TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic "In a sense [Philip] Nolan...

and Long, with the men whom they led, were but the advance couriers of American expansion...They served the purpose of spying out the country, and paving the way for the peaceful invasion of Moses and Stephen Austin and the 'crowd of impresarios' who followed them." Frank W. Johnson, former Tennessee resident, and leader in the 1836 Texas revolution, in his Texas and the Texans (1916) "Meanwhile James Long had yet to find out what to do with the fire inside him." John Myers Myers, "The Explosion at Natchez," in his The Deaths of the Bravos (1962); In the chronicles of Western conquest, the winners are usually called patriots. In schoolbooks and speeches, the are lauded for having fought for "liberty," instead of for land

and position. Their military blunders are minimized, their jealousies and power tussles smoothed over, their personal vices whitewashed. Often their chaotic marriages and failed fortunes are discreetly overlooked. And those who preceded them--the filibusters who "opened" the West at the expense of rightful owners like Spain or Mexico or the Indians--are deliberately forgotten. Often they possessed equal vision and courage--but because they invaded too soon, and were defeated, they barely end up in history's footnotes. Yet they blazed the first bloody trails. Such as Nashville-educated James Long, who started a Lone-Star republic--with a Tennessee printer, who launched the first Texas newspaper in English. And Long fathered the First white girl born in Texas. James Long was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, circa 1793. He was a nephew (or grandson) of General Long, a former captain under General Daniel Morgan in the Revolutionary War. The family moved to Kentucky--and then to Rutherford County, Tennessee. Long had a brother named David (birthplace (unknown), who was active in his Texas campaign. One Mr.

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic Black in Rutherford County gave Long some early schooling. At fifteen he tried and failed to become a merchant--so for the next few years he worked at his father's store. This was probably in Maury County, though possibly in Nashville...since he was said to have been a

boyhood neighbor of Andrew Jackson. He saved up $600 from storekeeping, and went to school in Nashville--probably at Cumberland College (later the University of Nashville) on Rutledge Hill., Then he studied medicine under a Dr. Holland. The War of 1812 broke out...so Long joined the army as a surgeon, in the brigade of William Carroll (later Tennessee governor). At the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson called him "my brave young lion." Next, he was sent to Natchez with generals Carroll and John Coffee. He was attending an invalid soldier, when a black servant girl took a close look at him. As President Lamar of Texas would later describe him, Long was "tall, active and erect, with a fiery eye and a martial tread, the very hero for a tale of love and war." The servant girl rushed to her mistress, all a-gush over the visible charms of this young military doctor. Her mistress' name? Jane Herbert Wilkinson. She had moved to Natchez, Mississippi, after her parents died, becoming the ward of her uncle...none other than General James Wilkinson--retired plotter who had been pushed out of the army for a second time. By 1815 Jane was living in Natchez, a "very lovely Southern girl with magnolia-tinted satin smooth cheeks." She listened to her black servant's report, then headed for the sick soldier's house. She took one look at his physician--and on some excuse or other, entered a game of checkers with him. She won. The prize was a pair of gloves ...and Long supposedly said, "How I wish I might dare to ask for the dear little hand that will wear the glove."

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic Jane was under age, so couldn't leave home without a legal guardian.

She carefully selected Dr. Long for this role --upsetting her relatives, then calming them down with a wedding on May 14, 1815. Dear uncle James Wilkinson gave away the bride--not so much losing a niece, as gaining a filibuster surrogate. (Site of the wedding was the plantation house of Propinquity off the Natchez Trace.) Three days after their marriage, Long quit the army, then practiced medicine at Port Gibson, briefly. Next, the Longs bought a plantation near Walnut Hills in Warren County...then sold it. Back at Natchez, James opened a store with W. W. Walker--along with a branch store at Natchitoches. Picture his dismay when the town of Vicksburg was laid out...skyrocketing the value of the plantation land he'd sold. Well, speaking of land, what about East Texas? His wife's uncle loved Texas, of course...as a halcyon haven for conspiratorial fantasies. Wilkinson had survived various courts-martial, "military inquiries, plus a Congressional investigation (and the comical Aaron Burr trial!). Lately he had been hoping his three-volume Memoirs would polish up his begrimed name, and lift his flagging fortunes. (The 1816 edition differed markedly from the 1811 version, at least in Volume II!) Wilkinson saw his future in James and Jane: according to an historian in 1879, Long "became acquainted, through his wife and family, of the plans and designs of the bold schemers [Burr and Wilkinson] and at once conceived the bold idea of carrying them into successful execution." But later scholar Owen P. White rightly credits Andrew Jackson with being the other major influence on Long. Besides the Battle of New Orleans, Long fought with Jackson in the Seminole War of 1817 in Florida as well. Two English traders had riled up the Seminoles. Jackson, leading Tennessee militia at his own expense, plunged ferociously into Florida...and Staged a military tribunal, which hanged the two traders. (In charge was ex-Tennessean Edward

