Lone Star (26 page)

Outside of Béxar, Texas was virtually depopulated by the purge, and San Antonio itself was reduced to the population of some twenty years before. In fact, as Arredondo wrote dryly, when the new, liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812 was received in Texas (and became law), he was unable to fill any of the offices because there were not enough "suitable" persons left.

Simón Hererra and a few Republicans were able to survive on Galveston Island. This island, off the north Texas coast, had been named for the Conde de Gálvez, the former Governor of Louisiana, and it was still the haunt of some Karankawa Indians. Hererra, with his aides Aury and Mina and joined by Colonel Perry, organized a miniature "Republic of Mexico" and chartered a few dubious ship captains to sail against Spanish commerce as privateers.

At first, this venture was surprisingly successful; several rich Spanish ships were taken. However, the Republicans made two mistakes. They attacked other than Spanish ships in a couple of cases, and one of the leaders, apparently Perry, engaged in the slave trade. By this time the United States Navy was beginning to dominate the Gulf and Caribbean, pledged both to destroy piracy and the now illegal importation of Negroes into America. In 1817, to avoid a war with the United States, Hererra and Perry decided upon a descent on the Central American coast. The buildings they had erected on Galveston Island were burned, and the Republic of Mexico took ship for the south. Neither it nor Perry survived this filibuster.

A new buccaneer took over: the legendary Jean Lafitte. Lafitte was born in France, emigrated to New Orleans, and became a blacksmith. He first entered history in 1807, when he became the known agent for smugglers violating the U.S. Embargo Act on the Louisiana coast. A dozen legends exist about his early past—including his dispossession and the rape of his wife by officers of Spain, romantic duels, and the like—but only one thing is certain: he had and held a hatred for the King of Spain. He always insisted he was not a pirate, but a buccaneer in the style of L'Ollonois, Louis le Golif, Montbars, and Pierre le Grand; it is a claim his adopted countrymen, the Americans, have sentimentally granted.

But Lafitte was not, in his early career, an American hero. He established a base at Grand Terre, or Barataria, about sixty miles from the Mississippi, and from this directed the smuggling operations on the coast. This caused the U.S. Governor of Louisiana, William C. C. Claiborne, to offer $500 for his head. With the flair all successful rogues must have, Lafitte made the Governor a laughingstock by offering $15,000 for Claiborne's capture in return.

Considerably more humiliating, Lafitte surrounded and captured a party of armed revenue agents in the swamps, then turned them loose with rich gifts. However, this provoked the U.S. Navy to bombard Barataria severely, and for a few years Lafitte quietly dropped from sight.

The British, in a diplomatic blunder, revived him. In 1814, when the British were preparing to invade Louisiana and take the mouth of the Mississippi from the United States, they approached Lafitte for aid. They promised him British citizenship, the command of a Royal Navy frigate with the rank of post captain, and £30,000 to make war against the United States. Lafitte, who always maintained that while he broke its laws he was a loyal "citizen" of the United States, sent documentary proof of this offer, and an offer of assistance, to the State of Louisiana. He was at once romantically received by New Orleans society, and he and his crew joined Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. For this, Lafitte received a full pardon for all crimes, signed by the President of the United States.

His smuggling and his agenting for pirates, meanwhile, had suffered. Inspired by Hererra's example, Lafitte secured letters of marque from the rebel regime in Venezuela to sail against the Spanish, and, in April 1817, moved to Galveston Island and founded a town he called Campeachy. Within a few months he attracted a thousand men. To strengthen the legality of his position, Lafitte also organized a "Republic of Mexico" on the island, created a titular government, and forced his men and all newcomers to Campeachy to take an oath of allegiance to it. He professed it a matter of great disappointment when American newspapers, detailing his activities on the Spanish Main, labeled him the "Pirate of the Gulf."

