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Austin and the Texas Archives War · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Who's that? That's our one
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Speaker 1: and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. Give him a
0:37
Speaker 1: hand or two or three, but not too many. They
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Speaker 1: called me ben No, this is this is one that's
0:55
Speaker 1: been on our list for a while. My friend. Uh,
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Speaker 1: you have actually traveled to aston Texas. Yeah? Yeah, well
1:02
Speaker 1: wait to Austin Uh one time many years ago for
1:06
Speaker 1: um this little thing they do they're called south by Southwest. Um.
1:11
Speaker 1: I'm joking. It's not a little, it's huge. It's sort
1:12
Speaker 1: of ballooned over the years. I didn't go to the
1:14
Speaker 1: music portion of it, which I would like to do
1:17
Speaker 1: one day. I went to the tech portion of it,
1:19
Speaker 1: which I think happens like right before or after the
1:21
Speaker 1: music thing. Overall, I've very much enjoyed at Austin. The
1:25
Speaker 1: Uber drivers were all super helpful, and we're really knowledgeable
1:30
Speaker 1: about the history of Austin Um, which is what we're
1:32
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. And anyone who's been there
1:35
Speaker 1: even is remotely familiar with it's probably aware of the
1:37
Speaker 1: whole campaign or slogan to keep Austin weird. Um, because
1:42
Speaker 1: you know, Texas is a very very large state and
1:45
Speaker 1: the majority of it is very very red, very um conservative, traditional,
1:53
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the idea of Texan. Everything's big.
1:56
Speaker 1: You know, it's a big big attitudes, big hats, big
1:59
Speaker 1: trucks and and big dreams. Right. Um. But Austin has
2:03
Speaker 1: always been kind of this like liberal enclave of arts
2:06
Speaker 1: and music and barbecue. Um. Also in other parts of
2:11
Speaker 1: the state. But yeah, it's always kind of maintained. It's
2:14
Speaker 1: little kind of oasis of weirdness, very similarly to how
2:18
Speaker 1: Atlanta is in Georgia. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a bad
2:22
Speaker 1: comparison at all. And it's funny because our research associate
2:27
Speaker 1: Gave he liked to frame this conversation as the fight
2:31
Speaker 1: to keep Austin weird, and he would love to point
2:35
Speaker 1: out to everyone that it's a story that dates back
2:38
Speaker 1: much further than you might think. It actually starts with
2:40
Speaker 1: something called the Texas Archives War of eighteen forty two.
2:44
Speaker 1: First thing you need to know about today's story is
2:48
Speaker 1: the road from just Land to statehood for Texas was
2:53
Speaker 1: an absolute mess. It was a train wreck. It was
2:56
Speaker 1: like two trains filled with burning trash that Calli did
3:00
Speaker 1: and then also someone through spaghetti on the wreckage. Like
3:03
Speaker 1: that's how messy it was. The In the summer of
3:07
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, what was the then the nascent Republic
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Speaker 1: of Texas was threatened by Mexican forces to the south,
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Speaker 1: and they also had a bitter internal conflict over what
3:24
Speaker 1: city should be the capital. And it's it's odd because
3:28
Speaker 1: if you look at multiple U. S. States, you'll see
3:31
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of conflicts, a lot of
3:34
Speaker 1: fights about which city gets to be the seat of power,
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Speaker 1: and Austin. Austin of course, ended up being the capital
3:44
Speaker 1: today and a lot of historians think it's because of
3:48
Speaker 1: this war. So maybe, well, maybe we talk a little
3:51
Speaker 1: bit about how how the early days of Texas got
3:56
Speaker 1: so messy, Right, there's the Texas Revolution. Yeah, And you know,
4:02
Speaker 1: it's funny. We we don't really think about, first of all,
4:05
Speaker 1: archive being particularly movable or something that's particularly contentious, um,
4:11
Speaker 1: but in this case it absolutely was. There was this
4:13
Speaker 1: whole kind of back and forth bush and pull over
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Speaker 1: where the capitol would go, and along with it it's
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Speaker 1: archive and uh. In eighteen thirty five that Texas revolution
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Speaker 1: you mentioned consisted of an uprising of colonists, United States
4:26
Speaker 1: colonists and Mexican American UM tex sentence known as Tejanos
4:31
Speaker 1: UM that lived in the southern part of Texas and
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Speaker 1: they were fighting against Mexican forces who were trying to
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Speaker 1: take back Texas or or you know, we're we're fighting
4:41
Speaker 1: against the statehood of Texas, which was you know, a territory. Uh,
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Speaker 1: Mexico considered theirs. The issue was really about self governance
4:53
Speaker 1: and an autonomy. These rebels would not accept any changes
4:58
Speaker 1: that seeded power to Mexico, to the Mexican president UM
5:04
Speaker 1: instead of with the state itself. They didn't want to
5:08
Speaker 1: share any of that stuff, any of those the decision
5:11
Speaker 1: making powers with Mexico. They wanted to rest with the
5:14
Speaker 1: state and the local government. And that's because on March
5:18
Speaker 1: two of eighteen thirty six, the Republic of Texas government
5:22
Speaker 1: was formed. UM. It was meant to be treated as
5:25
Speaker 1: an independent nation until it became part of the US
5:29
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty five. There was that kind of brief
5:34
Speaker 1: nine years, but still UM comparatively brief UM considering the
5:39
Speaker 1: history of the United States, where Texas was self governed,
5:44
Speaker 1: but it was not a particularly peaceful time there. There
5:48
Speaker 1: was always, you know, threats coming to take back that
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Speaker 1: power of self governance. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. The
5:55
Speaker 1: Mexican government heard about this declaration of independence. In their
6:00
Speaker 1: response was pretty much lowell uh and then yeah, and
6:04
Speaker 1: they kept uh. They kept rating the southern western boundaries
6:08
Speaker 1: of of the area well into the eighteen forties. Smithsonian
6:13
Speaker 1: has a great article on this, and they point out
6:15
Speaker 1: a little bit about how the government of the Republic
6:20
Speaker 1: was created. It was modeled on the US Congress. Uh.
