But the nation did have one sovereign currency which kept it afloat: millions of acres of unassigned land, and it employed the most ingenious devices for turning this land into cash. It gave free acreage to anyone who had served in its armed forces. It lured residents of the United States with roseate promises. And it hired a firm of New Orleans speculators, Toby and Brother, to print and sell certificates entitling any purchaser to a spacious homestead. The history of Texas in these formative years was an account of how men without money used land to keep afloat.
In the social life of the republic there were subtle changes. People began dropping the name Texican; they became Texians. Spanish accents on some words were eliminated and names simplified, so that the old Béjar became Bexar; Bexar became San Antonio. The Río Grande lost its accent, and all other ríos lost not only their accent but also their Spanish designation; henceforth they would be rivers. The lovely word arroyo became creek. As if to symbolize the transition from Spanish lyricism to Kentucky realism, poetic family names like Treviño became Trevino for the anglos, and the music was lost.
To facilitate administration, counties had to be established, and in time almost all the heroes participating in the battles were honored by having counties named after them: Austin, Bonham, Bowie, Crockett, Fannin, Houston, Lamar, Rusk, Travis; and all but Travis also had towns named in their honor. To the delight of future schoolchildren, Deaf Smith’s county would retain his full name.
The names of certain famous places also became enshrined as counties: Bexar, Goliad, Gonzales and Victoria, with San Jacinto following later. The first-named was awarded an area much larger than many European nations; from Bexar County, in decades to come, well over a hundred normal-sized counties would be carved.
By this lavish display of honors Texas served notice that it took its history seriously and sought to enshrine its nobler moments. Massachusetts and Virginia produced many national leaders, but they did not become the warp and woof of existence as did the heroes of Texas; Pennsylvania had its Valley Forge and New York its Saratoga, but they never became a living part of their region’s religion the way the Alamo did in Texas. From the start the new Texians proclaimed, and in a rather loud voice: ‘Look at us. We’re different.’
Among the counties formed in the first flush of victory was one named after Zave Campbell, whose exploits atop the wall were recited by both Señora Mordecai Marr and Joe, the Negro slave belonging to Colonel Travis, both of whom were spared by Santa Anna. Both told of Zave’s Ajax-like defense, but the most telling testimony came from a Mexican captain, who said: ‘There was this tall old man whose name was called out as I bore down upon him. “Xavier! Watch out!” someone shouted as I ran him through, and when we counted the dead bodies of our soldiers around his feet, there were nine.’
It was agreed that Xavier County should be established west of the Brazos River, but how the name should be pronounced was not so quickly settled. Older settlers who spoke Spanish wanted to call it Hah-vee-ehr, with accent on the last syllable, but newcomers promptly changed that to Ecks-ah-ver, with accent on the second. Within a few months it was agreed that the county was Za-veer, with a heavy accent on the second syllable, and so it became. Like many of the early counties, and like more than half of those that were to follow, Xavier County had no principal town; there was a miserable crossroads settlement of nine houses called Campbell, and it was designated the county seat, but it would never dominate thinking or become as important as the county it served. A settler rarely said: ‘I live in Campbell.’ He almost invariably said: ‘I live in Xavier County.’
Young Macnab became one of the first new settlers in Xavier. Reluctant to return to Victoria and a Mexican way of life with his adopted mother and aunt, he jumped at the invitation when his companion-in-arms Martin Ascot proposed: ‘Let’s take our free land side by side, along that river you told me about,’ and when this was agreed, the Mississippian said further: ‘Otto, let’s go to Galveston and meet the ship when Betsy Belle arrives!’
In his battlefield letter to his father he had promised to go to Mississippi to claim her, but the problems of land acquisition had become so demanding and in unforeseen ways so complex that he had sent her an ardent letter: ‘I simply cannot leave Texas now. It would be more practical for you to come here, and we shall marry as you step off the steamer.’
