Texas Archive War
The Texas Archive War ( Texas Archive War ) was a conflict in the Republic of Texas in 1842, which is the planned relocation of the Texas National Archives from the capital Austin to Houston turned. Ultimately, the conflict was about Sam Houston's efforts to make Houston the capital of Texas.
background
During the Texan War of Independence , the provisional Texas government constantly changed its seat for military reasons. The government files also changed their location. With the establishment of the Republic of Texas in April 1836, Columbia first became the capital and the seat of the National Archives. In 1837 the capital was relocated to Houston and the National Archives moved there too. In 1839 Mirabeau B. Lamar was elected President of Texas. Under his influence, the Texas Congress decided to build a planned city as the seat of government. This new city of Austin was right on the " frontier, " close to various hostile Native American tribes and with no prospective supplies of goods. Proponents of the move, however, argued that Austin would become Texas' center of population once the rest of the country were settled. The opposition under the former President Sam Houston wanted to keep the seat of government in the much more developed city of Houston, which was also much closer to the actual population distribution in Texas at the time.
The National Archives moved to Austin from August 26 to October 14, 1839. Fifty carts were required for the move. Shortly thereafter, on October 17, 1839, Lamar and his cabinet arrived in Austin. In the next few years, the Comanches succeeded in several surprise attacks near Austin. For the editorial staff of the Houston daily Morning Star , these raids proved that the capital and archives should return to Houston.
Sam Houston was re-elected president in September 1841. Because of the overwhelming majority that he was able to win, he felt justified in asserting his view on the capital question and moving the capital back to Houston. However, Congress repeatedly refused.
Prelude
Congress concluded its session in February 1842. The next month, Mexican troops under General Rafael Vásquez invaded Texas. On March 5, 1842, over 1,000 Mexican soldiers were encamped in San Antonio . A few days later, a vigilante committee in Austin recommended martial law and ordered residents to leave the city. Few citizens remained in Austin, and President Houston also left for Houston.
Vásquez and his troops withdrew after a few days, which Sam Houston may not have known about when he instructed Secretary of War George W. Hockley on March 10 to move the archives to Houston. As a justification, he cited the Texas constitution, which expressly permitted the relocation of the seat of government in an emergency during wartime.
Colonel Henry Jones, the Austin military commander, called a group of citizens to discuss Houston's orders. The people of Austin considered their city safe and complained that Houston's departure had damaged trust in the city and devalued their property. On March 16, the vigilantes decided that it was illegal to move the archive. They created a police force in Bastrop to search every vehicle and to confiscate every government file found. Sam Houston's private secretary, WD Miller, wrote that Austin residents "would raise their guns to prevent this move rather than to fight Mexicans." To resolve the problem, the President convened a special session in Houston on June 27, 1842. However, the Congress did not decide there to move the capital.
The climax of the conflict
In September 1842, under General Adrián Woll , Mexican soldiers marched into Texas again and again temporarily conquered the city of San Antonio. Houston convened the Seventh Texan Congress in Washington-on-the-Brazos . In his opening speech, Houston called on Congress to support the relocation of the archives against the will of the “rebellious” residents of Austin, and asserted that there could be no legitimate doubts about the correctness and necessity of this measure. However, a December 8 bill drafted by Senator Greer was not passed after Senate President Edward Burleson , who disliked Sam Houston, cast the decisive negative vote after a stalemate. Unimpressed by this, Greer tabled another bill on December 10th, this time relocating the General Land Office , which distributed the land among the white settlers. He left the name of the city to which the office was to be relocated open, so that a debate over the future seat of this important authority ensued for weeks.
On December 10, Houston entrusted two officers with the secret assignment of moving the National Archives to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Houston wrote that it was becoming more and more important every day to free the public archives and government files from their current peril in Austin and move them to a safe place. If they stayed there, they would inevitably be destroyed soon. Colonel Thomas I. Smith and Captain Eli Chandler were supposed to set up a small troop on the pretext of an attack against Indians and use them to secure and transfer the archive.
Smith arrived in Austin with over 20 soldiers and three wagons on the morning of December 30, 1842. They were almost completely loaded with files in their wagons when they were noticed by Angelina Eberly, the owner of a nearby hostel. Eberly ran to Congress Avenue, where a howitzer was parked, and fired the cannon. The General Land Office was damaged, but there was no significant property damage and no one was injured.
Smith and his soldiers hurried north-east of town to avoid the Bastrop roadside controls. They were accompanied by two officers from the General Land Office, who were supposed to prevent the agency's files from being damaged or altered. The transport made slow progress, especially since a downpour made the roads almost impassable for the already slow ox carts. On the first day, the troops only got as far as Kinney's Fort, about 30 km away on Bushy Creek , where they made their night camp.
Meanwhile in Austin, Captain Mark Lewis had formed a force to retrieve the archive. Although some of his people did not even have a horse and were little or no armed, they arrived at Kinney's Fort that same night. Since Smith had not posted any guards, the pursuers went unnoticed there. The files were returned to Austin on the morning of December 31st - whether Smith's soldiers brought them back or whether the Austin group confiscated the files and transported them back remains uncertain.
aftermath
The Texas House of Representatives set up a committee of inquiry to deal with the failed attempt to move the archives. The committee reprimanded President Houston for attempting to move the capital away from Austin without the approval of Congress. A Senate committee did not come to an agreement for Austin as the capital, but Houston denied the legal basis for the archive transfer, since the city was not directly threatened. In 1843 the Senate decided that the archives should be moved as long as there was no peace with Mexico. There was another stalemate, but Burleson cast his decisive vote this time in favor of the law. However, the House of Representatives rejected the law.
The Senate also passed a resolution recommending Sam Houston to move the government agencies back to Austin. However, Congress and government agencies remained in Washington-on-the-Brazos and new government records were also kept there. Former President Lamar received a letter in March 1843 describing the city of Austin as almost extinct - most stores were closed, but the archives were still on site.
On July 4, 1845, a meeting was held in Austin in preparation for the annexation of Texas to the United States . At that time, the new government files created in Washington-on-the-Brazos were moved to Austin, creating a unified national archive in one place.
A memorial to Angelina Eberly was erected in downtown Austin in 2004. The statue was created by cartoonist Pat Oliphant and shows Eberly firing the cannon. The memorial stands exactly on the scene of the historical event.
literature
- Patsy McDonald Spaw: The Texas Senate. Republic to Civil War, 1836-1861 . Texas A&M University Press, College Station 1991, ISBN 978-0-89096-442-2
- Dorman H. Winfrey: The Texan Archive War of 1842 . In: Southwestern Historical Quarterly , Vol. 64, Issue 2 (October 1960), pp. 171-184
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Winfrey, p. 171.
- ↑ a b c Winfrey, p. 172.
- ↑ a b c d Winfrey, p. 173.
- ↑ a b Winfrey, p. 174.
- ↑ "The president and heads of departments shall keep their offices at the seat of government, unless removed by the permission of Congress, or unless, in case of emergency in time of war, the public interest may require their removal."
- ^ Winfrey, p. 175.
- ↑ a b c d e Winfrey, p. 178.
- ^ Winfrey, p. 177.
- ↑ a b Spaw, p. 118.
- ↑ a b c Winfrey, p. 179.
- ↑ a b c d e Winfrey, p. 180.
- ^ Winfrey, p. 182.
- ^ Winfrey, p. 181.
- ^ Winfrey, p. 183.
- ↑ a b Spaw, p. 119.
- ↑ Spaw, S. 120th
- ↑ a b c Winfrey, p. 184.
- ↑ "... statue of Angelina Eberly firing off her cannon ..."