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic P. Gaines, who'd helped nab Aaron Burr.) For an encore, they toppled the Spanish

government...so Spain wisely chose to sell Florida, while it still had it to sell. Spain also forsook all claims to Oregon--but hung onto Texas. Diplomat Onis, smarting under years of Texas filibuster threats, drew the line at the Sabine River. The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 clinched the deal. No one wanted Texas more than Jackson. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun even feared he would use Florida as a pretext for a Mexican war. But by seizing Florida, he'd grabbed a chance at the presidency. So Texas could wait awhile. Conventional historians call the James Madison administration "the era of good feeling"but John Myers Myers, in his The Deaths of the Bravos, laughs at this. Down in New Orleans and Natchez, the treaty felt like a slap in the face...in effect, challenging the rowdy expansionists to a duel. Many still believed that the U.S. had been cheated out of Texas in the Louisiana -Purchase. Back in 1807, Aaron Burr had been arrested and indicted in Natchez--but the grand jury threw out the case, to the delight of the populace. Now in 1819, Natchez--like a city-state of antiquity--virtually declared war on Spain. Bellicose businessmen and planter- aristocrats. held a mass meeting...raising half-a-million dollars. General Adair of Kentucky, an alumnus of the Spanish Conspiracy, and the Aaron Burr caper (for which he'd been briefly jailed), plus the Gutierrez-Magee affair, was named the leader. Wisely he declined. So the honor fell upon Major James Long, quickly promoted to "General" Long. Veteran Texas filibusters joined up, such as Gutierrez, Sibley, and James Gaines...and of course, General Wilkinson, no doubt encouraging the entire enterprise from behind the scenes. Natchez-Under-the-Hill certainly supplied some sterling recruits...drifters and wharf ruffians avid for adventure. Back in 1810 a traveler had written of its environs: "For the size of it

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic there is not, perhaps" in the world a more profligate place." One visitor complained that prostitutes impeded his ability' to walk through town. Historian Owen P. White says the

roadways featured "half-naked girls" who "sold themselves dozens of times daily" to the river pirates, highwaymen, counterfeiters, smugglers, and slave stealers.* Now, in 1819, Long's promise of a "league of land" in Texas must have had a sobering, salutary effect upon some of the dissolute Under-the-Hill types. And Spain had not a thousand soldiers to hold Texas with. Boldness--plus cash Backing--might now yield Texas to the invaders, and ready it for annexation to the United States...even though the U.S. had officially spurned the idea. General Long seemed to feel that the pen was at least as mighty as the sword. So he initially dispatched Eli Harris, a printer from Tennessee, with sixty men--and a printing Press. Destination: Nacogdoches. Mission: to start a newspaper. By June 8 Harris had assembled 120 troops. He entered Texas from Natchitoches, where the commanding officer of U.S. troops winked at this blatant mockery of Spain's neutrality. His name? Captain Biddle Wilkinson, Jane's cousin...and nephew of General Wilkinson, a fact no historian nor biographer of Wilkinson has noticed. (General Wilkinson was no longer in the pay of Spain.) The understandably enraged Spanish official at Natchitoches could only sputter that these would-be newspaper publishers were "brigands who are going to commit a thousand atrocities." No doubt they picked up supplies at Long's store there. Eli Harris carried a flag designed by James Long, and sewn by Jane and her sister Chesley. White silk, red stripes, red fringe, with a single white star on a red field in the upper corner...Texas' first Lone Star flag. Then, amid fanfare and firing of cannons, General Long left Natchez on June 17 with *In the 1950s, an integrated brothel at 416 North Rankin Street (run by the daughter of ex-slaves), was deemed 'the greatest whorehouse in the South" by teenaged rock singer,

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic Jerry Lee Lewis, who studied boogie-woogie piano in clubs Under-the-Hill.

