=Southern Planters and Texas.=—­While the farmers of the North found the broad acres of the Western prairies stretching on before them apparently in endless expanse, it was far different with the Southern planters.  Ever active in their search for new fields as they exhausted the virgin soil of the older states, the restless subjects of King Cotton quickly reached the frontier of Louisiana.  There they paused; but only for a moment.  The fertile land of Texas just across the boundary lured them on and the Mexican republic to which it belonged extended to them a more than generous welcome.  Little realizing the perils lurking in a “peaceful penetration,” the authorities at Mexico City opened wide the doors and made large grants of land to American contractors, who agreed to bring a number of families into Texas.  The omnipresent Yankee, in the person of Moses Austin of Connecticut, hearing of this good news in the Southwest, obtained a grant in 1820 to settle three hundred Americans near Bexar—­a commission finally carried out to the letter by his son and celebrated in the name given to the present capital of the state of Texas.  Within a decade some twenty thousand Americans had crossed the border.

=Mexico Closes the Door.=—­The government of Mexico, unaccustomed to such enterprise and thoroughly frightened by its extent, drew back in dismay.  Its fears were increased as quarrels broke out between the Americans and the natives in Texas.  Fear grew into consternation when efforts were made by President Jackson to buy the territory for the United States.  Mexico then sought to close the flood gates.  It stopped all American colonization schemes, canceled many of the land grants, put a tariff on farming implements, and abolished slavery.  These barriers were raised too late.  A call for help ran through the western border of the United States.  The sentinels of the frontier answered.  Davy Crockett, the noted frontiersman, bear hunter, and backwoods politician; James Bowie, the dexterous wielder of the knife that to this day bears his name; and Sam Houston, warrior and pioneer, rushed to the aid of their countrymen in Texas.  Unacquainted with the niceties of diplomacy, impatient at the formalities of international law, they soon made it known that in spite of Mexican sovereignty they would be their own masters.

=The Independence of Texas Declared.=—­Numbering only about one-fourth of the population in Texas, they raised the standard of revolt in 1836 and summoned a convention.  Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they issued a declaration of independence signed mainly by Americans from the slave states.  Anticipating that the government of Mexico would not quietly accept their word of defiance as final, they dispatched a force to repel “the invading army,” as General Houston called the troops advancing under the command of Santa Ana, the Mexican president.  A portion of the Texan soldiers took their stand in the Alamo, an old Spanish mission in the cottonwood