The Austin Papers: October 1834--January, 1837, Volume 3 Page: III

                                
PREFACE
The American Historical Association in 1924 published the first volume
of The Austin Papers (Annual Report for 1919, Volume II, in two parts.
Washington: Government Printing Office. Pp. 1824). The documents in
that volume extend from 1789 through 1827. The Association will publish
in a subsequent Report the second volume of The Austin Papers, carrying
the documents through September, 1834. This, the third volume, pub-
lished by the University of Texas Press, completes the collection. It is
to be regretted that all the material could not appear in a single series,
but the generosity of the American Historical Association could not be
extended to more than three thousand pages.
The Austin Papers are the collection of materials accumulated by
Moses and Stephen F. Austin in the progress of their busy enterprises
from Virginia through Missouri and Arkansas to Texas. They consist of
business memoranda, physiographical observations, petitions and memo-
rials to local and superior governments, political addresses and proclama-
tions, and much personal and official correspondence. Moses Austin
illustrated in his own career the typical aspects of the business man in
the Westward Movement; and Stephen F. Austin was, to a degree not
approached by any other colonial proprietor in our history, the founder
and the indispensable guardian and director during its early vicissitudes
of a great American Commonwealth. The Austin Papers came into the
possession of the University of Texas in 1901 by gift of the literary execu-
tors of Colonel Guy M. Bryan, himself the nephew of Stephen F. Austin,
who had had the custody of the papers during his life.
In their entirety The Austin Papers are an absorbing human docu-
ment, reflecting the life of the Austin family in Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, and illuminating the
social and economic history—and to some extent the political history—of
the American frontier from 1789 to 1836. A review of the first volume
declared that: "Beyond all doubt, The Austin Papers comprise the most
significant contribution that has ever been made to the social history of
the men and women who, to use Stephen F. Austin's oft recurring phrase,
'redeemed Texas from the wilderness.' "
In general, the documents explain themselves and each other, but a
few words of introduction are necessary to put the reader in touch with
the situation at the beginning of this volume. Austin had gone to Mexico
in the summer of 1833 to present a petition for the organization of state
government in Texas. This petition was denied, but other reforms were
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