A Time to Stand (2 page)

There were thousands like him—all trying to take advantage of something that had never happened before. For centuries men yearning to better their lot could do little about it: few opportunities, poor transportation kept them glued to one place. Even the opening of the New World didn’t help much—travel remained as primitive and difficult as ever. Now suddenly all this was changing. Alongside the newspaper ads for candle tallow, sealskin caps and powder horns, strange new notices began to appear for things called boiler tubing,
flywheels and steam presses. New inventions, new machinery —that whole complex miracle called the industrial revolution was bursting into focus, changing the ways of centuries … waking people up … getting them on the move.

“This is the age of locomotion,” marveled the Baltimore
American.
“For one person that traveled a hundred years ago, there are now not a hundred, but a thousand.” And it was true. Passengers swarmed over the flimsy new railroads that fanned out from the Eastern cities. Thousands more jammed the steamboats that puffed along the rivers and the coast—by 1830 seven lines served New York alone.

Time ceased to be an insoluble problem. The Boston-Philadelphia mail now took only thirty-six hours—against twenty-one days a few decades ago. The New York
Commercial Advertiser
found a Boston man who made a business trip to Manhattan and back in less than thirty-three hours.

Along with the commercial travelers went a growing tide of people with no set goal in mind. Discontented, disappointed, or merely restless, they regarded the railroads and steamboats as heaven-sent blessings that would let them escape from their rut. Often they went first to the big cities—New York grew 30 per cent between 1830 and 1835—but sooner or later, they usually drifted west. Here, in the new towns springing up—or along the vast, untouched frontier—hope and opportunity loomed brightest of all.

John Forsyth, crushed by his wife’s death on Christmas Day, was just such a man. So was John Flanders of Salisbury, Massachusetts. Working in the family business, he had fought with his father over foreclosing a mortgage. Young Flanders lost … the situation was impossible … he cleared out.

Nor did it need a great family crisis to put a man on the road. When Dr. Amos Pollard felt his New York practice lagging, he simply took down his shingle and left. Dolphin Floyd, a carefree North Carolina country boy, found farm
life unbearably dull. Gaily telling his family he was off to marry “some old rich widow,” he sauntered westward and never returned.

Usually these men had no particular destination in view—just something better than they left behind. Young Daniel Cloud, a struggling Kentucky attorney, headed for Illinois where he heard there were more clients. But he found the weather too cold, the fees too low, and the “Yankee lawyers” too active. He pushed on to Missouri—and found the same story. Moving on to the rich Red River Valley of Arkansas, he finally discovered the life that suited him. He felt he could stay here forever.

For others it wasn’t so simple. By 1830 far more people were on the move than the bustling but simple towns of the West could absorb. The Alexandria
Gazette
warned that the tide of immigrants to the Southwest was far too great and rapid. The New Orleans
Bee
lamented that the city was glutted with lawyers, doctors and accountants.

Yet New Orleans remained an irresistible lure. The city was no longer the easygoing Creole town of ten years earlier —the steamboat had changed all that. Now the waterfront was always jammed with steamers from St. Louis, Cairo, Louisville, a dozen other river ports. And as gateway to the interior, the harbor teemed with great sailing ships from all over the world. The shops bulged with New Bedford sperm candles, Richmond tobacco, New York lace goods, Swiss muslins, French cologne water, Naples umbrellas. The population was soaring toward 60,000, the sixth largest city in America.

It was almost inevitable that Dolphin Floyd, the gay Carolina farm boy, should drift here. Likewise Amos Pollard, the wandering New York physician; and John Flanders, still smoldering over the fight with his father back in Massachusetts. Mingling with them in the crowded arcades and
coffee-houses were others with even less roots—men like dark, brawny Robert Cunningham, who left a secure Indiana home to float down the river on flatboats.

Together, they helped compose the busy, cosmopolitan world of New Orleans; yet basically, they were still drifting, and the fresh start remained as far away as ever. For only shrewd insiders were getting rich in this lively city, where the banks were chartering railroads and the railroads were chartering banks. The unknown and the unlucky continued to roam, searching for chances that never came. Even the great open land farther west was no longer a way out. The federal government, harassed by its own financial troubles, had stopped selling homesteads on credit.

