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of Judge [James Coffield] Mitchell, Judge Caswell R. Clifton, and other generous right-minded men" raise "instantly from one to two thousand men in a few counties of our State bordering on this central county."[37] Prior to leaving Laredo, as the reader will remember, "President" Cárdenas had sought to open negotiations with the government of Texas by contacting José Antonio Navarro, a prominent leader of the San Antonio Mexicans.[38] He had informed Navarro of the establishment of the provisional government of the so-called Republic of the Río Grande, and requested him to be the agent of the new government in Texas with full powers to "establish relations of amity and commerce with the government of your country," upon whose assistance the success of the Federalist enterprise unmistakably rests.[39] Like José Luciano Navarro, his brother, with whom Carbajal had corresponded the year before, Navarro politely refused the offer and informed Cárdenas of what seemed to him to be the continued official attitude of Texas. Your Excellency will be pleased to excuse me for remarking, that the opinion of the Government of this Republic being so clearly manifest, ever since the conference held with General Juan Pablo Anaya, it appears to me, it will be very difficult for the agent of the people of your States, whatever his influence might be with this Government, to induce it to change its policy, which is guided by the force of public exigencies . . . not to intermeddle officially with the domestic quarrels of the Mexicans, with which country it has its own difficulties . . . involving its future existence. Although the government of Texas was hopeful of triumphing in its quarrel with Mexico, he continued, I believe it desires to be justified 37. Henry S. Foote to M. B. Lamar, Raymond [Miss.], April 25, 1840, in Lamar Papers, III, 378-379. James Coffield Mitchell was a former Congressman from Tennessee (1825-1829) and judge of the eleventh circuit of Tennessee (1830-1836). In 1837 he settled near Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi, where later he was an unsuccessful candidate on the Whig ticket for governor of Mississippi and for the Mississippi state House of Representatives. He died at Jackson, Mississippi, August 7, 1843. Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927, pp. 1819-1820. 38. José Antonio Navarro was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and a representative of Béxar County in the Third Congress, 1838-1839. He was re-elected to the Fourth Congress, but resigned because of ill health. 39. Jesús Cárdenas to José Antonio Navarro, Laredo, Feb. 29, 1840, in Austin City Gazette, May 13, 1840. |