When the Republic of Texas was annexed as a State to the United States, it was the expectation that it would eventually be so divided as to make five States, giving to the slave property interest the advantage of ten additional votes in the National Senate. A provision in the Act of Annexation renders it optional with the people of Texas to separate their territory from time to time into as many States, not exceeding five, as may each contain a population equal to the number required by our fundamental law for the construction of a State by special act of Congress.

It has been generally expected that a separation of Texas into two States would soon be made. It has been supposed that Trinity River would be the division, and in anticipation of the event, that part of the country lying east of this stream is universally designated as Eastern Texas, and that beyond its right bank is distinguished with equal exactness as Western Texas.

A sectional, political jealousy of a very strong nature exists between these two sections of the State, which has its basis in a covetousness of the people of each to obtain as much as possible [of] the patronage and credit and the use of the Commonwealth property of the entire State, before it shall be divided for their own part of it.

This jealousy, which amounts with many of the people to a bitter animosity, has been greatly increased during the last two sessions of the Legislature by alleged breaches of faith on the part of the majority who represent the interests of the East.

The Pacific Railroad project, which proposes to carry the road through Northern Texas, is looked upon by the people of the West with no favor. If constructed as proposed, they consider that the road will be rather an injury than a benefit to them. To the East, however, it would be of incalculable advantage. To carry the bill, which offered to donate to the road an immense amount of State property as an inducement to foreign capitalists to undertake its construction, it is alleged, and universally believed in the West, that the Eastern members pledged themselves to vote for the so-called Loan bill, the passage of which would have insured the construction of certain internal roads which have been undertaken and are grievously needed by the West. The Pacific Railroad bill became a law; the Loan bill was subsequently defeated by Eastern votes. The people of the West, generally, consider themselves, to use their own phrase, as having been sold in the transaction, and are in consequence intensely exasperated.

Yet no public demonstration of this feeling is made, and in the legislative debates you may see nothing reported by which any distinct division of [301] interests between the two sections of the State is proclaimed. Only the vehemence and rhetorical emphasis with which it is denied, except in the lapses of excitement, betray it. The hope is expressed and the intention avowed that Texas may long remain one great, united, powerful State, retaining the undoubted advantage it has in the united strength of all parts acting together, and that distinction, consequence and power it holds as the greatest State in the Territorial area of the Union.

And these declarations on the part of the political leaders in the Legislature and elsewhere, are sincere. The intention of a speedy division of the State into two has been abandoned. It is now the purpose to endeavor by all possible means to continue the State in its unity, until, at least, the time arrives when it may be divided at once into five States.

The main reason for this change of purpose, I have no doubt is this:

A majority of the citizens of the whole of Western Texas are Mexicans and Germans, who have no attachment to the institution of Slavery, and whose interests would lead them to look with disfavor upon the continued filling up of the country by slave laborers. It is possible that the further introduction of slaves into the new Western State would be prohibited, or that it would be required that all slaves subsequently introduced into the country, should be educated and held subject to be made free after their labor should have paid their value and the expenses of their support and education.

The great Territory of what has been known as Western Texas would thus be made attractive to free emigrants, and would probably increase in population more rapidly than the East.

I will give the opinion upon this point of a very intelligent gentleman, who has lately himself come hither from Germany, and who for two years before his emigration had an opportunity, in the way of his business, of conversing with several thousand persons intending to leave that country for the United States. The objection of the existence of Slavery, he informs me, is constantly made by them to Texas, as a destination, and he has not the least doubt the immigration would be increased more than one hundred per cent., if Slavery were legally forbidden, or henceforth excluded from Western Texas.

Should, therefore, a division of the State be now made at Trinity River, as has been generally anticipated, it is probable not only that two Senators, not particularly devoted to the perpetuation of Slavery as the prime interest of their constituents, would be added to Congress, but that Western Texas would increase in population so rapidly as to secure the right to redivide itself once, if not twice, before the East would be able to do so. Thus it might happen that, instead of the Slave States gaining power by the annexation of Texas, they would have actually given to Freedom six Senatorial votes, while they themselves gained but four.

