Austin traveled to Mexico City to present the new constitution to the government along with a list of other demands. President Santa Ana refused to grant Texas separate status from Coahuila and threw Austin in prison on suspicion of arousing a rebellion.
Austin spent eight months in prison. In , he traveled to San Antonio to request a land grant from the Spanish governor, who initially turned him down. Austin persisted and was finally granted permission to settle Anglo families on , acres of Texas land.
Overjoyed, Austin immediately set out for the United States to begin recruiting colonists, but he became ill and died on the long journey back.
The younger Austin selected the lower reaches of Colorado River and Brazos River as the site for the colony, and the first colonists began arriving in December Over the next decade, Stephen Austin and other colonizers brought nearly 25, people into Texas, most of them Anglo-Americans. President Santa Ana refused to grant Texas separate status from Coahuila and on January 3, threw Austin in prison on suspicion of inciting insurrection. He was finally released eight months later in August Always more loyal to the United States than to Mexico, the settlers eventually broke from Mexico, with Austin in charge of the troops to form the independent Republic of Texas in Nine years later, they led the successful movement to make Texas an American state.
For a while, in , Austin toyed with the idea of abolishing collateral security for loans and basing "the credit system upon moral character alone Aware of the importance of external trade, Austin consistently urged the establishment of ports and the temporary legalization of coasting trade in foreign ships.
In lengthy arguments to various officials, he declared that the coasting trade would establish ties of mutual interest between the colonists and Mexico and enable Mexico to balance imports from England by exporting Texas cotton.
Congress legalized the port of Galveston after a survey of the pass by Austin in , and the government winked at the use of the Brazos and other landing places, but the coasting trade in foreign vessels was not established. As a result, external trade was confined to the United States.
As early as and as late as Austin was giving thought to diversion of the Missouri—Santa Fe trade to Texas, but this was another far-sighted plan that could not be realized. Harmony with state and federal authorities was indispensable to the success of the colonies. Austin clearly realized this fact and never allowed the settlers to forget the solid benefits that they received through the liberal colonization policy or their obligation to obey the laws and become loyal Mexican citizens.
He anticipated and disarmed criticism of inconvenient laws and clumsy administration and then used the patience of the colonists as evidence of good faith in begging the government for concessions. He thwarted the efforts of Haden Edwards to drag his colonists into the Fredonian Rebellion and led the militia from the Brazos and Colorado to assist Mexican troops in putting it down.
His settled policy before was to take no part in Mexican party convulsions. By Austin's various colonies comprised 8, persons, and other empresarios, though less successful, had brought in a great many more.
Naturally, it became more and more difficult for Austin to reconcile them to his cautious leadership. On the other hand, the rapid growth of the colonies, in addition to persistent efforts of the United States to buy Texas, increased the anxiety of Mexican leaders.
Their consequent attempt to safeguard the territory by stopping immigration—with other irritations—caused an insurrection, and continued friction led to revolution and independence.
The Law of April 6, , embodied the Mexican policy of stopping the further colonization of Texas by settlers from the United States.
The law proposed to annul general empresario contracts uncompleted or not begun and prohibited settlement of immigrants in territory adjacent to their native countries. In effect, it applied only to Texas and the United States. By ingenious and somewhat tortuous interpretation, Austin secured the exemption of his own colonies and the colony of Green DeWitt from the prohibition. He thereby gained a loophole for continued immigration from the United States and then turned industriously to the task of getting the law repealed.
He succeeded in this in December In the meantime, however, military measures to enforce the Law of April 6, , and imprudent administration of the tariff laws, to which the Texans became subject in September , produced the Anahuac Disturbances. Austin had been away from Texas for several months at Saltillo attending a session of the legislature, of which he was a member. It is probable that he could have averted the uprising, had he been at home.
Texas could no longer stand aside. Fortuitously Santa Anna won, and the colonists could not be diverted from claiming the reward of their valorous support. The Convention of met in October of that year to inform the government of the needs of the Texans. They wanted repeal of the prohibition against immigration from the United States, extension of tariff exemption, separation from Coahuila, and authority to establish state government in Texas.
For reasons not entirely clear these petitions were not presented to the government. Though Austin was president of the convention, he doubted the expediency of the meeting, fearing that it would stimulate suspicion of the loyalty of the colonists—all the more because the old Mexican inhabitants of San Antonio had sent no delegates to the convention.
It is easy to conclude that Austin held out hope that he might persuade these local Mexicans to take the lead in asking for reforms in a later convention; at any rate, he was in San Antonio engaged on this mission when the ground was cut from under his feet by publication of a call for a second convention to meet at San Felipe on April 1, Again Austin acquiesced and served in the convention, hoping in some measure to moderate its action.
This Convention of repeated the more important petitions of the previous meeting and went further in framing a constitution to accompany the request for state government. Though it was well known that Austin thought the movement ill-timed, the convention elected him to deliver the petitions and argue for their approval. Even men who distrusted him acknowledged his great influence with state and federal authorities.
Though Austin found loopholes allowing him to circumvent the policy, the Mexican policy angered many Anglo-American colonists who already had a long list of grievances against their distant government. In , a group of colonial leaders met to draft a constitution that would create a new Anglo-dominated Mexican state of Texas by splitting away from the Mexican-dominated Coahuila region it had previously been tied to.
The colonists hoped that by decreasing the influence of native Mexicans, whose culture and loyalties were more closely wedded to Mexico City, they could argue more effectively for American-style reforms.
Once they had hammered out a new constitution, the colonial leaders directed Austin to travel to Mexico City to present it to the government along with a list of other demands.
Austin conceded to the will of the people, but President Santa Ana refused to grant Texas separate status from Coahuila and threw Austin in prison on suspicion of inciting insurrection.
When he was finally released eight months later in August , Austin found that the Anglo-American colonists were on the brink of rebellion.
They were now demanding a Republic of Texas that would break entirely from the Mexican nation. Reluctantly, Austin abandoned his hope that the Anglo Texans could somehow remain a part of Mexico, and he began to prepare for war. The following year Austin helped lead the Texan rebels to victory over the Mexicans and assisted in the creation of the independent Republic of Texas.
Defeated by Sam Houston in a bid for the presidency of the new nation, Austin instead took the position of secretary of state. He died in office later that year. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Similar to Adolf Hitler, Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini did not become the dictator of a totalitarian regime overnight.
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