Back Home	Seminar on Records and Archives in Society
Course This Week Past Readings History Archives Projects	Scott, HIST 0647, Spring1999 The Texan Archive War of 1842 Winfrey, Dorman H. "The Texan Archive War of 1842." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 64 (October 1960): 171-184; Henry J. Jewett, "The Archive War of Texas." Debow's Review 26 (May 1859): 513-23. The Texan Archive War of 1842 involved more than just a dispute over who controlled the historical record of the Republic of Texas. This conflict "was brought on by a dispute which arose over President Sam Houston's attempt to remove the archives of the Republic of Texas from Austin to Houston and later to Washington-on-the-Brazos. The incident played a decisive part in the final determination of the location of the capital of Texas" (Winfrey, 171). Austin became the capital in 1839 amidst much controversy. Supporters of moving the national government to Austin argued that its position on the edge of the western frontier would be a central location for all Texans once the Indians were subdued and the rest of the nation was settled. Opponents argued that moving the capital to Austin was dangerous because it was too close to both their Mexican and Native American enemies. The Texas capital should remain in Houston, an established and fortified port city near the Gulf of Mexico. "These difference of opinion, the subsequent removal of the seat of government to Austin, and the attempts to change the capital back to Houston were the main causes of the Archive War" (Winfrey, 173). In 1842 the Mexican army invaded San Antonio, a town near Austin, which gave President Sam Houston an excuse to move the archives and the capital from Austin back to Houston. The archives was important because it contained items of symbolic and legal value: land titles, treaties between Texas and European countries, military records, official government papers, "banners and trophies of the battle of San Jacinto, [and] the seal of the Republic" (Winfrey, 171). Citizens of Austin opposed President Houston's attempt to move the archives, and subsequently their seat of government, back to Houston and they were willing to fight to keep the archives in their town. When Mexicans attacked Texas again in the fall of 1842 Congress assembled in Washington-on-the-Brazos and President Houston tried unsuccessfully to get Congressional approval to move the archives to that river town. Houston then decided to covertly order two Texas army officers to assemble a force of about twenty men, secretly retrieve the archives from Austin, and take them to Washington-on-the-Brazos. As soon as Austin residents realized what was happening, a small citizen's militia assembled under the leadership of Mrs. Angelina Eberly and they fired a six-pound howitzer at the archival thieves. Houston's troops escaped with the archives, but the Austin militia caught up with them early the next morning. Austin citizens returned the archives to their town and the bloodless Texan Archive War ended on New Year's Eve 1842. Although the archives stayed in Austin, the capital remained in Washington-on-the-Brazos until the United States annexed Texas in 1845. The Texas Congress convened in Austin in the summer of 1845 to approve annexation, at which time they deposited the rest of the Republic's official papers in the Texas archives. "The handful of Austin citizens who held the archives against so many odds no doubt played a decisive role in making Austin the permanent capital of Texas" (Winfrey, 184).