Of course the slave owners of the East, and the slave owners and those ambitious to become slavemasters in the West, will now be sufficiently careful not to let their minor quarrels touching railroads and such unimportant means [302] of wealth, interfere with their paramount interest in the stability of the value of negroes.

It seems to them now probable that the State of Texas will remain one, casting but two votes in the Senate, until its population is sufficiently large to permit a division of it into five States. It may then be expected that one entirely inland State will be formed, its northern boundary being New-Mexico and Kansas; its eastern boundary Arkansas and Louisiana. If the Pacific Railroad is constructed through this, as is the Texas project, it will be settled extensively by slave planters throughout its whole length. If this scheme fails, it will for a long time be very sparsely settled, except in the East, between the Red River and the Trinity, which is now being more rapidly taken possession of by slave owners than any other part of the present State, and will soon be a rich and populous planting district. The Southern boundary line of this State will be carried where it is necessary to effect the desired division of votes.

Four States may be conveniently constructed of the remaining Territory; each having a front (as town-lot speculators would say) on the sea-shore. The first between the Sabine and the Trinity, the second and third between the Trinity and the Guadalupe, the division between them being probably the Brazos, above San Felipe de Austin and the Colorado below; and the fourth, between the Guadalupe and the Rio Grande.

This last State to be west of the Guadalupe, as far as I have been able to judge from the prevailing sentiment of the people, is likely to enter the Union, nominally, as a Slave State, because it will not be thought right to destroy the value of their property in slaves, which immigrants to the Territory have brought with them while Slavery was legal. But the further introduction of slaves will be prohibited, and such will be the public feeling that this prohibition will be enforced, as a similar prohibition of the State of Georgia never has been. Slaves which have previously been brought into the country will be likely to be held, subsequently to the formation of the State, subject to great amelioration of their condition, and to education, and the earliest practicable scheme of emancipation which can be carried out without a practical confiscation of the property of their owners in them. The political position of the State will be generous and broadly Democratic, and it will be virtually an acquisition to the number and the power of the Free States.

Although the time at which this may occur is still many years distant, and circumstances may seem to entirely change the aspect of affairs, I give my opinion that this is the prospect from present indications, with distinctness, because I have formed it with care, and because it is a subject of great interest to all those who look from elsewhere towards Western Texas as a desirable country for their future residence. Among the grounds for my opinion are the following:

A very large majority of the present population of the territory described (which I should have observed compares in its area with the State of [303]

[304] New-York) are men who have been, or now are, accustomed to hard labor with their own hands, for the support of themselves and their families. The proportion of this class to that of the slaves, and of slaveholders or whites from Slave States, is much more likely to be increased than lessened in the future. Consequently, the majority of the laborers in the State are likely to be freemen, and these free laborers will not only not be slaves, as is the case with a majority of the laborers in Delaware and Maryland, but they will be voting citizens, looking out sharply for their own interests.

And it is only by especial laws, onerous in their execution upon the rest of the community, that Slavery can be sustained. Especially will this be the case here, where the facilities for the escape of negroes from Slavery are greater than anywhere else at the South, and the people at large are already heavily taxed for the apprehension of fugitives. Neither the Mexican nor the German population is at present regarded and treated by the Anglo-American Texans with that respect for their rights and regard for their interests and opinions which might be likely to conciliate their political friendship.

A variety of circumstances will tend to render slave property insecure in this frontier territory, except at the expense of kindness or relaxation of discipline, which will interfere materially with its profits, and bring its results more directly in unfavorable contrast with those of competitive labor. This is already very perceptible.

The larger the population of free laboring proprietors, the smaller will be the proportion of land open to occupation by slave-owners and their property. But a small part of the country is attractive to planters, from its natural adaptation to their purposes. Much of this is already settled upon by Germans. The vicinity of free laboring families, I have shown in my letters on the “Industry of the South,” in the Times, is everywhere considered objectionable, as demoralizing (to discipline) and otherwise interfering with the profit of working slaves, by their owners.

