Stephen F. Austin Becomes the First Empresario (Mar 24, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
This week we continue with the series on the causes and coming of the Texas Revolution. This entry examines the beginning of the “Empresario System,” a means to populate Texas, which would lead to Texas becoming a Mexican province dominated by former residents of the United States, a consequence that will ultimately lead to Revolution.
When Moses Austin succumbed to pneumonia in June 1821, it fell to his eldest son, Stephen Fuller Austin, to take up his dream of a colony in Texas. Stephen F. Austin was twenty-seven, a bachelor, and preparing to become a lawyer/judge in Arkansas. The idea to settle three hundred families in Texas was not his—it was his father’s—but when Moses died, Stephen felt a familial obligation to make good on his father’s scheme. He was waiting for Moses to meet him in Natchitoches, from which they both would travel to San Antonio when he received word of his father’s death. Instead, Stephen F. Austin would make that trip alone.
Austin arrived in San Antonio at almost the same time that news had come that Spain no longer had Mexico as a colony and, instead, a new nation was in the process of becoming a reality. Moses Austin’s agreement was with the Spanish colonial authorities, not the new nation of Mexico, so while Martínez remained the governor, Austin now had to make a new agreement that would satisfy the new Mexican authorities in Mexico City. Martínez and Austin worked out the details of the grant. The colony would be 250,000 acres located on a coastal plain between the San Antonio and Brazos Rivers. Austin agreed to bring three hundred families within that swath, with the head of a household receiving 640 acres, his wife an additional 320 acres, 320 acres for each child, and an additional 80 acres for each slave the family brought. The government would provide no administrative support and Austin had to assure the “good conduct” of each colonist. Austin needed some mechanism to profit from his grant, and that became an agreement that while the land was “free,” Austin would collect twelve and a half cents an acre as a “fee” for his service as an empresario. Austin, like his father, also hoped to open a store that would provide goods for his colonists. Austin immediately went to New Orleans to post advertisements for his venture.
Just a look at the grant agreement gives an indication of what type of colonist Austin had in mind and what kind of economic and social system he hoped to “transplant” in Texas. He posted his advertisements in New Orleans and other cities and towns of the American South, which indicated that he was targeting migrants from those regions. The vast majority of the Austin original settlers—the “Old 300”—were going to not only come from the South but the “Deep South,” the region which in the 1820s was becoming more wedded to and committed to a reliance on and growth of the slave-labor/plantation system. Furthermore, a look at the amount of land Mexico was granting shows that this was no system designed to attract small freeholders who hoped to operate small farms. Instead, these grants could be for only one purpose—to institute the plantation system to grow cash crops, a structure that not only relied upon but wholly depended on enslaved labor. Texas, from the outset of Anglo migration, was intended to be a slave-holding region.
Austin was in the United States preparing for his venture when he received another shock: The authorities in Mexico City rejected the Martínez-Austin proposal for settlement and grants and were prepared to move on to enact a national immigration plan that was directed to attract more European and Mexican immigrants than Americans, not just to Texas but the whole of Mexico. It was at this point that the true effectiveness of Stephen F. Austin became apparent. Moses Austin may have been someone adept at conceiving a large plan, but it would be Stephen F. Austin who understood that being adept at politics was the more beneficial skill—and the younger Austin would prove to be a very good politician.
Instead of working through Martínez and from the United States or Texas, Austin decided that he would travel to Mexico City and negotiate directly with the provisional Mexican Congress and Emperor Agustín. His negotiations paid off—he also made valuable contacts in Mexico City that would serve Texas well later—and on January 3, 1823, the Imperial Colonization Law (ICL) went into effect. It contained a few minor adjustments: the head of household now would receive a league of land (4605 acres) and also gave the land agents—christened empresarios—a personal grant of 67,000 acres for every two hundred families he brought to Texas.
Austin had another brief scare about the end of his scheme three months after the ICL became law. Agustín was forced off the throne by a coup, and the new government began to dismantle and abrogate every law passed by the Imperial Congress. However, Austin was able to use the contacts he had made to gain favors with the new government, and they kept the contract with Austin in place. Additionally, when the new government organized a Federalist structure, Austin was able to work with the authorities of the new state of Coahuila y Tejas to pass, in 1825, a state colonization law whose strictures mirrored those of the ICL. Texas was now ready for other empresarios to come in and bring Anglo settlers to Texas—for really the first time—actually to populate the region. However, what Mexico should have probably heeded was that it might not be the best idea to encourage emigration by citizens from an adjacent nation that really had no plans to abandon their “Americaness” or to assimilate to Mexican culture. Mexico was about to populate Texas, but, for their interests, likely the exactly wrong people they should have encouraged to come.
Next week, the empresario system serves its purpose, but the effect is not what Mexico had planned. Texas was about to become an Anglo province.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.