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Chapter 27 Lamar's First Term
Chapter 27 Lamar's first term
"Would you look at that. I've been in office one year and unlike what some of my opponents may have thought, our country still stands"- President Mirabeau B. Lamar 1842
"Look we did not steal our party name from the Texans. It's a total coincidence I swear."- Abraham Lincoln 1860
"In honor of our great President who is the father of education for all of Texas, I present to you Lamar University."- Dean Gerald Hawkins 1932
In the beginning of Lamar's first few months in office many in the Western Union Party assumed that he would use his control of congress to pass multiple legislation centralizing Texas as well as revoking the Indians of their appointed land. To their surprise Lamar was more restrained in his policies. While Lamar's memoirs showed that he had big plans for Texas including massive wars against the Indian tribes, turning her into a regional power with a national railroad and multiple pacific ports, and possible conquests of Mexico, Lamar fortunately knew that he would have to act in a realistic manner if he wanted to prove himself as President. While he had won the election the votes came to a small 151 man difference that could easily have gone the other direction. All Lamar needed was a major scandal or failure for 152 people to choose Houston next election. Even worse the currently popular Republican Party could lose congress to the Western Union Party if Lamar's popularity dropped, ruining all the work he had done in the legislative branch the past five years. So instead he decided on two primary goals for his first term, Economic prosperity and the creation of a national education system.
One of the main priorities of the Republican Party that had prompted them to national fame was their promises of economic success and high support of industrialization. When Lamar managed to gain California in the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo he never did it just for bragging rights. Rather, his primary goal was to use California to keep Texas independent by using access to the Pacific to trade with China and to use California's vast resources to Texas's use in the future, as the current lands of the state of Texas were at the time only good for farming and lumber (though they would know of the nation's vast oil reserves decades later). The main problem was that beyond the Arizona trail trade with California was at a minimum and the journey to the Pacific could take 2-3 months on horseback. So Lamar had to focus on securing Texas first and then using the rise in revenue to fully exploit California later. His first act was to create the National Bank of Texas in 1842. This piece of legislation was approved with immense bipartisan support as both Republicans and Western Unionists saw just how damaging the loss of a central bank was in relation to the United States and the Great Panic. Up until that point the Republic had largely relied on its loans from France as well as other loans from the United States. The Franc and the Dollar were primarily used in trading deals with the Redback only being worth $.10. With the founding of the First National Bank, the value of the redback had immediately doubled and Texas was able to gain more loans from European nations and establish a credit system for trade with Western Europe. Recognizing that cotton was Texas's chief cash crop, Lamar would use government funds to subsidize the founding of the nation's first textile mill in 1842. Lamar's logic for this decision is that while it was a payment of national taxes for private interests, the creation of the textile mill could add large amounts of profits to the Texas economy by producing high quality textile products to sell directly to Texans and other nations in Latin America for a handsome price instead of having to buy directly from the United States. The Brazos mill would be opened up on September 23rd and is located 20 miles north of the current city of Sugar Land. Lumber mills were also given the same treatment as they were found in high demand within the Midwest United States and Southwest America, while being a source of large material stock for the housing and shipping industry. The creation of these mills were primarily concentrated in Eastern Texas due to the large number and size of rivers that were used to power the first generation mils. In addition to the textile and lumber mills subsidies were spent on gunsmiths as the people of Texas were in large need of firearms for defense, sport, and hunting. When Samuel Colt came to Texas he surprisingly found hundreds of dollars in Texas funding along with private donations that would allow him to open his first gunworks in 1839 near the city of Houston. Lastly in need of direct funding was the shipbuilding industry. At the time New Orleans and Havana were the only serious competitors in the gulf when it came to quality ships and ports for trade. Lamar worked closely with Jose Navarro to turn Galveston into a sort of New York of the Gulf by expanding the city over the island and putting massive amounts of funding into the first shipyards and harbors. Immense help came in the form of Adelsverein as Lamar was able to work with Prince Carl to attract thousands of Germans from the Hanseatic cities to Galveston to work on the newly created shipyards. This policy would be of massive benefit for the Republican party in the long run as Galveston would later become a practical German island with the island remaining a bastion for the party well into the end of the century. At the time the Western Union party called these actions to be wasteful spending as they concentrated the precious loans and taxes into a few select businesses that would have little gain. History later proved these to be economically beneficial in the long run as by 1861 an estimated $ 70 million redbacks were added to the Texas GDP due to Lamar's policies. Half extra revenue brought by these economic growths would be spent on investment in California and the West were silver and iron mines in the future Deseret and Arizona commonwealths were being opened, with the coastal cities of San Francisco, Las Angeles, San Diego, and Monterrey, beginning the process of being turned into large trade cities that would dominate North America later in the 19th century. Lastly of note is the development of Texas's first railroads. Lamar was introduced to the concept in 1843 by an English immigrant named Thomas Percival. Thomas had worked on the birth of the first railways around London and wanted to introduce him to Texas so that he could make a name for himself by introducing the innovative system to Texas. Lamar was intrigued to the concept as he foresaw the enormous benefits this would have for the Republic by connecting Texas and California while transporting its people across the hundreds of miles of land. While he could not fully realize these goals during his presidency, Lamar gave the go ahead for the first railroad in Texas to be built between Houston and Galveston.
