STILLMAN-PAID STUDY: CORTINA WASN'T JUST A " BANDIT," BUT INSTEAD WAS A POLITICAL KINGMAKER SOUGHT BY POLITICIANS

(Ed.'s Note: In 1942, Harvard graduate student Leroy Graf wrote his dissertation financed by a grandson of Charles Stillman grandson depicting his commercial ventures in the Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico. The collection is now open for research, although a note  found in the original Stillman boxes stated: "The Stillman papers have been placed in Harvard College Library for the use of Mr. Leroy P. Graf in preparing an historical account of the family's early activities in Texas. While Mr. Graf is at work on this project the papers should be considered private, to be consulted by no one except with his permission. T. Franklin Currier. November, 1939." [LeRoy P. Graf, The Economic History of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1820–1875 (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1942)]

There is a special section where Graf examines the role of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, the son of

Doña Estefana Goseascochea de Cortina, daughter of Salvador de La Garza, the largest landowner in Cameron County whose ranch, Rancho Viejo was established in 1770 and the King of Spain gave him the royal grant in 1781. 

Unlike most Texas historians and apologists, Graf's characterization is not one that brands him as a bandit and killer after he occupied Brownsville in September 28, 1859, but rather takes a dispassionate overview of the maligned heir of the Espiritu Santo Grant. Some excerpts follow below.)

He was continually being accused of driving off cattle into Mexico. Yet, with all these charges and indictments, he was never arrested by the authorities, although he was often at large on the American side.

After the raid it was asserted that the authorities could not take him  during these years because he always had a gang around him to protect him.

It would be more accurate to say that but few attempts were made to arrest him, an they were not pressed with much energy. The control which he asserted over the common Mexicans in Cameron County was the real reason for his continued immunity. He was reputed to control some 40 or 50 votes and consequently was a person to be conciliated by the American politicians.

AT this time the dominant political group in the Valley were the Anti-Sam Houston Democrats who, despite their traffic with Cortina before the raid, proved themselves highly vocal highly vocal in calling for both state and federal assistance once their Mexican political machine had run amuck.

(Footnote: Although bearing a grudge against the dominant political group, Theodore C. Yard of Point Isabel, in a letter transmitted to Houston, cast considerable light on the manipulation of the Mexican vote. If he had been the only one to make these charges, one would hesitate to place too much confidence in them, for he is clearly a partisan leader; but the truth is, he merely treats in specific terms what a number of others refer to in generalizations.

According to Yard, F. W. Latham, Stephen Powers, F. Cummings, A. Werbiski, R.B. Kingsbury, E. B. Scarborough, and others were those who succeeded in maintaining themselves in authority through the Mexican vote. n the election of August 1858, the Democratic Convention in Brownsville had chosen F.F. Fenn to run for assessor and collector, but the leaders found that in order to assure the election of their sheriff they would have to conciliate Cortina and the other Mexicans. Consequently Cortina's brother Jose Maria was run against Fenn and badly defeated him.

End Part 2