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.