Nolan's business was mustanging—gathering wild horses in Texas and selling them to the burgeoning market in the South. He scouted Texas thoroughly and was the first English-speaking person to make an accurate map. In his business and his map-making, Nolan saw Spanish weakness, and smelled the heady scent of empire. Already, there was something about the open spaces of Texas that strongly affected the Anglo-Celtic mind.
In 1797, Nolan presented the Baron de Carondelet, Governor of Louisiana, with a copy of his Texas map and received a contract to sell horses to a Louisiana regiment. Both men knew his operations were in Texas, and therefore, illegal. Carondelet and his Texas colleague, Muñoz, were not always on the best of terms. More important, Nolan also entered into a secret compact with General James Wilkinson, commander of the United States Army. Wilkinson suggested that Nolan get together some good men and detach Texas from New Spain, with the General's clandestine support.
In October 1800, Nolan reentered Texas with a party of about twenty armed Americans and some personal slaves. This was ostensibly to be just another mustang raid. But the new Texas governor, Juan Bautista de Elguezábal, was gripped by an attitude approaching phobia toward all Anglo-Americans. This feeling was rapidly becoming dominant on the Spanish-American frontier. Elguezábal, aware that there were already American squatters in parts of east Texas, issued orders that all North Americans whose conduct was the least suspicious should be arrested. Nolan fully qualified; in fact, the Spanish claimed to have evidence that he planned to foment a revolution and make himself King of Texas.
Standing orders were issued to "put Nolan out of the way" if he ever again returned to Texas.
Nolan met a Spanish patrol in east Texas but was able to face these men down. He got as far as the Brazos River and had assembled three hundred horses, before a full company under Lieutenant Musquiz tracked him down. Musquiz surrounded the American camp by night and attacked it at dawn.
In a brief, sharp fight, Nolan was shot and killed. Peter Ellis Bean took command of his forces, but, outnumbered and almost out of ammunition, Bean surrendered to Musquiz, on his own assumption that the Americans would be sent back to the United States. The Spanish officer instead marched them into Mexico, after noting in his journal: "Nolan's negroes begged permission to bury their master's body, which I granted after causing his ears to be cut off in order to send them to the Governor of Texas."
Nothing was known in the United States of Nolan's fate for many years. His men were held in Mexico pending a Royal decision on what should be done with them. This did not arrive, with Spanish slowness, until 1807. The King decreed that every fifth man should be hanged as a pirate, and the rest sentenced to ten years' hard labor.
Meanwhile, all but nine of the party of twenty had died of prison or hardship. The Spanish official empowered to execute the King's orders took this as a mitigating circumstance, and decided only one American should be hanged. The survivors were assembled on their knees before a military drum, blindfolded, and threw dice from a crystal tumbler. The lowest, and fatal, number was thrown by Ephraim Blackburn, who, Spanish records show, was duly hanged. The rest were marched to Acapulco, which then was hardly an Anglo-American resort.
The fate and even the names of all except Peter Ellis Bean were lost. Bean was a recalcitrant but remarkably resourceful prisoner. He once threw his plate in a Spanish priest's face; he tried to escape several times; and he was once tortured by being placed in stocks and left for fifteen days. When revolution against the Crown broke out in Mexico in 1810, Bean at once volunteered to join the Royal army and fight. He was released. At the first opportunity, he deserted to the revolutionary general Morelos, and talked Morelos into sending him back to the United States to win American sympathy and aid. Bean arrived again in New Orleans in 1814, in time to fight the British in Andrew Jackson's army. Surviving all this, he returned to Mexico a few years later, after independence, and was made a colonel in the Republican army. He married rich, and died in bed.
Meanwhile, Nolan's sponsor, General Wilkinson, was busy with many things. Wilkinson was another of that series of fantastic figures of the Southwestern frontier. Like St. Denis, he wore his nation's uniform—but his service was always strictly for himself. He was not typical—but not entirely unusual for the times. Neither the American army nor diplomatic service was yet professional; men went in and out of offices as their influence allowed, but few thought in terms of a federal career. Wilkinson became one of the greatest double agents—but not quite traitors—of all times.
