Class Notes, Texas to 1861

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Texas Cities, 1860: Houston vs Galveston, Laredo, Brownsville, San Antonio

It is interesting to note that urban areas of this time were all located on the boundary zones of the regions.

  • the cities displayed elements of both the regions they straddled and acted to pull together diverse cultural and economic elements.

 

Contrast Houston and Galveston.
Houston
Galveston
  • tide water
  • tied to the rural hinterland
  • business oriented
  • focus of east and central Texas on the banks of Buffalo Bayou; accessible
  • ocean port
  • oriented overseas, especially New Orleans
  • pleasure, culture, leisure oriented
  • detached from the rural back country on the tip of an island; not very accessible

San Antonio was the meeting place of four cultures (German, Anglo, Tejano, Black) with sharp differences between groups within the city.

Read this description of San Antonio:

Approached from the northeast, the very first glimpse was striking: over the brow of a low hill "the domes and white clustered dwellings" of the compact city suddenly appeared, "basking in the edge of a vast plain." Between that view and the city itself the traveler entered the chaparral, the broad mesquite plains of South Texas. Yet that particular road (from New Braunfels) led directly into a street more typical of Central Texas: a long row of German houses, "of fresh square-humble proportions, but neat, and thoroughly roofed and finished." At the first plaza the scene changed abruptly to "all Mexican": the battered Baroque facade of the Alamo, the windowless, but better thatched, houses of adobe (gray, unburnt bricks), with groups of brown idlers lounging at their doors." Across the river on Commerce Street American houses, standing back from the street, "with galleries and jalousies and a garden picket-fence against the walk" dominated the scene, which quickly dissolved into a composite of all three cultures around the main plaza: American hotels and glass-fronted stores; German shops with German signs; low, flat-roofed Hispano stone and adobe buildings washed in blue and yellow. The Hispano-Americans, chiefly congregating in the south and southwest sectors of the city along the river and the Laredo road, were very largely employed in the freighting business; the Germans were mostly mechanic, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and a few local farmers; the Americans rant he government and most of the hotels and taverns, and controlled most of the money. The city had lost much of its population after the Revolution, but had grown rapidly after the War with Mexico, in large part because the outfitting place for a long string of forts in the interior, the departure point for caravans to Chihuahua and California, as well as the trade center of its local region.

There were no significant cities in North Texas. Instead, the pattern was very much evenly spaced small villages and towns, like the Midwest. Paris was the largest town, however.

Laredo and Brownsville were small trading posts in the Mexican wilderness, not well integrated into the rest of the state.

What linked all of these places? What was the means of transportaion and communication?

Observe the map "Circulation Networks."

  • Note the stage coach lines, railroads, river and ocean transportation routes within Texas and to the outside world.
  • Some of the routes from the Spanish and Mexican eras were still evident but only as fragments. Understand that the rivers of Texas have never been good means of transportation. They are not navigable for more than a few miles. Also, although there are a number of bays along the Texas coast, most are too shallow to offer good ports. The best entrances to Texas lay just east of the richest land in the state, along Galveston Bay.

 

You will see that the network was well integrated within Texas but that it was an isolated system, with few connections to other places outside the state.

The connections that did exist were through Galveston and the land/river portals in the northeastern corner of the state.

  • in the northeast, cotton was shipped down the Red River to New Orleans, cattle was driven overland to markets in Mississippi, and stage coach lines linked Texas to Vickburg, MS, Memphis, and St. Louis.

Transportation was important to the early development of the state. In Houston, two rival settlements, Allen's Landing and Harrisburg, vied for supremacy of the region. Allen's Landing got the railroad which bypassed Harrisburg. Thus, what is today downtown Houston is at Allen's Landing. When Houston became the railroad hub, it managed to capture most of the trade that had gone to other ports, e.g., Indianola and Port Lavaca. Houston became significant economically, the other towns dwindled in population and importance.

The result was that Texas had an insular and provincial character.

Population Characteristics on the Eve of the Civil War

The regional differences tearing the country apart were mirrored in Texas, a state since 1846. Texas was then, as it is now, multicultural.

African Americans: in 1836 12 percent of the population of Texas was black. The population increased between 1840 and 1860 with migration from the South so that by 1860 one-third of the population of Texas was black, and spatially concentrated in East Texas.

most of the African Americans had been born in Alabama and Virginia. There were also 355 free people of color in 1860, 174 women and 181 males. Seventy percent of these free blacks were literate and skilled craftsmen.

Tejanos: by 1860 only about 6 percent of the population was of Mexican descent and they were spatially concentrated in South Texas.

Texas in 1860: three cultures: German/European, Anglo, and Tejano. Evidenced by the reports of the convention over secession were issued in three languages, German, Spanish, and English. The vote to seceed from the union shows clear regional differences.

  • to stay: Hill Country, along the Red River
  • to leave: everywhere else except Angelina County.