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Texas Republic

In the decade that Texas struggled to survive as a republic, Mexico refused to recognize its independence. At first, the Mexicans rejected outright the idea of Texan separation as well as the upstart government's claim that its border ran from the mouth to the headwaters of the Rio Grande and from there to the Adams-Onís Treaty line. Mexican forces on a number of occasions made raids into the southern fringes of the republic, the most serious of which being General Adrian Woll's occupation of San Antonio for one week in September 1842. For their part, Texans made a number of raids across the Rio Grande and launched a disastrous expedition in 1841 to gain control of New Mexico and divert at least some of the Santa Fe Trail commerce to Texas. The Texans also supported rebels in northern Mexico and the insurgency in Yucatán during this time. Texas gained recognition from the United States in 1837, although its efforts at annexation were rejected by the U.S. Congress. Recognition by France and Britain's promise of support for negotiations with Mexico led President Mirabeau B. Lamar to abandon any effort at annexation to the United States as a gesture toward Mexico. On reassuming the Texas presidency, Houston renewed annexation negotiations with the United States, which ultimately led Mexico to make a belated offer of recognition. In 1845 the Congress of the United States passed a resolution of annexation, the Texas government held a constitutional convention to draft a state constitution, and on December 29 Texas was admitted as one of the United States. The event precipitated war between Mexico and the United States.

In hindsight the futility of Mexico's effort to retain its Texas territory, indeed the whole of what ultimately became the Southwestern United States, is clear. Struggling to forge a national state out of the social and political fragmentation that marked the colonial period, Mexico lacked the economic and human resources to develop the region or to mount an adequate military defense of it. In desperation, Mexican officialdom listened to the siren song of Anglo-American frontiersmen who promised to become good Mexican citizens in return for the opportunity to settle the land and make it productive. Too late, the Mexican government discovered that they had turned Texas over to foreigners who intended to recreate the social, economic, and political system they had left behind in the United States, even at the cost of abandoning their oaths of loyalty to their adoptive nation. The ultimate beneficiary of the situation was the United States, which, taking advantage of Mexican turmoil and the groundwork laid by its advancing frontier folk, acquired dominion of the Mexican north.

Texas Iindependence

The military successes prompted Santa Anna personally to lead a force of 6,000 men against the revolt. At San Antonio in late February, he laid siege to the former Mission San Antonio de Valero, which by that point was only a makeshift fort known as the Alamo. Rather than bypass the small (approximately 200 men) isolated garrison and attack the main insurgent army under Sam Houston, Santa Anna brought his entire force to bear on the fort, which fell on the morning of March 6 with heavy casualties. The execution on Santa Anna's order of over 300 prisoners taken following the surrender of a Texan force under James Fannin at Goliad later than month stiffened resistance among the Texans.

Unbeknown to either side at the Alamo, a convention meeting on March 2 to the northeast at the village of Washington on the Brazos had declared independence. According to the delegates, Mexico had broken its compact with Texas on a number of grounds. The Mexican government had acted tyrannically in abrogating the Constitution of 1824, denying the settlers those republican institutions to which they were accustomed in their home country, and rejecting the petition for separate statehood. It had allowed army officers to act arbitrarily, subordinating civil to military authority, and incited the Indians against the settlers. The government also had failed to establish adequate systems of education and trial by jury and denied settlers liberty of conscience. Most of the charges were contrived, considering that they did not represent anything other than differences in Anglo-American and Mexican cultures or a singling out of immigrants for special treatment. To the contrary, the Mexican government had granted considerable latitude to the settlers in how they conducted their affairs.

Texas independence was won at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Santa Anna, having outdistanced the bulk of his army, set up camp in a low-lying and exposed field near the northwestern end of Galveston Bay. His 1,400 men, some of whom had arrived just hours before, were at rest and had failed to post adequate guards when Sam Houston led his entire force of 910 men in an assault that took the Mexicans by surprise. The battle lasted just 18 minutes and, according to Houston's figures, resulted in 630 Mexicans dead and 730 captured. Santa Anna, who had fled, was captured the following day. In subsequent negotiations, Santa Anna signed two treaties, one public and one secret, at the Texas port of Velasco by which he ordered the retreat of the Mexican army, promised not to take up arms against Texas, and agreed to work toward recognition of Texas by the Mexican Congress in return for his freedom. Except for the withdrawal of Mexican forces from Texas, neither pact was honored. The Mexican Congress considered Santa Anna's negotiation of these treaties scandalous and nullified them both. Nevertheless, Texan independence was a fait accompli.

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.

Texas Struggle

Texans, both Anglo-American and Mexican, protested the measures, sometimes in terms that deepened the suspicions of the government. Armed encounters between colonists and Mexican military units, refusals to pay customs duties, the meeting of two extralegal conventions in 1832 and 1833, and memorials by the San Antonio and Goliad town councils all addressed similar grievances: the continued prohibition of legal immigration; the insecurity of slave property in Texas; the absence of an adequate judicial system; the perception that the tariff system was counter productive; and, above all, the continued union with Coahuila, which had nine times the population of Texas, and thus dominated it in the state legislature. As representative of the Anglo-American Texas colonies, Stephen E Austin traveled to Mexico City in the spring of 1833 with a list of grievances and a copy of a new state constitution to present for action to the national government.

In 1833 and 1834 Texas also became embroiled in the federalist-centralist struggle taking place in the rest of the nation. As supporters of local control, Mexican Texans generally sided with the federalists. The Anglo-American settlers also tended to look not to the political factions involved but to the inviolability of the federalist Constitution of 1824. Federalists managed to wrest control of the state government away from the centralist faction in the state legislature and transferred the capital from Saltillo to Monclova (in presentday Coahuila). The legislature then undertook a series of reforms aimed at undermining the colonists' grounds for seeking separate statehood. Among the reforms were establishment of a circuit court for Texas and trial by jury, the creation of new administrative districts in Texas, and an increase in the number of Texas representatives to the state legislature. Despite the pro-Texas moves, however, they failed to gain the confidence of the Anglo-American settlers because of their reliance on large-scale sale of public lands to finance the government, which the Texans interpreted as corrupt land speculation.

After removing his Liberal vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías, and reversing a series of anticlerical and antimilitary reforms, President Antonio López de Santa Anna attempted to come to terms with the Texans. Gómez Farfas had rescinded the prohibition on U.S. immigration to Texas but had arrested Austin on charges of treason. Santa Anna freed Austin and tried to reassure the Texans that he had no quarrel with them. At the same time his government made a number of moves that increased tensions in Texas, most notably an order to disband state militias, the decision to crush the federalist governor and state militia at Zacatecas, and the arrest of Coahuila's federalist governor. Also, reports arrived in Texas that Santa Anna was preparing to send a large military force there.