Texas: A Contest of Civilizations

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1903 - Texas - 320 pages
A study based on the history of Texas.
 

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Page 154 - ART. 7. Until after the year 1840, the general congress shall not prohibit the entrance of any foreigner, as a colonist, unless imperious circumstances should require it, with respect to the individuals of a particular nation.
Page 126 - Caballada from hostile Indians, would exact a reward for their honesty. They openly carried off herds of cattle and horses from the settlements east of the Rio Grande, sparing the lives of the herdsmen, not from motives of humanity, but because they deemed it impolitic to kill those who were so useful in raising horses and mules for the benefit of the Comanches...
Page 126 - In the destruction of the Missions, the Comanches were the principal agents. Encouraged by the passive submission of the Mexicans of mixed blood, they carried their insolence so far as to ride into Bexar, and alight in the public square, leaving their horses to be caught and pastured by the obsequious soldiers of the garrison, on pain of chastisement. To raise a contribution, they would enter the town with a drove of Mexican horses, stolen by themselves, and, under pretense of having rescued the...
Page 23 - Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; Nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; Nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
Page 56 - Every day all the Indians recite in concert the text of the Christian doctrine according to the catechism of Ripalda, in the morning before work and in the evening after it. Three or four times a week the ministers instruct...
Page 197 - One work of the Consultation wns the organization of a provisional government. "The scheme adopted was double, one part providing for a civil aad the other for a military organization ; and both of them were triumphs of potential confusion and conflict of authority. The civil government was to consist of a governor and lieutenant-governor elected by the consultation. and a council made up of one member from each municipality elected by its delegates. The governor and council had illdefined and practically...
Page 216 - Naturally enough, the movement resulted in a wide extension of the slaveholding area; but the idea that it was consciously inaugurated and carried out with that object in view is too palpably mistaken to be worth discussing." The reviewer has some misgivings about this opinion. Very likely the Texas immigrants went there from economic motives; but behind the movement as a whole was a conscious notion that it was aiding slavery extension. How else can we explain the feverish anxiety of the South to...
Page 60 - Spaniard to be directing them, and four of them are not sufficient for what could be done by one. .They work, with a lack of energy corresponding to their inborn laziness, some at weaving and in the forges, and others as carpenters and bricklayers, in which trades instruction has been furnished them by the missionaries with no small endeavor for their comfort. They have been provided also with the proper tools for all these occupations. " The employment of the women and children is to spin with rough...
Page 143 - ... quantity to be allowed settlers, and while in San Antonio proposed, as we saw, a scale that Martinez approved. Reflection now caused him to submit slight changes. He proposed to allow a man, whether married or single, six hundred and forty acres, and, in addition, three hundred and twenty acres for a wife, one hundred and sixty for each child, and eighty for each slave. The total for a man with wife, child, and slave did not differ greatly under the two plans, but the man's headright — and...
Page 178 - He was received with great ceremony at Brazoria and immediately presented with the blessed resolutions. Nothing further was needed to prove to him that the conduct of the Texans had been entirely innocent and praiseworthy."1 It was not strange, therefore, that in 1835 the Texans called to mind an expedient that three years earlier, under similar circumstances, had served them so effectively. In 1835, however, a large proportion of the Texans were actually contemplating independence. But the problem...

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