View attachment 290702
View attachment 290704
The Textile Mill and the Railroad. The two leading factors of Texas Industrialization. Modern Day Galveston Shipyard.
What surprised many of Lamar's political opponents, and the people of Texas in general, was the man's passion for education. As a child Lamar grew up with his father giving him unlimited access to books and setting him with some of the best tutors in Georgia. From these sessions Lamar became somewhat of an intellectual and was even accepted to Princeton University, an offer he surprisingly refused. He had an immense passion for reading and knowledge and wanted all children of Texas to be given the same opportunity. Lamar saw this as one of his best platforms to rely on in the beginning as it would raise the literacy rate and work efficiency of Texas overall. It was also something Western Unionists could hardly oppose as saying that, "Spending on education is a bad thing", was not something that helped you to win votes. Lamar passed the National Education Act in 1842 which created the Department of Education, whose position of secretary was given to Anson Jones to give the Western Union a small concession without a large amount of political power. The law also enacted a universal public education system that mandated all children to at least graduate elementary before they could enter the workforce. Through his connections with Seguin, Lamar worked closely with the Catholic Church and gave them a large amount of autonomy in the education system in order to maintain their missions to educate the Tejano population as well as civilizing the Indian population. In regards to the Indians while citizens technically had the same right to education funding was mostly steered towards white schoolhouses and thus Indian children were forced to rely on their tribal communities or Christian missionaries that would often visit the tribal territories. Lamar is also remembered for setting up large amounts of land to be used for future universities with the two most notable cases being the future University of Texas and University of Texas A&M.
View attachment 290700View attachment 290701
Universities of Texas A&M and Texas. The two top public universities in Texas.
The most controversial part of Lamar's presidency is his policies and stances towards Indians. Documents and personal journals recovered by Texas historians revealed that Lamar had a high amount of hate for the Indian man and believed that their "total extinction" was necessary in order to expand the lands of Texas to the white population. It is unknown what was the cause of this hatred as Lamar grew up in an area of Georgia well away from Cherokee lands and had suffered no personal tragedies at the hand of any Indian tribes. Regardless he still maintained a strong hatred that only slightly lessened once he was out of office. Had Lamar been able to gain power in 1836 then he might've been able to see these plans come to and would have found a large amount of support. Fortunately, after five years of relative peace with the Indian tribes and the overall success of the Indian Citizenship Initiative, Lamar knew that any implementation of these plans would only ruin his reputation and result in a complete landslide victory against him come 1844. Thus he withheld his hand and chose to wait for the right opportunities to strike. Lamar chose to completely ignore the new tribes who had become citizens, and instead directed his focus towards the Comanche, the most hated enemies of Texas. While he never fully ordered for an outright war to commence, Lamar called for a policy of total retaliation where any attack against a Texas settlement would result in the Army and Texas Rangers being sent out to completely annihilate the aggressor tribe in response. These actions would be the first battles of the Indian Wars of Texas that would continue until the mid 1880's. While attacks against the hostile native tribes were often successful they developed into a pretty mixed bag of results. The primary negative effect was the continued hostile raids by Comanche and Apache in response to the attacks, resulting in the emergence of the first warbands directed against Texas. The most powerful groups of the Comanche and Apache still kept to themselves as little direct territorial expansion had commenced unto their lands, though a hostile somewhat cold war setting began on the frontier between these two groups and Texas. Lamar's frontier battles also earned the ire of the Eastern Indians who joined the Western Union Party en masse, Lamar justified these actions though as he only retaliated after being attacked on and did not direct use of the army towards citizens. Still, Lamar gained many benefits from these campaigns such as increasing support from the Tejanos, who had long since despised the frontier Indians and found new land open for their settlement as well as the whites. New lands were being opened for settlement (though they wouldn't be fullly exploited yet) and in the course of a few years rouge Indian attacks against settlements and farms ceased with only attacks by large and united tribal parties remaining. Finally Lamar managed to gain the political support of both the Army and Texas Rangers who both saw extensive funding to protect the frontier and were in their views being unleashed against the true enemy without any restraints, something Houston had not done during his two terms. As for the average Indian in Texas only time would tell of their status. Some thrived while others fought in resistance to protect their people and culture, dying in vain to see the southwest lost to the white man.