So off the two friends went, down the Brazos River in a flat-bottomed scow, then up to the fledgling town of Houston, where they reported to Buffalo Bayou for a sailing ship, which carried them across the wide bay to Galveston, the principal settlement in the republic. They were standing on the improvised dock when Betsy Belle’s schooner braved the treacherous sandbar that both protected Galveston’s harbor and sank unwary ships that could not find the only safe passage.
As soon as Otto saw Betsy Belle in her blue hat with streamers and white dress with ruffles, he knew he was going to like her, for she looked both like a young bride and like the future mother of children. ‘You’re lucky!’ he whispered to Ascot, and he felt even more approval when he stood beside Martin as the Galveston minister intoned the marriage ceremony. When the clergyman, a Methodist with bright eyes, told Martin: ‘You may kiss the bride,’ Ascot did so, then told Otto: ‘You must kiss her, too,’ and the fourteen-year-old boy, blushing furiously, did so.
The three partners, for so they termed themselves, spent only two nights in Galveston, for they were eager to locate and take up residence on the land the government was giving them for their service at San Jacinto. Purchasing three horses with funds from the dowry Betsy Belle had brought from Mississippi, they rode the eighty-eight miles back to Xavier County, where Otto identified the land he wanted the partnership to claim, and both he and Martin stepped off the six hundred and forty acres side by side, to which each was entitled, when across the fields, riding a very small donkey, came an old comrade who was about to save them from making a serious mistake.
It was Yancey Quimper shouting ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute!’ and when he halted his donkey he gallantly raised Betsy Belle’s hand to his lips: ‘All Texas is honored to receive such a beauty from Alabama.’
‘Mississippi,’ Betsy Belle said.
‘What are you men doing?’
‘Locating our six-forty’s,’ Ascot replied.
‘Six-forty’s!’ Quimper exploded, and before the day was out he was leading his friends to the county seat at Campbell, where his good friend Judge Phinizy, formerly of the Arkansas bench, would be certifying land entitlements.
During the trip Yancey brought his friends from San Jacinto up to date regarding his fortunes: ‘Many people consider me the principal citizen of Xavier County,’ but what exactly he did, the travelers could not discern. At twenty-four he was what rural people called ‘a fine figure of a man,’ tall, rather fleshy and pale of complexion. He seemed to lack strength, as if one or two critical bones had been omitted, but he offset this by a warm, radiant smile that he flashed at anyone he wanted to impress.
He was always dressed in accordance with another ancient truism—‘clothes make the man’—and he had lately purchased a big Mexican hat with a very broad brim. It was precisely sized to match his build, so that when he came picking his way down the dusty streets in Campbell, he proclaimed himself, without speaking, to be ‘our leading citizen.’
He had been raised by his Tennessee father to speak rather good English, but after the death of his parents his association with the rude soldiers of the revolution had encouraged him to acquire their informal speech habits, so that now his sentences were colorfully ungrammatical and his words those of the barnyard and ranch. But he spoke with marked effectiveness, often and loud. As a verified hero of the battle in which Texas had won her freedom, he felt himself entitled, and sometimes obligated, to express his opinion on almost everything, but he did so with such an attractive mixture of gravity and wit that he did not offend. He was, in this rural setting, a man of substance.
‘For a while after Indepen
dence,’ he said as they neared Campbell, ‘I tried to rebuild the inn at Quimper’s Ferry. Impossible to get aholt of any money. Me, a hero in battle, a man with a good reputation, unable to find a cent.’
‘What happened to the inn?’
‘Charred posts, stickin’ out of the ground.’
‘Were you able to sell the land?’
‘Sell?’ Quimper turned sideways on his donkey and told Betsy Belle: ‘My mammy gave me one piece of solid advice: “Get aholt of land and never let it go. Burn your house, even burn your Bible, but never let nobody touch your land.” ’
Judge Leander Phinizy, an unkempt, bearded man with dark sunken eyes that brooded as if they had witnessed all the chicanery the world could provide, had risen to become a major luminary of the Texas bar after a rather devious start. Expelled from William and Mary College in Virginia for ‘prolonged, offensive and noisy drunkenness,’ he had made his way to Georgia, where such behavior was tolerated. After marrying a local girl whose parents had acreage, he utilized his earlier schooling by reading for law, but before he was accepted by the Georgia bar he became involved in a malodorous land fraud involving widows and found it expedient to take his unquestioned talents farther west. Settling ultimately in the freer air of Arkansas, he announced himself as a lawyer, and when his credentials were requested he stated simply that he had read for law in the offices of ‘that notable Georgia jurist Xerxes Noltworthy.’ When mail addressed to his supposed mentor produced no reply, Phinizy explained: ‘Poor man shot himself. Cancer of the esophagus.’
