Texas by James A. Michener
Mattie, who befriended everyone, even Karankawa, was especially strong in her condemnation of the proposed law: ‘Niggers ain’t really human. I don’t yearn to own none, but those good folks who bring ’em here ought to be protected in their property.’
This question so agitated the settlers that a delegation of three planters, led by Jubal Quimper, went resolutely down to Austin’s headquarters and told him bluntly: ‘Our liberties must be preserved.’ And with that simple statement arose the tantalizing ethical issue which would plague Texas for decades, because good-hearted men like Jubal Quimper honestly believed that their freedom could be ensured only by the right to enslave others.
Austin, perceiving the moral wrong in this position, laid bare his honest feelings: ‘Gentlemen, I tell you frankly that I oppose slavery with every fiber of my body, now and forever. I condemn it four times. It’s bad for society in general. It’s bad for commerce. And bad for both master and slave. Never have I departed from this belief and never shall I. The wise men in Saltillo who framed our constitution knew what they were doing, and they did it well. Slavery should be outlawed.’
There could have been no statement of principle more unequivocal than that, and it persuaded Quimper, who spoke for the others: ‘You’re right, Stephen. What we need is a whole new start. No masters. No slaves.’
But no sooner had Quimper renewed his support than an extraordinary reversal occurred, for that night Austin began to review the problem, not according to his personal convictions but according to his role as leader of a tentative colony not yet securely based, and the more he studied reality the more convinced he became that Tejas had little chance of survival if it failed to attract hundreds or even thousands of established Southern gentlemen who would bring with them prosperity and culture. In an open meeting next morning he attacked the philosophical problem first.
‘Gentlemen, order, order. I do not derogate the great states of Kentucky and Tennessee from which many of our finest settlers have come, nor do I speak against any man standing here. But I have become painfully aware that our colony can progress only if we attract in large numbers families of wealth, high cultural attainment and sound moral training from our educated Southern states like Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. When they join us with their books, their wealth and their long experience in trade, they will make Tejas a state of which we shall be proud.’
There was a long silence while the inescapable truth of what he had said was judged, and then Quimper cried: ‘You’re right, Stephen. We need schoolteachers and men who know the Bible.’
While many nodded and some whispered, Austin waited, almost afraid to point out the consequences of what he had just said, but finally he summoned courage and spoke: ‘Such men will not join us if they cannot bring their slaves. What white man could grow sugar cane in our steaming river bottoms? What white man from Alabama could toil under our blazing sun chopping cotton? Then pick it? Then haul it to the gin? Only Negroes can do such work, and slavery seems to be the pattern ordained by God for handling them. It is clear that Tejas must have slavery or perish.’
So Jubal Quimper, in a committee of seven, only one of whom owned slaves, helped Austin draft an appeal to the state government in Saltillo and the national government in Mexico City, explaining that whereas the abolishment of slavery was unquestionably right for the rest of the nation, it was not appropriate, at this time, in a frontier region like Tejas: ‘We cannot work our fields without slaves, and we cannot populate our empty spaces unless men of property from the Southern states of America are permitted to bring their slaves with them.’ Austin, a man who hated slavery, had become its champion.
During the trip back home Quimper reviewed the sudden shifts of their leader: ‘First he was stern morality: “Slavery must be abolished.” Then he was all for the South: “They must be allowed to bring in their slaves.” I wonder where he really stands? Matter of fact, I wonder where I stand.’
This moral confusion on the part of Austin and his adherents would continue, for when Austin concocted a dream for enticing thousands of German and Swiss settlers, he became an ardent opponent of slavery, in deference to their known dislike for keeping anyone in bondage:
‘The possibility of such a country as Tejas being overrun by a slave population almost makes me weep. Slavery is an injustice and a demoralizing agent in society. When I started this colony I was forced to tolerate it for a while, because I had to draw upon the slave states for my emigrants. But slavery is now most positively prohibited by our Mexican constitution and I hope it may always be so, for it is a curse of the curses and one of the worst reproaches of civilized man.’