When the elections came around in 1844 the Western Party was shocked when Sam Houston chose not to run, as he still had one more term left under the constitution. Houston's reasoning was that while he still despised Lamar, he recognized that their was a high chance of losing for a second time as Lamar's only major downsides were the rise in national debt and hostility against Indians. Both of these could be dismissed as the spending was used mainly for the military, economic development, and education system; while the Indian attacks were targeting solely hostile Comanche tribes, something even the most liberal of Texans would not disagree against. The Western Union Party instead chose Anson Jones as he was somewhat of a rising star in Texas politics being one of the nation's chief medical experts as well as a primary founder of the party. Lamar of course chose to run again and also kept Burnett as his running mate, who was an immense help in the legislative branch. The course of the campaign was rather calm as Lamar still traveled around the country but mostly to the large frontier settlements and big cities as he had to focus on the presidency. Anson Jones primarily worked his campaign off of supporters in the East where the party was trying to consolidate its base in order to capture congress and build a bastion for future presidential elections. In the spirit of the previous election another Presidential debate was held in San Antonio where over 2500 people had gathered to watch. This time the debates were more even as Anson Jones was able to successfully promote the Western Union's platform while Lamar maintained the success that he had created in his presidency. Neither side was successful in attacking the other but most witnesses agreed that Lamar held a slight edge when it came to confrontations about policy. In the end Lamar had won a victory with a close but respectable 60% majority vote. The Western Union Party was at least successful in congressional elections where they were able to reduce the gap to 25(W)-35(R) in the house and 11(W)-14(R) in the senate.
1844 Texas Presidential Elections
Lamar/Burnett (R): 10,243 60.4%
Jones/Anderson (W): 6,815 39.6%
View attachment 290708View attachment 290710
"Would you look at that. I've been in office one year and unlike what some of my opponents may have thought, our country still stands"- President Mirabeau B. Lamar 1842
"Look we did not steal our party name from the Texans. It's a total coincidence I swear."- Abraham Lincoln 1860
"In honor of our great President who is the father of education for all of Texas, I present to you Lamar University."- Dean Gerald Hawkins 1932
In the beginning of Lamar's first few months in office many in the Western Union Party assumed that he would use his control of congress to pass multiple legislation centralizing Texas as well as revoking the Indians of their appointed land. To their surprise Lamar was more restrained in his policies. While Lamar's memoirs showed that he had big plans for Texas including massive wars against the Indian tribes, turning her into a regional power with a national railroad and multiple pacific ports, and possible conquests of Mexico, Lamar fortunately knew that he would have to act in a realistic manner if he wanted to prove himself as President. While he had won the election the votes came to a small 151 man difference that could easily have gone the other direction. All Lamar needed was a major scandal or failure for 152 people to choose Houston next election. Even worse the currently popular Republican Party could lose congress to the Western Union Party if Lamar's popularity dropped, ruining all the work he had done in the legislative branch the past five years. So instead he decided on two primary goals for his first term, Economic prosperity and the creation of a national education system.