On the Arkansas frontier he proved himself to be a good lawyer, and after notable success in helping to establish order in rough territories he was promoted to judge, but his probate of certain wills subjected him to unfortunate scrutiny, and he deemed it best to emigrate to Texas. Here at last his deportment was circumspect, and he became, as Quimper had said, ‘a shining light of our judicial system.’
Judge Phinizy held court in a one-room, dirt-floored hovel whose only window was a rude hole covered by a piece of calf hide that had been hammered in bear grease until it became remarkably translucent. There was a table and an armchair for the judge, carved by himself, two rickety chairs for plaintiffs, and a large bucket into which the judge shot tobacco juice often and with enviable skill, for it stood some distance from the bench.
Phinizy conducted trials with the aid of a heavy woven-leather riding crop, which he beat furiously against his table when rendering even the simplest decision, and now, as Martin and Otto, as the principals, took the two chairs and Yancey and Betsy Belle stood by the door, Judge Phinizy lashed about with his crop and shouted: ‘Goddamnit, is there no courtesy left in the world? Somebody give that beautiful example of Southern womanhood a chair,’ and after this was done, the judge explained: ‘For jury trials we bring in those two benches.’
Smiling at the claimants, he said: ‘You’re very fortunate, young men, to have Mr. Quimper here to guide you. The Republic of Texas was about to award him the customary six hundred and forty acres which all you heroes get, when he pointed out to the visiting land commissioner that he was entitled to rather more.’
He paused dramatically, and remained silent for so long that Ascot realized that a question was in order, so he asked: ‘How much did he get?’
‘Well, his dead father should have had a league-and-a-labor from the Mexican government, but the papers were lost in the fire. He himself was assured six hundred and forty acres because of his valiant service at San Jacinto. And under our new constitution he had head rights to his own league-and-a-labor. He gets an additional six-forty for having served six months in the army. That made a total of ten thousand four hundred and ninety acres.’
Admiringly, Martin and Otto turned to nod at Yancey, who held up his hand as if to say ‘Wait!’ The judge continued: ‘Where Mr. Quimper showed his brilliance, he asked the commissioner and me: “Isn’t the government awarding six hundred and forty acres to the heirs of anyone who died at either the Alamo or Goliad?” The commissioner said: “Yes, but your father was dead before those battles took place,” and Mr. Quimper explained: “Yes, but my mother wasn’t, because she died fighting off Mexican soldiers at her ferry to save General Houston’s retreat.” So we gave him her award, too. Total? Eleven thousand one hundred and thirty acres.’
Otto gasped, but Martin, who was fascinated by law, asked: ‘And what does that mean for us?’ and Judge Phinizy said: ‘If Mr. Quimper is prepared to vouch for Mr. Macnab’s heroism, I think something can be worked out.’
‘He was more than brave,’ Yancey intoned. ‘Whenever I looked back, there he was, keepin’ close.’
‘Texas wants to reward its heroes, Mr. Macnab … How old are you?’
Without hesitation Otto said, ‘Eighteen.’
‘You’ll probably get your height in your twenties. Many do.’
With Yancey providing the data, this was the settlement Judge Phinizy approved: ‘Otto Macnab, hero of both Goliad and San Jacinto, twelve hundred and eighty acres for your service in the army for the duration of the war, plus six hundred and forty bonus for being at San Jacinto. Then, for your brave father, who died at Goliad, six hundred and forty acres, plus another three hundred and twenty for his service for less than three months in our army. This makes a total, I believe, of two thousand eight hundred and eighty acres. So ordered.’ And with a majestic pursing of his lips he arched a magisterial spray of tobacco juice right into the bucket.