Before he assumed command of the U.S. Army, he had been part of conspiracies against George Washington, George Rogers Clark, Mad Anthony Wayne, Kentucky, Virginia, and the United States itself. In 1787, Wilkinson traveled down to New Orleans. While in command of the Kentucky militia, he made a secret concordat with Spain. He became a Spanish citizen, promised to separate the Western counties from the United States, and went back north with Miró's gold. He almost fomented a war between Kentucky and Virginia, but survived with reputation intact and was rewarded with command of the army. When he took command in Louisiana, after Jefferson's purchase, he was still a citizen of Spain, and drawing Spanish gold in return for regular reports on what the anglo-sajones of the North were plotting next. At the same time, he spoke regularly to important Americans about the possibility of detaching Texas from New Spain.
When Wilkinson and United States forces entered Louisiana on the authority of the Purchase, there was an extremely delicate diplomatic situation. At first, the Spanish refused to evacuate; the return of the province to France in 1800 had been kept secret, and the French tricolor had gone up just shortly before. Finally, Spain gave in—only to be stunned once more.
The United States government insisted that it had bought not only Louisiana, but everything north and east of the Rio Grande as well. The French, to sweeten the Louisiana pot, had revived their old claims to Texas, and sold them as part of the Purchase. President Jefferson indicated to Spain that he expected their people to evacuate Texas, with great popular support. Now, there was extreme tension on the Texas-U.S. border. Spain responded by throwing more troops into east Texas, and by standing fast. They argued that even Napoleon could not sell a province he had never owned.
With Texas unresolved, there was another, more immediate problem. Since the days of St. Denis, the actual border between Texas and Louisiana had never been surveyed or defined; it had been a matter of gentleman's agreement between the Spanish and the French. But the new Yankees on the border were much more difficult to reason with than the French. Spain put soldiers across the Sabine, at the old post of Los Adaes; the Americans demanded their removal, and before they were removed, there was almost open war. The Americans now insisted the boundary was along the Sabine; the Spanish held it extended south directly from the Red.
Wilkinson arrived on this messy scene and personally took charge. He opened a lengthy protocol with the Spanish over the boundary question, and while this was going on, dispatched a New Jersey officer, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, to scout New Mexico. Whatever Wilkinson's motives—probably to foment a war of nerves—this action was remarkable in light of the touchy diplomatic situation.
Wilkinson had other irons in the fire. He informed the British government about a possible Anglo-American invasion of New Spain. When he had the British interested, he informed the Spanish ambassador that Great Britain was plotting against Spain. Spain increased his pay. Meanwhile, Wilkinson pulled his greatest coup of all; he caught the imagination of the Vice-President of the United States, Aaron Burr.
Wilkinson mentioned the possibility of detaching Texas, New Mexico, and perhaps even Mexico itself from Spain. The original idea was Wilkinson's, but Burr, who, whatever his faults, was a man of action, "matured it." Making, as he thought, a secret compact with Wilkinson that the general would resign and join his project at the proper time, Burr made a trip west in 1805, seeking support, raising men and arms and shipping to carry them down the Mississippi. By this time, Bu
rr had left the office of Vice-President.
What the result of this grand design would have been can only be conjecture. Wilkinson had overplayed his hand. He was having difficulty in keeping federal politicians off his back, and the Spanish themselves were getting suspicious. If Spain revealed his secret dealings—or even the fact he was a Spanish subject—Wilkinson would be a candidate for a firing squad. Now, realizing his schemes could no longer be sustained, Wilkinson extracted himself with brilliance, if utter immorality.
He wrote President Jefferson that he was on the trail of a great conspiracy. Having caught Jefferson's interest, he next revealed the traitor's name: Aaron Burr. For Jefferson, and for a great part of the country, he could not have named a more fortunate choice. Burr was unpopular; now he became an arch-ogre. To defray his great expenses in tracking his conspiracy down, Wilkinson asked the President for a large sum of money, and collected.
