AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER (1793-1836), an Amer ican frontier colonizer and founder of the principal settlements of English-speaking people in Texas during the 1820's, while that country was still a part of Mexico, was the oldest son of Moses Austin (1761-1821) who had himself inaugurated the project for the colonization of Texas during the last year or two of his life and Maria Brown, of Quaker descent. Moses was caught in the financial panic of 1819 and left the lead-mining region of south east Missouri, where he had settled, for Texas. Here he obtained a grant of land for colonization purposes (Jan. 18 21) but died six months later, leaving his son to carry out the enterprise. Stephen F. Austin had been educated at Bacon academy, Col chester (Conn.), and at Transylvania university, Lexington (Ky.), and had served in the territorial legislature of Missouri from 1814 to 1819, when the slavery question was raised to a high pitch over the Tallmadge proposal to exclude slavery upon the admission of Missouri as a state. Involved in his father's business misfortunes, he joined a general migration into the new territory of Arkansas, and opened a farm at Long Prairie, on the Red river, as a step towards Texas; but proceeding to New Orleans he learned that the approaches to Texas from that city were better. There he began the study of law and assisted in editing the Louisiana Advertiser, until the middle of July, 1821, when, with all the vigour of a young man, he entered Texas and, during the following winter, planned a substantial settlement near the coast between the Brazos and the Colorado rivers. Meanwhile a suc cessful revolution had occurred in Mexico, and it became neces sary for him to go to Mexico City to secure the confirmation of his grants, and for some years henceforward he was one of the main factors in the struggle between two civilizations for the possession of Texas.
In the interest of the slaveholding element of Anglo-Ameri cans Austin successfully defeated the efforts of Mexican states men, who were supported by British agents and diplomats, to keep negro slavery out of Texas; and in 1833, when he failed to induce the Mexican government to make Texas a separate state in the confederation, so that the American settlers might have that liberty and self-government which they considered indis pensable, he wrote home recommending the organization of a state without waiting for the consent of the Mexican congress, he was thrown into prison. He was released in 1835, the Texas Revolution followed, and Austin secured the help of money and men from people in the United States. In the end he found himself and his colonies practically submerged by the flood of adventurers and immigrants; and the revolution was successful. Sam Houston defeated him in a campaign for the presidency; and Austin died on Dec. 7, 1836, while serving in the subordinate position of secretary of state. As a colonizer on an advancing frontier where there was a contest between two civilizations and where one had to restrain his own followers and conciliate the defence, Austin's work was of a high order, and it constitutes his chief title to fame.