Biography: Jose Antonio Navarro

¶ … David McDonald; Jose Antonio Navarro: In search of the American Dream in Nineteenth Century Texas

McDonald, D. (2010). Jose Antonio Navarro: In search of the American Dream in Nineteenth

Century Texas, Denton: Texas State Historical Association.

The portrait which emerges of Jose Antonio Navarro in David McDonald's historical biography Jose Antonio Navarro: In search of the American Dream in Nineteenth Century Texas is intended to be a complex and nuanced one. In the past, two polarized points-of-view of the Texas legislator have tended to dominate the political discourse. One is the traditional portrait of Navarro as a true Texas patriot, based upon his role in establishing an independent Texan state and shaping the legislation of Texas throughout the duration of his political career. The other is the view that Navarro was a collaborator with the enemy and should have aligned himself with Mexicans vs. Anglos: McDonald's support of the slave trade and the Confederacy has also earned him the ire of many contemporary historians.

McDonald justifies his biographical project by underlining the many factual as well as ideological errors which have characterized these previous biographies, which he views as excessively one-sided (McDonald 2010: 2). He seeks a balanced, fully-realized portrait of the Texas politician and rancher. It should be noted that as a historian, David McDonald's credentials are somewhat unusual. He is not an academic but is rather a self-employed historian who has worked as the park historian for the Casa Navarro State Historic Site and also a consultant for PBS's American Experience ("David McDonald," 2015). His book is explicitly geared at a popular audience but still engages in serious historical excavation in his attempt to bring his subject to life and to defend Navarro's reputation.

Navarro lived to well over a hundred, so the story of his life is in many ways the story of Texas. Texas underwent a series of seismic revolutionary shifts, from Spanish colonization to Mexican control to independence to incorporation into the U.S. .and secession during the U.S. Civil War. Because of the fact that Navarro's life spans so many different identities of Texas, McDonald calls the 19th century in Texas itself the 'Age of Navarro.' The book is divided into chronological chapters which span the course of Navarro's life (versus chapters broken down into topics or subjects): Roots, 1762-1816; Emerging leader, 1816-22; The making of a legislator, 1822-28; Businessman, land commissioner, and politician, 1828-35; Mexican-Texan, 1835-40; Statesman and prisoner, 1840-45; Tejano spokesman, 1845-53; and Elder statesman, 1853-71. The self-explanatory names reflect the different phases of Navarro's political career and character and also reflect the development of Texas -- from a territory to an independent nation to a U.S. state.

By both his supporters as well as his detractors, Navarro was called a 'Tejano:' a Mexican-American living in Texas who aligned himself with the Texas independent movement. The book chronicles Navarro's life from birth to death, beginning with the influence of his family relationships and his political work in the Bexar County legislative assembly. In many ways Navarro's tale is a classic American Dream story, beginning with humble beginnings as a merchant and a smuggler to a major political and economic figure and one of the dominant landowners and ranchers of his area. Like Lincoln, he had little formal schooling and was largely self-taught. His uncle was extremely supportive of his political career and proved to be a critical figure in his nephew's eventual advancement: this type of nepotism was typical in the careers of many politicians of the era.

Navarro did not initially support an independent Texas (although most of his family members and associates did). Because of his personal connections, the Navarro family was forced to leave Texas for Louisiana in 1813 after an uprising and Navarro began to be persuaded more and more to the side of pro-independence. After Mexico declared itself independent from Spain and his election to the Bexar city council and newly-emerged Mexican State legislature, Navarro emerged as an early force in support of colonization and also the slave trade to support the burgeoning cotton industry. He allied himself with Stephen Austin and ultimately took the side of Texan independence. But according to McDonald, Navarro was characterized as a Mexican-American in the true hyphenated sense in the sense that although he supported the American dream of progress and opportunity, he was also an advocate for the culture, values, and worldview of his people (McDonald 2010: 272).

For McDonald, Navarro's identity in many ways could be described as postmodern and fragmented, uniting many different unharmonious impulses that were in the public discourse at the time yet were ultimately melded in his persona. Navarro became a passionate advocate of the American Dream and the American experience, which is manifested by his considerable social mobility over the course of his lifetime. He also respected his Mexican heritage and never tried to create a break between himself and his home culture, honoring it in all the actions over the course of his life. However, part of his own economic advancement was tied to the support of the slave trade and the cotton industry.

McDonald's most controversial claim is that he denies the fact that Navarro was a supporter of the Confederacy in his heart, as is commonly assumed based upon Navarro's actions. He claims that this came from a misread newspaper article which wrote that Navarro supported having Texans secede from the Know-Nothing Party, not the Union, and claims that Navarro's personal letters to his friends (versus his political speeches) suggest that he supported the Union (McDonald 2010: 247). However, these claims seem dubious given Navarro's sons fought for the Confederacy and there are no explicit statements or actions of Navarro against its existence. It is possible, that like some Texans he supported the Confederacy out of convenience vs. deeply felt ideology or more in support for his state's culture vs. A belief that secession was a legal or moral imperative. McDonald believes that the fact that his sons fought for the Confederacy is due to his friendship with Sam Huston and other political allies, not out of personal ideology. But this seems belied by the economic benefits McDonald accrued from slavery as a rancher as well as the benefits accorded to him by his support of slavery politically.

McDonald, although he presents himself as an objective historical chronicler, still thus emerges as a kind of advocate for his subject at times. He is anxious to argue for his subject's essential goodness, even by 21st century standards, while simultaneously acknowledging Navarro was a man of his times. For example, countering claims that Navarro supported slavery and was a racist, he denies that Navarro supported racism. This has always been one of the most negative charges against Navarro by historical detractors, particularly given his own nonwhite heritage: his support for both the Confederacy and the institution of slavery seems profoundly hypocritical as well as immoral. McDonald's defense of his subject is problematic, given that he was actively involved in groups which were anti-Reconstruction and worked against black enfranchisement. These groups also often used stridently racist language and imagery, which McDonald claims was simply a way of supporting the native population of Texans and was not actively anti-black (McDonald 260-270).

But this seems to be a very generous reading of his subject's motivation for his actions: there were certainly politicians who did not support all of the measures of Reconstruction but who also did not engage in racist diatribes or support groups which did so. Navarro also supported the nation of Texas continuing to accept slaves through the slave trade, even though the U.S. had ended its participation in international traffic in slaves. This actually suggests Navarro went above and beyond the standards of his day in supporting racism.