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The Final Day

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox

Words are as important to lawyers as a bookcase full of tan-covered, black-labeled Southwestern Reporters used to be before the internet made appeals court decisions easily available online.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that a lawsuit can fail or prevail on the nuance of a single word. Accordingly, a well-crafted legal brief is built on linguistic redundancy, as in a matter being "ordered, adjudged and decreed."

Fortunately, while William Henry Stewart was a smart lawyer who rose to become a wise judge, no doubt versed in all legal terms of art, he also knew how to arrange simple words for clear communication. It is thanks to him and the journal he kept that Texans can today easily visualize the last day in the nearly decade long life of the Republic of Texas, an event that transpired five years before the mid-point of the 19th century.

Noting that Austin was only “a very small town on the frontier,” Stewart recorded in his journal that somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 persons were in town for the ceremony on Feb. 19, 1846 for the ceremony marking the end of the Republic of Texas and the beginning of Texas’ status as the 28th state of the Union.

“It was a wonderfully impressive scene,” he wrote.

A group of gutsy men had signed a document declaring Texas independent from Mexico on March 2, 1836. It took a baptism of blood to make that freedom a fact, but for more than nine years, Texas would stand among other nations of the world as a sovereign entity.

While the 27-year-old Stewart played no role in the revolution, he got to Texas as soon as he could. That was in the fall of 1844, when after a brief stint in Iowa, he walked off a ship at Galveston. Soon, he decided to move inland and begin a legal practice in Gonzales. Not quite two years later, he traveled the 65 miles from Gonzales to the Capital City specifically to see the change-of-government event.

“After prayer the President of Texas, Anson Jones, delivered a speech,” Stewart wrote. “It was a strong, vivid review of the trials, the privations and the triumphs of the early settlers of Texas, of the making of the republic, of the war with Mexico, of the tragedies of that war, and so on through the [almost] 10 years of the life of the republic.”

Then Jones related the recent history of the move toward annexation, and the reason everyone had gathered on that day to witness the transition of governmental authority.

“He closed with a solemnity that was profound,” Stewart continued. “His closing sentence was: ‘And now the Republic of Texas is no more.’”

Those nine words seemed to hit the crowd as forcefully as a load of grape shot from the Twin Sisters, the two cannon that helped assure Texas independence at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.

“Although we all knew why we had gathered there; although we knew beforehand just what was to be done, the services were so simple, yet so serious, and the speech of the President so grave that when he said: ‘And now the Republic of Texas is no more,’ the people acted as though they were stunned.”

And then Stewart really produced some powerful prose:

“The silence was broken only by the rattling of the ropes as the Lone Star of Texas, which had been floating from the flagstaff, came down. Then those 2,000 or 3,000 persons looked as though they would cry. There was a look of suffering in every face. The full significance of their act was brought home to them by the hauling down of the flag – the flag for which they had borne so much and which represented so much to them.”

The spectators continued in that “unsettled, tremulous, deeply sentimental state” when the man standing at the halliards “began pulling at the ropes and slowly but surely another flag was hoisted on high.”

As a crowd “still as death” looked on, the flag reached the top of the staff. The wind caught it “and the Stars and Stripes of the United States burst into view.”

At that, those gathered outside the one-story frame building that had been the republic’s capitol came back to life.

“A mighty cheer went up, hats were thrown a-high, cannon boomed and there was a tremendous tumult,” concluded. “Never before and never since have I see such a sudden change from grief to rejoicing. It was marvelous.”

Stewart did well in the new state. Voters in Gonzales elected him mayor in 1848, and a year later they sent him to Austin as a state representative. He served one term, and then after nearly a decade long hiatus, represented the Gonzales area again during the final legislative session before the Civil War.

Though born in Maryland, when Texas seceded from the Union that Stewart had witnessed it join, he joined the Confederate Army, serving as a major in the Quartermaster Corps.

In 1868, three years after the South’s failed attempt to divorce itself from the United States, Stewart moved to Galveston. With the exception of time spent in Austin as a delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention, he practiced law in the prosperous port city until 1876, when he was elected as a district judge.

Stewart remained on the bench until his death on March 26, 1903, but his description of the final day of the Republic of Texas will live on.


© Mike Cox - February 20, 2014 column
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