Stephen F. Austin, empresario of Texas

Abstract

Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. By Gregg Cantrell. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 493. Illustrations, maps. $29.95.) The last biography of Stephen F. Austin was written in 1925; thus, a scholarly reevaluation of his life and times has been long overdue. This need has now been very successfully satisfied by Gregg Cantrell's magisterial study. Cantrell has provided a narrative text of nearly 500 pages that fully explores Austin's career through the use of an impressive array of American and Mexican secondary and primary materials. Not only has Cantrell followed his subject from birth to death, but he has done so with a fully developed background of contextual detail that gives the biography a sense of being rooted in the time and place surrounding each sphere of Austin's life. One may question the necessity for such a long book on Austin. In places, the text does seem to bog down a bit, and no doubt a little tighter editing would have made for a more concise treatment. Still, this problem is minor in a well-written, even engaging, narrative that maintains a reader's interest. With only a couple of exceptions, the use of novelistic suppositions is avoided, and Cantrell constructs plausible and probable conclusions from scant evidence. There is an excellent set of maps to support the text and, at the end, a very useful essay on sources. Cantrell is overly modest in his introductory assertion that the work is simply a biography and not an attempt to analyze wider themes. In a number of places, the author offers insights about the events through which Austin moved that are informative and even provocative. For instance, Cantrell offers an overview of the debate between the old and new western historiography and places Austin's career within the differing interpretative themes. He finds that, often enough, it does not fit neatly or easily into either, suggesting a historical situation that was far more complex and layered than the rival historiographical schools allow. Also examined are the nature of east Missouri in the 18 10s and 1820s, the impact of the Panic of 1819 on that frontier, and the effect that the War of 1812 had on young Austin's career and on the region. Indeed, Cantrell suggests that the war created a labor shortage on the frontier that helped to expand slavery into the West. The bulk of the study, properly, concerns the evolution of Texas within the newly independent nation of Mexico. This required an introduction to Mexican political history, particularly on the contest between centralism and federalism that worked to constantly bedevil Austin's land schemes. Within Texas, Cantrell focuses on the growing American colony populated primarily by southerners who wanted a slave-based society and on this group's growing unrest under Mexican rule. The main focus of the work, of course, is Stephen Austin himself, a difficult man to pin down. He was a master diplomat and successful conciliator, a workaholic who could be paternalistic, cynical, and selfpitying. He was a life-long bachelor who had to deal with recurring bouts of ill health while being obsessively driven to follow his perceived calling: the Americanization of Texas. Cantrell faced the unenviable task of trying to pierce Austin's own smokescreen of misrepresentations and self-serving rationalizations, many of which do not stand up to Cantrell's investigations. The author has been careful to balance Austin's considerable accomplishments with his sometimes questionable ideas. Cantrell starts by tracing the fortunes of Austin's family, looking especially at the trials and tribulations of his father, Moses, and that man's desire for wealth and influence in east Missouri during the early republic. The almost continuous need for money and the spiralling debt that formed the essence of Moses's life would weigh heavily on his son. The need for economic advancement and financial security for his family underlies the moody and restless nature of much of Stephen Austin's career. …