An American historian in the 19th century described the frontier vanguard in the following words:
Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they had hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their hearts' core. Their lives were harsh and narrow; they gained their bread by their blood and sweat, in the unending struggle with the wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered terrible injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers.
The Anglo-American 18th-century frontier, like that of the Spanish, was one of war. The word "Texan" was not yet part of the English language. But in the bloody hills of Kentucky and on the middle border of Tennessee the type of man was already made.
Chapter 8
THE FILIBUSTERS
In 1806, the only towns . . . as were San Antonio, numbering about 2,000 inhabitants, Goliad with perhaps 1,400, and Nacogdoches with nearly 500. In spite of the dangers that constantly threatened them, many excellent American families had settled near Nacogdoches, and these, with the officers in the Mexican army, formed the higher circles of society. Elaborate dinner-parties were given, at which the conversation was bright and sparkling, the toast-speeches witty and eloquent: toasts were always given to the King of Spain and the President of the United States. In San Antonio lived many descendants of aristocratic Spanish families; the army officers were generally men of polished manners, as they often came from the Viceregal Court of Mexico; the priests were men of learning and refinement. The governor made frequent receptions, while each night on the public square the people met to dance, to converse, to promenade, and to visit. Captain Pike, who (in 1805–6) was sent out by our government on an exploring tour, reported San Antonio to be one of the most delightful places in the Spanish colonies.
ANNA J. HARDWICKE PENNYBACKER,
in A History Of Texas For Schools, 1895
TO Spanish officers holding the west side of the Mississippi, the vision of this cold, dry, graceless, and restlessly aggressive race helping themselves to the continent was frightening. There was a historic antagonism between the Hispanic and the English-speaking worlds, rooted in the collapse of the Middle Ages. The Puritan frontiersmen still told tales of the Spanish Inquisition and thought of the King of Spain as the archtyrant; Charles III's officials were appalled at the energy and the Mammonite tendency to what they called "piracy" of the Anglo-Saxon horde. Anglosajón, in Spanish, had always a pejorative connotation, standing at best for men without manners, and at worst for rapists and looters.
The French dream of North American empire was exploded in the gunsmoke at Quebec, but Spain had inherited France's superb strategic position athwart the Mississippi. The red and gold of Leon and Castile flew over New Orleans, and Spanish cannon dominated the river. In this era before rails or efficient land transport, Spain controlled all inner America's outlet to the sea. But Spain suffered from the same deadly weakness that made the French presence in the Ohio country ephemeral. Spain ruled only some 20,000 Europeans in the entire Louisiana Territory, and most of these were Canadian French.
A few cannon and a few thousand French-speaking subjects did not make Spanish power secure. There were no troops, or even the will, in metropolitan Spain to keep a firm grasp on this outpost of empire. Spain's legal title to Louisiana was recognized by all powers, but as Spanish colonial officials well knew, history rarely turned on legality alone.
Don Francisco Bouligny, a Spanish officer commanding in Upper Louisiana, or Missouri, was the first official to recommend a rather dangerous step: to fight the Anglo-Saxon population increase by trying to incorporate it within the borders of Spain. In 1776, Bouligny recommended that immigration be opened to Anglo-Americans who were willing to change citizenship. He saw that Boonesboro and other settlements in Kentucky were now firmly fixed, and there was even an English-speaking outpost on the river, at Manchac. If the east bank became solidly English, Bouligny argued, the English would eventually dominate the country. His purpose was to suck all new settlement west of the river, under the Spanish flag. Spain would have to allow freedom from restriction and give liberal grants of land. The price the immigrants would have to pay would be loyalty to Spain.
The ethnic homogeneity of the empire had already been broken, with the incorporation of thousands of ethnic French. Most of these had made loyal subjects. Bouligny proposed that English-speaking Roman Catholics be given land grants. The law of Spain required all citizens to be Catholic and permitted no other form of worship. Bouligny's first proposal was that only Catholic Englishmen should be admitted freely, and supplied with Irish curates in the pay of the Crown.
Whatever the supply of Irish priests, however, the stumbling block was that there were no Roman Catholic Anglo-Saxons on the Mississippi frontier. In fact, there were only about 30,000 English-speaking Catholics in all British America, and none of these were in the West or could be induced to go there. Bouligny now went further: he wrote that immigration should be opened to "any individual, whatever his nation, especially if he comes with his family and his negroes." He ignored the delicate question of religion. However, Governor Gálvez understood and agreed. Louisiana officials had no power to change the law, but to create a viable community of immigrants they would have to ignore it. This, carefully never put in writing, they agreed to do. Unknown to most Anglo-Americans, or for that matter even to their own countrymen, many Spanish officials were themselves in violation of the law. They were freethinkers, or at least, Freemasons.
The American Revolution threw a stream of refugees, mostly Tories, across the Mississippi. Some even built a town along the Amité River. These people were not molested by Spanish soldiers, and, in 1779, Gálvez even paid them an official, friendly visit. When it was apparent that the United States had won its independence, most of them took the oath of allegiance to the King of Spain. In 1783, Gálvez was able to secure a Royal edict that all refugees into His Most Catholic Majesty's dominions should enjoy the right to stay. Many did.
