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 Gómez Farfas had rescinded the prohibition on U.S. immigration to Texas but had arrested Austin on charges of treason.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.