One of the main priorities of the Republican Party that had prompted them to national fame was their promises of economic success and high support of industrialization. When Lamar managed to gain California in the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo he never did it just for bragging rights. Rather, his primary goal was to use California to keep Texas independent by using access to the Pacific to trade with China and to use California's vast resources to Texas's use in the future, as the current lands of the state of Texas were at the time only good for farming and lumber (though they would know of the nation's vast oil reserves decades later). The main problem was that beyond the Arizona trail trade with California was at a minimum and the journey to the Pacific could take 2-3 months on horseback. So Lamar had to focus on securing Texas first and then using the rise in revenue to fully exploit California later. His first act was to create the National Bank of Texas in 1842. This piece of legislation was approved with immense bipartisan support as both Republicans and Western Unionists saw just how damaging the loss of a central bank was in relation to the United States and the Great Panic. Up until that point the Republic had largely relied on its loans from France as well as other loans from the United States. The Franc and the Dollar were primarily used in trading deals with the Redback only being worth $.10. With the founding of the First National Bank, the value of the redback had immediately doubled and Texas was able to gain more loans from European nations and establish a credit system for trade with Western Europe. Recognizing that cotton was Texas's chief cash crop, Lamar would use government funds to subsidize the founding of the nation's first textile mill in 1842. Lamar's logic for this decision is that while it was a payment of national taxes for private interests, the creation of the textile mill could add large amounts of profits to the Texas economy by producing high quality textile products to sell directly to Texans and other nations in Latin America for a handsome price instead of having to buy directly from the United States. The Brazos mill would be opened up on September 23rd and is located 20 miles north of the current city of Sugar Land. Lumber mills were also given the same treatment as they were found in high demand within the Midwest United States and Southwest America, while being a source of large material stock for the housing and shipping industry. The creation of these mills were primarily concentrated in Eastern Texas due to the large number and size of rivers that were used to power the first generation mils. In addition to the textile and lumber mills subsidies were spent on gunsmiths as the people of Texas were in large need of firearms for defense, sport, and hunting. When Samuel Colt came to Texas he surprisingly found hundreds of dollars in Texas funding along with private donations that would allow him to open his first gunworks in 1839 near the city of Houston. Lastly in need of direct funding was the shipbuilding industry. At the time New Orleans and Havana were the only serious competitors in the gulf when it came to quality ships and ports for trade. Lamar worked closely with Jose Navarro to turn Galveston into a sort of New York of the Gulf by expanding the city over the island and putting massive amounts of funding into the first shipyards and harbors. Immense help came in the form of Adelsverein as Lamar was able to work with Prince Carl to attract thousands of Germans from the Hanseatic cities to Galveston to work on the newly created shipyards. This policy would be of massive benefit for the Republican party in the long run as Galveston would later become a practical German island with the island remaining a bastion for the party well into the end of the century. At the time the Western Union party called these actions to be wasteful spending as they concentrated the precious loans and taxes into a few select businesses that would have little gain. History later proved these to be economically beneficial in the long run as by 1861 an estimated $ 70 million redbacks were added to the Texas GDP due to Lamar's policies. Half extra revenue brought by these economic growths would be spent on investment in California and the West were silver and iron mines in the future Deseret and Arizona commonwealths were being opened, with the coastal cities of San Francisco, Las Angeles, San Diego, and Monterrey, beginning the process of being turned into large trade cities that would dominate North America later in the 19th century. Lastly of note is the development of Texas's first railroads. Lamar was introduced to the concept in 1843 by an English immigrant named Thomas Percival. Thomas had worked on the birth of the first railways around London and wanted to introduce him to Texas so that he could make a name for himself by introducing the innovative system to Texas. Lamar was intrigued to the concept as he foresaw the enormous benefits this would have for the Republic by connecting Texas and California while transporting its people across the hundreds of miles of land. While he could not fully realize these goals during his presidency, Lamar gave the go ahead for the first railroad in Texas to be built between Houston and Galveston.
View attachment 290702
The Textile Mill and the Railroad. The two leading factors of Texas Industrialization. Modern Day Galveston Shipyard.
What surprised many of Lamar's political opponents, and the people of Texas in general, was the man's passion for education. As a child Lamar grew up with his father giving him unlimited access to books and setting him with some of the best tutors in Georgia. From these sessions Lamar became somewhat of an intellectual and was even accepted to Princeton University, an offer he surprisingly refused. He had an immense passion for reading and knowledge and wanted all children of Texas to be given the same opportunity. Lamar saw this as one of his best platforms to rely on in the beginning as it would raise the literacy rate and work efficiency of Texas overall. It was also something Western Unionists could hardly oppose as saying that, "Spending on education is a bad thing", was not something that helped you to win votes. Lamar passed the National Education Act in 1842 which created the Department of Education, whose position of secretary was given to Anson Jones to give the Western Union a small concession without a large amount of political power. The law also enacted a universal public education system that mandated all children to at least graduate elementary before they could enter the workforce. Through his connections with Seguin, Lamar worked closely with the Catholic Church and gave them a large amount of autonomy in the education system in order to maintain their missions to educate the Tejano population as well as civilizing the Indian population. In regards to the Indians while citizens technically had the same right to education funding was mostly steered towards white schoolhouses and thus Indian children were forced to rely on their tribal communities or Christian missionaries that would often visit the tribal territories. Lamar is also remembered for setting up large amounts of land to be used for future universities with the two most notable cases being the future University of Texas and University of Texas A&M.
