended for the
Neches river as the true boundary, and Dr. James Long, who had married
the daughter of a wealthy planter at Natchez, Mississippi, lost no time
in exploiting his scheme of forming the Republic of Texas. Leaving
Natchez June 17, 1819, with 75 men, he reached Nacogdoches with
approximately 300, including Samuel Davenport, Bernado Guitierrez de
Lara, and many others who had fled in 1813.
Upon reaching Nacogdoches, Long’s forces occupied the Old Stone Fort,
organized a provisional government, and issued a proclamation declaring
Texas a free and independent republic, and another newspaper—the third
in Nacogdoches as well as in Texas—was published by Horatio Bigelow. It
was called “The Mexican Advocate.”
It is very probable that Dr. Long’s expedition would have been
completely successful if it had been organized a year later, after the
revolutionary movement had begun in Spain but in 1819 the royalists were
in control in Mexico; and that fact, together with Long’s division of
his forces after leaving Nacogdoches for the West, so weakened his
fighting units as to cause them to fall an easy prey to the successive
onslaughts of the Spanish Army sent against him under Colonel Perez.
With the capture of his block houses and forts on the Brazos, Trinity
and Red rivers, Mrs. Jane Long, who had been left at Nacogdoches, fled
across the Sabine, and her husband soon followed, thus ending his first
attempt at freeing Texas, in October, 1819.
[Illustration: Frost Thorne Home—Hart Hotel
Residence of Texas’ first millionaire. Built 1825. See page 12.]