Remember the Alamo [11]
"Yet the strife for liberty went on."
"It did. Two years afterwards, Magee and Bernardo, with
twelve hundred Americans, raised the standard of independence
on the Trinity River. I saw them them{sic} take this very
city, though it was ably defended by Salcedo. They fought
like heroes. I had many of the wounded in my house. I
succored them with my purse.
"It was a great deed for a handful of men."
"The fame of it brought young Americans by hundreds here. To
a man they joined the Mexican party struggling to free
themselves from the tyranny of old Spain. I do not think any
one of them received money. The love of freedom and the love
of adventure were alike their motive and their reward."
"Mexico owed these men a debt she has forgotten."
"She forgot it very quickly. In the following year, though
they had again defended San Antonio against the Spaniards, the
Mexicans drove all the Americans out of the city their rifles
had saved."
"You were here; tell me the true reason."
"It was not altogether ingratitude. It was the instinct of
self-preservation. The very bravery of the Americans made the
men whom they had defended hate and fear them; and there was
a continual influx of young men from the States. The Mexicans
said to each other: `There is no end to these Americans.
Very soon they will make a quarrel and turn their arms against
us. They do not conform to our customs, and they will not
take an order from any officer but their own.'"
Houston smiled. "It is away the Saxon race has," he said.
"The old Britons made the same complaint of them. They went
first to England to help the Britons fight the Romans, and
they liked the country so well, they determined to stay there.
If I remember rightly the old Britons had to let them do so."
"It is an old political situation. You can go back to Genesis
and find Pharaoh arguing about the Jews in the same manner."
"What happened after this forcible expulsion of the American
element from Texas?"
"Mexican independence was for a time abandoned, and the
Spanish viceroys were more tyrannical than ever. But
Americans still came, though they pursued different tactics.
They bought land and settled on the great rivers. In eighteen
twenty-one, Austin, with the permission of the Spanish viceroy
in Mexico, introduced three hundred families."
"That was a step in the right direction; but I am astonished
the viceroy sanctioned it."
"Apodoca, who was then viceroy, was a Spaniard of the proudest
type. He had very much the same contempt for the Mexicans
that an old English viceroy in New York had for the colonists
he was sent to govern. I dare say any of them would have
permitted three hundred German families to settle in some part
of British America, as far from New York as Texas is from
Mexico. I do not need to tell you that Austin's colonists are
a band of choice spirits, hardy working men, trained in the
district schools of New England and New York--nearly every one
of them a farmer or mechanic."
"They were the very material liberty needed. They have made
homes."
"That is the truth. The fighters who preceded them owned
nothing but their horses and their rifles. But these men
brought with them their wives and their children, their
civilization, their inborn love of freedom and national faith.
They accepted the guarantee of the Spanish government, and
they expected the Spanish government to keep its promises."
"It did not."
"It had no opportunity. The colonists were hardly settled
when the standard of revolt against Spain was again raised.
Santa Anna took the field for a republican form of government,
and once more a body of Americans, under the Tennesseean,
Long, joined the Mexican army."
"I remember that, well."
"In eighteen twenty-four, Santa Anna, Victoria and Bravo drove
the Spaniards forever from Mexico, and then they promulgated
the famous constitution of eighteen twenty-four. It was a
noble constitution, purely democratic and federal, and the
Texan colonists