With great cunning, Wilkinson did not accuse Burr of conspiring against Texas or New Spain. That sort of filibustering was not quite treason. Instead, he personally preferred charges that Burr was out to separate Kentucky and the Louisiana Purchase from the United States. He personally ordered Burr's arrest. Wilkinson was the sole source of this charge, and he was to be the principal witness at Burr's ensuing treason trial. Whatever else this did—Burr was acquitted on a technicality—it effectively silenced Burr, who otherwise might have talked and brought Wilkinson down in his own destruction. The Burr Conspiracy, and James Wilkinson, have always been unhappy subjects for the historian. One capable scoundrel can cause enormous riptides in the currents of history, which makes rational study dangerous. There is strong evidence to suggest that all Wilkinson's plots and counterplots were done for only one reason: to frighten Spain and therefore permit him to extort money from Spain for information. Having shaken the United States government to its roots by accusing Burr, Wilkinson sent pertinent parts of the story on to Madrid, and in return for revealing this great danger and quickly scotching it, he received a handsome sum of gold.
Then, in 1806, before quitting Louisiana and journeying to Burr's trial, Wilkinson called a conference with General Herrera, in command of the east Texas forces of Spain. He proposed the border situation be settled amicably; he agreed to accept a buffer or neutral zone between the Sabine and the Arroyo Hondo, a tiny tributary of the Red. This moved the U.S. boundary seven miles to the east. Neither Herrera nor Wilkinson had the least authority to negotiate a treaty, but Wilkinson proposed that it was stupid for them, as professional soldiers, to fight over something their respective governments would soon work out. Herrera gratefully agreed, and, since the protocol was favorable to Spain, he was upheld.
Wilkinson might have been in serious trouble for giving United States territory away. But Wilkinson, again, had read Thomas Jefferson rightly; he knew the last thing the Administration wanted was a Spanish war. He was commended for his actions. He passed out of history peacefully, like the Chevalier de St. Denis.
The Neutral Ground, as it was called, proved a legacy of trouble, not from the Spanish, but from the swarm of outlaws that quickly congregated there. Neither Spain nor the United States had jurisdiction, and under the terms of the protocol, neither could send in its officers or troops. For six years, some of the worst desperadoes the old border had ever known, thieves, murderers, and smugglers, found it a perfect haven. The situation, from the American side, became intolerable when the 1810 Revolution against the Crown broke out in Mexico, and quickly spread to Texas. Law and order dissolved west of the Sabine. Many Mexican revolutionaries fled into the Neutral Ground. Finally, Lieutenant Augustus Magee of the United States Army was authorized to clean the strip out.
Magee, who was a hardheaded frontier officer, quickly broke up the robber gangs. Some inhabitants of the strip were killed in fighting, a few were hanged, and Magee, to show the United States meant business, had the prisoners his men took tied to posts and flogged. The strip did not again cause trouble.
But now Augustus Magee, looking across the Sabine to Texas, caught the heady scent of empire. In New Spain, the Revolution had failed: the powers of the Crown, Church, and Army had killed Hidalgo and crushed his Indian and mestizo followers. But Texas and Mexico still seethed with frustrated Republicans, and some of these had sought refuge in the Neutral Ground. Magee met some of these men, who were both educated and idealistic, and they implanted the notion in him that the Royalists in Texas were both corrupt and ripe.
Magee, who was no idealist, also was familiar with Zebulon Pike's experiences in the West. Pike had ventured into New Mexico on Wilkinson's orders, and deliberately, it seems, planted the United States flag at a little fort beside the Upper Rio Grande. It is not known what Wilkinson's intention was, except perhaps further to frighten Spain.
If so, he succeeded. Spanish documents show that the civil, military, and ecclesiastical authorities in New Mexico felt consternation at the appearance of the U.S. flag on their soil. A detachment of soldiers was sent to arrest Pike. But he was an entirely different proposition from the piratical Nolan: Pike was an officer on the regular service of a bordering and quite truculent power, and there was no question of hanging him. The governor of New Mexico hit upon the happy idea that Pike had merely lost his way, which Zebulon Pike, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, let stand. Pike was taken to Santa Fé, wined, dined, shown the extreme courtesy of which highborn Spaniards were capable, and sent back to New Orleans via Chihuahua and San Antonio de Béxar. Shortly afterward, the Spanish government sent three companies of troops on a march from Béxar to Santa Fé, directly across Comanche country, probably as a show of force to prove to the Americans that Texas was still theirs.