But later he would be forced once more to consider the realities of settlement, and again he would reverse himself completely:
‘I used to oppose slavery, but during the last six months I have had to restudy the matter and now conclude that Texas must be a slave country. Circumstances and unavoidable necessity compel it. It is the wish of the people, and I shall do all I can, prudently, in favor of it. I will do so.’
Quimper, listening to this speech, noticed that Austin had dropped the Spanish Tejas in favor of the English Texas, indicating serious doubt that his colony could long remain with Mexico, which he also now pronounced in the American fashion. Never again would his friends hear him use the Spanish names which he had tried so faithfully to defend but which he now abandoned forever.
Jubal’s attention to such heady political matters was diverted in late 1828 by an exciting letter from his former lawyer in Gallatin, Tennessee:
Jubal, I send you great news! Your persecutor, Hammond Carver, was killed in a duel, and this legally terminates his case against you. I have ascertained from his survivors that they have no intention of resurrecting the suit, and they have acknowledged in writing that the contested land is yours, along with all the buildings on it. You find yourself not a rich man but one with ample fields and some money, which you can claim only by coming here in person. Do so immediately, for you and Mattie have many friends in these parts who are eager to see you resume your life among them.
This heaven-sent opportunity to escape the tensions of a frontier Texas made Jubal realize how much he longed for the stability of a settled Tennessee, and he was ready to depart immediately: ‘Mattie! We’re free to go home!’
She deflated his enthusiasm by saying with bulldog stubbornness: ‘I have no wish to see Tennessee again,’ and he began placing before her all the reasons why they should return to the pleasant life that they could now have in Gallatin: ‘Arthur says we won’t be really rich, but we’ll have enough to buy us a couple of slaves. You won’t have to worry about the ferry, and we won’t have strangers traipsin’ into our home. More important, we can have real walls and windows.’
He threw at her an impressive summary of the differences between civilized Tennessee and barbarian Texas, but in the end she countered with an incontestable reply: ‘I like it here.’ And in fragmentary comments she let him and Yancey know how deeply Texas had infected her: ‘Nothin’ I saw in Tennessee is better than that clump of oak trees in the meadow.’ During another debate she said: ‘I like the Brazos, the way it rises and falls, like it had a will of its own.’ On a different day she said: ‘My heart beats faster when a stranger comes to the door at night, needin’ food—and we have it.’ And finally: ‘Like a rock gatherin’ moss, I’ve allowed Texas to grow over me, and I admire the feel.’
Guarding each word, she said: ‘You and Yancey can go back and settle the claim, and if you’re so minded, you can stay. I’ll give you your freedom, in the courts if you wish, but this is now my home and I expect to end my days runnin’ my ferry.’
The force of her statement made Jubal pause. Twice he started to speak but could find no words, then abruptly he turned away and went to walk beneath the oak trees that Mattie loved so deeply, and as he tried to see their new home through her eyes he began to appreciate why she loved Texas and was so unwilling to l
She cherished his embrace but did not wish to impede him: ‘If your heart’s set on Tennessee …’
‘Hush! I’ll go back, sell the land, and buy some lumber in New Orleans. I’m goin’ to build you a proper house.’ With this commitment, from which he would never deviate, Jubal Quimper became a Texican.
That day Mattie, with a song trembling on her lips, started to pack the goods her two men would require for their long trip, but her work was interrupted by Yancey, who came whispering: ‘I don’t want to go. Indians and that Strip and all,’ and she could guess that what really held him back was his memory of that fistfight with the smaller boy. What will happen to him? she asked herself. A boy who refuses a journey up the Mississippi?
She had finished packing when a cloud of dust appeared from the south; Benito Garza was on his way to New Orleans with another convoy of mules for the American army. He was twenty-two now, a slim, neat fellow with a small mustache, an ingratiating smile and a fair command of English: ‘This time I take the mules myself. I do not need guide of trader from San Antonio.’
