Stephen F Austin
Known as the “Father of Texas,” Stephen F Austin was an empresario — or immigration agent — who established the first Anglo-American colony in modern-day Texas, then the Tejas province of Mexico. He spent a lot of energy on defending and expanding slavery, even as the Mexican government sought to ban it. His efforts on that front eventually contributed to Texas’ independence.
Austin’s fateful influence on Texas was nearly dashed several times. His father Moses was the initial recipient of the empresario grant from the Spanish government, which would have allowed him to bring 300 families into Tejas. Moses died, and Stephen, living in New Orleans at the time, inherited the grant.
In the time Stephen spent traveling from Louisiana to Texas, Mexico had achieved independence from Spain and the Mexican congress at first refused to recognize Austin’s land grant.
In 1823, Austin traveled to Mexico City and convinced the congress to approve the grant. Then the Emperor of Mexico abdicated, and Austin again had to fight — successfully — for a new immigration law that opened public land to settlement and continued the empresario system.
By 1825, Austin had brought the first 300 families to his colony. These families are now referred to as the Old Three Hundred. He continued to bring families into the Austin colony and had effective civil and military authority over the settlers. He also founded informal armed groups to protect the colonists; these groups later evolved into the Texas Rangers.
Austin sought to retain good relations with the Mexican government and was not a supporter of Texas independence. At the same time, he was at odds with Mexico regarding slavery, which he viewed as important for the success of his colony. When the Mexican government attempted to make slavery illegal, Austin battled the Mexican legislature to keep the institution intact.
These efforts include an 1828 petition to the legislature that would have enabled slaveholding immigrants to Texas to circumvent recognition of their slaves as slaves. This sleight of hand would have been achieved by allowing the immigrants to legally “free” their slaves before immigrating, and contract them into a lifetime term of indentured servitude instead.
By 1830, colonists in the Austin colony were growing dissatisfied with and resentful of the Mexican government. Austin traveled to Mexico City to lobby for reforms, including the lifting of an 1830 ban on US immigration into Tejas, designed to limit American influence over the region. Although Austin at this time still hoped to continue to work with the Mexican system, the government believed he was trying to incite insurrection and tossed him in jail. Austin was imprisoned from 1834 and 1835.
In his absence, a number of events propelled Austin’s colonists toward confrontation with the Mexican government. In 1835, while Austin was still imprisoned, colonists learned that Mexico was proposing new abolition legislation. They turned against the Mexican government, calling it “oppressive” and a “plundering, robbing, autocratical government” without regard for the security of “life, liberty or property.” When Austin returned to Texas, he took up arms with his colonists and gained support from the US Government by detailing his belief that Mexican leadership planned to “exterminate” the colonists and fill Texas with Native Americans and freed slaves.
Texas won independence in 1836 and Austin ran for president. He ended up losing to Sam Houston, who then appointed Austin secretary of state. In 1836, Austin contracted a severe cold, which progressed to pneumonia. He died in December at the age of 43.