6:23
Speaker 1: It had two houses of the legislature. They were elected
6:27
Speaker 1: by what Texas considered to be citizens who were not
6:32
Speaker 1: free people of color, not Native Americans. It was like
6:36
Speaker 1: white dudes, the right kind of white dudes, etcetera. So
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Speaker 1: all in all, the Congress represented about seventy thousand people,
6:44
Speaker 1: and we know this because they took a census once
6:47
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty. One of the big things that you
6:51
Speaker 1: have to figure out when you start your own country
6:55
Speaker 1: is where you're gonna put the capital. And this is
6:58
Speaker 1: how messy it was, folks. Five different cities in Texas
7:02
Speaker 1: were temporarily capitals in the very first year of the
7:07
Speaker 1: Republic's existence. And they were. They were not always jumping
7:11
Speaker 1: around because of local pride, you know what I mean?
7:14
Speaker 1: They were they were usually moving to escape invasion and
7:19
Speaker 1: capture by forces from Mexico. Uh. Sam Houston chose the
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Speaker 1: city of Houston as the capital in eighteen thirty seven.
7:29
Speaker 1: Was he biased? I think so because the city of
7:31
Speaker 1: Houston was already named after him. So he was like,
7:36
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like, I got one. You know. He
7:38
Speaker 1: did have a worse in the race. The Texas Congress, though,
7:42
Speaker 1: wanted to find some location in central Texas to build
7:46
Speaker 1: a planned city. But for the moment, Sam Houston got
7:50
Speaker 1: his way. The Republic's archives, which mentioned at the top,
7:54
Speaker 1: included stuff like official documents, military records, land titles, trophies,
7:59
Speaker 1: international treaties. All this stuff was shipped from the city
8:02
Speaker 1: of Columbia to Houston with this new designation. And this
8:06
Speaker 1: this comes from a Nestorian named Dorman Winfrey who wrote
8:11
Speaker 1: about the Texas Archive wars like more than half a
8:15
Speaker 1: century ago. And um, this is where it gets sticky,
8:20
Speaker 1: because Houston is not the capital of Texas today. How
8:24
Speaker 1: did that happen? No, that's right. Um. The next president
8:27
Speaker 1: of that you know, short lived independent Texas Republic was
8:32
Speaker 1: a guy named Marabeau Lamar. That's how he said it. Uh.
8:36
Speaker 1: He was he was in a tiny from Georgia, and
8:39
Speaker 1: he believed, uh that the only way to achieve any
8:44
Speaker 1: kind of progress as a nation was to completely obliterate
8:49
Speaker 1: and and and cause the extinction of the Native American
8:53
Speaker 1: UM race class. Yeah. Yeah, pretty problematic guy there. He
8:59
Speaker 1: wanted to move the capital to Austin, and he did
9:02
Speaker 1: that thing in eighteen thirty nine, Um because it was
9:05
Speaker 1: more central, Like you said, Ben folks were not into
9:08
Speaker 1: this idea. UM. They were supporters of Sam Houston. And
9:14
Speaker 1: Sam Houston himself. He felt that Austin was too remote,
9:17
Speaker 1: it wasn't very developed, and it was too close to
9:20
Speaker 1: Mexican and Native American UM rivals, you know that they
9:25
Speaker 1: were potentially wanting to do them harm and invade their
9:29
Speaker 1: sovereign lands. The Comanche and Cherokee nations in particular were
9:35
Speaker 1: right around that that area, and we Houston then, you know,
9:39
Speaker 1: it's not what it like looks like today. But I
9:42
Speaker 1: do think of the the stereotypical image of Houston UM
9:45
Speaker 1: as being a little bit more of like downtown kind
9:49
Speaker 1: of you know, center of of government of you know,
9:52
Speaker 1: like government buildings and things like that. Um, much more
9:56
Speaker 1: access to trade with the Gulf of Mexico in all
9:59
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, and so guess who comes back into
10:03
Speaker 1: the game. Sam Houston himself. He becomes president again the
10:07
Speaker 1: second time in eighteen forty one, and Austin isn't is
10:11
Speaker 1: the capital. And this, to me is hilarious. He's been
10:14
Speaker 1: a lot of time beat me here, Max, He's been
10:17
Speaker 1: a lot of time just bitching and winching about how
10:20
Speaker 1: much he hated It's perfect about how much he hated Austin.
10:25
Speaker 1: He called it the most unfortunate site on Earth for
10:27
Speaker 1: a seat of government. And what I love about this
10:30
Speaker 1: is like, wherever you live, picture your president or your
10:34
Speaker 1: prime minister or whatever. Like if you live in the US,
10:37
Speaker 1: picture picture Joe Biden starting every speech in d C.
