Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 by Andrew J. Torget

Author:Andrew J. Torget [Torget, Andrew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: history, United States, State & Local, Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), Latin America, Mexico, Social Science, Slavery
ISBN: 9781469624259
Google: pVu0CAAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2015-08-06T23:54:41.175262+00:00

Barnyard Republic

As the Houston administration suffered repeated setbacks in foreign relations, the government’s efforts within the Republic fared little better. Although Texan representatives in Washington, D.C., and London boasted about the effectiveness of the new Texan state, the truth was that Sam Houston’s government barely functioned. Having secured nothing more than recognition from the United States, Texans found themselves attempting to build an effective state with almost no resources. Indeed, the failure of cotton diplomacy to overcome international objections to Texas’s emergence as a slaveholders’ republic quickly brought painful consequences to the new nation.

What bedeviled the Republic of Texas most was the lack of revenue, without which there could be no government. When Texan agents failed to secure loans in either the United States or Great Britain, Houston’s administration had no choice but to begin taxing imported goods. The cash required to pay such tariffs, however, was almost nonexistent among Texas citizens, and so the measure’s primary effect was to increase the appeal of smuggling along the U.S.-Texas border. And because the anemic Texas government could not afford the manpower needed to enforce tariff duties or slow smuggling along the border, the Republic then turned to levying taxes directly on its citizens. In June 1837 the Texas Congress decreed that every citizen would be required to pay a 1.5 percent tax on the value of certain personal property he or she owned, such as land, slaves, mules, and horses. Yet, again, the Texas government lacked the means to enforce such measures, and so during the first three years of the Republic at least a third of all property taxes simply went unpaid. Houston’s administration finally resorted to issuing paper money—“to avoid the absolute dissolution of the government,” Houston grumbled—and printed $500,000 in treasury notes in late 1837, followed by another $300,000 in 1838. Backed solely by the faith of the Texas government, the notes soon traded in New Orleans for only fifty cents to the U.S. dollar.48

The result was a government that existed largely on paper. Although the Texas Congress passed numerous laws aimed at instilling some measure of order on the fledgling nation—including an act prescribing the death penalty for at least fourteen crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and stealing slaves—it was impossible to enforce such measures without more revenue.49 Key government posts could not be paid and administration officials went without salaries during the first year of the Republic.50 The Texas nation, in fact, could not even manage to run a functioning postal system, and mail service became so abysmal that many Texans hired private carriers to transport their correspondence safely to the United States.51 Perhaps most telling, however, was the dreadfully understaffed condition of the Republic’s General Land Office. The Land Office was charged with sorting through an avalanche of competing claims to tens of millions of acres granted under the Spanish, Mexican, and Republic of Texas governments, so the office could then validate and issue new land titles. The task was simply enormous. But so was

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