Lafitte was a man of splendid appearance and considerable courtesy and dignity. He built a fine home at Campeachy, lived in baronial style, and entertained visitors royally. A very significant number of men prominent in the Gulf region visited him at one time or another. Lafitte continually professed that the United States was his adopted country, and let it be known that his privateers had strict orders not to molest American shipping, only Spanish. Some of the sea wolves sailing under his commission, however, were not scrupulous in their choice of victims. Lafitte did great damage to Spanish and other shipping on the Gulf of Mexico, and a considerable store of treasure was brought back to Galveston Island. From one such "haul" Lafitte garnered the chain and seal of a Mexican bishop, robbed on his way to Rome. This prize was given as a present to Rezin Bowie, a member of the Louisiana family deeply engaged in the smuggling and slave-running trade.

The continuing tension between the American and Spanish governments had not been eased by the succession of filibusters originating in the United States. So long as Washington maintained an official claim to Texas, each entry of American "volunteers" seemed part of an official conspiracy. While the United States government itself did not conspire against Spain, the activities of officers and men like Wilkinson, Magee, and even the buccaneer Lafitte made Spanish officials quite confused over where public policy ended and private enterprise began. Washington's protests that it had little control over the filibusters was politely disbelieved. Finally, after years of wrangling, both governments reached agreement. The United States purchased Florida, and as part of the treaty the Neutral Ground became Louisiana territory and the American claim to Texas was abandoned. This treaty was signed in 1819 and soon afterward ratified, but only over great opposition in the American Southwest.

It was vehemently held along the Mississippi that Congress had no right, or power, to sell, exchange, or relinquish an "American possession." Hundreds of angry letters were mailed to Washington. Dinner talk on the subject was violent, and there were a number of protest meetings, which were attended by prominent men. One center of opposition was the frontier town of Natchez, Mississippi.

In the spring of 1819, the people of Natchez organized and equipped an expedition, "to invade Texas and establish a Republic." Dr. James Long, who had gained a reputation fighting at New Orleans, was a favorite of Andrew Jackson, and had married a niece of James Wilkinson, was elected to lead this filibuster. Dr. Long, taking along his lovely young wife and infant child, marched west from Natchez for Nacogdoches in June 1819, with eighty men. By the time he reached the Texas border, his force had swelled to three hundred, and among these was the old revolutionary, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara.

Long easily took Nacogdoches, which was almost deserted after the earlier revolution and Royalist counterrevolution. Here a solemn convention was held. Texas was declared a free and independent republic and Dr. Long was elected its President. Long then offered Texas's public lands put up for sale on generous terms, and sent men to establish posts on the Brazos and the Trinity.

Now, in September 1819, the new President of Texas set out for Galveston Island to seek assistance from the real power in the region, Jean Lafitte. On the way Long heard that a Spanish army had left Béxar for east Texas, and he sent back orders for his wife to cross over to Louisiana, while his officers were to "concentrate their forces." Then he rushed on to Galveston.

The Pirate of the Gulf received Long cordially and wished him success. But Lafitte, who had already helped another illegal expedition (some exiled Bonapartists under Generals Lallemand and Rigault, who tried to settle 120 Frenchmen on the Trinity in 1818, but were driven away), absolutely refused to become involved. He told Long coolly that no mixed group of Mexican revolutionists, American land seekers, and republican idealists could win without a large, well-disciplined army, which Long did not have.

Returning disappointed to Nacogdoches, Long learned that the Spanish General Pérez had defeated his forces, killed his brother, and captured some of his settlers. Nacogdoches itself was deserted, everyone had fled. Long crossed over into the United States, joining his wife and child.

But James Long had caught the filibuster fever. He made his way to New Orleans, talking of a new expedition. He found supporters to finance him and get him new supplies, and he fell in with Don Felix Trespalacios, a well-known Mexican Republican exile. In 1820, Long and Trespalacios, styling themselves the "Patriot Army," led an expedition by sea against the Texas coast. Mrs. Long, now with two small children, went along.

