The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937 Page: 129
348 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Mercer Colony in Texas, 1844-1883
river, will, I hope, have the pleasure to, deliver to you, this letter
which is designed to procure for him such aid as you can con-
veniently render him, while prosecuting his own claims, as well
as mine, upon your state and its citizens. He will need many
documents which, I hope, you will enable him to find, and to
be appraised of the recent decisions of your Legislature, and
courts of justice on questions naturally arising in his efforts to
promote his interests as well as mine. No one, I am well apprised,
can so well aid him in this respect as yourself as well from your
official station under the former, as well as under the present
government of Texas.
I have, in vain, expended, more than 12,000 dollars on the lands.
I have sought to colonize; but now deserted by most of my asso-
ciates and persecuted as I have been by the Texas legislature,
and convention, I ask but a very moderate remuneration for
expenses incurred in adding largely to the population of Texas,
and in directing her character in a very critical state of her
affairs-when her navy was laid up within the harbor of Gal-
veston; her army reduced to a few frontier rangers; her Treasury
exhausted; her territory threatened in the invasion. You will
remember doubtless the abrupt adjournment of her Congress while
we were together at Washington, on the receipt of a rumor, which
proved to be unfounded, that a large army had crossed the Rio
Grande, accompanied by all the materials for a renewal of Mexican
hostilities. By subsequent resolutions and acts of the Congress
near to the admission of Texas into the union, as well as by
the more solemn act of the Convention which settled that event
my rights under the contract I made with her president were
assailed though inconclusively admitted by those very acts; and,
finally, my surveyor Chambers, the nephew of General Chambers
was threatened, by nine of her citizens inspired by the example
of her legislature openly, and with force if he proceeded to execute
the contract with me. ...
Seven only of all my associates have been faithful throughout
to their engagements to me, and if your legislature will enable
me to satisfy their part claims, I care little what may become of
mine, altho I devoted at an advanced age with a diligence rarely
surpassed three years & a half of my life to the prosecution of
the object of my grant. Believing as I did that I could not more
usefully terminate a long life devoted to objects of public improve-
ment than by planting and nourishing a colony, of which, I could
become the moral head and in the midst of which I meant to live
and die. I have been much disappointed, tho, as regards the chief
end of my grant, in the view of the Texian government, the pur-
pose it was, in effect fulfilled at my cost and that of my associates.87
1Mercer to Miller, received April 22, 1852. In the records of the case,
Preston vs. Walsh.129
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937, periodical, 1937; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101099/m1/143/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.