Gálvez, and his successor, Miró, were now actually building a pluralistic society in a most unusual place, a colony of Spain.
By 1787, Miró was actively pursuing two courses of action. The Spanish Minister at Philadelphia was empowered to recruit Anglo-Americans for the Missouri country, while General James Wilkinson of Kentucky, one of the oddest and most successful scoundrels ever to wear an American uniform, was paid to separate the western settlements from the United States. As part of the conspiracy, Wilkinson secretly took an oath of allegiance to Spain and tried to foment a war between Virginia and Kentucky.
The Spanish policy of recruitment was more successful. One Revolutionary veteran, Colonel William Morgan of New Jersey, contracted to settle a number of American families at the mouth of the Ohio, at a town called New Madrid. The Spanish offered lucrative deals to responsible men who could recruit and found a colony at their own expense. They were granted the title empresario and given enormous acreages of free land. The families they brought with them were also well rewarded. Spain granted rich land—leagues of it—under terms immensely better than those administered under the public land policies of the new United States. Missouri had other advantages: the French, long before, had already wiped out the powerful Indian tribes through a combination of warfare, smallpox, and venereal disease.
Several thousand American citizens immigrated to Missouri. Among these were a number of men who later became prominent in the state. Although these colonists agreed to become Roman Catholics, they were officially assured they would be left in peace. Miró, in a private audience, smilingly insisted that it was quite all right for one
family to continue being Protestant. They did, however, all become citizens of Spain.
The Louisiana governor's plans were almost upset by the unexpected arrival of a Capuchin priest, Padre Sadella, who was sent out by the Inquisition, in Spain still a law unto itself. As reported in an official document of 1789, Miró acted quickly. He had Father Sadella arrested and shanghaied aboard a vessel bound for home. The arrest was carried out at night, and Miró pretended he had never arrived. He was quite concerned that the news of the Inquisition's interest in the affairs of Louisiana would leak out.
Angrily defending his action to the King, Miró wrote: "His Majesty ordered me to foster an increase in the population, admitting inhabitants from the Ohio country. These people were invited with the promise they would never be molested . . . the mere mention of the name of the Inquisition would stop all immigration, and cause those already here to depart." As Miró well knew, it would also have caused a riot among the Catholic, but not particularly pious, French of New Orleans.
The Anglo-American settlements in Upper Louisiana generally prospered. Despite the clash of cultures, there was no real trouble. The problems of religion were scrupulously avoided, and the problems caused by Spanish customs law were evaded by all concerned. Spanish officers either "took their bite (mordida)" or turned their backs; at any rate New Madrid and other communities did a flourishing business with Pittsburgh and other trading posts on the Ohio. Under the de jure tyranny of Spain, a handful of enlightened officials had created a de facto free society comparable to that of the United States. They considered their policies eminently successful. Missouri was filling up, with Spanish subjects whose only fault was that they still spoke English. Miró felt that a generation or two would bridge that gap, but in this he was much too sanguine, for the English-speaking would have soon predominated.
The only trouble at all came over local self-government, and this was prophetic. As empresarios, Morgan and his kind were Spanish officials; they were granted vast powers over their colonies. They were expected to run them in the manner of hidalgos. Morgan, wisely, let New Madrid hold elections and generally run itself. Although the Anglo settlers caused no trouble, Morgan's granting of self-rule aroused Spanish suspicions and fears. Miró and his officers, all aristocrats, had no trust at all that ordinary subjects could govern their own affairs. In Spanish eyes, Morgan's system was tantamount to anarchy.
Two things brought the Spanish dream of a great new Mississippi empire to an end. First, the United States was able to hold the western settlements in Kentucky, and through the device of statehood, begin its rapid, organic growth. Now, Spanish threats to close the Mississippi to Anglo shipping did not cow Kentucky, but brought the danger of a U.S.-Spanish war. Second, the fatal weakness of metropolitan Spain brought all Bouligny's, Gálvez's, and Miró's work to an ignominious end. In 1800, Napoleon, First Consul of the powerful French Republic, his ambitions blocked in Egypt, reconceived the old notion of a Gallic American empire. Napoleon forced the King of Spain to cede him Louisiana, in return for some petty Italian territory.
At this transfer, Napoleon made a solemn covenant that the French would never alienate Louisiana or let it fall into the hands of an English-speaking power. But Napoleon had broken promises before, and would again.
The British Navy, and a Negro revolt in the French possession of Haiti, again blocked the French dictator's dreams of overseas empire. By 1803, Napoleon was drawn back to brewing continental war, and he realized that the resumption of conflict with Great Britain would endanger French control of Louisiana. Almost at the same time that the French flag formally replaced the Spanish over New Orleans, Napoleon abruptly sold the whole territory, with its people and its historic claims, to the government of the United States.