At a place called Point Bolivar, the Patriots built a tiny fort. Trespalacios then sailed down to Mexico, to spread revolution, while Dr. Long took some men and marched inland to La Bahia. Once again the old town fell to American invaders. But Royalists quickly surrounded Long's men, and the Patriots were forced to surrender. Long would have been shot, but the political climate of New Spain was now in complete flux. The leaders of the Royalists were going over to the idea of independence, and Long was, after delays, sent south to the City of Mexico.

In Mexico Long found that the Royal government had fallen; Iturbide was in power, and soon to make himself Emperor; his comrade in arms, Trespalacios, had just been appointed Governor of Texas. Dr. Long created a problem for the new regime, which did not know whether to treat him as a Republican hero or an Anglo-Saxon pirate. In the end he was shot, ostensibly as an accident, though many of his friends claimed Don Felix Trespalacios himself had given the order.

Jane Wilkinson Long, meanwhile, had remained in the tiny fort at Point Bolivar on Galveston Bay. When news of Long's capture reached there, the small garrison of Patriots voted to go back to New Orleans. All the men sailed away, leaving Jane Long, her two tiny children, and a single Negro girl behind. Mrs. Long was not yet twenty-one years of age.

The two women and two children survived the winter of 1812 mainly through courage. For some time their only food was oysters the slave girl clawed up from Galveston Bay. Once Indians appeared. Jane Long loaded and touched off one of the small cannon the Patriot Army had abandoned at the fort. The savages sheered away.

At last, a Mexican messenger rode into this deserted stretch of coast, with news that Dr. Long was dead. The indomitable Jane Long now rode to Béxar, and from Béxar to Monterrey, many hundreds of miles. She was determined to have her husband's killer punished. Finally, she realized that, despite the protestations of sympathy polite Mexicans gave her everywhere, nothing was going to be done. She went back to Mississippi on horseback.

Years later she returned to Texas and settled at Richmond near the coast. She died in 1880, honored by most of the people of the state as a heroic pioneer.

The treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States finally ended two decades of hostility, confusion, and bloodshed. As part of the price of acquiring Florida, the United States officially renounced its claim to Texas. Disturbed by the constant intrusion of Americans into Spanish territory, President Madison had ordered American citizens not to enter Texas; however, the fact that Mexico declared independence from Spain, thus destroying the professed rationale of the filibusters, did more to bring the era to its end. Long was the last of the true filibusters in Texas.

The warlike expeditions, and the Mexican revolution of 1810, had a disastrous effect upon the province. In effect, most of the Spanish progress of the preceding century was destroyed. General Arredondo executed or exiled one thousand people, approximately one-third the Texas Spanish population. In the aftermath of Long's filibuster, royal officers drove away more settlers. Much of the improved farmlands around San Antonio, and in east Texas, went back to waste. Travelers crossing Spanish Texas faced a risk of starvation, and for some years even at Béxar food was scarce. The great problem was underpopulation. There were 30,000 untamed Indians in the province, but fewer than 4,000 Europeans, when the era of the filibusters closed.

In 1821, the United States Navy forced Jean Lafitte to halt his buccaneering operations in the Gulf. Lafitte abandoned his base on Galveston Island and disappeared from history. Some said he died a few years later on the high seas, at the hands of Spain. There were lasting rumors that Lafitte buried an enormous treasure on one of the sandy islands off the Texas coast. But, like the rest of the filibusters, Lafitte left nothing but romantic and bloody legends behind.

Chapter 9

THE EMPRESARIOS

They are a strange people, and must be studied to be managed. They have high ideas of national dignity, should it be openly attacked, but will sacrifice national dignity, and national interest, too, if it can be done in a "still" way, or so as not to arrest public attention. "Dios castiga el escándalo más que el crimen" (God punishes the exposure more than the crime) is their motto. The maxim influences their morals and their politics. I learned it when I was there in 1822, and I now believe that if I had not always kept it in view, and known the power which "appearances" have on them, even when they know they are deceived, I should never have succeeded to the extent I have done in Americanizing Texas.