PREFACE
The Austin Papers are the collection of materials accumulated by :Moses and Stephen F. Austin in the progress of their busy enterprises from Virginia through :Missouri and Arkansas to Texas. They con- sist of business memoranda, physiographical observations, petitions and memorials to local and superior governments, political addresses and proclamations, and much personal and official correspoclence. l\'Ioses Austin illustrated in his own career the typical aspects of the business man in the Westward :Movement; nnd Stephen F. Austin was, to a degree not approQ.ched by any other colonial pro- prietor in our history, the founder and the indispensable guardian and director during its early vicissitudes of n great American Com- monwealth. As a whole, the present compilation differs grently from previous collections presented by the Historicnl :Manuscripts Commission. Hundreds of letters are from inconspicuous persons, unknown to his- tory, who exerted no ascertainable influence upon the larger events of their time-men who merely Iived and strove for the betterment of themselves and of their families. l\'Iany pieces illustrate minutim of local administration too small, no doubt, to interest a great num- ber of students; and others have only a biographical value. Taken together, however, they give a composite picture which the most careful selection could not equal in clearness, accuracy, or authori- tativeness. This alone, perhaps, would be sufficient reason for de- ciding against omitting any considerable part of the collection, but other reasons against doing so seemed imperative. In the first place, there would have been very grave objection on the part of the authorities of the University of Texas to a material infringement of the integrity of the collection. • In the second place, omission would isolate and practically withdraw from further con- sideration documents which might have considerable interpretative and complementary value for other collections. And finally the colonization and subsequent history of Texas so involve and underlie certain questions of national morality in our domestic and interna- tional relations that it seems inadvisable to offer to students less th:rn the full story which this important collection contains. Nothing has
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