Many historians have
ventured answers as to why the expedition occurred and how it may or may not
have been driven by national leaders or national forces. Yet an investigation
of the men who participated shows that they were free agents, westerners who
took their fate into their own hands as they always had. In contrast to
macro-view histories, only a few historians of the expedition have previously descended
to the man-with-a-musket perspective, and only in passing. Richard W. Gronet
notes correctly that, although “many of the North Americans joined the force
for reasons of land, loot, and adventure, the guiding purpose of its commanders
and many in the ranks was the seizure of Texas for the proclaimed Republic of
Mexico.”[1]
Ed Bradley strikes a different, but also accurate note, saying that “a large
number of filibusters were motivated by material concerns,” but also supported
a “balance of republican idealism and wished-for material gain.”[2]
These arguments in their own
way are valid, but have heretofore lacked a key piece of evidence that can
provide the test for the various premises. Were there men in the expedition who
placed idealism on a pedestal and sacrificed their fortunes and sacred honor for
a foreign revolution? Indeed: Henry Adams Bullard and Aaron Mower gave up their
budding careers as a lawyer and a printer and followed a romantic figure,
Toledo to the revolution. Did some men pursue monetary gain? Undoubtedly, some
did, though certainly not all. Augustus Magee, born and raised in the Boston
elite, when faced with disappointment in his career, could have simply resigned
and returned home to wealth, yet he turned his back on his past and devoted
himself to a desperate venture instead. Did men seek new lands for starting
families or for speculation? Certainly they did, as the settlement data proves.
Whatever their motivations may have been at the beginning of their journey,
many of those who survived were attracted to Texas in later years to live in it.
The latter point is the most
important, and is illustrative of the need for further research into the
filibuster. The Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition has frequently been treated as a
historical flash-in-the pan, unrelated to subsequent Texas history. It is
appropriate to re-appraise this view of history towards a more contiguous
narrative. Arredondo’s reprisal and its deleterious effect on the
Spanish/Mexican population in Texas has long since necessitated a reappraisal
on its own. Adding to this imperative is the fact that over a dozen of Stephen
F. Austin’s first colonists – and possibly more since so many participants are
lost to history – had experience in Texas that predated his by a decade. For these
settlers, the sons of other veterans who followed their parents’ paths to
Texas, and the thousands of westerners who knew them, colonization under the empresario was the second act in their Texas drama, directly connected to and
dependent on the first, which the men of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition wrote
in the years 1812-1813.
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