Stephen F. Austin : Empresario of Texas

by Gregg Cantrell

• ISBN13: 9780300076837
• ISBN10: 0300076835
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-09-10
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas, " has long been enshrined in the public imagination as an authentic American hero, but one who was colorless and rather remote. This book, the first major biography in more than seventy years, brings Austin's private life, motives, personality, and character into sharp focus, revealing a driven man who successfully mixed effort and cunning, idealism and pragmatism to build an illustrious career.

Gregg Cantrell traces Austin's early life from his privileged boyhood as the son of the Missouri mining baron Moses Austin to his family's humiliating financial downfall after the War of 1812. He tells how in 1821 Stephen Austin inherited his father's daring plan to colonize Spanish Texas. Over the next fifteen years Austin carried out this plan with dazzling success, becoming a consummate manager, exhorter, politician, and diplomat, and playing a central role in the event that led to the Texas Revolution and the establishment of the Lone Star Republic. Within a generation, as a result largely of forces that he helped set in mo

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
A Note on Spelling, Punctuation, and Usage	xiii
Introduction	1	(14)
A Foundation for Greatness, 1793-1810	15	(28)
Successes and Failures, 1810-1818	43	(20)
New Beginnings, 1819-1820	63	(17)
Texas, 1820-1821	80	(24)
Mexico, 1821-1823	104	(28)
Empresario Estevan F. Austin, 1823-1825	132	(39)
Staying the Course, 1825-1827	171	(31)
Crises, Personal and Political, 1828-1830	202	(20)
We Will Be Happy, 1830-1831	222	(25)
The Call of Duty, 1832-1833	247	(20)
Prison, 1833-1834	267	(30)
War Is Our Only Resource, 1835	297	(32)
The Road to Independence, 1835-1836	329	(19)
Home, 1836	348	(17)
Epilogue. The Father of Texas: Stephen F. Austin in Retrospect	365	(16)
Appendix	381	(4)
Notes	385	(78)
An Essay on Sources	463	(16)
Index	479