Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/61



had become oppressive. Commerce was placed under the most oppress restrictions. The administration of the customs was committed to the worst men. All attempts to secure justice had been baffled. The people had improved their lands. Their titles were guaranteed by the Mexican Government, and still large sums of money had been extorted from them in obtaining titles. The disapprobation of the Mexican Government evidently had settled upon the colonists, and yet they were ruled by Mexican laws, and were governed by beings who blindly carried out Mexican edicts. Alarmed, the colonists undertook precautionary measures. But when an edict of Santa Anna commanded the people to surrender their private arms — thus exposing their wives and children to the rage of savage Indians, as well as to the horrors of starvation, for many families depended on wild game for their daily food — the final stroke of tyranny which rends the will of the subject from the will of the despot, had been delivered; and no other thought occupied Texan minds but freedom from Mexican despotism and misrule. On the eastern bank of the Guadaloupe, about seventy miles from San Antonio de Bexar, is situated Gonzales, which was originally the capital of De Witt's colony. Almost weekly incursions of the Indians had made it necessary for the defence of the place, that it should have a piece of artillery. Santa Anna commanded Ugartchea, a Colonel commanding several dragoons in the Mexican army, to march from San Antonio de Bexar to Gonzales, to carry off this four-pounder. Inconsiderable skirmishing took place, as the people flocked to the place to hold possession of the little field-piece. A great point was, however, gained: the Mexican army had fired the first shot. Swords drawn from their scabbards that day were no more to be sheathed, until every link of Mexican fetters, then encircling the youthful form of Texan liberty, should be burst asunder, and Texas stand free and unfettered by despotism among the nations of the earth.