Then suddenly word spread of still another opportunity— a new hope brighter than all the rest—a promised land just over the horizon: the Mexican province of Texas. It was said that the young republic was practically giving the place away—immense tracts for as little as four cents an acre. Perhaps here was that fresh start after all.

Hoping to develop her vast stretches of empty territory, Mexico had embarked on an ambitious program of colonization. Under laws of 1824 and 1825 foreigners were invited to settle in Texas and live for ten years free of taxes and duties. Every family got 4,428 acres of land for a nominal payment of $30—padded perhaps to $200 by the time Mexican bureaucracy had taken its bite. In return, the colonists had only to take the Mexican oath of allegiance and promise to be at least nominal Catholics. The whole program was put in the hands of contractors, called
empresarios,
who received huge grants of land in return for establishing colonies and bringing in settlers.

Led by Stephen F. Austin, a tactful administrative genius who had received his grant even before the general law, the
empresarios
went to work. Newspaper notices appeared,
describing the wonderful sites available. McKean’s bookstore in New Orleans blossomed with maps, showing the best routes. Guidebooks sang of the future: “No sturdy forest here for months defies the axe, but smiling prairies invite the plough. Here no humble prices reduce the stimulus to labor, but the reward of industry is so ample as to furnish the greatest incentive.”

Dolphin Floyd, Dr. Pollard, all the others quickly succumbed. The “Texas fever,” as it was called, swept New Orleans and spread across the South. In Tennessee, a 26-year-old blacksmith named Almeron Dickinson told his bride to start packing. In Kentucky, Green B. Jameson, a lawyer with a mechanical bent, gathered his things too. Throughout the Mississippi Valley men scrawled “G. T. T.” (Gone To Texas) on their cabin doors and headed for the border.

Soon the whole country knew. On a remote Missouri farm, Andrew Kent explained it all to his wife Elizabeth and began laying plans. Hiram Williamson, a footloose Philadelphia bachelor, decided there was room for him too. In Athens, Georgia, a wild 18-year-old named William Malone went on a drinking spree … couldn’t face his martinet father … set off the following day. In Illinois, young Jonathan Lindley also got ready to go. His father had heard that the Mexican government gave families an extra 160 acres for every child—and the Lindleys had eleven.

Land was the magnet, but most of these people weren’t just speculators hoping to turn a quick profit. Lewis Duel was a Manhattan plasterer … Marcus Sewell an English shoemaker … William Jackson a landlocked sailor.

They were, in fact, all types. Henry Warnell was as raucous a character as roamed the frontier. A freckled, redheaded little jockey, he drank hard, talked fast, and chewed mountainous wads of tobacco. Sometime in the early ’30’s he turned up in Arkansas … married (or didn’t marry) a
girl in Sevier County … found himself a father … decided it was time to move on to Texas.

Micajah Autry was the opposite. An adoring husband, he wrote poetry, sketched pictures and played the violin beautifully. But somehow he could never make any money. Born well-to-do in North Carolina, he tried his hand at “literary pursuits,” teaching and the law. In 1831 he brought his family and slaves to Jackson, Tennessee, where he practiced a little, then opened a store. Of course it failed. Deciding Texas might be the answer, he headed west once more, planning to send for his family later. He was one of the last to come, but a letter to his wife Martha conveyed a thought that might well have been written by any of them: “I am determined to provide for you a home or perish.”

One and all, they poured across the Sabine River and into the promised land. Some with great fanfare—like Sam Houston, the brilliant ex-governor of Tennessee. Houston had resigned in disgrace after mysteriously parting from his bride … brooded for a while among the Cherokee Indians … finally decided that Texas held the key “to grace his name for after ages to admire.” But most came unnoticed, quietly putting up with immense hardships for this great new chance. It was August, 1830 when Jacob Darst piled his wife and two children on an oxcart and creaked away from his Missouri farm. Crawling over the faintest trails, lurching along dry stream bottoms, they took nearly six grinding, painful months to reach the Texas border.

But it was worth it. For once, the glib promoters were not exaggerating. Texas proved to be an eye-opening, breathtaking sight.

