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| The Texas War for Independence |
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| Many Americans who migrated to Texas at the invitation of the Mexican government did not completely shed their identity or loyalty to the United States. |
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| They brought American traditions and expectations with them (including, for many, the right to own slaves). |
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| For instance, the majority of these new settlers were Protestant, and though they were not required to attend the Catholic mass, Mexico's prohibition on the public practice of other religions upset them and they routinely ignored it. |
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| Accustomed to representative democracy, jury trials, and the defendant’s right to appear before a judge, the Anglo-American settlers in Texas also disliked the Mexican legal system, which provided for an initial hearing by an alcalde, an administrator who often combined the duties of mayor, judge, and law enforcement officer. |
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| The alcalde sent a written record of the proceeding to a judge in Saltillo, the state capital, who decided the outcome. |
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| Settlers also resented that at most two Texas representatives were allowed in the state legislature. |
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| Their greatest source of discontent, though, was the Mexican government's 1829 abolition of slavery. |
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| Most American settlers were from southern states, and many had brought slaves with them. |
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| Mexico tried to accommodate them by maintaining the fiction that the slaves were indentured servants. |
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| But American slaveholders in Texas distrusted the Mexican government and wanted Texas to be a new U.S. slave state. |
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| The dislike of most for Roman Catholicism (the prevailing religion of Mexico) and a widely held belief in American racial superiority led them generally to regard Mexicans as dishonest, ignorant, and backward. |
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| Figure 1.3 |
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| This 1833 map shows the extent of land grants made by Mexico to American settlers in Texas. |
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| Nearly all are in the eastern portion of the state, one factor that led to war with Mexico in 1846. |
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| Image credit: Holley (Armstrong & Plaskitt), Public Domain |
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| Belief in their own superiority inspired some Texans to try to undermine the power of the Mexican government. |
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| When empresario Haden Edwards attempted to evict people who had settled his land grant before he gained title to it, the Mexican government nullified its agreement with him. |
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| Outraged, Edwards and a small party of men took prisoner the alcalde of Nacogdoches. |
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| The Mexican army marched to the town, and Edwards and his troops then declared the formation of the Republic of Fredonia between the Sabine and Rio Grande Rivers. |
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| To demonstrate loyalty to their adopted country, a force led by Stephen Austin hastened to Nacogdoches to support the Mexican army. |
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| Edwards’s revolt collapsed, and the revolutionaries fled Texas. |
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| The growing presence of American settlers in Texas, their reluctance to abide by Mexican law, and their desire for independence caused the Mexican government to grow wary. |
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| In 1830, it forbade future U.S. immigration and increased its military presence in Texas. |
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| Settlers continued to stream illegally across the long border; by 1835, after immigration resumed, there were twenty thousand Anglo-Americans in Texas. |
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| Fifty-five delegates from the Anglo-American settlements gathered in 1831 to demand the suspension of customs duties, the resumption of immigration from the United States, better protection from Indian tribes, the granting of promised land titles, and the creation of an independent state of Texas separate from Coahuila. |
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| Ordered to disband, the delegates reconvened in early April 1833 to write a constitution for an independent Texas. |
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| Surprisingly, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexico’s new president, agreed to all demands, except the call for statehood. |
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| Coahuila y Texas made provisions for jury trials, increased Texas’s representation in the state legislature, and removed restrictions on commerce. |
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| Figure 1.4 |
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| This portrait of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna depicts the Mexican president and general in full military regalia. |
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| Image credit: Public Domain |
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| Texans' hopes for independence were quashed in 1834, however, when Santa Anna dismissed the Mexican Congress and abolished all state governments, including that of Coahuila y Texas. |
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| In January 1835, reneging on earlier promises, he dispatched troops to the town of Anahuac to collect customs duties. |
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| Lawyer and soldier William B. Travis and a small force marched on Anahuac in June, and the fort surrendered. |
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| On October 2, Anglo-American forces met Mexican troops at the town of Gonzales; the Mexican troops fled and the Americans moved on to take San Antonio. |
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| Now more cautious, delegates to the Consultation of 1835 at San Felipe de Austin voted against declaring independence, instead drafting a statement, which became known as the Declaration of Causes, promising continued loyalty if Mexico returned to a constitutional form of government. |
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| They selected Henry Smith, leader of the Independence Party, as governor of Texas and placed Sam Houston, a former soldier who had been a congressman and governor of Tennessee, in charge of its small military force. |
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| The Consultation delegates met again in March 1836. |
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| They declared their independence from Mexico and drafted a constitution calling for an American-style judicial system and an elected president and legislature. |
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| Significantly, they also established that slavery would not be prohibited in Texas. |
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| Many wealthy Tejanos supported the push for independence, hoping for liberal governmental reforms and economic benefits. |
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| Remember the Alamo! |
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| Mexico had no intention of losing its northern province. |
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| Santa Anna and his army of four thousand had besieged San Antonio in February 1836. |
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| Hopelessly outnumbered, its two hundred defenders, under Travis, fought fiercely from their refuge in an old mission known as the Alamo. |
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| After ten days, however, the mission was taken and all but a few of the defenders were dead, including Travis and James Bowie, the famed frontiersman who was also a land speculator and slave trader. |
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| A few male survivors, possibly including the frontier legend and former Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett, were led outside the walls and executed. |
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| The few women and children inside the mission were allowed to leave with the only adult male survivor, a slave owned by Travis who was then freed by the Mexican Army. |
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| Terrified, they fled. |
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| Figure 1.5 |
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| The Fall of the Alamo, painted by Theodore Gentilz fewer than ten years after this pivotal moment in the Texas Revolution, depicts the 1836 assault on the Alamo complex. |