southern by birth and education and among them were some few who had slaves in the United States and took them into Texas. A single good slave was often worth as much as a whole section of government land at the standard price of $1.25 an acre. But most of the Texas settlers expected their speculation to prosper and looked forward to the time when they might turn their small farms into large plantations, stock them with slaves, and join the aristocracy. Of necessity the Texas community was part and parcel of the American South.

The Mexican enthusiasm for American colonists in Texas weakened about 1830 when a law was passed prohibiting further immigration. But Mexico had no administrative machinery capable of enforcing the law and the current was now too powerful to be resisted. The parents and grandparents of the new Texans had been too long accustomed to browbeat the Indians, to intrigue with Spanish officials, and to defy their own Government. Their relatives had elected Andrew Jackson in 1828, and like them they worshiped the ideas of democracy and home rule. The Mexican effort to stem the tide, and to prohibit slavery among them, was treated as their kinsmen in South Carolina were at the moment treating the laws of the United States. South Carolina in 1832 made a gesture of nullification, led to it by the dogmatic teaching of Calhoun and his political school. Americans in Texas had even better grounds for declining to be swallowed up in a centralized government or to permit their institutions to be Latinized by Mexicans.

The mental attitude of Stephen F. Austin is a fair summary of the status of Texas with reference to Mexico. The studies that Professor Barker has made in the Austin papers, which have been preserved in great abundance, indicate that from the issuance of his grant in 1821 until 1832 Austin was unswerving in his loyalty to the terms of the contract. He sought in good faith to bring in families of sound character, of Roman Catholic faith, and willing to take and observe oaths of loyalty to the country of their adoption. The spirit of separation that showed itself before 1832 in some of the other settlements of Americans in Texas did not spread into the Austin grant.

Between 1832 and 1834 the spirit of Austin began to waver. Texas had been promised home rule, without receiving it. Instead, Texas was a part of a state of Coahuila and Texas, in which the Coahuila majority of natives might permanently overbalance the

Americans living east of San Antonio. There arose a necessity for a separation of Texas from Coahuila, and its admission as a separate state in the Republic of Mexico. But this was denied by the Mexican congress, whose internal ructions threatened the existence of the federal principle in Mexico in any form. The Mexican civil war between Bustamente and Santa Anna imperiled the peace of the republic and forced the Texans to take sides. Since Santa Anna professed to be a constitutionalist, anxious to overthrow the principle of centralization, he gained the support of Texas. But when he was victorious, he revealed the insincerity of his professions, and sought to make himself head of a centralized state. The autonomy of Texas was denied, its militia was cut down, and a military governor supplanted its legislature. Austin was in doubt until 1834. Then his mind cleared, as he saw that Texas could not live in the Mexico of Santa Anna. After 1834 he worked for independence.

The motives at work in favor of Texas independence were the frontier dislike of coercion, and an American fear of Mexicanization. In addition to these, there was a motive based on property rights. The earlier of the settlers had come in under legal Mexican grants, and received titles good under any Mexican law. Later arrivals speculated much in titles that were something less than perfect. There was ever a chance that a powerful Mexican Government would annul many of the grants, and there were great areas of ungranted lands that would be at the disposal of an independent government in Texas. The whole American border was aflame with land speculation after 1833, and this homely motive played a considerable part in steadying Texans in a conclusion to separate which they might well have reached on other grounds.

In October, 1835, Texas held a convention at Austin, and framed a constitution for itself. Michigan had just finished one; Arkansas was just about to begin one. All were unauthorized, and found their origin in the spontaneous desires of frontier groups for autonomous government. The Texas convention faced the question whether to make a constitution for use within Mexico, or to work for independence, and decided in favor of the former alternative. But the course of the Mexican Government in the next few months was such that in March, 1836, another Texas convention adopted a declaration of independence. The conservatives were losing their hope of an agreement with Mexico, and the immediate immigrants were almost to a man for separation. The new constitution ac

cepted the common law as a basis for the criminal code, followed the structure of the United States Constitution where it was practicable, and permitted the Spanish law of property to remain in force.

The Mexican army and the Texas militia were already engaged in civil war when the declaration of independence was promulgated. Santa Anna was in the field to preserve his realm. There was heavy fighting at San Antonio, where the Texas defenders took refuge in the Alamo, and where those who survived the engagement were murdered by the victorious Mexicans. Davy Crockett and James Bowie were among the slain, but their souls, like John Brown's, went marching on. In April, 1836, General Sam Houston, who commanded the largest of the Texas forces, was attacked by Santa Anna on the San Jacinto River and completely dispersed the Mexicans. Santa Anna was captured as he fled, and under duress signed a treaty as president of Mexico recognizing the independence of Texas and the territorial claim of that republic as far south as the Rio Grande. The Mexican congress repudiated his authority to do this, and the facts of occupation had given no warrant for so extensive a region; but Texas never receded from its claim.