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

seventy-five land-lusting recruits. Jane Long had to stay behind with her baby-- daughter Ann due in a couple of weeks--even as her husband, General" Long, left town one step ahead of an arrest warrant. His ranks swelled to a reported 600, including Indians. They entered Nacogdoches on June 21--to a warm welcomeand they proclaimed a republic. Long was the President, and his Supreme Council included Gutierrez and Sibley. Representative government was guaranteed; so was the right to liberal education; along with freedom of religion (most campaigns against Spain flaunted such an anti-Catholic dig). The news reached England, where the raising of the Lone Star flag was reported in the London Courier.. And the "Declaration of the Supreme Council" was excerpted in Niles' Weekly Register of Baltimore--and was printed in full by-that filibuster mouthpiece, Nashville's Clarion (whose editors knew Long personally). The most historic proviso in the Declaration was "freedom of the press," exercised with a flair by the Texas Republican--Texas's first newspaper in English (August-October, 1819). Its printing press was seemingly owned by the printer Eli Harris, who must have brought it from Tennessee. Harris had published the Mountain Echo in McMinnville, Tennessee, of which one copy survives from 1816; he had also been a pressman in Franklin, Tennessee, circa 1816-18. Harris probably shared in the editing of the Republican, though the titular editor was Horatio Bigelow (background unknown). Harris most likely had friends at the Nashville Clarion who may have helped create the Republican, behind the scenes. The Clarion reprinted a long tirade from a Mississippi paper on July 13: Our citizens have a right to migrate where they choose ...perhaps there is no part of the universe more healthy [than Texas]...Divine Providence itself [supports] this holy effort against the most despicable despotism that ever existed...enfeebled, priest ridden ...rotten monarchy of old Spain. A letter from Natchitoches (August 10) said Texas should be annexed to the U.S.--another letter,

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic from the Kentucky Gazette, claimed there were "many young men in America, panting for

glory," eager for such an endeavor. (In Long's ranks was that hard drinking Kentuckian, James Bowie--professional slave-stealer and knife-wielder who died at the Alamo.*) Another letter from Texas (August 13) boasted that "citizens are constantly moving in with their families...This is certainly the most healthy, beautiful and fertile country I have ever seen--I have never seen a more orderly set of soldiers." On August 17 the Clarion vowed to publicize Texas "until the public attention is drawn to that delightful country enslaved by miserable wretches," while lamenting the lack of information due to "the great distance between Nashville and the Patriot army." When the Nashville Clarion proudly printed the Declaration of the new Texas republic (on August 24, 1819), it editorialized against the "Hydra monster, tyranny," quoting the St. Louis Enquirer "that this beautiful province is about to be covered with adventurers...every man who wishes to see gold and silver abundant in his country...to see liberty continue her march to the Pacific ocean" ought to support this fledgling republic! The Cincinnati Inquirer hoped that "a daring and intrepid leader" would arise to bring "liberty"--and, especially, 300 gold and silver mines--into the bosom of the United States." A more sobering letter from Texas appeared on September 7--pleading for extra troops to keep the Indian allies in line, "to prevent them from killing prisoners, as well as women and children, and plundering private property." The going rate for soldiers was $13 a month for privates, $16 for corporals, $20 for sergeants--with even privates getting ten sections of land. Oh, yes, this filibuster frontier was safe for families, who were offered 640 acres each...and even "old Maids and Bachelors" could get 320 acres apiece, suggesting a thrilling singles' club for hardy spinsters and fearless unmarried men.

*Many secondary sources claim James Bowie was born in Tennessee--but he was almost certainly born in Kentucky (see pp. ).

