Page:Don Erasmo Seguin.djvu/9

 at the 'border of the Neutral Ground which had been established by General Wilkinson of the Anerican forces and General Herrera of the Spanish forces in 1804, to see that all of the conditions of their entry into the Province were complied with and to conduct them safely into the interior.

Commissioner Don Erasmo Seguin was accompanied on this mission by Veramandi. After meeting Austin and some of his colonists at Nachitoches the Commissioner, Veramandi, Austin and an escort pushed on along the old San Antonio Road towards Bexar in order to meet Governor Martinez and complete the arrangements for the settlement of the Colonists.

On August the 10th, 1821, while this party was camped on the Guadalupe, messengers to Don Erasmo Seguin reached the party and imparted the glorious news that Mexico had achieved her independence from Spain.

During the long march and while engaged in the search for a suitable site for a colony for the Americans a warm friendship, born of mutual admiration, spraring up between Austin and Seguin which was destined to endure through the years and which inured particularly to the benefit of the colonists. The broad, liberal and progressive theories of government entertained by Austin were at this favorable opportunity transmitted to the receptive mind of Erasmo Seguin and had a most beneficial effect upon the future of Texas.

In 1821 Mexico gained its independence from Spain and in 1824 Erasmo Seguin was Deputy from Texas to the National Congress at Mexico City. As the Deputy for Texas he espoused the principles of the Liberal Party and assisted in forming the first Liberal Constitution, the same to be forever known as the Constitution of 1824, "Acta Constitutiva de la Federacion Mexicana", the Federation then comprising nineteen states and five territories whose first President was Guadalupe Victoria.

In 1833, when the political union of Coahuila and Teras became unsatisfactory to the colonists, the Ayuntamiento of DeWitt's Colony at Gonzales appointed Stephen F. Austin, James B. Miller and Erasmo Seguin as Commissioners to represent the colonists at the National Capitol and to endeavor to secure a separate state government. In order to allay the hostility of Santa Anna it was deemed advisable to at that time abandon the effort to secure political relief. Later the effort was renewed, Austin went to Mexico City and because of his efforts in this direction was for a long time confined there in prison.

When the Dictator Santa Anna abrogated the Constitution of 1824 and prorogued the Congress of Coahuila and Texas, denying to the colonists the political and social rights guaranteed to them by that Constitution, Austin was among the first of the Americans to protest. He vigorously asserted the liberties of the colonists as Mexican citizens under the Constitution of 1824.

The first Revolutionary Meeting convened to protest against the