Texan Secession

When Mexico achieved independence in 1821, Texas was one of the country's least-populated regions. The Mexican population in Texas was confined to three major settlements: San Antonio, the provincial capital; La Bahfa (modern-day Goliad), near the coast; and Nacogdoches, in the eastern pine forests. The approximately 3,000 Tejanos (Mexican Texans) who lived there shared the region with a large number of Indian peoples from plains hunter Comanches to woodland agriculturalist Caddoes. Economic activities consisted almost entirely of subsistence farming, open-range ranching, and military service. Development of the province had been a perennial problem for colonial authorities. Geographically isolated from the mining and commercial centers of the Mexican interior and lacking mineral resources or sophisticated native cultures to exploit, Texas's small military population was the nucleus of settlement. After the Louisiana Purchase, royal authorities attempted to establish a string of settlements to hold the province against U.S. encroachments. Hostilities during the Mexican War of Independence, however, retarded Texas's development as Tejano insurrectionaries were killed or fled to Louisiana, and recently established settlements were abandoned. The U.S. claims to Mexican territory south to the Rio Grande ceased only with agreement to the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. By this time the United States had occupied Texas territory to the Sabine River, prime proof to the government in Mexico that the United States coveted the region.

Recognizing the vulnerability of sparsely settled territory, Mexican authorities turned to immigration as the solution to holding Texas against the United States. Early in 1821 they accepted a proposal for settlement of 300 families made by Moses Austin, who died shortly after, leaving his son Stephen to carry out the plan. Aggressively pursuing approval from the newly independent Mexican government, Stephen F. Austin became the first and most successful of the land impresarios to operate in Mexican Texas. He established the pattern for Mexico's policies concerning land grants both at the national and state levels. The federalist Constitution of 1824 gave the states control over land granting matters; Texas was combined with Coahuila to the south in a single state. By 1831 Austin had more than 5,500 Anglo-Americans and their slaves living in his colonies, a number that exceeded the total Mexican population of Texas.

The impresario system, under which men of means contracted to settle a specific number of families in return for large government land grants and the right to collect fees from colonists, proved only partially successful. Aside from Austin, who fulfilled nearly all his contracts, and Martín de León, the only active Mexican impresario, few contractors came even close to fulfilling their obligations. For instance, efforts to recruit European Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, met with very limited success. In East Texas Anglo-American families mostly filtered into the region individually or came at the prompting of the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, a New York corporation holding title to three impresario contracts.