Creating a Mythistory: Texas Historians in the Nineteenth Century

211 Z'i'8( A AO. HW CREATING A MYTHISTORY: TEXAS HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Laura Lyons McLemore, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas August, 1998 IP 6* McLemore, Laura Lyons, Creating a Mythistory: Texas Historians in the Nineteenth Century. Doctor of Philosophy (History), August, 1998,284 pp., references, 253 titles. Many historians have acknowledged the temptation to portray people as they see themselves and wish to be seen, blending history and ideology. The result is "mythistory." Twentieth century Texas writers and historians, remarking upon the exceptional durability of the Texas mythistory that emerged from the nineteenth century, have questioned its resistance to revision throughout the twentieth century. By placing the writing of Texas history within the context of American and European intellectual climates and history writing generally, from the close of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, it is possible to identify a pattern that provides some insight into the popularity and persistence of Texas mythistory. An overview of Texas history writing in the nineteenth century reveals that history was employed in the interest of personal and political agendas during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Civil War and especially Reconstruction had a profound effect on Texans' historical consciousness, while during the same period the Gilded Age had a profound effect on all American society and historical consciousness, impelling Americans to turn to nostalgia. In Texas, professional historians and nostalgia buffs joined forces to create Texas' mythistory, centered primarily on the Texas revolution. The one continuous mythical thread throughout Texas history, however, is that of Texas as a new world Eden, both as a place and a state of mind. With the promulgation of Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis," Texas became America's foremost representative of its frontier identity. The myths that evolved in the nineteenth century remain useful not only to Texans but to Americans and the world at large even in the late twentieth century. Not only do they continue to seem vital to Texans' ability to see themselves as a people and confront the future, but they continue to be cherished representatives of the American self. 211 Z'i'8( A AO. HW CREATING A MYTHISTORY: TEXAS HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Laura Lyons McLemore, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas August, 1998 Copyright by Laura Lyons McLemore 1998 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Numerous individuals have contributed both directly and indirectly to the completion of this project. First and foremost among them is Dr. Randolph B. Campbell, my major professor, who inspired, guided, challenged, championed, and, when necessary, pushed and prodded me from the conception of it to the conclusion. I have the greatest respect, admiration, and gratitude for members of my graduate committee, Drs. Donald E. Chipman, Donald Pickens, Ray Stephens, Ron Marcello, James Ward Lee, and Jim Laney, all of whom contributed valuable advice and insight. My colleagues at Austin College supported me in countless ways. In the course of researching and writing this dissertation, I received generous assistance in the form of fellowships from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, the Texas State Historical Association, the University of Texas-Center for American History, and the Department of History at the University of North Texas, which made the time and travel necessarily devoted to the effort possible. Finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to family and friends whose patience, sacrifice, and unswerving belief in me enabled me to pursue and achieve my goals. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1. PROLOGUE: HISTORIANS OF SPANISH TEXAS 10 The Enlightenment in Spanish America The works of Juan Agustin Morfi and Jos6 Antonio Pichardo 2. HISTORY AS ROMANTIC ART 32 Changes in the intellectual climates of Europe and the United States The romantic reaction to Rationalism The evolution of American Romanticism and its application to history 3. TEXAS HISTORIANS AND THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION, THE 1830S 83 Anglo-American settlement in Texas and the proliferation of literature on Texas Generalizations about Texas historians in the 1830s Historians: Mary Austin Holley, David Barnett Edward, Chester Newell, Frederic LeClerc, and Edward Stiff History for promotion of personal interests 4. LONE STAR RISING, THE 1840S 127 History as political propaganda: William Kennedy, Henry S. Foote, A. B. Lawrence, Nicholas Doran P. Maillard, John Niles and Lorrain Thompson Pease The Mexican side of the Texas Revolution: Vicente Filisola 5. PRIDE GOETH ... BEFORE A FALL, THE WRITING OF TEXAS HISTORY 1850-1880 163 Changes in the climate of opinion and the rise of scientific history Influences on the writing of Texas history Antebellum historians : William Gouge, Jos6 Antonio Navarro, and Henderson Yoakum, Texas' national historian The effects of Civil War and Reconstruction: DeWitt Clinton Baker, James Morphis, Homer Thrall, and Reuben Potter History versus collective memory 6. EVERY TEXAN HIS OWN HISTORIAN 217 The emergence of professional historians and academic history, changes of style and audience Hubert Howe Bancroft's "history factory" Memorials, memoirs, and the retreat to nostalgia A department of history at the University of Texas Scientific history and nostalgia join forces to create a mythistory 7. TEXAS, THE ETERNAL FRONTIER 251 Overview of Texas history writing in the nineteenth century The effect of Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis on American historical consciousness Texas, the living symbol of the American pioneer spirit. WORKS CITED 262 INTRODUCTION When historian Boyd C. Shafer told a friend he would be speaking before the Texas State Historical Association about the historian in America, his friend asked why he did not speak about the historians in Texas. Shafer replied, "I did not know much about the historians in Texas except that there were many of them and they were proud of Texas."1 Truer words were probably never spoken. T. R. Fehrenbach has boasted that the great difference between Texas and every other American state in the twentieth century is that Texas has a history. Indeed, pride in Texas history seems frequently to have elevated it to mythical proportions, so that the distinction between myth and history becomes difficult to draw. There are those who argue that this is not only a fact but is-to some extent at least-as it should be.2 Every society, including the United States and Texas, has some myths 1 Boyd C. Shafer, "The Historian in America," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60 (Jan. 1957): 381. 2 T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 711. Many have made this observation in recent years. See, for example, L. D. Clark, "Texas Historical Writing: A Sample of the Myth at Age 150," American West 12 (Jan- Feb. 1986): 80-81; James Sutton Payne, "Texas Historiography in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Eugene C. Barker, Charles W. Ramsdell, and Walter P. Webb: (Ph.D. diss, University of Denver, 1972), 30-31; Stephen Stagner, "Epics, Science, and the Lost Frontier: Texas Historical Writing, 1836-1936," Western Historical Quarterly 12 (April 1981): 165-81; Robert F. O'Connor, ed. Texas Myths (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1986), vii, 8, 20; Walter L. Buenger and Robert A. Calvert, eds. Texas Through Time, Evolving Interpretations (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1991), ix. See William H. McNeill, "Mythistory or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians," American Historical Review 91 (Feb. 1986): 5-6. associated with its history and identity. In Texas, however, myth seems particularly difficult to separate from history, prompting writer Larry McMurtry to question whether Texas has ever had an unsentimental historian.3 Shafer was also correct in observing that Texas had many historians. In the nineteenth century, for example, almost everyone in Texas was, in a sense, a historian. Texas attracted both the adventurous and the curious; the events unfolding there and the land itself were dramatic, evocative, and fraught with political implications; those who experienced it, and who were literate enough to do so, seemed compelled to write about it. Moreover, Texans apply the term "historian" freely. Even today one may hear the names Roy Bedicek, Walter Prescott Webb, and J. Frank Dobie referred to collectively as Texas historians. The defining characteristics of a Texas historian do not seem any clearer in the twentieth century than they did in the nineteenth. Indeed, according to McMurtry, something about Texas still turns even tough-minded intellectuals into sentimentalists. The chief requirement of a Texas historian, he argued in 1968, seems to be the ability to tell a Texas tale and get the facts straight.4 3 Larry McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas (Austin: Encino Press, 1968), 38. 4 Ibid., 38-40. With so many proud Texas historians in print, it is not difficult to conclude, as Boyd Shafer did, that little is actually known about most of them. Some of the giants of this century like Eugene C. Barker, Charles W. Ramsdell, Walter

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