10:41
Speaker 1: Like he's an insults comic, you know what I mean.
10:44
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, you know, I hope a hurricane
10:47
Speaker 1: comes through d C. It'll do billions of dollars worth
10:50
Speaker 1: of improvements, and and like all all these terrible jokes
10:54
Speaker 1: like it's it's just it's it's bad. It's like bad
10:58
Speaker 1: school spirit, it's bad. From a rally you show up
11:01
Speaker 1: and you're like, Okay, hey, thanks for coming, UMU d
11:06
Speaker 1: C anyway go us I could catch And so he
11:13
Speaker 1: wouldn't even like get a place there. He he was
11:16
Speaker 1: so against it just in general, just as a city
11:20
Speaker 1: like it sounded like he just had a fundamental issue
11:22
Speaker 1: with the whole vibe again, you know it did. It
11:25
Speaker 1: did strike me as being a bit more on the
11:28
Speaker 1: it was on the upswing. But so it was probably
11:30
Speaker 1: a little more underdeveloped. I mean there's talking like things
11:33
Speaker 1: like a thoroughfare. You know, maybe I'm picturing in my
11:35
Speaker 1: mind a little bit like you know, one of those
11:38
Speaker 1: pioneer towns like in Deadwood or something like that. Maybe
11:41
Speaker 1: it just was a little bit less developed, and maybe
11:43
Speaker 1: there was like maybe it was muddy or something. He
11:45
Speaker 1: didn't like getting his pantaloons besmirched. But he would only
11:49
Speaker 1: stay in like boarding houses rather than or boarding house
11:52
Speaker 1: rather than like taking up residents officially. Yeah, yeah, And
11:56
Speaker 1: so Houston felt like he had a lot of political
11:59
Speaker 1: capital to spend. He got three quarters of the vote
12:02
Speaker 1: in the recent election, and so he said, I'm gonna
12:05
Speaker 1: move the capital back to the town that happens to
12:09
Speaker 1: be named after me, and he kept he kept starting
12:13
Speaker 1: fights about this in the legislature, and people kept batting
12:17
Speaker 1: down his his proposals. The people of Austin, of course,
12:22
Speaker 1: they had they had pride in their hometown, but they
12:25
Speaker 1: also had an economic interest in remaining the capital because
12:29
Speaker 1: this was the capital of Texas. The city was growing
12:33
Speaker 1: at a rapid pace, it was as you said on
12:35
Speaker 1: the upswing, and if the capital relocated, then property values
12:40
Speaker 1: would tank, there would be less investment like there would
12:43
Speaker 1: there would be a litany of economic complications. So from
12:47
Speaker 1: their perspective, this Sam Houston guy was abandoning the actual
12:52
Speaker 1: seat of government, and he was maybe being alarmist about
12:57
Speaker 1: the threats from Mexican forces, mainly to achieve his political
13:02
Speaker 1: games and perhaps as a stop to his own ego. Uh.
13:06
Speaker 1: Here's what happened though, This is who mentioned the forces
13:09
Speaker 1: of the Mexican government. They gave him the excuse he
13:14
Speaker 1: needed to cause us Belliott to move the capital again.
13:24
Speaker 1: In March of eighteen forty two, seven hundred troops from
13:28
Speaker 1: Mexico crossed the Republic of Texas borders and they occupied
13:32
Speaker 1: San Antonio, which was only about eighty miles from Austin.
13:35
Speaker 1: The Officials of the time declared martial law. Tons of
13:39
Speaker 1: families evacuated to try to find a safer place to live.
13:43
Speaker 1: Houston was like, look, this is an attack. There will
13:47
Speaker 1: be more in the future. And we know from reading
13:50
Speaker 1: his correspondencies with his fiancee that he was really concerned
13:54
Speaker 1: not just from Mexican forces, but he was concerned that
13:57
Speaker 1: the Native American populations nearby would burn and destroy the city,
14:02
Speaker 1: especially it's archives. He thought that Austin was actually his
14:07
Speaker 1: ego aside, not a safe place for the capital of
14:11
Speaker 1: the Republic of Texas, and he was worried that he
14:14
Speaker 1: would get in trouble if he let Austin be captured
14:18
Speaker 1: as the capital. And we've got the we've got the
14:20
Speaker 1: letters where he says this, But one of the things
14:23
Speaker 1: he mentions is that if any president let this happen,
14:26
Speaker 1: they would be culpable and the entire nation would hate them. Right,
14:31
Speaker 1: It's true. It makes me you know, I again, I
14:33
Speaker 1: haven't really given much thought to the importance of archives,
14:36
Speaker 1: but you're right. And then the days where everything was
14:38
Speaker 1: on paper, the burning of these archives or destruction would
14:42
Speaker 1: cause some irrevocable harm, not only in terms of morale,
14:46
Speaker 1: but just literally it would cause all kinds of problems
14:48
Speaker 1: with like property, titles and deeds and all that he
14:51
Speaker 1: wrote on Mar two, the destruction of the National Archives
14:56
Speaker 1: would entail irremediable injury upon the whole people of Texas.
15:00
Speaker 1: Should the infinite evil which the loss of the National
15:03
Speaker 1: Archives would occasion fall upon the country through his neglect
15:08
Speaker 1: referring to himself of imperious constitutional duty, he would be
15:12
Speaker 1: culpable in the extreme and must justly incur the reproach
15:16
Speaker 1: of a whole nation. Right, I mean this is remember
15:20
Speaker 1: this before the cloud, they have all their stuff on paper.
