Two years later he rallied a small band and repeated his attack, but was again unsuccessful.1

In the same year with Long's invasion came the beginning of a movement for the peaceable occupation of Texas by colonists from the United States, under the leadership of Moses Austin, who lived in the district that was then seeking statehood under the name of Missouri. In 1819, after the conclusion of the treaty with Spain gave some assurance that Spanish grants to land in that province would be valid, Austin conceived the plan of obtaining such a grant and settling the land with Anglo-American immigrants. With the efficient help of his son Stephen he set about the work at once. At the cost of much patient effort and hardship the grant was obtained and the colony organized. Meanwhile Moses Austin died in 1821, and the completion of the enterprise devolved wholly upon his son; but there have been few men better fitted for such work than he. In the face of innumerable difficulties and discouragements he pushed it to final success. Other empresarios joined in the movement, and the colonists were soon in practical possession of the country as far west as the Guadalupe River. A century of feeble and desultory effort at colonization by the Spaniards had brought

1 For the Gutierrez-Magee and the Long invasions, see Bancroft, North Mex. States and Texas, II., 19-32; McCaleb, "The First Period of the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition" (Texas State Hist. Assoc., Quarterly, IV., 218-229); Foote, Texas and the Texans, I., 201 et seq.

to Texas a white population of less than three thousand; but in less than seven years there came four times that many colonists from the United States.' This overwhelming and still increasing majority of aggressive and determined Anglo-American pioneers had almost nothing in common with the Mexicans, and there could be no doubt that the future had a revolution in store for Texas.?

This successful colonization of Texas was to a large degree the result of the mistaken policy of Mexico herself. In 1821, when the work was just beginning, she became independent of Spain; and, in the enthusiasm of which she soon became possessed for the republican propaganda, she imagined that there must be sympathy between her own people and those of the United States. Austin's grant was confirmed on terms more liberal than the petition for it embodied. Moses Austin, whose contract was transferred to Stephen, requested a section of land for each head of a family, while the amount actually given was practically a sitio and labor, or more than seven times as much. The same amount was given each head of a family in the grants to other empresarios. One scarcely knows whether to wonder most at the spendthrift

3

4

1 Bancroft, North Mex. States and Texas, II., 76. For a summary of the history of Austin's colony, see his statement to the settlers, November 1, 1829, in Gammel, Laws of Texas, I., 3-25. 3 Gammel, Laws of Texas, I., 31.

4 A sitio, or square league, contains 4428.4 acres; a labor is one-twenty-fifth of a sitio.

policy of the Mexican government, its low estimate of Texas lands, or its intense desire for immigrants.

It was not long, however, until some of the Mexican leaders began to see the danger of colonizing Texas with a population which Mexico could not assimilate; and they undertook to stop it. The first step was the promulgation by President Guerrero, September 15, 1829, of a decree abolishing slavery in Mexico. This measure was due to the influence of J. M. Tornel, a member of the Mexican house of deputies, who intended it to establish a barrier between the United States and Mexico.1 It caused a storm of protest from Texas, which resulted in the exception of that department by a further decree of December 2, 1829.2 But Lucas Alamán, Mexican minister of foreign and internal affairs, reported to the national congress the project of a law to suspend the grants to colonists from the United States and stop the immigration.3 The law was enacted on April 6, 1830, and provision was made for the military occupation of Texas in order to enforce it. The attempt at enforcement failed, but the friction thus caused served to hasten

1 Tornel, Breve Reseña Histórica, 85.

'Translation in The Texas Gazette, January 30, 1830; quoted in full by L. G. Bugbee, in Pol. Sci. Quarterly, XIII., 656; cf. Niles' Register, XXXVIII., 291.

' Filisola, Memorias para la Historia de la Guerra de Tejas, II., 590-612; poorly translated into English in House Exec. Docs. 25 Cong., 2 Sess., XII., 351, PP. 312-322.

♦ Dublán y Lozano, Legislación Mexicana, II., 238-240; Filisola, Memorias, etc., I., 158-165.

the revolution by which Mexico lost Texas altogether.

The first serious evidence of the growth of this friction was a rising of the colonists which occurred in 1832, in the course of which all the Mexican troops were ejected from Texas. A struggle between the Mexican Liberals and the Centralists was going on contemporaneously; and by giving the insurrection the guise of a movement on behalf of the Liberals, who proved for the time successful, the Texans avoided the appearance of rebellion against the national government. They followed it up by an effort to obtain separate statehood for Texas, which had been joined with Coahuila to compose a single state of the Mexican federation, but their petition was not granted. Then came another wave of centralization in Mexico to which, by the middle of May, 1835, every district of the federation except Texas succumbed. The resistance of Texas led to a revolution, which passed in its development through two distinct phases. It took on first the aspect of a defence of the Mexican constitution by the Texans, in co-operation with the Mexican Liberals and against the encroachments of the Centralists; but early in the year 1836 it changed to a struggle for absolute independence for Texas, which ended with the defeat of the Mexicans at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836.

The constitution adopted by the republic of Texas, March 17, 1836, included a provision legal

izing slavery. Considering that the colonists were mainly from the slave-holding states, that many of them were actually slave-holders, and that a considerable number of slaves was already in the country, nothing else was to have been expected. It is, however, a mistake to suppose that the Texan constitution established slavery on what had been free soil, as may be made clear by a brief summary of the Mexican legislation on the subject. The first measure affecting the institution was the general colonization law of January 4, 1823, under which Austin's colony was established, which (article 30) provided that slaves introduced into Mexico should not be bought or sold; and that children born of slaves in that country should be free at fourteen years of age. The second enactment was a decree of the Mexican congress, adopted July 13, 1824, prohibiting the slave-trade in Mexico; but the prohibition does not seem to have been understood as preventing colonists from bringing their slaves with them. The national constitution of Mexico adopted in 1824 and continuing in force up to the time of the Texas revolution contained no provision on the subject; but the constitution of Coahuila and Texas, which was promulgated March 11, 1827, provided (article 13) that thenceforth no one should be born a slave in the state, and that after six months the introduction of slaves should be altogether forbidden. A decree, however, of the congress of the state, May 5, 1828, provided for the