What 2 things did filibusters hope to do by going to Texas?
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Answer:
Main Idea – In Texas, American filibusters took advantage of Spanish weakness to increase their own power. Setting the Scene: Entrepreneurs like Philip Nolan and Peter Bean (filibusters) came to Texas in 1800 to make money capturing and selling wild horses. Unfortunately for them, this was against the law.
The first of the American filibusters, Philip Nolan, was not a filibuster in the truest sense of the word. Nolan, an educated man who immigrated to America from Ireland, was involved in the business of capturing wild horses in Texas and selling them in New Orleans. In 1797, Nolan signed a contract with the French governor of Louisiana, Baron de Carondelet, to sell the mustangs to a Louisiana regiment. Carondelet knew Nolan was conducting illegal roundup operations in Texas, but he was not always on the best of terms with his Spanish counterpart, Texas Governor Manuel Munoz. Nolan also came to a financial agreement with Governor Munoz to ignore his illegal activities, and the American’s mustanging operations continued unabated for the next few years.
In October of 1800, Nolan again reentered Texas with twenty men and a few slaves, but by this time a new governor, Juan Bautista de Elguezabal, had been appointed. Governor Elguezabal issued an order that all Americans exhibiting the least suspicious conduct should be arrested. This order definitely pertained to Philip Nolan, who the governor learned had been meeting in secret with General James Wilkinson, the commander of the American Army in the west, to discuss the separation of Texas from New Spain. Orders were issued to all Spanish patrols to permanently silence Nolan if he returned to Texas.
Within a few days, a company of Spanish cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Musquiz tracked Nolan down at a camp on the Brazos River where the mustanger had assembled nearly three hundred wild horses. The Spanish surrounded the camp by night and attacked at sunrise. During a brief, but vicious fight Philip Nolan was killed and Peter Ellis Bean took command. Heavily outnumbered and nearly out of ammunition, Bean soon surrendered. Lieutenant Musquiz marched the survivors into Mexico, noting in his journal that he had granted Nolan’s slaves permission to bury their master “after causing his ears to be cut off in order to send them to the Governor.”
The King of Spain eventually decreed that every fifth prisoner should be hanged as a pirate and the rest sentenced to ten years at hard labor. By then all but nine of the filibusters had died in prison, so the survivors were blindfolded and made to throw dice. Ephraim Blackburn, who threw the lowest number, was duly hanged. The fate of the other prisoners except for Peter Ellis Bean has been lost and long-forgotten over time, but Bean, a true survivor, was later made a colonel in the Mexican army, married a rich widow, and died of old age in a warm and comfortable bed.