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Speaker 1: It's it is all in one place. This is fo
15:27
Speaker 1: bar if the archives get taken uh. And a couple
15:31
Speaker 1: of weeks before this all goes down, Houston had talked
15:34
Speaker 1: to his Secretary of War, a guy named George W. Hawkley,
15:38
Speaker 1: and he said, move the archives out of Austin to Houston.
15:41
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter what the capital is, just move them. And
15:45
Speaker 1: there's a guy who's a commissioner of the General Land
15:48
Speaker 1: Office that you know, deals with public lands and patents
15:51
Speaker 1: and they keep track of all the records. This guy's name,
15:54
Speaker 1: I kid you not is peg Leg. That's his street name,
15:58
Speaker 1: Thomas peg leg word the Commissioner of the General Land Office. Uh,
16:03
Speaker 1: he gets the word, you gotta you gotta start packing
16:06
Speaker 1: up the boxes, get these archives ready to go. But
16:09
Speaker 1: there's another guy in Austin who is planning against this.
16:12
Speaker 1: He's the military commander. His name is Colonel Henry Jones,
16:16
Speaker 1: and he says, this is malarkey, this is bs of
16:20
Speaker 1: the highest stink factor. He gets a bunch of like,
16:24
Speaker 1: he gets a bunch of piste off Austin nights together
16:27
Speaker 1: and he's like, let's let's talk about this. But really
16:30
Speaker 1: what he means is like, let's get our pitchfork sharpened.
16:33
Speaker 1: Everybody brings something you can light as a torch. They
16:36
Speaker 1: form what they call the Committee of Vigilance to stop
16:39
Speaker 1: this transport, to guard the archives. They think this this
16:43
Speaker 1: war like they're they're almost conspiratorial. Honestly, they're like the
16:48
Speaker 1: war on San Antonio. If war it is is overblown,
16:52
Speaker 1: it's a pretext to move the capital from our city.
16:55
Speaker 1: Will we stand for that, good people of Austin, And
16:57
Speaker 1: they're like, no, rabble rabble, rab rabble rabble, So they say, uh,
17:03
Speaker 1: rabble rabble. Who said that? In the McDonald land pantheon?
17:06
Speaker 1: Was that the Hamburglar rebel rebel. Oh, I don't know, maybe,
17:12
Speaker 1: and then I think it was like all he said
17:14
Speaker 1: as he was hammer, I still wanted to do a
17:18
Speaker 1: great episode on the McDonald's pantheon. Man, I missed those folks,
17:22
Speaker 1: even though, yeah, creepy, like what the fry the fry twins,
17:27
Speaker 1: it's a little the little the little pom pom looking dudes.
17:29
Speaker 1: They looked like those uh uh to give you all
17:33
Speaker 1: an answer, it was the Hamburgler who said rebble rebel?
17:36
Speaker 1: Did I say that? South Park they also have like
17:40
Speaker 1: a rabble rapper rebble thing, I think. And you know
17:43
Speaker 1: who I always thought was such an excellent representation of
17:46
Speaker 1: capitalism as Mayor mccheese. Absolutely, that big old flat head.
17:52
Speaker 1: You know, why did you have a sash that said mayor?
17:55
Speaker 1: Was that ever a thing that people actually did? You know?
17:58
Speaker 1: It's a good question, Um, all the fry guys. Yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: the fry guys. They were like little pom poms of
18:06
Speaker 1: various genders with they were literally just pom poms made
18:09
Speaker 1: of fries, I assume, with legs and and uh it
18:12
Speaker 1: looks like kind of converse type sneakers. But to answer
18:15
Speaker 1: your question, Ben, the mayoral sash. It does strike me
18:19
Speaker 1: as kind of an old school, you know, um thing,
18:23
Speaker 1: like in Deadwood, for example, the second time I've mentioned
18:25
Speaker 1: this today, there is a character named eb Farnum who
18:28
Speaker 1: owns the End and he is sort of a Everyone
18:32
Speaker 1: calls him a grotesque because he's kind of this like hovering,
18:34
Speaker 1: sort of like weirdo. Uh. They make him the mayor. Uh,
18:37
Speaker 1: and it's clearly a symbolic gesture because he's kind of
18:40
Speaker 1: an idiot. Uh. So that would strike me as the
18:42
Speaker 1: kind of person that would wear a sash that says
18:43
Speaker 1: mayor for their own benefit. Okay, all right, so now
18:46
Speaker 1: we could go back to Texas. We sorted out our
18:49
Speaker 1: v I T very important things for this episode. So
18:53
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a flight, one way flight from McDonald
18:56
Speaker 1: land back to Texas. One more thing, one more thing.
18:59
Speaker 1: He has no what grimaces? He's a blob, right purple blob?
19:03
Speaker 1: Is he catching? Is he a condiment? He's a one
19:06
Speaker 1: giant taste bud. Oh gross, it's so fucked up. I'm
19:14
Speaker 1: not okay, man, Beep, I'm not I'm not okay with this.
19:19
Speaker 1: I heard that somewhere and maybe another podcast or something recently.
19:23
Speaker 1: I was like, are you kidding me? He's a taste?
19:26
Speaker 1: But why is that? Why is his name Grimace? Then?
