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AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
lands that were then valueless to Mexico or to civilized man- Left to their own resources and daring enterprise, they have conquered a wilderness, and made lmown to Mexico and to the world the true value, and developed the resources, of a large portion of the Mexican territory. which was ·before hid in obscurity,- They have also greatly contributed to the new system of frontier defence by means of population and fully tested its efficacy, for the savages have re- tired before them, as they will continue to do, if the same system is pursued, until they are reduced to "full subjection or settled in villages as agriculturists. It is certainly a natural and very rational inquiry. What induce- ments, what incentives, what hopes, could have operated so power- fully upon the minds of the emigrants to Texas, as to have given them fortitude to brave the clangers of savage foes, to dispise the hardships and privations of the wilderness, to support them through tryals and privations at which the stoutest hearts shrink- The cries of their little children even for bread, the well founded fears and despondency of their wives, surrounded as they were the first years of the settlement, by Indians, famine, and siclmess and by the dark gloom of moments when even hope almost recoiled from the futureY- What impulse of freedom and deeply imbeded hope bore them up and carried them through such difficulties 1- Was it the bare expectation.-of getting a piece of land in a wild wilderness and there living on the mere products of their manuel labor, and degenerating into the habits of wild Indians 1 No-common sense, and the characters and former habits of those settlers, unite in say- ing- NO- But on the contrary the great and nerving hope that bore them onward, was to redeem this country from the wilderness, and convert it into the abode of civilization, of abundance and hap- piness, and by that means to repay themselves, their wives and children for the hardships and sufferings of their early settlement, and also to repay the government more than thousand fold for the privilige of settling in Texas, and of making wild lands valuable, that before were valuless- On what grounds was such a hope as this founded? It was founded on the colonization laws, on the general, liberal and broad invitation given in those laws to the whole woi-ld to come and settle in Texas-on the faith of the Govt that stich an invitation would not be thm given 'merely to draw a few unsuspicious emigrants to this wilderness and then to close the door and shut them out for- ever from their friends and relations, and in fact from the balance of the civilized world, when years of struggling through difficulties had just begun to realize their hopes- Could the first emigrants have supposed that they would have been deprived of the privilege of settling by their sides a son or daughter, an agetl father or wid-
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