The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan
Authors: James Donovan
Ads: Link
slaves and a good bit of land. He was also gaining a reputation as a fearless backwoodsman, one whom few men dared to insult. When that happened, the Bowie blood came up, and he would often take matters into his own hands—literally. “It was his habit to settle all difficulties without regard to time or place,” remembered one friend, “and it was the same whether he met one or many.”
Bowie and his brothers moved into a more profitable business in 1819. The African slave trade had been abolished nine years earlier, but the burgeoning plantation culture in the Deep South and west of the Mississippi created a lucrative market for smuggled slaves. Those captured by the authorities were sold at auction. Like a few other states, Louisiana gave half the auction proceeds to the parties who turned in the slaves or provided information leading to their seizure.
The resourceful Bowie brothers—they all stuck close together, particularly James and Rezin—quickly learned the ropes. They did much business with the man who dominated slave smuggling in the area, Jean Laffite—who, along with Andrew Jackson, was credited with saving New Orleans from the British. The Bowies added a brilliant twist to the scam: after they turned in the “found” slaves to the authorities, they would outbid other buyers at auction. Pocketing their reward of half the proceeds, they would in effect pay only half the final price and receive clear title to their chattels to boot.
Two years of this netted the brothers Bowie a small fortune, but their scheme was a delicate one, with a finite profit potential, and they got out before officials became too suspicious of the brothers’ knack for finding their source of bounty. Next up for the Bowies was an even more lucrative business: land speculation on a grand scale.
In itself, the buying of uninhabited land, sometimes on credit or on easy terms, reselling it at a higher price, and then paying off the original note—thus making a tidy profit with little capital ventured—was not illegal. Many men were involved in similar schemes in the young country’s new territories, and Arkansas and Louisiana were rife with opportunity: they had changed hands more than once, and the confusing lack of clear title and multiple sovereignties created a muddled and wide-open market for fraud and forgery. Over the next decade, the Bowies jumped in feetfirst, none more enthusiastically than the brother some now referred to as Big Jim Bowie. Before the end of the decade, he engineered more than one hundred forged land claims and titles comprising eighty thousand acres in Arkansas and almost as many in Louisiana—enough to make him the largest landowner in the region if and when the claims were patented and thus legitimized.
But the Bowies’ massive land schemes caught the attention of the U.S. attorney general, who instigated a thorough investigation that canceled almost all the fraudulent transactions—the audacity, method, and scale of which led these and similar claims to be known as Bowie claims. The attorney general also threatened legal action and possible criminal charges. Though neither of the brothers would ever be officially charged, and though the widespread knowledge of the scams did not prevent the election of Rezin Bowie to the Louisiana legislature three times, brother James had worn out his welcome.
But Big Jim had already set his sights westward, on an area even more wide open and promising: Texas, whose abundant land and rumored silver deposits seemed ripe for the Bowie touch.
He had made his first trip to the Mexican province in 1828, riding first to Stephen F. Austin’s San Felipe, where he talked of building a much-needed cotton mill, then westward 150 miles to San Antonio de Béxar. There he introduced himself to the town’s leading citizen, Don Juan Martín de Veramendi, soon to be vice governor of Texas—and his lovely daughter, sixteen-year-old Ursula. He made a few more trips over the
Bowie and his brothers moved into a more profitable business in 1819. The African slave trade had been abolished nine years earlier, but the burgeoning plantation culture in the Deep South and west of the Mississippi created a lucrative market for smuggled slaves. Those captured by the authorities were sold at auction. Like a few other states, Louisiana gave half the auction proceeds to the parties who turned in the slaves or provided information leading to their seizure.
The resourceful Bowie brothers—they all stuck close together, particularly James and Rezin—quickly learned the ropes. They did much business with the man who dominated slave smuggling in the area, Jean Laffite—who, along with Andrew Jackson, was credited with saving New Orleans from the British. The Bowies added a brilliant twist to the scam: after they turned in the “found” slaves to the authorities, they would outbid other buyers at auction. Pocketing their reward of half the proceeds, they would in effect pay only half the final price and receive clear title to their chattels to boot.
Two years of this netted the brothers Bowie a small fortune, but their scheme was a delicate one, with a finite profit potential, and they got out before officials became too suspicious of the brothers’ knack for finding their source of bounty. Next up for the Bowies was an even more lucrative business: land speculation on a grand scale.
In itself, the buying of uninhabited land, sometimes on credit or on easy terms, reselling it at a higher price, and then paying off the original note—thus making a tidy profit with little capital ventured—was not illegal. Many men were involved in similar schemes in the young country’s new territories, and Arkansas and Louisiana were rife with opportunity: they had changed hands more than once, and the confusing lack of clear title and multiple sovereignties created a muddled and wide-open market for fraud and forgery. Over the next decade, the Bowies jumped in feetfirst, none more enthusiastically than the brother some now referred to as Big Jim Bowie. Before the end of the decade, he engineered more than one hundred forged land claims and titles comprising eighty thousand acres in Arkansas and almost as many in Louisiana—enough to make him the largest landowner in the region if and when the claims were patented and thus legitimized.
But the Bowies’ massive land schemes caught the attention of the U.S. attorney general, who instigated a thorough investigation that canceled almost all the fraudulent transactions—the audacity, method, and scale of which led these and similar claims to be known as Bowie claims. The attorney general also threatened legal action and possible criminal charges. Though neither of the brothers would ever be officially charged, and though the widespread knowledge of the scams did not prevent the election of Rezin Bowie to the Louisiana legislature three times, brother James had worn out his welcome.
But Big Jim had already set his sights westward, on an area even more wide open and promising: Texas, whose abundant land and rumored silver deposits seemed ripe for the Bowie touch.
He had made his first trip to the Mexican province in 1828, riding first to Stephen F. Austin’s San Felipe, where he talked of building a much-needed cotton mill, then westward 150 miles to San Antonio de Béxar. There he introduced himself to the town’s leading citizen, Don Juan Martín de Veramendi, soon to be vice governor of Texas—and his lovely daughter, sixteen-year-old Ursula. He made a few more trips over the