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

The Clarion welcomed the first issue of the Texas Republican on September 14--voicing pride over General Long's Maury County background and Elli Harris's local journalistic ties. Also in the first issue (though not reprinted in the Clarion) was the notice of an election of a board of trustees for a seminary! General Long, as President Long, was apparently starting a college in the midst of his revolution. Another Republican article (Clarion, October 5) extolled Texas' natural wonders, and told Nashvillians how to capture wild horses. Once again settlers were promised land, plus extra acreage for their children. But one Kentucky paper called the brazen Long bunch plunderers--and some Louisiana papers cautioned young men not to join the reckless enterprise. The New Orleans Louisiana Gazette (July 7, 1819) printed a letter castigating the operation as illegal, appealing only to "vagabonds." The definitive historian of this filibuster decade, Harris Gaylord Warren terms Long's Texas thrust as: definitely a phase of American expansionism to the Pacific. American citizens have been noted for their assumption that they are endowed with an inalienable right to go wherever their inclinations might lead them...if those modern barbarians [Long & Co.] made a feeble attempt to adorn their land grabbing with a mantle of righteousness, they deceived no one. And back at Natchez, the First Lady was pining for her husband. So with her two children, Jane journeyed to Alexandria, Louisiana, to stay with her sister. For a month she was ill, fraught with stark depression...till her doctor prescribed a bracing tonic for her blues a trip to the republican Nacogdoches. Jane left her two children with her sister, one of them the new-born, and with considerable difficulty reached Nacogdoches. Here she found the Executive Mansion to be the Old Stone Fort blockhouse...with the Presidential suite a single, crude room! Well, at least her flag was flying over the fort. She "arrived upon the very eve of calamity," wrote future Texas president Lamar, spending only a few days with husbandPresident Long...days of "perpetual excitement and alarm." Historian John Myers Myers

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic Chuckles that while Nashville readers were being promised a square mile of Texas for the asking, doom was hovering over the infant nation."

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The occupation army was low on food, since the killjoy U.S. government had slapped an embargo on the new republic--and worse, had seized $300,000 worth of food and clothing (imagine that in today's money!) which it promptly sold off. In 1841, Eli Harris said the money had been subscribed by "some of the most prominent men in the United states, whose names it is not necessary to name." Who could help them now? Maybe that affable pirate, Jean Lafitte. He even maintained his own "Republic of Mexico," a kind of corsair utopia--not only for buccaneers, but for fugitives from justice, fences (stolen goods merchants), plus those essential personnel, prostitutes. Long had written him...but Lafitte liked to be on the winner's side (as at the Battle of New Orleans), so to risk his hard-earned contraband, and worthy pirate staff, sounded like a bad investment. Anyway, Lafitte had jeopardized his amnesty--valiantly won at New Orleansby turning Galveston Harbor back into a pirate's cove and smuggler's harbor. He and his brother Pierre needed no further friction with the U.S. Government. The highly flexible Lafittes were also on the Spanish payroll--while still robbing Spanish ships--yet were simultaneously selling information to this season's crop of Mexican rebels. Whereas Long was at odds with both Spain and the Mexicans, plus his own government. But the slippery Lafittes were cordial to all comers. Long first sent in James Gaines, veteran border character, then Horatio Bigelow, editor of the Texas Republican. Both received polite, oily hospitality--but no commitment. Lafitte got Bigelow drunk (to avoid serious discussions), and Bigelow co-operated with this program for several sodden weeks. Lafitte and Long corresponded further, Lafitte writing cheerful but ambiguous encouragement. Long decreed Galveston to be a "free port of entry," naming Lafitte

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic "Governor of Galveston" with a franchise to patriotically pillage the Spanish--a practice

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Lafitte hardly needed any permission for. But since he was also secret Spanish agent "19-uno, he urged the governor of Cuba to "dispose of that enemy," James Long. Long left Nacogdoches on October 22, 1819, to visit Lafitte himself. Jane stayed behind with a Major Cook in commandwho quickly commenced boozing it up with his men, and the First Lady fired off a message to her President. The Old Stone Fort was virtually unmanned with the troops out foraging for food--and now, here came the royalist army...over 600 strong! The Spanish had just quelled the latest phase of their own, long-running revolution: now it was time to smash this imported, Made-in-U.S.A. version! On November 10, Long himself was intercepted by some Spanish soldiers, who demanded that his party surrender. Instead they opened fire, wounding several Spanish. Soon after, they almost starved...they killed an alligator, which some of them refused to eat, trying to subsist on acorns, pecans, and berries in lieu of 'gator-burgers. Long made it to Galveston, meeting with Lafitte whom he may have known from the Battle of New Orleans. He noticed that "doubloons were as plentiful as biscuits" around the pirate's lair. But his charming rogue host evaded any concession. Somewhere in his travels Jane's alarmed letter reached him--but by the time he got back to Nacogdoches, his Lone Star air-castle had crumbled. His fortress garrisoned only with invalids and cripples, had been a push-over for the Spanish. They'd silenced that organ of republican rhetoric, Eli Harris's printing press, by smashing it. They killed an Indian who tried to wrest a gun from a soldier...and since he took his time dying, they. devoutly gave him a Catholic baptism on the way out. Major Cook had seemingly sobered up enough to escape; and Jane barely got away. Bravely James Long helped rescue some of the stragglers; other small parties had been captured, and houses burnt. A resident

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

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ruefully wrote a New York newspaper: The Dons have certainly exhibited more energy than was expected." At least the Spanish wanted to hire Eli Harris's printing skills, offering to pay him double for the loss of his newspaper office...and make him a Major if he would but move to Mexico. But he headed back to the U.S. ("I have no faith in the Mexicans--and I will not go!"), though some his men joined Lafitte. The romance of Lone Star colonization was dimming somewhat. The Long baby had died at Alexandria (Jane's several eulogists avoid discussing her decision to leave her newborn with sister). James's brother David Long had tried to get supplies to Nacogdoches, but the Spanish killed him for refusing to lay down his only weapon, a sword. Fire and be damned! were his last words. A sheriff was holding Jane's possessions. And because of bad debts, James Long was about to be arrestedso he surrendered his horse. A well-wisher supplied him with another mount...but when he checked on his trading post at Natchitoches, he discovered his former partner had sold off his goods, pocketed the proceeds, and charged bills in his name. They discussed the matter, and his partner tried to kill him. Back at Alexandria, Louisiana, he and Jane perked up a bit when they met Warren D. C. Hall, an attorney...and friend of Lafitte. Hall had fought in all the Gutierrez-Magee engagements. He and Long left in late February, reaching Bolivar Point on April 20, l820near Lafitte's Galveston Island settlement. Tennessean Thomas B. Robertson joined them. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy was quite firmly inviting Lafitte to evacuate Galveston Island. So with a fitting flourish, he burned all his buildings...then sailed off for ports unknown. The night Lafitte departed, the Longs arrived. Jane even had dinner with the pirate aboard his ship, trying to pry information out of him. As a nice chivalric touch, Lafitte gave Jane a fish-shaped powder horn as a souvenir bearing the words El Perata ("The Pirate").

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

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Out on Bolivar Point, President Long was re-mustering what was left of his army, giving them an April 10 deadline--after which, they would get no Texas land! Next, he went to New Orleans for six weeks, setting up a recruiting office at (where else?) convivial Maspero's Exchange. He enlisted around fifty more troops. But the U.S. marshal arrested them all...though President Long slipped away with a boatload of supplies. Meanwhile his Supreme Council elected one E. W. Ripley of New Orleans as the next President--wooing him with a hefty chunk of land, plus a $25,000 salary. President Ripley issued a letter on July 10 promising to bring "Religion, morality, frugality and industry" to the Republic of Texas--along with schools, colleges, seminaries, roads, canals, even factories. He also wanted to check the spread of slavery...ironic, since the Natchez planter class had backed General Long. But Ripley never set foot in his republic (can you blame him?), so General Long remained its de facto Chief Executive. Now the garrison at Fort Bolivar had colorful individuals for neighbors...the exciting Karankawa Indians. They wore distinctive red and black war-paint, and shafts of cane through their lower lips and nipples (anticipating the British "punk-rock" musician mutilations of the 1980s). They also smeared their bodies with alligator grease, to ward off mosquitoes. They were cannibals, and one of their alleged folkways was to devour a live victim bite-by-bite until death. Their favorite meat was children. James told Jane they had already eaten 200 Americans.* The two of them witnessed some Karankawas boarding a French sloop, stranded on Galveston Island, on July 30--killing all the crew. The cargo had been wine: that same evening, the Indians got drunk. So Long and thirty of his killed thirty-two of them. They only lost three of their own men in "a contest in close quarters between the bow and the bayonet." They took two Indian boys prisoner...who became popular, well-behaved mascots (when one of them died in a gun *One early traveler surmised that they merely ate people to acquire their qualities of bravery foreshadowing anthropologist James George Frazer's The Golden Bough.

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic accident, everyone wept). In another battle, Long's men killed thirty more Karankawas. From the safety of New Orleans, absentee President Ripley issued two directives in August: (1) banning corporal punishment in the republican army, and (2) banning cursing!

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He sent his representative, Jose Trespalacios, out into Texas to put some of Long's soldiers to work at unwelcome manual labor...paying them off in "treasury notes" which they found they couldn't cash in New Orleans. The soldiers went looking for Trespalacios--doubtless putting the prohibition against cursing to the test--and Trespalacios went into hiding. President Ripley now ordered Long to simply stand byat Bolivar...and patiently wait for more support to arrive, frustrating indeed to such a man of action. By the spring of 1821 this ennui, caused by such an impotent policy, led to violence fatal to their aims. At least Jane had tried to pretty up their quarters and socialize with the other officers' wives. But quelling her spirits was one Mary Crow--a foul-tongued harridan who felt the ruling against profanity did not apply to civilian fellow travelers. She was the lover of Modellio (or Medallo), protg of Trespalacios. When Geneneral (if not President) Long reprimanded the insolent Miss Crow, the already insubordinate Modellio threatened. his life. Long banished Mary Crow, so Modellio pulled out two knives...and Long most unwisely ordered his men to fire. Modellio fell dead. And how was Long to ~ gain more support? Alas, filibustering was falling out of fashion (for the moment). Spain--probably to stifle any more such land-grabs by the gringos--was now encouraging legitimate migration. Suddenly the Nashville Clarion--longtime antagonist of Catholic Spain--began lauding its virtues on July 4, 1821: It should excite no astonishment to find many respectable citizens of the west embracing every opportunity of obtaining settlements in the province of Texas, where it seems they are invited by the recent policy of the Spanish authorities...the Sabine is daily being crossed at many

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic places by adventurers who settle down and cultivate the soil...

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Back at Bolivar the liberation army was fast diminishing, with General Long thinning the ranks even further on September 19, 1821--when he left with three vessels and fifty-three men. He left only a few soldiers behind...with Jane and their daughter, a slave girl named Kian...and a dog nick-named "Galveston" by later writers. General Long and his men sailed down the coast and went ashore, setting out on a thirty-mile forced march. At dawn, on October 4, they attacked the presido (fort) of La Bahia (Goliad), storming its stone walls. Since there were no sentries on duty, they took it without firing a shot. Long learned that most of the people were going over to the revolutionaries--so he released his prisoners, and made peace with the officials. But after leaving Bahia, he was captured and brought to Mexico City with his men (some of whom were held till 1825). He protested in a letter to the authorities: "I have been four months a prisoner to the Mexican Imperial government without even having been informed of what I am accused." Finally they let him loose. But Long was an anachronism, a filibuster-without-a-cause, and just plain in the way. Rashly he began denouncing the new government as being despotic, not democratic. His own execution of Modellio no doubt further damaged his credibility. He should have kept silentsince all he wanted now was some land for himself and family. Long tried to visit the minister of Chile in the old Inquisition buildings, on April 8, 1822...but a sentry stopped him. Long reached for his passport. Perhaps fearing that he was reaching for a pistol, the sentry shot him dead. Nineteenth century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft said Long tried to strike the sentry--but his friends and most later historians suspect that he was set up and murdered. Back at Bolivar, Long's troops had been gradually departing. They hoped Jane would come, too...but she believed her husband would return ("I will remain faithful to the trust, and if I

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

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should not survive, he will at least find my bones here when he returns ") . With her daughter Ann--and the black girl Kian and the faithful pooch "Galveston"--Jane literally held the fort. They were equipped with muskets, ammunition, fish hooks...and one fish line. The work of a filibuster's widow was never done. Jane, on whose gentle hand her late husband had slipped a glove after she beat him on the checker board, was now turning her hand to that more serious game known as survival. The opening round starred those dynamic aborigines, the Karankawa Indians. Jane discouraged their appetite by hoisting her red flannel petticoat for a flag, then touching off a cannon blast. She also shot birds for food, and with Kian, caught fish and gathered oysters. The weather turned frigid, as Galveston Harbor froze over which almost never happens--and Jane even saw a bear crossing the ice. She was pregnant again, and gave birth to another daughter. Snow sifted into the child's makeshift crib...and a day after the birth of this Lone Star babe, Jane was up, scrounging for food. She and Kian collected frozen fish, preserving them in brine, in an empty pickle barrel. When she fished, she kept her line looped around her waist. One large fish nearly pulled her into the ocean--she loosened her fish line just in time...and lost it at the same time. From then on, they lived on oysters. Some visitors arrived the day after Christmas, 1821...and as a kind of Christmas card, they gave Jane a letter written by James from prison. Jane hung on, still waiting for James, and the holiday visitors left. By mid-January Janes family was starving...no food in three days. Miraculously, she found the fish had washed ashore with her hook and line intact...literally saving their lives. Kian acted as a lookout...finally they saw sails. Jane rushed down the beach, babe in arms, waving. A sloop came ashore with the first settlers of Stephen F. Austin's colony. A fitting finale, and indicative of the changed times. The vanguard of peaceful, migrating settlers had

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic rescued the widow of a Texas filibuster republican "president."