The territory not adapted to planting consists of mountains, with narrow valleys, suitable for the fields of small farmers, and the steadings of sheep ranges; and of great prairies, intersected and divided by arid plains and thorny thickets, and deficient in wood and water. A large part of these are well adapted to grazing purposes, and especially to wool-growing.

Experiments indicate that much of the land is remarkably well adapted to vineyards, and that the manufacture of wine, to which many of the Germans are accustomed, will be profitable.

In one part of the territory, there are several abundant water-courses, with rapid streams, unnavigable, and readily dammed at frequent intervals. On the banks of these streams are inexhaustible quarries of the most easily-worked stone, suitable to building purposes, that I have ever seen, equal to the Caen stone of France, superior to the Portland stone of England, more like the Leith stone, of which Edinburgh is built, than any other I remember, but superior to [305] it in softness and fineness. Sand, lime and clay, are also here found in abundance. Bituminous coal, iron, copper and lead, have been found in the mountains. On the one hand of these streams are the most productive cotton lands in the world; on the other is an unsurpassed wool-growing region.

The Germans find the climate very favorable to their health, and not inimical to vigorous labor.

Taking these natural circumstances into consideration, in connection with the character of its present population, especially of that part of it derived from Germany, it seems probable that the State must be one of very varied industry, and that the habits and the interests of the people will generally be opposed to the continuance of a degrading labor system among them. It must be remembered that the Mexican population within the territory is large and increasing, and that it is a dark-colored, mixed race, including often no small proportion of African blood, so much so that it requires the eye of an expert to distinguish many of those held as slaves, on account of their color, from others among the Mexicans who are constitutionally eligible to the highest offices. The Mexicans have no repugnance, but rather the contrary, to equality and the closest intimacy with negroes. But the intelligence, the enterprise, and the peculiar habits of mind which are the effects of early industrial training, that exist as most important elements in the Germans, as well as the rational regard for liberty, as a right of man, which they generally have, is wanting in the degraded Mexicans.

There are no capitalists among the Germans, but they will inevitably gain wealth much more rapidly than the Anglo-Americans, though it will be by productive industry rather than speculation. They are cautious but patient, industrious and persevering in whatever they undertake. They contrast remarkably with the American Southerners in this respect. Southerners are rarely enterprising, but they are adventurous. Their business must be magnificent and attended with excitement and grand glory, or they sleep over it. A German will speculate patiently for years on a half acre of vines in which he can work before breakfast, while he finds it hard to earn his living by the rest of his day’s labor. If wine is to be profitably made in Texas, this poor German settler will be the one to demonstrate it, to find how it is to be profitably made and to make it. So it will be of Wheat and Barley and Rice; so of Olives, of Indigo and of Tea; of the Fig, the Palm and the Agave. So it will be especially of all kinds of manufacturing and mining, and of various enterprises, to success in which Southern American proprietorship and Slave labor has never yet been found adequate.

I have found the Germans everywhere remarkably contented and satisfied with their success and their prospects. Their success and contentment is every year increasing the emigration, and I see no reason why it should not continue growing larger, year after year, for an indefinite time. The present residents have proved the climate to be unexpectedly favorable to the health of [306] Northern Europeans. They have proved that there is an abundant reward for labor to be obtained from the soil, and a large interest to be had on the employment of capital. They have demonstrated that cotton can be cultivated to greater advantage by free white laborers than with negro slaves, and at present prices with great profit. They have demonstrated that the climate is not destructive to energy and industry in white men, as is so frequently asserted, and they do not at present seem at all likely to fall into those indolent and inefficient habits which so generally characterize the Anglo-American settlers. With the latter, emigration certainly does seem to tend strongly towards barbarism. It is not so with the patient and industrious, but genial German. This is seen, as I have often shown in my letters, in the comfort which even the poorest Germans contrive to secure in their homes, so much more than the generality of Americans in Texas.

There is, then, I conclude, in Western Texas, a most favorable territory and a promising basis of character for a prosperous, wealthy, healthy-minded, and happy community, and a great, free, independent state. And such a State, self-governed by such a people, I hope to live to see here.