Pike kept a clear, trained eye on his travels through New Mexico, Texas, and New Spain. His puritanical Yankee soul was astounded at the luxury of Spanish officialdom—Spanish officers traveled about with burros loaded with delicacies and wines. But he also saw and reported the rags and indiscipline of the common soldiery. Spanish culture had frozen on this frontier. Spanish cavalry was armed with shield and lance. The militia carried old musketoons and even crossbows. If it came to war, this country was ripe for plucking, or so many Americans thought.
Lieutenant Magee was already toying with the notion of empire when his own government made up his mind. Although he had a good record, he failed promotion to captain. Convinced that the cause of Republican liberty in Texas was being lost mainly because there was no competent soldier west of the Sabine to lead it, Magee resigned his commission in January 1812, and appointed himself a colonel in the "Republican Army of the North," which he now proceeded to raise.
These were extremely confused and bloody times in New Spain, or Mexico. For a generation social tensions had been rising in the Spanish empire, based on poverty, political oppression, racial antagonism, and the clash of castes. The ideas of the American and French revolutions touched a few highly educated or prominent men and created republican sentiment. However, the first real crack in the structure came when Napoleon, invading Spain, forced the Bourbon King off his throne, in 1808. This caused a guerrilla war in Spain, and it paralyzed the Americas. All power, and all initiative, rested with the Crown, which was suddenly and disastrously defunct. No council, governor, or viceroy in America recognized French rule or Joseph Napoleon—but Ferdinand VII, for a time in French hands, could not rule either. In America, in a time of great tension, there developed a fatal interregnum. The whole, overcentralized structure of Spanish government rapidly crumbled.
In 1810, a mestizo priest, Hidalgo, raised the grito or shout of revolt against the government in Dolores. This was much more a social insurrection than either a republican movement or a national rebellion against Spain. With a horde of Indians and mestizos of the lower castes, some of whom were soldiers, Hidalgo seized the city of Guanajuato, looted it, and set up a provisional government. Soon afterward, he captured Guadalajara, and the provinces of Nuevo Santander and Coahuila—on the Texas border—went over to him. The civil
insurrection was now a full-scale revolution.
But this revolt divided, rather than unified, the population of Mexico. The traditional arbiters of the Spanish state, the latifundistas or landowners, the army, and the Church, and most of the professional and merchant middle class stood with the Crown. Significantly, the revolutionaries came predominantly from the lowest classes, and most of their leadership came from the lower orders of the Catholic clergy. This was a people's revolt against intolerable conditions, not a declaration of independence on the North American order. The threat of social revolution threw most propertied and educated Mexicans on the Spanish side; this alliance doomed Hidalgo and his horde. The revolution failed to take the capital, and one by one its leaders were captured and shot by the superior Spanish soldiery.
The Spanish people of Texas at the outset declared loyalty to the King. But then, volatile, the Bexarites revolted, seized General Simón Herrera and Governor Manuel María de Salcedo—then reinstated them. The entire social order of New Spain, with the power of the Crown gone, resembled nothing so much as a headless chicken, floundering about.
The execution of Hidalgo, Matamoros, and other leaders did not stamp out the revolution. A smoldering guerrilla warfare continued. One of the leaders of this was Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, a wealthy citizen of Revilla in Nuevo Santander, just south of the Rio Bravo. Gutiérrez was a man of profound republican feeling, and he fled to the United States to whip up sentiment for the revolutionaries. He spent time in Philadelphia and New Orleans, unsuccessfully, and then set up a sort of headquarters in exile at Natchitoches on the Texas-Louisiana border. Here he carried on a correspondence with the Texas republicans and suddenly interested Augustus Magee. Magee and Gutiérrez planned to invade Texas, with Gutiérrez in command for obvious political reasons, but with Colonel Magee and his Army of the North doing the dirty work. Gutiérrez began to flood Texas with pamphlets and broadsides; Magee went to New Orleans to recruit men.
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