The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969 Page: 449
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Notes and Documents
Augustine Bible Society, with affiliations in the United States, had
been distributing Bibles in the Republic of Texas.'
In the scarlet hills for which the Redlands were named, agriculture
enjoyed something of a golden age. Both before and after the Revolu-
tion San Augustine was an agricultural center. The best farms were
east of town, but farms, or "plantations," as they liked to call them,
were scattered in every direction, over fertile clearings in the timber-
lands. Cotton was planted by scattering the seed indiscriminately in
February, then returning in April to weed furrows out of the mass of
green. Waste was no trouble, because the portions of the farms under
the plow were small when contrasted to the larger unimproved hold-
ings which might belong to the farmer. Corn was a major crop, and
there was a clinging effort to raise tobacco. From the United States
Negro slaves were purchased. A wealthy Redlander might own one
slave or thirty-five slaves, or no slaves at all. While there was a constant
presence of the Negro, there is not a median by which to describe
human property of the average planter, except to say that most of
the planters were nonslaveholders who perhaps hired slaves from
other people when they needed a large labor force.
Certainly the key to the flowering of San Augustine was the San
Antonio Road. Like an umbilical cord it connected the people with
the motherland, which was, in a manner of speaking, the economic
benefactor of her runaways. Six bales of cotton would fit safely into
a wagon, which oxen could reasonably draw through mud, should
the autumn rains stir it up on the road. If you quickly went to the
east road, out toward Philip A. Sublett's, you were not made of record
or questioned by the Republic's authorities in the customhouse in
town. All the way to the Sabine you had a clear way, for certainly
neither Elisha Roberts, nor any of the patrons of his tavern, would at-
tempt to stop you, since Roberts himself was a smuggler." The United
States Customhouse was easy to avoid beyond the Sabine. Once in the
states you could pass for a Louisiana planter anyway, and though it
might sometimes irritate the Prudhommes and their friends, the profits
for a Texian were very high.'
So San Augustine under the Republic grew rich. The process was
fast, for the district was weakly governed. Nacogdoches, with its con-
7H. Bailey Carroll (ed.), "Texas Collection," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, L
(October, 1946), 282.
*Republic of Texas v. Elisha Roberts, Minutes of the District Court (District Clerk's
Office, San Augustine, Texas), A, p. 8.
'The Redlander, September 20o, 1841.349
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969, periodical, 1969; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117146/m1/403/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.