The Mercantile House of McKinney & Williams, Underwriters of the Texas Revolution

Abstract

From time to time historians and other recorders pursue a practice, not discouraged by business historians, of pointing out that for every Napoleon and Wellington there existed a Rothschild and Baring, and for every American Revolution—whether in the 1770's or 1860's— there lived a Robert Morris or Jay Cooke, some one person or group of persons who could supply the economic and business administrative sagacity required to keep the financial arteries of war flowing successfully. When in the 1830's the people of Texas ended their political subordination to Mexico by military revolution, the thread of this business-makes-it-possible pattern can be found to be running true. In Texas two men, unsung for military exploits, in large measure made possible the financial continuance of the Texas government and its army during a period when the stage was being set for the eventual annexation to the United States of an area roughly the size of France. Without these two men, Thomas F. McKinney and Samuel May Williams, the disputed genius of Sam Houston might not have won a decisive victory at San Jacinto, terminating the Mexican hold on Texas, for without their aid Houston's army conceivably would have lacked clothes, provisions, and most especially, arms.