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held unorthodox religious views that “inculcated infidel ideas in the minds of the students,” as one observer put it.³¹ Other critics had complained that a professor of political science had said uncomplimentary things about the free coinage of silver, a key plank in the 1896 platform of the Democratic and Populist Parties, one that had strong support in Texas and the West. To eliminate the possibility of professors expressing such unpopular opinions, some newspapers advocated the elimination of the university's political science chair. Happily, the regents decided against that drastic measure. However, a member of the Board of Regents grilled the errant professor, and he agreed not to mention the topic of silver again.

      Another Texas professor, speaking at a teachers’ meeting in Denver, made the flabbergasting mistake of saying that it was a good thing that the South had lost the Civil War. “The great question in the South is the lifting up of the colored man to citizenship,” the professor argued. “And it is being done,” he added. He spoke in defense of southern states (including Texas) restricting the political rights of African Americans, but this did not mollify Texans with diehard Confederate sympathies. Race relations were a touchy subject in turn-of-the-century Texas, a former slave state where racially motivated lynching was common.³² The Board of Regents excused the incident by claiming that it had been an impromptu address on the subject of “southern patriotism” given on short notice. If the gentleman had had more time to reflect before speaking, the regents implied, he would not have uttered such inflammatory statements. All of these incidents led J. J. Lane, a University of Texas professor, to write in his 1903 History of Education in Texas that he disapproved of student and (in some cases) faculty participation in politics. Such activities could only harm the university.³³

      As in many other public institutions at the turn of the previous century, the University of Texas faculty were judged by bedrock cultural assumptions, shifting political currents, and the whims of crafty politicians. According to Garrison, political controversy involving President Prather's predecessor George T. Winston had caused “such a storm” that “two years of [Prather's] wise and sympathetic administration have hardly enabled us to orient ourselves.”³⁴ Garrison had been personally involved in those controversies and in helping to right the ship after Prather's arrival in 1899. He must have worried about how the Yankee Bolton would fit in. Surely he would never allow Bolton to teach anything about his doctoral specialty, free blacks in the South. The astute Bolton must have soon realized that his dissertation was a dead letter in Austin. If he objected to abandoning the field he had pioneered, he never mentioned it.

      In the fall of 1901 Bolton simply put his head down and went to work in the classroom and on the Quarterly.³⁵ Meanwhile Garrison wrote a report on the status of historical studies on the southwestern United States for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. He sketched the regional situation in broad terms but concentrated on research activities in Texas, especially the acquisition of the important Bexar Archives. Garrison thought there was still more to be discovered in Mexico, which he had scouted in the summer of 1900.³⁶ “No man living,” he averred, “could estimate it accurately or indicate, except in a general way, the nature of the documents.”³⁷ The repositories in Mexico City were virtually unexplored. Mexico's provincial archives doubtless held additional treasures for the curious researcher. The archival investigations that Garrison outlined would become Bolton's lifework. Garrison had no doubt hoped when he hired him that Bolton would work the Mexican archives, but in late 1901 he could not have guessed how completely Bolton would embrace that project.

      Garrison's report heralded his own ambitions for the University of Texas while paving the way for Bolton. At that time there were no other significant university libraries with historical research collections west of Missouri, so the University of Texas was well positioned to become a center of graduate training.³⁸ This situation would change in a few years, but for the moment there was no better place in the West for an aspiring historian. Bolton scrambled to get on board Garrison's southwestern express. “Garrison was the man in this year's national association,” Herbert told his brother. “Texas has the key to Spanish American history.” Bolton was “grubbing Spanish” so that he could “help turn the lock.”³⁹ Garrison enhanced his scholarly reputation in 1903 with the publication of Texas, A Contest of Civilizations in the respected American Commonwealths series.⁴⁰

      Early in 1902 Garrison revealed to Bolton his long-range thinking about the younger scholar's future. In the fall of 1902 Bolton would begin teaching a course on “European Expansion, commercial and colonial activities” in colonial America. “I think I shall in time be able to block out a field of my own here,” he wrote Fred.⁴¹ This new course would at least have Herbert teaching American history, even though it was not in the area of his special training. Perhaps it was just as well that Garrison redirected Bolton's intellectual interests. By December Bolton had taken to describing his work on freedmen simply as “Niggers,” which suggests neither sympathy with nor a deep interest in the subject.⁴²

      The rest of the Bolton family arrived in Austin as expected. Once settled, the Boltons fit into the social round of the young faculty and their families. “This is a great place for callers,” Herbert told his brother. People visited in the “forenoon, afternoon, and evening.” One couple in particular visited frequently. “They come in with a pack of cards to spend the evening,” or might invite the Boltons for singing. He liked his colleague, but he wasn't “a very hard worker, I think. Likes too well to go to church and calling.” Organized religion was not going to get in the way of Bolton's ambition. “Do you people attend church?” he asked Fred. “We do not,” though most of the Texas people did. “I haven't the time.”⁴³

      Moving expenses had staggered the Boltons’ finances, a situation that usually caused Herbert to think about greener pastures. Garrison had virtually promised Bolton a raise, but the regents did not promote him. In the past, personal pride and pecuniary needs had made Bolton rail against politics and outrageous fortune, but not this time. “I shall not worry for another year,” he wrote. “Promotions are slow here, in spite of what they told me before I came.”⁴⁴ Rather than excoriating Garrison for misleading him about early promotion, Bolton worked hard to please him. Bolton was more philosophical at Texas because for the first time he was reasonably certain things were going his way. With his $1,500 salary he no doubt knew that he was getting top pay in his grade.⁴⁵ And now he saw the beginnings of something that would prove more important to him than money: the possibility of developing a field of historical investigation entirely his own.

      Bolton rapidly developed his knowledge of Spanish and southwestern history so that he could begin archival research. “I have a new bee in my bonnet,” he told Fred in July. He had decided to go to Mexico City. “I want to lay my lines here deep enough, and my plans broad enough, so that if, in the future, chance should leave an open field, I will be master of the situation.” Bolton was tired of being at the mercy of others. To control his destiny, he planned to dominate the field of southwestern history that Garrison had pioneered. “To do it one must know the Spanish archives and the Spanish language.”⁴⁶ The department head must have been pleased that his hardworking instructor was willing to go to Mexico at his own expense. He did not yet understand the extent of Bolton's aggressive plans.

      Once summer school was out, Bolton boarded a train for the four-day ride to Mexico City. After quickly orienting himself in the Mexican capital—“beats Milwaukee in many respects,” he observed—Bolton turned to the Archivo Nacional. “It's a bold venture, but I have the nerve.”⁴⁷ He burrowed into the Archivo with characteristic energy but struggled with the strange orthography and lack of finding aids. On Sundays he found time to sightsee. As might be expected, Bolton was a historically minded tourist. What he saw appealed to his romantic imagination. He traced the route of Cortes's entry into the city and saw the tree under which Cortes wept on la noche triste because he had lost so many of his men during his retreat from the Aztec capital in 1520. Bolton visited the Zocolo, the main plaza, and ventured out to Coyoacan, where Cortes had lived. Sites of American feats of arms during the Mexican War also seized his attention. He ambled along the remains of old causeways that harked back to the Aztec empire. There were sixteenth-century churches cheek by jowl with modern structures.

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