The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 16, July 1912 - April, 1913 Page: 390
464 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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390 The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
he could not hope to see such a decree obeyed unless it should be
enforced by a larger military force than he then had."'
4. The General Character of the Two Races.-There are funda-
mental differences between the Mexican and American races which
even today make amicable joint occupation of a territory difficult.
This is true even where cultured and intelligent members of both
nations come in contact. Mutual understanding seems, generally
speaking, to be confined to individual instances, of which the
number is not surprisingly large. On the contrary, prejudice on
each side is deeply rooted. In the case of Texas this race antago-
nism developed very shortly after Anglo-American settlement began,
and frontier conditions were calculated to nourish it. Mexico has
never had an emigrant class in the sense in which that term is
applied to the European and Anglo-American. The impulse behind
the emigration of those races is the desire to better conditions of
living and to acquire homes at a cheaper price. Mexican emi-
gration has been of a more casual and purposeless nature. There
were a few Mexicans of the better class in Texas, but they were
for the most part living in or near San Antonio de Bejar and
Goliad. While relatively few of the Anglo-Americans who came
to the new colonies were cultured, at least they were generally
honest and industrious and came with the intention of making
homes in the new country. One of the requirements of empresario
contracts was that each colonist should furnish a certificate of good
moral character, and this requirement was fairly well observed.
The attitude of the two races toward law and political insti-
tutions was essentially different through centuries of different
political training. The one race, in all its history, had known only
primitive chief-rule and Spanish military despotism, while the
other was the heir of not only the traditions but the actual results
of political freedom centuries old. The outward form and termi-
nology of the local colonial governments was Mexican, and they
were subject in the higher courts to the legal procedure of the
adopted country, but the spirit of the local administration was the
'It is not certain whether the "commander of the frontier of that state"
means Colonel Piedras, who was in command of the local garrison at
Nacogdoches, or General TerAn, who was comandante general of the East-
ern States; these states are often referred to as the states on the frontier.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 16, July 1912 - April, 1913, periodical, 1913; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101058/m1/398/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.