19:29
Speaker 1: Shouldn't his name be like mommy or you know, tasty,
19:33
Speaker 1: tasty to taste? But I don't know. Okay, alright, well
19:36
Speaker 1: we're we're going back to Texas. We'll return to this.
19:39
Speaker 1: We'll sort this out. It's got me cursing on air. Sorry,
19:42
Speaker 1: Grimmace taste whatever. The McDonald corporation disputes this. Uh, I
19:47
Speaker 1: think it's okay. I think I think it's still I
19:49
Speaker 1: think it's still up in the air. But I like
19:50
Speaker 1: the idea. Uh, the Internet is a is a wild
19:53
Speaker 1: and mysterious place. We got some connects. We'll talk back
19:58
Speaker 1: to Texas. Back to Texas, okay. So Sam Houston, Oh,
20:02
Speaker 1: Sam Houston first tries to get these papers peacefully, but
20:07
Speaker 1: then these Austinites from this Committee of Vigilance, they end
20:11
Speaker 1: up going to the messengers from Sam Houston. They take
20:16
Speaker 1: those messengers horses and they protest by shaving off the
20:19
Speaker 1: tails and the mains of these poor innocent horses, which
20:23
Speaker 1: is what our pals, Miles and Jack over at Dale's
20:26
Speaker 1: Yecheis would definitely call a weird flex yeah, I don't know.
20:29
Speaker 1: I don't I don't imagine the horses much cared or noticed.
20:31
Speaker 1: Maybe they got a little chilly, but it's certainly not
20:34
Speaker 1: a good look for the horse riders. Uh. They would
20:37
Speaker 1: look absolutely foolish carrying their messages on these shorn horses.
20:43
Speaker 1: But Houston didn't let this get to him. He called
20:46
Speaker 1: a special session of Congress to get to the bottom
20:48
Speaker 1: of all this and sort everything out. It met on June.
20:52
Speaker 1: He made it clear that it was very important to
20:55
Speaker 1: move the capital and the archives, but the legislature of
20:58
Speaker 1: the time did not take up his cause. His please
21:02
Speaker 1: fell on deaf ears, and they did not make any
21:05
Speaker 1: moves in his favor. Then in the fall, troops from
21:10
Speaker 1: Mexico attacked San Antonio, um, which caused Houston to gather
21:16
Speaker 1: the Congress up for another special session. This time it
21:19
Speaker 1: meant in an amazingly named hyphen it place that I
21:22
Speaker 1: don't believe exists anymore, called Washington on Brazos. I imagine
21:27
Speaker 1: that had to have been a reference to, like Washington
21:29
Speaker 1: being the capital of the US. They're trying to feel
21:33
Speaker 1: a little more like state like or US centric. I
21:36
Speaker 1: don't know, that's weird. Why would they invoke Washington if
21:39
Speaker 1: they're still trying to be independent. Man, No, I have
21:41
Speaker 1: a theory. I have a theory. Theory. But it's like,
21:44
Speaker 1: you know, the same reason why like kaisers are all
21:48
Speaker 1: comes from the word Caesar is It's like, you know,
21:50
Speaker 1: does Washington kind of mean like now to these people,
21:52
Speaker 1: like this signifies like a capital Washington. Yeah, that's I
22:00
Speaker 1: agree with you, Max. Yet, so this is interesting because
22:04
Speaker 1: it feels like it could be a compromise. Right, it's
22:06
Speaker 1: not Austin, it's not Houston. Uh, it's not named after
22:10
Speaker 1: the president, so that conflict of interest is gone. But
22:14
Speaker 1: this this comes to us, uh, courtesy of Patsy McDonald,
22:19
Speaker 1: who was the author of Texas Senate Republic to Civil
22:22
Speaker 1: War eighteen thirty six to sixty one. She also notes
22:26
Speaker 1: that there was a President of the Senate at the time,
22:28
Speaker 1: Edward Burlson, who didn't really dig Sam Houston's whole vibe,
22:34
Speaker 1: and so he said, I'm not gonna support the legal
22:39
Speaker 1: decision that would trigger the transfer of the archives. So
22:42
Speaker 1: the motion to move this stuff stalled in a tie,
22:46
Speaker 1: and Houston said, look, the official channels aren't doing what
22:51
Speaker 1: I want. Well, I'm Texan. So I'm gonna take the
22:53
Speaker 1: law into my own hands, outside of Congress, outside the government,
22:57
Speaker 1: even though I run the government. He's he didn't really
23:00
Speaker 1: stress about that part. So December ten, he secretly orders
23:04
Speaker 1: two officers from the Texas Army, Captain Eli Chandler and
23:07
Speaker 1: Colonel Thomas Smith, to gather up twenty guys to steal
23:12
Speaker 1: the archives from Austin with secrecy, efficiency and dispatch and
23:18
Speaker 1: take them to Washington on Brasos. You know what this means, fellas,
23:22
Speaker 1: We've got a heist. Max sound cube? Yeah, I love
23:28
Speaker 1: The best part of this, by the way, is watching
23:31
Speaker 1: Max's face when I just requested a lunar chrously vague
23:34
Speaker 1: sound cube. Max, you got it? That was you mean?
23:36
Speaker 1: You mean when it lights up with joy and and
23:39
Speaker 1: and the the the anticipation of a creative moment. Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: I love that about Max. He's always down to clown
23:46
Speaker 1: when it comes to sound effects, always down to sound clown. Um. Oh,
23:52
Speaker 1: it'll be a good alternative to SoundCloud. What's called soundclown?