“It does not appear to me possible that there can be a land more lovely,” wrote William Dewees, one of the first arrivals. “No language can convey anything adequate to the
emotion felt by the visitor,” echoed David Edward, another early traveler.

And indeed it did defy language, judging from the efforts of Mary Austin Holley, whose handbook became almost a bible: “One feels that Omnipotence has here consecrated in the bosom of Nature and under Heaven’s wide canopy, a glorious temple in which to receive praise and adoration of the grateful beholder.”

The sheer abundance of everything staggered the imagination. No drought or falling water table had yet taken its toll. The prairie was an endless sea of waving grass and wild flowers—dahlias, geraniums, primroses, carpets of violets. The fresh green river bottoms were thick with bee trees, all dripping honey. Deep, limpid pools lay covered with lilies. The streams were full of fish, and game was everywhere—bear, deer, rabbits, turkeys, prairie chickens. Mustangs and buffalo roamed at will—there for the taking.

It was enough to give birth to a Texas penchant for superlatives that was destined to endure. Travelers described sugar cane that grew twenty-five feet in a single season … pumpkins as large as a man could lift … a sweet potato so big that a whole family dined on it, and there was enough left over to feed the pigs.

Exaggerated or not, the reaction was immensely significant. It meant that at last these restless people had found what they wanted. Old sorrows were forgotten in the discovery of this great new land, and from the very beginning, they were determined never to lose it again. “We’re here all united together,” wrote William Dewees, “bound together by an indissoluble tie. As the past has been full of bitterness, we of course look forward to future happiness. …”

Some moved in among the Mexicans, settling in the sleepy mission towns, the lazy Gulf ports, and especially the old
provincial capital of San Antonio de Bexar. Often known simply as Bexar, the town had been an important center in the days of Spanish rule. But with Mexico’s independence, it became merely a neglected outpost and soon crumbled into decay. In ten short years, half the population left.

Yet, the place still had undeniable charm. During the hot, sunny day, brightly dressed Mexicans lolled against the flat-roofed adobe houses that lined the narrow streets. Others bathed in the sparkling little San Antonio River on the eastern edge of town, or gossiped in the two central squares whose names, Main Plaza and Military Plaza, carried a trace of past grandeur. In the evening, fires glowed in every yard, and guitar music drifted from half-closed doorways. Nobody worked very hard in San Antonio—just enough to stay comfortable.

It was hard for an American not to fall under the spell of this pleasant life. Nat Lewis, a shrewd young man from Falmouth, Massachusetts, opened a store on Main Plaza; by 1832 nearly everybody owed him money. John W. Smith, a versatile Missourian, became the town’s leading carpenter, engineer, entrepreneur and boardinghouse keeper.

But of them all, Jim Bowie was the one who really stood out. To the settlers in Texas, this tall, sandy-haired man was a living legend. He had grown up in the tough sugar cane country of Louisiana. He had roped and ridden alligators. He had fought in that most famous of all frontier brawls, the Sand Bar Fight, where his big knife killed Major Morris Wright in one fierce thrust. He had used it in other fights too, so it was said, and although the details were hazy, nobody cared to take issue with him. He had made vast fortunes—$65,000 slave trading with the pirate Jean Lafitte … $20,000 on Arkansas land titles that already smelled of fraud … huge speculations in Texas; by now he was said to own a million acres. He had gone to San Antonio in 1828, turned
Catholic, become a Mexican citizen and married the richest girl in town—blond 19-year-old Maria Ursula de Veramendi. He had made still more money, survived countless adventures—like the fabulous Indian fight near the San Saba mine, where he and ten friends fought off 164 Indians for two days.

A typical performance, for Bowie was the toughest of fighters. But never in a rough-and-tumble way. On the contrary, he was smooth, polished, rarely raised his voice. But this very coolness somehow made him seem, when aroused, all the more lethal.

Such moments were rare, for Bowie was quite used to getting his way. Once, returning on an exhausted horse from deep inside Mexico, he fell in with Sam Houston. Bowie’s greeting was brief and to the point: “Houston, I want your horse.”

“You can’t have him. I have only one and I need him.”

“I’m going to take him,” said Bowie, and left the room for a moment.

“Do you think it right,” Houston asked a friend, “for me to give up my horse to Bowie?”