Texan Opinion

Texan opinion was divided but open to being interpreted as largely disloyal. The major camps consisted of war and peace parties and the Tejano federalists. There is little doubt that a vocal and active minority headed mostly by more recent arrivals made up a war party intent on separating Texas from Mexico. The peace party, which included much of the longer-established Anglo-American population, actively sought to promote separation from Coahuila but wished to remain part of Mexico under the terms of the federalist Constitution of 1824, which Santa Anna had annulled. Most of the Tejano elite, which was centered largely at San Antonio, had become involved in the political struggle between federalists and centralists and had chosen to oppose Santa Anna's centralizing measures. From Mexico City's perspective, therefore, Texas was a hotbed of resistance to the national government.

For Mexican authorities, proof of Texan disloyalty came in the summer of 1835. At the end of June, war party members attacked the Galveston Bay garrison at Anahuac and forced its surrender. Texas officials refused to turn over the leaders of the assault along with other individuals accused by the national government of being troublemakers. Soon after, Austin returned from Mexico to proclaim that Texas should separate from Mexico if the federal military invaded the province. Resistance finally became violent on October 2, when colonists at Gonzales fired on a detachment sent by the federal military commander at San Antonio to collect a small cannon on loan to the settlement.

During the fall and winter of 1835-36, the hostilities in Texas were, at least on the surface, resistance against Santa Anna's suppression of the federal system. For instance, the provisional government organized in November issued a declaration in favor of the Constitution of 1824. At the same time, while the insurgents sought assistance from the United States, they shied away from an alliance with Mexican federalists. Many Tejanos who initially joined the revolt against Santa Anna would later abandon the field after Texas declared its independence, but José Antonio Navarro and Francisco Ruiz signed the document, and Juan N. Seguín led a Tejano cavalry company through the end of the war. A significant minority of Mexican Texans, particularly in the Goliad area, and a small group of Anglo-Americans in eastern Texas sided with the central government. The evidence makes clear, however, that the overwhelming majority of the Texan leadership favored complete separation from Mexico. Early successes by the insurgents, combined with a hardening of the Mexican government's position, propelled the secessionists' drive for a formal declaration of independence from Mexico. In December 1835 General Martín Perfecto Cos surrendered San Antonio to one rebel army while another rebel force captured the garrison at Goliad, leaving Texas entirely in the hands of the insurgents. A group of rebels at the latter place went so far as to issue a declaration of independence, which the provincial authorities rejected as premature.