23:57
Speaker 1: And um, I don't know what will work, So let's
23:58
Speaker 1: get legs. We could work on it. As giant shoes
24:01
Speaker 1: to the Texas Archives. War became a thing. Houston wrote
24:07
Speaker 1: this of the momentous day that he ordered those those
24:10
Speaker 1: two secret army officers Eli Chandler and Thomas Um to
24:16
Speaker 1: gather those forces. He said, the importance of removing the
24:20
Speaker 1: public archives and government stores from their present dangerous situation
24:24
Speaker 1: at the city of Austin to a place of security
24:27
Speaker 1: is becoming daily more and more imperative. While they remain
24:30
Speaker 1: where they are, no one knows the hour when they
24:33
Speaker 1: may be utterly destroyed. It's not necessarily hyperbole there, I
24:44
Speaker 1: mean he has serious concerns. So his his covert strike
24:48
Speaker 1: force enters town on December in the wee hours of
24:52
Speaker 1: the morning. They were loading up the archives uh into
24:55
Speaker 1: wagons when a local Indans keeper named Angelie Everley finds
25:02
Speaker 1: them uh and she owns several spots in the city.
25:05
Speaker 1: She's playing the Monopoly game in addition to her and
25:07
Speaker 1: she's got some properties, and she said, these archives have
25:11
Speaker 1: symbolic value to the republic. We've already lost the capital
25:15
Speaker 1: here in Austin, and if we lose the archives, then
25:18
Speaker 1: we're gonna be as a city left out of the
25:20
Speaker 1: future of Texas. So she runs in kind of like
25:24
Speaker 1: a Paul Revere style thing. Right, and she's telling everybody
25:29
Speaker 1: in Austin, YO, look, they're still in the archives. I
25:32
Speaker 1: don't know, she said yo at the time, but she
25:34
Speaker 1: was like, you know, raising awareness. And then an ad
25:37
Speaker 1: hoc army of angry locals gathered. And then on Austin's
25:43
Speaker 1: main thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, there was a loaded six pound
25:48
Speaker 1: howitzer and it was carrying grape shot. And this was
25:51
Speaker 1: left over from the Republic's earlier wars with Native American communities.
25:56
Speaker 1: So this lady Angelina, she faces the muzzle of the
26:00
Speaker 1: howitzer towards the Land Office and fires the cannon. This
26:05
Speaker 1: is we know this happened, and it comes from D. G. Wootton,
26:08
Speaker 1: author of a complete history of Texas. And there was
26:10
Speaker 1: like a Ward peg leg the land commissioner from earlier.
26:16
Speaker 1: He writes a layer to Sam Houston about this and
26:18
Speaker 1: he says there was a cry blow the old house
26:21
Speaker 1: to places. Some shots hit the land Office, but no
26:25
Speaker 1: one was injured, no damage was done. Everybody was very
26:29
Speaker 1: lucky that there were no fatalities. History might have gone
26:33
Speaker 1: differently now, of course, Ward there's a little historical least
26:37
Speaker 1: ragg of course, ward um as pre existing beef with cannons.
26:41
Speaker 1: Peg Leg was not a like ironic nickname. That's right, Ward,
26:47
Speaker 1: who was Mayor of Austin at the time, lost his
26:49
Speaker 1: right arm to a faulty cannon um during a celebration
26:55
Speaker 1: of the five year anniversary of the Battle of Santia Sinto.
26:58
Speaker 1: There's this thing as a peg arm. Why is he
27:01
Speaker 1: peg leg if he lost an arm, not not to
27:03
Speaker 1: not to diminish the man's suffering. I just feels like
27:05
Speaker 1: a misplaced nickname if you ask me. Yeah, he lost
27:09
Speaker 1: his right arm due to a cannon malfunction during the
27:12
Speaker 1: five year anniversary of the Battle of Saint Jacinto, and
27:15
Speaker 1: before that at an earlier siege, in Assault of Bexar
27:19
Speaker 1: in eight thirty five, he lost his right leg to
27:22
Speaker 1: cannon fire. So okay, cannon's hate him would be the
27:25
Speaker 1: buzfeed headline, and and and also peg leg would take
27:29
Speaker 1: precedent over the leg. The leg injury came first, presumably um,
27:34
Speaker 1: and then the the arm and followed suit. But the
27:37
Speaker 1: nickname was already you know, fully ensconced by that point.
27:41
Speaker 1: So Smith, Chandler and their guys made off with the
27:46
Speaker 1: archives in their wagons. This is the highest we're talking about.
27:50
Speaker 1: They were pursued by twenty Austin knites out for blood. Uh.
27:55
Speaker 1: Some were carrying that cannon, alright, a cannon and around
27:59
Speaker 1: new In the next day, at Bushy Creek, which is
28:02
Speaker 1: just a lovely, delightfully named creek north of Austin, the
28:06
Speaker 1: Austin folks literally took the troops hostage. They held them
28:10
Speaker 1: at gunpoint. Uh. Smith was ordered to uh surrender or fight.