Macnab and Ascot were so appreciative of the way Quimper had doubled even Martin’s entitlements—1,280 acres because of extraordinary heroism—that they entered into an agreement. ‘Look,’ Martin said, ‘none of us have much money. Let’s work together and rebuild the inn. And then we’ll build a house on your land, Otto.’
At this point in the discussion Otto made a significant decision: ‘I don’t need a house yet.’
‘Where would you stay?’ Ascot asked, and Otto said: ‘I could work for Yancey, maybe,’ and Betsy Belle cried: ‘Nonsense! You’ll live with us.’
In the next weeks the four young Texians did two things: they slaved like beasts of burden to erect at the ferry a shack which could only by the most careless use of words be called an inn, and they laid off the portions of land which the nation had given each of them. Quimper took a strip on the right bank of the Brazos starting from his mother’s burned inn and running south; Otto chose his adjacent to that; and Martin stepped off his touching Otto’s. When the portions were surveyed and legally transferred, Ascot told his wife one night: ‘Come to think of it, Yancey did all the choosing for us,’ and she said with a suspicion which had started that first day when he kissed her hand: ‘I’m sure he expects Otto and us to clear out some day. Then he’ll have it all.’
The work of building was arduous. Not only did everyone, including Betsy Belle, sweat in the summer sun chopping trees and sawing timbers, but at night, often on empty stomachs, they slept on bare ground. Of the many different types of tools they should have had for such a task, they had only three: two axes, a pair of good saws and two hammers, but with these they built a cabin through whose sides the wind and rain would whistle, and when the boxlike structure was what Yancey called ‘completed like the finest palace,’ they added on the south exposure a long, low porch. Quimper’s Ferry was back in business.
With the first hard-earned dollars the foursome collected, Yancey felt he had to go to the national capital, Columbia-on-the-Brazos, to buy the ropes and wires necessary for the reopening of a ferry service: ‘Martin, you and Betsy Belle stay here and run the inn. Otto and me, we’ll ride down and get the necessaries.’
‘When do we start our house?’
‘First things first. Let’s for God’s sake get some money around here.’ Each of the four realized that from the amount of really strenuous work they had done, they should in an orderly society have earned large sums of cash, but since little was circulating, they ended their labors with nothing. And the first three travelers to hal
t at the inn before crossing on a pitiful little raft that Otto and Martin had built, had not a cent to pay for their keep. They did have a cow, so a barter was concluded.
When Ascot wanted to know why Judge Phinizy had been so cooperative, Yancey said: ‘He don’t get paid, either. He’s supposed to, but the government’s got no money.’
‘What’s that have to do with it?’
‘I give him things to eat. He gives me land.’
On the evening before their departure for the capital, Yancey reported on a discussion he’d had with the judge: ‘He told me “That young feller Ascot, he seemed real bright,” and when I told him you were, he said “Why don’t he read for law?” and I asked where, and he said “I’ll teach him if he drops in now and then.” I asked him how much, and he said “Nothin’. I could use a cow. And Texas could use a good lawyer,” and I asked “How long?” and he said “If he’s as bright as you claim, he could do it in mebbe six weeks,” and I said you’d do it.’
The suggestion was like a rope tossed to a foundering man, for in Mississippi, before the Texas fever caught him, Ascot had been vaguely intending to study law, and his recent strenuous experience in house building had satisfied him that he was better fitted for more cerebral labors. ‘When could I start?’ he asked eagerly, and Yancey said: ‘Right now. He give me these books for you to begin with,’ and he delivered two grease-stained books printed in London in the previous century and thumbed by young Virginians who had aspired to the courts: Blackstone’s Commentaries and Coke’s Institutes.
Martin, taking the books reverentially, asked: ‘What about Betsy Belle?’ and Yancey said: ‘She can run the inn while you study and we’re gone,’ and in the morning Martin went to work on Judge Phinizy’s lawbooks while Yancey and Otto headed south to obtain equipment for the proposed ferry.