He had brought with him a Mexican boy, no more than fourteen, and a large remuda of some three dozen mules, which he hoped to augment as he moved north: ‘I like to buy any mules you might have, Señor Quimper?’ When Jubal said he had none, Garza asked: ‘Is it true, señor? You’re going to Tennessee?’
‘I must.’
‘A town on the Mississippi?’
‘It’s a state. Like Coahuila-y-Tejas.’
‘But it is on the Mississippi?’ When Quimper nodded, the ebullient young man slapped himself on the knee and cried: ‘Then you must come with us! Save time, save money. Catch a steamboat up the river!’ And he worked his arms like the pistons of a riverboat, spouting imaginary steam with his mouth and sounding a whistle. Mattie was enthusiastic about such a plan and tried to persuade her son, now sixteen, to go along: ‘You can help manage the mules, and you’ll see the steamboat,’ but he still refused to go, not wishing to take such risks.
The two men left in October and wandered up the Goliad Road with some fifty mules, adding to them at the Trinity and then keeping to the southernmost route along the Gulf till they crossed the Sabine into Louisiana. There they found tolerable roads leading to New Orleans, where Jubal stayed in Mexican lodgings with his two companions. He told Garza as the latter dickered with the American authorities over the prices of his mules: ‘Benito, I’d enjoy travelin’ with you some time again. You know how to move about.’ And Garza said: ‘You’d be welcome. I need to practice English if so many of you are coming to Tejas.’
‘You must. Because I’m tellin’ you … I’m warnin’ you, really, Texas won’t be Mexican forever.’
‘I think it will be,’ Garza said, and when they were back in their mean quarters he asked Quimper: ‘How long, señor, have you been in Tejas?’ and Quimper thought a moment, then said: ‘Six years,’ and Garza laughed: ‘Señor! And you’re telling me who is to run Tejas! My people explored Tejas three hundred years ago.’
Quimper considered this, then said with no rancor: ‘Amigo, that may have ensured you a foothold in what you call Tejas. But in the Texas that’s comin’ you better speak like an American and think like one, or you’re goin’ to be homeless,’ and the young man snapped: ‘Garzas will be living here when you’ve run back to Tennessee.’
The only thing about Garza that Quimper did not like was this quickness at resenting whatever the young man interpreted as an insult to his Hispanic heritage: ‘If you’re goin’ to live in a white man’s state, Benito, you mustn’t be so touchy.’
‘But I am a white man, and Tejas is my state.’ Quimper let the matter drop, for he no longer tried to understand how the Hispanic mind worked.
When Quimper left the Mississippi riverboat at Memphis and started overland to Nashville, he experienced several moments of solemn discovery: Tennessee is so cramped compared to Texas … A man can hardly breathe, hemmed in by all these trees. He did enjoy the snug little towns and the orderly plantations manned by slaves, but repeatedly he caught himself longing for the Brazos and the great, open freedom of Texas: I’ll sell the land and get back home.
He spent his first two weeks in Nashville listening to talk about those events which had occurred since his hasty departure in 1822: ‘We got ourself a great new governor, Sam Houston, him as fought with Andy Jackson against the Indians at Horseshoe Bend. Strong man, strong ideas, outstandin’ patriot. Goin’ to be President of the United States one of these days.’
Wherever he moved he heard good reports of Houston: ‘Big man, you know. Brave, too. Lived among the Indians. Speaks their language, I’m told. Taller than that post, I’d judge.’
‘How did he become governor?’
‘Oh, he was a military hero! General Jackson thought very highly of him, and that helped him get elected to the Congress, in Washington. How many terms did he serve, Jake? Three?’
‘Two,’ Jake said. ‘Could of been elected permanent, or senator, either. But we wanted him for governor, and with Andy Jackson’s help, we got him.’
Quimper had no opportunity to see Houston in Nashville, for men explained that the governor had business to the east: ‘You know, he’s standin’ for reelection this year. Foolish for anyone to run against him, most popular man in the state.’
By the time Quimper left Nashville for the short trip to Gallatin he had heard so much about Houston that he said, on his last night in town: ‘He’s the kind of man we could use in Texas,’ but his fellow diners dismissed the idea: ‘His home’s in Tennessee. Hell, he is Tennessee.’
When Quimper arrived in his old hometown of Gallatin he heard only one topic of conversation: ‘Little Eliza Allen of our town! She’s goin’ to marry the governor! Tomorrow!’ Since the Aliens were among the leading citizens in Gallatin, Jubal did not know them socially, but he was pleased to think that if the wedding was public, he would have a chance to see and perhaps even meet Sam Houston.
The celebrations took place in January 1829, and they were a sumptuous affair, for not often did a small town like Gallatin find one of its daughters marrying the governor of a state, a man certain to be reelected, and after a term or two in the federal Senate, perhaps be elected to the presidency. Several score of guests rode out from Nashville and others came long distances from the eastern part of the state, where Houston had once lived. He was a rising star with whom politicians of all stripes wished to be associated, and when Quimper saw him, a giant of a man, and holding on to his arm a delicate little woman dressed in white with just a touch of pink in her ribbons, he was awed: He looks like a governor! He looks like a Texican! I was right when I said we could use him.
When the wedding was solemnized in high form, Quimper found himself thinking: Not much like the mass unions that Father Clooney celebrates, and he felt a longing for that simpler life: I know what Mattie meant. I couldn’t live here in Gallatin after that free life on the rivers.
But such thoughts were expelled that night when, at about ten, the men of town were nicely inebriated and someone shouted: ‘Let’s give the governor and his lady a real shivaree!’ Nearly a hundred drunks assembled outside the tavern with horns and drums and washboards and bugles and tin pots. Led by one of Eliza’s cousins, the crowd surged along the streets, gathering recruits, until it reached the small house in which the governor and Eliza were spending their first night together.
There a noise was generated which had not been matched since the explosion of a powder depot some years before. Horns blared, men bellowed, drums were banged, and the night was made raucous with a serenade whose tradition dated back two thousand years. A marriage was being launched, and the community wished to mark this mystical occasion not only with prayers but also with riotous celeb
It was a shivaree honoring a great and much-loved man, a man of dignity and power, and all who shattered the night did so in hopes that somehow their destiny would be matched to his. But it was also a serenade to a gentlewoman whom the town loved, and after a while the men started a chant:
‘Eliza! Eliza! The world’s fairest flower.
Eliza! Eliza! Pray come to my bower.’
It was well after two in the morning before the barrel was empty and the tin pots beaten beyond recognition. Then off to their beds straggled the celebrants, except those who returned to the taverns, banging on the doors and demanding admittance. Quimper, remaining in the streets through the night, judged that he had never participated in a better shivaree and he doubted that anyone else had, either.
A few days later, Jubal found an opportunity to talk with Houston: ‘Governor, I’ve cast my lot with Texas, and I can see that you’re the kind of man we need down there. To pull things together before we join the Union.’
Houston, afraid that this might be a trap seducing him into some impropriety, said easily: ‘Now, sir, I can tell you that I’ve always thought well of that part of Mexico. In 18 and 22 I applied for a land grant down there. Can’t remember whether I ever received the papers or not, but I know it’s a splendid territory.’
‘You have a dazzlin’ future, Governor, Texas or wherever.’
The big man appreciated such flattery and accepted it gracefully: ‘My future’s twofold. To build a proper house for my wife and to get reelected governor of this great state. That’s enough to keep me busy.’
The next day Quimper was startled to see Governor Houston striding through town in his favorite costume: Indian garb, sandals, buckskin britches, with a bright red shawl draped about his shoulders. ‘What’s he doin’?’ Jubal asked a bystander, and the man snorted: ‘Keep watchin’. You’ll see wonders.’ And on subsequent days Houston appeared in three radically different costumes, none appropriate to his high office. Finally Jubal had to comment: ‘Governor, you seem to like unusual dress,’ to which Houston replied: ‘I dress like the land, different seasons, different colors.’