28:16
Speaker 1: According to um Winfries account of the story, of which
28:20
Speaker 1: there are several another one written by Wootton, at the
28:23
Speaker 1: mob forcing Smith to move the archives back to Austin,
28:27
Speaker 1: and wards account um had the vigilantes hauling the archives
28:32
Speaker 1: back themselves. UM fabulous article from Smithsonian Magazine by Shella mcclear,
28:40
Speaker 1: The Fascinating Story of the Texas Archives War of two
28:43
Speaker 1: gives you the play by play for a lot of
28:45
Speaker 1: this stuff, highly worth the full read. So, regardless of
28:50
Speaker 1: the specifics, they did surrender the archives. The archives were
28:54
Speaker 1: returned to Houston. The Committee of Vigilance decided to party hardy,
28:59
Speaker 1: and they got together the New Year's celebration and some accounts,
29:04
Speaker 1: again there's discrepancy between these accounts. Some accounts say they
29:07
Speaker 1: even said, hey, you know Colonel Smith come hang out
29:12
Speaker 1: and uh depend on which story you here. He may
29:15
Speaker 1: have accepted, he may have declined. Either way, No one
29:18
Speaker 1: was seriously injured, no one died. It seemed like it
29:22
Speaker 1: was It seemed like the War of the Texas Archives
29:25
Speaker 1: was over. But they had to settle somewhere, and the
29:30
Speaker 1: land Office was damaged by you know, the ends keeper
29:33
Speaker 1: firing a cannon uh to bring the building down. She actually,
29:39
Speaker 1: Mrs Eberley, actually got the archives herself. The records were
29:44
Speaker 1: sealed in these tin boxes. They were stored at her
29:47
Speaker 1: place under seven guard, and any attempt to take them
29:51
Speaker 1: by force, according to historians like Louis Wills Kemp, would
29:56
Speaker 1: have triggered a civil war in Texas. Everley definitely had
30:02
Speaker 1: a financial concern involved because she owned so much property
30:06
Speaker 1: and the property values. Who tank if Austin lost the
30:10
Speaker 1: capital and the archives. Um Old peg Leg is not
30:14
Speaker 1: super jazzed about this. He writes to Houston and says,
30:18
Speaker 1: I have employed all the exhaustion I could to have
30:21
Speaker 1: them restored to this place, but in vain and what
30:24
Speaker 1: the result? Maybe providence alone can determine. Many threats have
30:29
Speaker 1: been made against me. But how I have a dangerous
30:32
Speaker 1: song present my situation. Maybe we will not complain if
30:36
Speaker 1: I can do a service to the republic. Oh and
30:39
Speaker 1: then Congress got mad at Houston. It was a whole
30:42
Speaker 1: to do. They reprimanded him. But what what does that mean?
30:46
Speaker 1: They all all they were just like, we're mad at you. Yeah,
30:51
Speaker 1: they might have pounded a fist on a table or something.
30:53
Speaker 1: I possibly slammed the door or stumped a foot or something,
30:56
Speaker 1: but it did not appear to amount to any official
31:00
Speaker 1: like censure or actual consequences. Right, yeah, Yeah, they just said,
31:06
Speaker 1: you know, you had no legal reason to attempt to
31:09
Speaker 1: move the archives, and he knew he didn't. He went
31:13
Speaker 1: outside of the law to do it. Uh. The archives
31:16
Speaker 1: stayed in Austin for a while. The seat of government
31:18
Speaker 1: was still Washington on Brassos, and Austin was at the
31:23
Speaker 1: time on the decline, was turning into a ghost town. Eventually,
31:28
Speaker 1: like peg Leg spends the first half of eighteen forty
31:31
Speaker 1: three trying to get the archives back in the possession
31:35
Speaker 1: of the Land Commission. And then this, obviously, you know,
31:37
Speaker 1: plays into the whole idea of what we talked about,
31:40
Speaker 1: that the Austinites were very concerned that if the archives
31:44
Speaker 1: were not there selfishly, Um that that explosion and you know,
31:49
Speaker 1: development and all that stuff would probably start to wane,
31:53
Speaker 1: and as we see it most certainly did, right, Yeah, yeah,
31:57
Speaker 1: it most certainly did. And so so when peg Leg
32:01
Speaker 1: doesn't have any luck getting these archives out of Austin,
32:05
Speaker 1: he creates a new land office in the current capital
32:09
Speaker 1: and he starts making a new archive. If you fast
32:14
Speaker 1: forward just the next year July four Independence days, we
32:17
Speaker 1: know what today in the US without too much hubbub
32:21
Speaker 1: and without too many growing pains, those two archives get
32:24
Speaker 1: combined and reunited in Texas. The Republic of Texas joins
32:28
Speaker 1: the USA a few months later on December twenty nine eight,
32:33
Speaker 1: and Austin ends up becoming the capital. Uh, this doesn't
32:41
Speaker 1: really get resolved until eighteen fifty that's when the people
32:45
Speaker 1: of Texas finally vote to choose Austin as their capital.
32:50
Speaker 1: But that's still doesn't become like official, like concrete, concrete,
32:56
Speaker 1: until eighteen seventy two, when there's a statewide vote that
33:01
Speaker 1: marks the end to this strange, very messy journey. I
33:06
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, should we start keeping archives? They
33:09
Speaker 1: seem important? Like what if we need to make a
33:12
Speaker 1: state later we should have some archives. Who's going to
33:15
Speaker 1: be in charge of the art? Max? Max? Will you?
33:18
Speaker 1: Will you run the archives for us? I guess that
33:21
Speaker 1: kind of seems like could be. I don't know more.