View attachment 290700View attachment 290701
Universities of Texas A&M and Texas. The two top public universities in Texas.
The most controversial part of Lamar's presidency is his policies and stances towards Indians. Documents and personal journals recovered by Texas historians revealed that Lamar had a high amount of hate for the Indian man and believed that their "total extinction" was necessary in order to expand the lands of Texas to the white population. It is unknown what was the cause of this hatred as Lamar grew up in an area of Georgia well away from Cherokee lands and had suffered no personal tragedies at the hand of any Indian tribes. Regardless he still maintained a strong hatred that only slightly lessened once he was out of office. Had Lamar been able to gain power in 1836 then he might've been able to see these plans come to and would have found a large amount of support. Fortunately, after five years of relative peace with the Indian tribes and the overall success of the Indian Citizenship Initiative, Lamar knew that any implementation of these plans would only ruin his reputation and result in a complete landslide victory against him come 1844. Thus he withheld his hand and chose to wait for the right opportunities to strike. Lamar chose to completely ignore the new tribes who had become citizens, and instead directed his focus towards the Comanche, the most hated enemies of Texas. While he never fully ordered for an outright war to commence, Lamar called for a policy of total retaliation where any attack against a Texas settlement would result in the Army and Texas Rangers being sent out to completely annihilate the aggressor tribe in response. These actions would be the first battles of the Indian Wars of Texas that would continue until the mid 1880's. While attacks against the hostile native tribes were often successful they developed into a pretty mixed bag of results. The primary negative effect was the continued hostile raids by Comanche and Apache in response to the attacks, resulting in the emergence of the first warbands directed against Texas. The most powerful groups of the Comanche and Apache still kept to themselves as little direct territorial expansion had commenced unto their lands, though a hostile somewhat cold war setting began on the frontier between these two groups and Texas. Lamar's frontier battles also earned the ire of the Eastern Indians who joined the Western Union Party en masse, Lamar justified these actions though as he only retaliated after being attacked on and did not direct use of the army towards citizens. Still, Lamar gained many benefits from these campaigns such as increasing support from the Tejanos, who had long since despised the frontier Indians and found new land open for their settlement as well as the whites. New lands were being opened for settlement (though they wouldn't be fullly exploited yet) and in the course of a few years rouge Indian attacks against settlements and farms ceased with only attacks by large and united tribal parties remaining. Finally Lamar managed to gain the political support of both the Army and Texas Rangers who both saw extensive funding to protect the frontier and were in their views being unleashed against the true enemy without any restraints, something Houston had not done during his two terms. As for the average Indian in Texas only time would tell of their status. Some thrived while others fought in resistance to protect their people and culture, dying in vain to see the southwest lost to the white man.
When the elections came around in 1844 the Western Party was shocked when Sam Houston chose not to run, as he still had one more term left under the constitution. Houston's reasoning was that while he still despised Lamar, he recognized that their was a high chance of losing for a second time as Lamar's only major downsides were the rise in national debt and hostility against Indians. Both of these could be dismissed as the spending was used mainly for the military, economic development, and education system; while the Indian attacks were targeting solely hostile Comanche tribes, something even the most liberal of Texans would not disagree against. The Western Union Party instead chose Anson Jones as he was somewhat of a rising star in Texas politics being one of the nation's chief medical experts as well as a primary founder of the party. Lamar of course chose to run again and also kept Burnett as his running mate, who was an immense help in the legislative branch. The course of the campaign was rather calm as Lamar still traveled around the country but mostly to the large frontier settlements and big cities as he had to focus on the presidency. Anson Jones primarily worked his campaign off of supporters in the East where the party was trying to consolidate its base in order to capture congress and build a bastion for future presidential elections. In the spirit of the previous election another Presidential debate was held in San Antonio where over 2500 people had gathered to watch. This time the debates were more even as Anson Jones was able to successfully promote the Western Union's platform while Lamar maintained the success that he had created in his presidency. Neither side was successful in attacking the other but most witnesses agreed that Lamar held a slight edge when it came to confrontations about policy. In the end Lamar had won a victory with a close but respectable 60% majority vote. The Western Union Party was at least successful in congressional elections where they were able to reduce the gap to 25(W)-35(R) in the house and 11(W)-14(R) in the senate.
1844 Texas Presidential Elections
Lamar/Burnett (R): 10,243 60.4%
Jones/Anderson (W): 6,815 39.6%
View attachment 290708View attachment 290710
- Kaiser Chris
- Word Count: 2.5k