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Then began Jane's complicated, arduous travels, mostly on horseback, covering hundreds of miles. She briefly stayed in a hut fashioned of boards and leaves, offered by a kindly old black man. She visited sites of future Texas warfare: at La Bahia (Goliad) a ball was held in her honor, and the local priest danced with her--then at San Antonio she stayed at the Alamo mission. She had learned of her husband's death. Long's trusted companion Ben Milam wrote her a letter telling his difficulty in learning the truth. He believed Long had been set up and murdered--he confronted the Mexicans with this in writing--and their response was exquisite. The guard who'd fired the shot was tried, briefly imprisoned, then promoted in rank. Jane eventually retrieved James's weapons and ammunition. In vain she tried for a pension--but as veteran filibuster Peter Ellis Bean would write to Stephen Austin on July 26, 1826: "Please enform the widow long that is imposibel that this government will alow hir any Penchen as hir husband ws no nown as a General on this Plase nor had no comision from this Gverment." Jane took in washing awhile, then finally was awarded a land grant. Her admirer Ben Milam built her a home (Milam was from Frankfort, Kentucky, the town laid out by her uncle James Wilkinson). In 1832, she opened "Long's Hotel," her famous boarding house in Brazoria. Stephen Austin would deliver a major address there in 1835--and among her guests would be the first three presidents of Texas: Burnet, Lamar,* and Sam Houston. Lamar and Houston were would-be suitorsand there were others, but after James Long, no other man could enter her heart or her life. In spirit, James Long lived on ...his widow secretly stored ammunition at the hotel for the Texas Revolution. *Mirabeau Buonparte Lamar--whose given names evoke the French Revolution and subsequent empire--eulogized James Long. With Jane's help, he produced a lengthy account of his career.

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic Visitors often noticed Jane's feminine manners, and quick, searching intellect. She wore well her "Mother of Texas" appellation...dying in Richmond, Virginia, in 1880.

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Uncle James Wilkinson died in Mexico City in 1825, and a legend has him selling Bibles there. Wilkinson at least deserves to be granted posthumous, dishonorary citizenship as a Tennessean, since he assisted so many expansionist conspiracies, from Blount, Phillip Nolan (with Peter Ellis Bean), and Aaron Burr, to Gutierrez and Long. Ben Milam, who had sought justice in the death of his friend James Long, died in the house-to-house fighting at San Antonio, a few months before the fall of the Alamo. Tennessee printer Eli Harris moved to Ouachita, Louisiana, on the Ouachita River, becoming a deputy sheriff, then a parish judge. He wrote President Lamar (1841) seeking a pension for himself, his wife and children, "being crippled & advanced in years...l was proud of being the man to establish the Star and the flag of Texas." Nashville remembered James Long. At his death, the Clarion reminisced (July 9, 1822): His father lives 6 miles from Natchez...[James Long was] raised in this state & a dozen men were known to us who have known him from his infancy to the time of his receiving the command of the liberating army. Several of his school companions live in Nashville. More recently, Harris Gaylord Warren took the acid view: "James Long was interested in subdividing Texas in a grand real estate operation [whose] followers were a curious mixture of good and bad frontiersmen, honest lovers of liberty, and ambitious young men--all in pursuit of wealth, adventure, and honor, in that order." At least his death heralded the more constructive phase of colonization, that o The empresarios. In the year previous, the Clarion had printed a letter from Stephen F. Austin announcing Moses Austin's settling in Texas (August 3, 1821). Then, fifteen years later, more adventurers like James Long would file through the Old Stone Fort and sign their names to the oath for Texas independence.

TWW Dr. James Long Founds a Lone-Star Republic

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Like James Long, they voiced the ideal of liberty, though to paraphrase Patrick Henry, their credo was: Give us land, or give up your life! And like Long, not a few of them (largely Tennesseans and Kentuckians), gave their own lives instead. Jane Long had done her part. Besides sewing the first Lone star flag, she passed the torch The powder-horn she received from Jean Lafite, emblazoned with the words El Parata, she later handed to that greatest of Tennessee-Texas land pirates...Sam Houston. Houston would pass it to Robert Hall, one of the men guarding Santa Anna after the Battle of San Jacinto...and it would turn up at the Dallas museum in time for the Texas Centennial in 1936.