33:23
Speaker 1: Y'all are the creatives on the functional one, so I
33:26
Speaker 1: guess you know, thank you don't sell yourself short. You're
33:29
Speaker 1: creative as well. He's functional. That nothing if not nonfunctioning creatives.
33:40
Speaker 1: But I think I think between the three of us
33:42
Speaker 1: we could successfully run and operate an archive, don't you.
33:46
Speaker 1: I would like to think that. But you know, now
33:49
Speaker 1: we live in a world with the benefit of the Internet.
33:51
Speaker 1: We have, uh, we have our own archive kind of
33:54
Speaker 1: going with ridiculous historians over on Facebook. Yeah, that's where
33:58
Speaker 1: we start. We have podcast episodes that's probably in the archive.
34:02
Speaker 1: You know what we need? We need to flag. I'm
34:05
Speaker 1: an amateur vexillologist, which is the fancy word study or flags?
34:10
Speaker 1: We could we could uh, I don't know what would
34:12
Speaker 1: be on our flag. Maybe that's a question for the
34:14
Speaker 1: folks in the audience that has a great idea design
34:17
Speaker 1: a ridiculous history flag for the ridiculous nation one nation
34:21
Speaker 1: under fraud. I don't know what are we um, one
34:25
Speaker 1: nation under whimsy. Sure we gotta work one nation under
34:31
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we'll work on it. Send our sender suggestions
34:34
Speaker 1: for that as well. That's our that. This is our
34:38
Speaker 1: story today and it's an amazing history. If you're listening
34:41
Speaker 1: and you are lucky enough to live in the city
34:44
Speaker 1: of Austin, uh, we hope you enjoy this episode. We
34:48
Speaker 1: hope you can also tell us where all the all
34:50
Speaker 1: the good food is for when we when we hit
34:53
Speaker 1: the road again, which maybe sooner than later, hopefully coming
34:56
Speaker 1: to a town near you. I just remember really enjoying torches, tacos.
35:00
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of a breakfast taco, breakfast Mexican
35:03
Speaker 1: food of any kind. Clabst French eiros is really great.
35:06
Speaker 1: But hey, Austin Knights, let us know what your favorite
35:08
Speaker 1: taco places. And you know we we promised at the
35:10
Speaker 1: top of the show. They're being kind of a full
35:12
Speaker 1: circle connection as to how this whole back and forth
35:15
Speaker 1: hullebluh sort of led to the strong identity of Austin
35:19
Speaker 1: and its citizens. Obviously we've seen that, and then how
35:22
Speaker 1: you know how much they fought for keeping the archive
35:25
Speaker 1: and the capital there um, but how how did this
35:28
Speaker 1: kind of enter into the current sort of keep Austin
35:32
Speaker 1: weird mentality that we talked about on the top of
35:34
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. Well, first it's a weird story. That's
35:38
Speaker 1: not that's not a story that all capitals can lay
35:41
Speaker 1: claim to. And secondly, this show's Austin's own independence within
35:48
Speaker 1: a first republic and then a state that very much
35:52
Speaker 1: prizes its own independence. Austin fought to become the capital,
35:58
Speaker 1: and even when things were looking dire, they did not
36:00
Speaker 1: give up. Uh, And they maintained a unique identity which
36:04
Speaker 1: I would argue continues to date to great acclaim. Indeed, Um, well,
36:09
Speaker 1: let us know if you have any more. Like I said,
36:11
Speaker 1: all the the Uber drivers that I had when I
36:13
Speaker 1: was in Austin were super super um knowledgeable about the
36:17
Speaker 1: history of their city and we're very proud. Uh. And
36:20
Speaker 1: one thing I also remember we didn't see it in action,
36:22
Speaker 1: but there's this bridge where all of these bats hang
36:25
Speaker 1: underneath it and usually at a certain time every single evening,
36:29
Speaker 1: the bats all, um, you know, dissipate like on mass
36:33
Speaker 1: But I think we missed it or it didn't happen
36:35
Speaker 1: that night or something like that. But lots of really
36:37
Speaker 1: cool things to check out in Austin, and I hope
36:40
Speaker 1: to make it back very soon. So let us know
36:42
Speaker 1: what your favorite things to eat and do in Austin are.
36:45
Speaker 1: You can write to us at Ridiculous and I heart
36:47
Speaker 1: media dot com. You can join our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians,
36:51
Speaker 1: by you know, just going to Facebook and pointing it
36:53
Speaker 1: towards Ridiculous Historians. Answer a couple of very simple questions
36:57
Speaker 1: and you're in lots of cool folks chatting about history
37:00
Speaker 1: there and memes of plenty being shared, and I think
37:03
Speaker 1: you'd enjoy it. And you the royal, You, You the listener,
37:06
Speaker 1: you specifically you listening now thanks to you, You specifically
37:11
Speaker 1: of course in Texas and abroad, thanks of course to
37:14
Speaker 1: our Ride or Die super producer Max Williams, Gabe Bluesier,
37:19
Speaker 1: Research Associate extraordinaire, Eve's Jeff co Christopher Ociotis you know
37:24
Speaker 1: all the hits, all the good ones, um owen Thanks
37:28
Speaker 1: to Jonathan strictly indeed, I love that guy. In quotation fingers,
37:34
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. For more podcasts for my
37:43
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
37:46
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows