Slavery
Slavery was a very important issue to Austin, one he called "of great interest" to him. Austin was a periodical enslaver throughout his life; however, he had conflicting views about it. Theoretically, he believed slavery was wrong and went against the American ideal of liberty. In practice, however, he agreed with the social, economic, and political justifications for it and worked hard to defend and expand it. Despite his defense of it, he also harbored concerns that the long-term effects of slavery would destroy American society. He grew particularly concerned following Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831, stating:
"I sometimes shudder at the consequences and think that a large part of America will be Santo Domingonized in 100, or 200 years. The idea of seeing such a country as this overrun by a slave population almost makes me weep. It is in vain to tell a North American that the white population will be destroyed some fifty or eighty years hence by the negroes, and that his daughters will be violated and Butchered by them."
While Austin thought it would be advantageous someday for Texas to phase out of slavery, up until the Texas Revolution, he worked to ensure that his colony's immigrants could bypass the Mexican government's resistance to it. Doing so ensured the population growth and economic development of his colony, which was primarily dependent on the monocropping of cotton and sugar. In August 1825, he recommended that the state government allow immigrants to bring people they were enslaving with them through 1840, with the caveat that female grandchildren of the enslaved people would be freed by age 15 and males by age 25. His recommendation was rejected.
In 1826, when a state committee proposed abolishing slavery outright, 25 percent of the people in Austin's colony were enslaved. Austin's colonists, mostly pro-slavery immigrants from the south, threatened to leave Texas if the proposition passed, while prospective Southern immigrants hesitated to come to Texas until slavery was guaranteed there. Austin conceded that his colony's success depended on slavery. Without enslaved people, the colonists would lack the mass labor to cultivate the land, which would stall the pace of immigration needed to develop and increase the land's value, deflate the economy, and motivate his colonists to leave.
Austin went before the legislature and pleaded that, at the least, his original 300 families should be allowed to continue enslaving people. He argued against the "bad faith" of freeing them, demanded reparations to enslavers for every enslaved person emancipated by the state, warned that the loss of enslaved people could leave some colonists destitute, and reasoned that freeing them would not only leave his settlers alone in the harsh Texas environment but would also expose them to the discomfort and nuisance of living amongst formerly enslaved people, who would become vagrants seeking retribution upon their former owners. While he waited for the legislature's verdict of his request, Austin went into a deep depression over the issue and sent his brother, Brown Austin, to further lobby the legislature on his behalf.
In March 1827, the legislature signed Article 13 into law. Despite the law complying with some of his requests, Austin called it "unconstitutional". He contested the law as it freed the children of enslaved people at birth, established a six-month grace period before fully emancipating all enslaved people in the state, and included provisions to improve the conditions of enslaved people and transitioning freedmen. Austin –– who had been so effective in persuading the legislature, however, that the author of Article 13 (before its passage) requested to withdraw it –– helped his colonists evade the law by advising them to legally supplant the word "slave" with the words "workingmen", "family servants", and "laborers", and by working to pass a decree that banned freedmen from Texas and forced emancipated slaves to work for their former slaveowners until the accrued "debt" (e.g. clothing, food), incurred for their own enslavement, was worked off.
In 1828, Austin petitioned the legislature to guarantee that slaveowners immigrating to Texas could legally "free" their slaves before immigrating and contract them into a lifetime term of indentured servitude, thereby avoiding recognizing them as slaves. He lobbied to help his colony elude president Vicente Guerrero's 1829 decree to emancipate enslaved people in the province legally and to bypass the government's effort to prohibit slavery when it passed the Law of April 6, 1830.
In 1829, John Durst, a prominent landowner and politician, wrote about the president's emancipation of enslaved people, "We are ruined forever should this measure be adopted". Stephen F. Austin replied,
"I am the owner of one slave only, an old decrepit woman, not worth much, but in this matter I should feel that my constitutional rights as a Mexican were just as much infringed, as they would be if I had a thousand."
In 1830, Austin wrote that he would oppose Texas joining the United States without guarantees that he should "insist on the perpetual exclusion of slavery from this state [Texas]". In 1833, he wrote:
"Texas must be a slave country. Circumstances and unavoidable necessity compel it. It is the wish of the people there, and it is my duty to do all I can, prudently, in favor of it. I will do so."
In May 1835, Austin's colonists learned that Mexico's tolerance for the evasions of enslavers was drawing to a close with its proposal of new abolition legislation. Alarmed, and with Austin imprisoned in Mexico for pushing for independence, colonists turned against the Mexican government, calling it "oppressive" and a "plundering, robbing, autocratical government" without regard for the security of "life, liberty or property". Resisting the impact a changed slavery policy would have on economic growth, and fearing rumors of Mexico's plan to free the enslaved people and turn them loose upon the colonists, shortly after Austin returned from Mexico, he and his colonists took up arms against the Mexican government. Austin later gained U.S. Government support for his revolution when he wrote to Senator Lewis F. Linn and pleaded that Santa Anna planned to "exterminate" all of the colonists and fill Texas "with Indians and negroes [freed slaves]".