The Territory of Wisconsin was created the day before the battle of San Jacinto, and its people were no more certain of their Americanism than were those who won the freedom of Texas. Independence for Texas was conceived as a first step to incorporation in the United States. Texas agents were immediately sent to Washington to demand it, but found Jackson hesitant even to recognize the independence of the State. The election of 1836 was approaching, and there were already enough northern enemies of the Administration without arousing all the opponents of slavery who would see in Texas an attempt to build up the slave power. After the election of Van Buren it was still impossible to procure the admission of Texas. Formal recognition took place, and diplomatic agents were exchanged, but Texas was obliged to bear itself as an independent republic until 1845. The Jacksonian wave of migration came to an end in 1837. An anti-Jackson party, the Whigs, rose to life and victory. And the necessities of slavery politics determined the future of Texas. The financial collapse that visited the United States in 1837 temporarily diverted the thoughts of the country from speculation and growth to curtailment and recuperation.

CHAPTER XXXV

1837: THE PROSTRATE WEST

THE rage for emigration and speculation, and the high prices based upon an abundance of paper money, grew in intensity during the Jacksonian migration, producing an unbalanced economic life that could have no other end than financial collapse and general bankruptcy. But while the going was good, the tide of development flowed so fast that few could hope to stand against it. Over the whole West new villages appeared without forewarning, and former villages became cities at a single leap. What happened at Chicago was repeated elsewhere, on a similar scale. "Here," wrote a careful reporter, "the rise in real property and the influx of migration are unexampled in the Western World. Lots in Town with small improvements are selling at from 10 to 15000$, the right of preemption on qr. sec. of Land are worth from 8 to 10,000$. Several persons former citizens of ... [Parke County, Indiana, near Terre Haute] have become immensely wealthy merely by settling on a tract of Land & improving it sufficiently to hold the preemption, and money is a sure drug. Altho this looks incredible it is nevertheless true. The emigration to the northern part of Illinois is unprecedented. Whether this state of things can last long or not I can't say, it seems hardly possible." The craze that John G. Davis saw when he wrote this letter in 1835 was wider than he knew; but he did not overstate it.1

Interlocked with the migration, stimulated by it, and itself an incentive to it, the internal improvements program of the western States reached full development at the same time. The source of the demand for internal improvements was the universal western conviction that there could not be solvency and prosperity without a market for the crops. The Erie Canal was a powerful stimulant, and the open rivalry of the seaboard communities for western trade kept the idea alive. The Ohio Canal, first among the western works to reach completion, gave wide advertisement to western ambitions, and the other canals, undertaken about the same time, did not have to be argued in the West. The Black Hawk War gave publicity to Illinois and its neighborhood. The removals of

1 The late J. G. D. Mack, of Madison, Wisconsin, generously made available the papers of his ancestor, John G. Davis,

Indian tribes towards their new frontier homes held the attention of the country. About 1832 the abnormal forces drawing emigrants to the west became considerable, and in the following year they were reinforced by hard times in the Atlantic cities.

The American State took upon itself a new character during the booming years of this period. Heretofore the people had been content with a State that levied as few taxes as possible, and kept the courts open to litigants. Beyond its function as preserver of the peace, the State had few duties. The initiative in life was in the hands of the citizen, who disliked the suggestion of control. Public education had not yet built up a horde of salaried teachers. The militia was a go-as-you-please organization, without many military attributes. The revenues of government were not large enough to arouse cupidity or to make their control a matter of consequence. Politics were fought on personal issues and theories of government. The State was not in business.

Chief among the influences that drove the American State into business was the American System of Henry Clay. Under his teaching the West accepted the doctrine that there must be improved routes of communication in order to provide access to markets. These roads called for money; yet not only was private capital lacking, but private capitalists were not accustomed to investment in the stock of improvement companies. The legal side of such securities was yet inchoate. The powers of promoters, the control of corporations, the rights of the State with reference to corporations, the protection of the stockholders, were still to be worked out with pain, loss, and inconvenience to a multitude of innocent investors. Meanwhile, the works were needed. The United States, through its taxing system, might have become the source of the funds had not the strict constructionists interposed a barrier through Madison and Monroe. The States were the only other possible recourse, and when New York led off with the building of the Erie Canal there began a new period both in the use of capital and the activities of the State.

Every year after the inauguration of the Erie Canal witnessed an increase in State investment in improvements. To maintain their ascendency or to get new business, the tidewater States plunged into popular but ill-considered projects. The western States also responded to the enthusiasms of their people, and with each year of the Jacksonian period migration became more lavish in their commitments.