The Spanish experiment with pluralism and free immigration ended abruptly in 1800, for reasons beyond Spain's control. But the policy was to influence later history, for two reasons. One was that everyone concerned considered it a great success; Napoleon's commissioner for Louisiana, after investigation, had even recommended its continuance to the Anglo-Saxon-hating leader of the French. Spain would be tempted to try it once again, in Texas. A precedent was set.
The other reason was that one of the Americans who took up lands in Missouri, and became a loyal citizen of Spain, was a Connecticut Yankee named Don Moses Austin. He and his son, as empresarios, were to bring the first Anglo-Saxon colony to the country north of the Rio Grande.
At the close of the 18th century, an exhilarating sense of opportunity pervaded the entire Anglo-American frontier. The Indians had been pushed back into northwest Ohio; settlers were in Illinois. Kentucky was a prosperous state, and only the friendly Chickasaws still held extensive lands in Tennessee. Georgia had acquired title, under federal law, to all its former Indian territories. Everywhere, thousands of settlers were pouring west, and the Territory of Mississippi was being organized. The Amerinds of the old Southwest were in their tragic half-century of full retreat toward the desiccated lands of Oklahoma.
It was now being shown that the free citizens of an egalitarian republic could exercise a far more energetic imperialism than the most corrupt ministers of a monarchical state. But Anglo-American imperialism, if that were the proper word for it, was a folk imperialism: it was largely individual enterprise. The various governments only entered the picture when a task arose too big for private citizens—such as removing all remaining Indians from their lands within the boundaries of a new state. The purpose of government, in Anglo-American thought, was not to hinder but support. And because this was a free society of white citizens, with freely elected officials, the governments were and had to be acquiescent and responsive. No ukase out of the national capital could protect the Amerinds or halt the steady encroachment west.
Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana was more in the nature of support of this movement, than of its shaping or control. In the same fashion, a few years later Americans were going into Florida, whether with Jackson in pursuit of Indians or as settlers running down fleeing slaves, and the better part of valor was to secure the land by diplomacy or purchase to avoid the risk of war.
The Americans of the Southwest had a taste of territorial expansion, and both a sense of far horizons and ethnic superiority—a feeling that then pervaded the whole English-speaking world. They were also belligerent, a lasting American folkway that seems to have formed its base in the old Southwest.
These attitudes, coupled with a lasting distaste and sense of separation from the Old World, bordering on xenophobia in some cases, were useful in the erection of a powerful and dominant United States. They did not, in intellectual terms, create for many Americans what historians call a "usable past." Hypocrisy and confusion entered into the American concept of history when the attitudes and practices of the expanding frontier were correlated with the 18th-century Atlantic manifestos, to which thousands of frontier folk never subscribed.
The British government still played its disastrous game with medals and firearms for Indian chiefs, hoping to contain the American advance. This containment effort was far too little and too late. The West was determined on three goals: more land, dominion over the continent, and expansion of its folk. The War of 1812, which established American independence beyond doubt and helped crush the Southern Indians, was entirely popular in the West. It was perhaps significant, however, that Massachusetts, still mercantile and Atlantic-oriented, almost chose secession in preference to a British war. The border was not much concerned with freedom of the seas. It was determined to have freedom of action.
The national government was frequently painfully caught between Eastern pacifism and Southwestern expansionism and belligerency, swinging one way or the other, depending on where the immediate power lay.
At the close of the 18th century, besides the woodchoppers and plantation makers of the border West, another class of expansionists was rising in the land. These were the men called filibusters, who cut a brief but bloody swath across the old Sou
thwest.
The term filibuster derived from the old English word freebooter, by which Anglo-Saxons invariably described Sir Henry Morgan and the various looters of the old Spanish Main. The word had semantic significance. Drake, Morgan, Dampier, Rogers, and Shelvocke went beyond the recognized international law. Morgan had raided the Caribbean coast and looted Panama with only the flimsiest license. But the English freebooters, in most Anglo-Saxon eyes, served a national and ethnic as well as a personally profitable purpose. The freebooters did not, or were supposed not to, attack their own kind; they confined their damage to the King of Spain—an ancient, historic, religious, and ethnic, if not always admitted, enemy.
Sir Henry Morgan, the freebooter supreme, was considered to have done necessary things his own cowardly government would not, or could not, approve. The French had this same class of entrepreneur in the Gulf and Caribbean and called them boucaniers, and in the 17th and early 18th century French and English buccaneers often were allied. Freebooter came into the French language as flibustier, and then, through a curious process, back into American English as filibuster. It carried all its emotional connotations intact. Significantly, Spanish never adopted a term for freebooter or buccaneer. All such men were called simply piratas, or pirates. When filibustero came into Spanish usage, it referred to American insurgents against the Spanish Crown.
The first of the American filibusters was Philip Nolan, mistakenly named by Edward Everett Hale as "The Man without a Country." Nolan was an educated man, who immigrated to the frontier from Ireland, with a love both for far horizons and the main chance. In the year 1785 he was known in Texas, from where he engaged in a highly dangerous and completely illegal trade with Natchez on the Mississippi. If Louisiana encouraged Anglo immigration and allowed free trade, the Governor of Texas, Manuel Muñoz, emphatically did not.
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