Although most Americans view Sam Houston as a military leader and practical politician with little understanding of intellectual issues, he actually possessed a complex moral and political philosophy which he elaborated and demonstrated during a fifty-year public career. He based his philosophy on a mixture of Christian idealism and pragmatic realism, with duty, honor, and strict morality serving to restrain his love of reality, reason, and physical pleasures. The dual nature of his moral beliefs extended into his politics, which mixed Jeffersonian republicanism, individual rights, and limited government, with Jacksonian democracy, the needs of society, and the will of the people. Throughout most of his career he kept those conflicting sets of ideals successfully in balance, with only the turmoil of the 1850s leading him into extreme positions.

This dissertation provides a history of Spanish-Comanche relations during the era of Spanish Texas. The study is based on research in archival documents, some newly discovered. Chapter 1 presents an overview of events that brought both people to the land that Spaniards named Texas. The remaining chapters provide a detailed account of Spanish-Comanche interaction from first contact until the end of Spanish rule in 1821. Although it is generally written that Spaniards first met Comanches at San Antonio de Béxar in 1743, a careful examination of Spanish documents indicates that Spaniards heard rumors of Comanches in Texas in the 1740s, but their first meeting did not occur until the early 1750s. From that first encounter until the close of the Spanish era, Spanish authorities instituted a number of different policies in their efforts to coexist peacefully with the Comanche nation. The author explores each of those policies, how the Comanches reacted to those policies, and the impact of that diplomacy on both cultures. Spaniards and Comanches negotiated a peace treaty in 1785, and that treaty remained in effect, with varying degrees of success, for the duration of Spanish rule. Leaders on both sides were committed to maintaining that peace, although Spaniards were hampered by meager resources and Comanches by the decentralized organization of their society. The dissertation includes a detailed account of the Spanish expedition to the Red River in 1759, led by Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla. That account, based on the recently discovered diary of Juan Angel de Oyarzún, provides new information on the campaign as well as a reevaluation of its outcome. The primary intention of this study is to provide a balanced account of Spanish-Comanche relations, relying on the historical record as well as anthropological evidence to uncover, wherever possible, the Comanche side of the story. The research reveals much about the political organization of the Comanche people.

This thesis analyzes the political career of Oran M. Roberts during the critical period from 1850 to 1873. Through a reassessment of Roberts's extensive personal papers in the context of modern historical scholarship, the author explains how Roberts's political philosophy reflected the biases and prejudices typical of his era, as well as his own material interests and ambitions. Topic areas covered include Roberts's position on the Compromise of 1850, his constitutional philosophy, his involvement in the secession movement in Texas (including his service as president of the state secession convention), his military career during the Civil War, his participation in Presidential Reconstruction, his views on Congressional Reconstruction, and his role in the process of "redemption" in Texas.

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This work is a study of white Texans' attitudes toward their role in the federal Union and their right to secede from it during the antebellum period. The central question of the study is why did people so strongly Unionist in 1846 became so strongly secessionist by 1861. In tracing this significant shift in Texans' sentiment, the author especially emphasizes the racial attitudes of white Texans, their emotional defense of the institution of slavery, and their strong conviction that the Negroes, if emancipated, would destroy white society. Of special importance to this study is the relationship of Texans' racial attitudes to their attitudes toward the Union.

Includes summaries of legislation from 1856 to 1949 regarding the blind, deaf and dumb, the mentally deranged, child welfare, the physically ill, and the aged. Also includes histories of schools and institutions established, including Deaf and Blind institute for Colored youths, State Lunatic Asylum, Epileptic Colony, Insane Asylum for Negroes, State Juvenile Training School, The State Orphan's home.

The idea of the Texas Revolution as an internal conspiracy cannot be eliminated. This thesis describes the role of a small minority of the wealthier settlers in Texas in precipitating the Texas Revolution for their own economic reasons. This group, made up of many of the leading figures in Texas, were, for the most part, well-to-do farmers, merchants, and professional men.. Most of them were slaveholders, and their prosperity depended upon the continued existence of this institution. In their minds, the entire economic growth and development of Texas rested upon slavery. When the Mexican government began to threaten the economic future of Texas by the passage of prohibitatory laws on slavery and commerce, many of the leaders in Texas began to think of freeing Texas from Mexican control. The threat to their own economic position and prosperity gave birth to the idea of Texas independence.

Memoria (licenciado en ciencias jurídicas y sociales) / El estudio de las fuentes del derecho es sin duda una tarea que debe ser llevada a cabo. Conocerlas es necesario tanto para comprender el origen y los fundamentos de las instituciones jurídicas que nos rigen como para proyectar las modificaciones legislativas futuras que los cambios de época exigen constantemente. Los códigos que hoy rigen en Chile son, como en gran parte del mundo occidental, la vía fundamental de expresión del Derecho. Han sido el resultado de todo un camino recorrido en pos de lograr la mejor forma de regulación de la vida en sociedad y de contar con una herramienta eficaz para el progreso de los pueblos. Es por esto que, a pesar de todas las críticas y reparos que puedan hacerse al analizar esta técnica legislativa y de que ya se haya empezado a hablar del fin de la era codificadora , las investigaciones sobre el proceso codificador en nuestro país tienen especial importancia. Los trabajos al respecto son escasos y han sido desarrollados fundamentalmente en el campo del Derecho civil , siendo aún necesarios en otras áreas del saber jurídico, en particular en materia procesal . Este trabajo tiene por objeto completar en alguna medida los vacíos referidos intentando el estudio sistemático de los primeros pasos que se dieron en nuestro país en orden a lograr la codificación de las leyes procesales. Para esto, se analizará la labor codificadora del jurista Mariano Egaña a quien en el año 1834 fue encomendada la misión de elaborar un proyecto de ley de administración de justicia y organización de tribunales, trabajo que culminó con la promulgación de las llamadas "Leyes Marianas" en el año 1837.

This dissertation explores the important but long forgotten career of the American artist Francis Davis Millet (1848-1912) and in the process calls into question several common understandings of turn-of-the-century American civic art. Through an examination of Millet’s civic art, including mural painting, illustration, and parades, I argue that Millet attempted to use the works he created for large audiences to help viewers navigate a common modern experience: the cultural diversity they encountered all around them. While many American artists making civic art during this period focused on allegorical scenes and emphasized whiteness, Millet’s images taught audiences about cultural diversity and even reflected a certain cultural sensitivity in their careful rendering of nonwhite subjects. In doing so, Millet employed the rhetoric of empiricism and engaged with his subject matter in a manner understood by his audience to be under the purview of science. This, I argue, aligned his project to the hierarchical understanding of “culture” and “evolution” presented by the anthropological community at the time, which argued for the superiority of white over nonwhite groups. In this way, though Millet attempted to move away from all-white subject matter and used global themes relevant to a modern moment, the underlying message he promoted served to reinforce notions of Anglo American hegemony.

No description available.