The Dissertation Committee for Judith L - The University of Texas at ...

sorts, grasses ample enough to feed many cattle, and soils just right for farming. 42 Thus,
all these descriptions shaped the perceptions of the Germans and portrayed Texas as a
promise land not to be turned down.
Reasons to Leave: The Southern Anglos
Southern Anglos had their reasons for moving west. One of the major push
factors behind southern Anglo migration was soil exhaustion from overproduction of
cotton and tobacco. By the 1820s and well through the 1850s men were moving their
families and for those who practiced slavery, their slaves to areas such as Tennessee,
Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas searching for fertile lands. 43 Even though
these moves could be quite expensive, 44 the perception for some southerners was staying
where they were presented a bleak economic future. A bleak future and tired land meant
less opportunity for many to make a living and accumulate wealth. These reasons served
as another push factor. The Civil War temporarily interrupted the migratory flow west,
but once it was over there was a renewal of migration.
Westward expansion of southern Anglos into Texas began in 1820 with the
institution of the empresario system by the Spanish government, a system that would
leave a lasting impression upon early Texas migration patterns. 45 The first southern
Texan Heritage Society, 1995), 24.
41
Ibid., 75.
42
Ibid., 148-157.
43
Joan E.Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier, (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1991): 33; Frank Lawrence Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1949), 23-89.
44
One estimation of costs to move a plantation from a southern Atlantic state to another region in the
southwest was $60,000. This figure includes the costs of buying and clearing 100-200 acres of land,
moving family and up to twenty slaves, tools, and livestock. See Joan Cashin, A Family Venture, 40.
45
Rupert N. Richardson, Adrian Anderson, Cary D.Wintz, and Ernest Wallace, Texas: The Lone Star
State, 8
25
th Ed., (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 57.