Chapter 3 Mexican Texas

1
Chapter 3Mexican Texas

• 1821-1836

2
Land Empresarios
After Moses death, his son, Stephen F. Austin,
assumed his fathers contract. By 1825, Stephen
Austin had nearly completed the terms of his
first contract, and that year the government made
a second agreement with him to settle 500
families. Stephen received an additional three
grants between 1825 and 1831, but only complied
fully with his first contract. He used part of
his grants for speculating purposes, as did the
other empresarios and even some settlers who
sought to turn a profit from the Mexican
governments generosity. Between 1821 and 1835, a
total of forty-one empresario contracts were
signed, permitting some 13,500 families to come
to Texas. (Calvert, De Leon,
Cantrell, pp. 58, 61-62.)
Moses Austin (1761-1821) In January 1821, the
Spanish government agreed to Austin proposal to
let him oversee the settlement of 300 Catholic
families from the United States to Texas in
exchange for a huge personal grant of Texas
lands. (Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 58.)
3
Philip Nolan (1801)
A scientific expedition dispatched by President
Thomas Jefferson. (1806)
General James Wilkinson (1806)
4
In 1819, Dr. James Long and a force of fellow
filibusters attempted to wrest Texas from Mexico.
This endeavor apparently had the backing of a
group of Natchez entrepreneurs who were upset
over the passage of the Transcontinental Treaty
of 1819. p. 57.
5
The Constitution of 1824
6
Haden Edwards, Benjamin Edwards and the Fredonia
Republic (1826)
7

• The Investigation and Report of Mier Y Terán
• In order to evaluate how the national government
  might best deal with the troubles in Texas,
  Mexico dispatched Manuel de Mier y Terán, a
  high-ranking military officer and trained
  engineer, to the north. Crossing into Texas in
  1828, Mier y Terán reported that
• The province was flooded with Anglo Americans
• Nacogdoches had essentially become an American
  town
• Prospects for assimilation of the Anglos into
  Mexican culture appeared dim
• The Anglo settlements generally resisted obeying
  the colonization laws.
• Mier y Terán report spurred the drafting and
  implementation of the Law of April 6, 1830.

Manuel de Mier y Terán, 1789-1832
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
8

• The Law of April 6, 1830
• The Law of April 6, 1830 intended to stop further
  immigration into Texas from the United States by
  declaring uncompleted empresario agreements as
  void, although Mier y Terán let stand as valid
  those contract belonging to men who had already
  brought 100 families.
• Future American immigrants must not settle in any
  territory bordering the United States.
• New presidio were established to check illegal
  immigration.
• The Law banned further importation of slaves into
  Texas.

Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
9
Among Anglos, a radical faction of the
Federalists, which has come to be known as the
war party, emerged from the outrage over the
Law of April 6. In the summer of 1832, friction
between settler and authorities trying to enforce
recently instituted policies regulating commerce
in the Gulf ports and the collection of new
tariffs reached a high pitch at the military post
in Anahuac.
The Law of April 6, 1830, Resisted
Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn, an Anglo-American
adventurer who had joined the Centralist cause in
Mexico, arrested the lawyer William Barret Travis
when the latter attempted a ruse to secure the
release of two runaway slaves that Bradburn had
in protective custody. In response to Traviss
arrest, vigilantes gathered to call for his
release. When Bradburn refused to surrender his
prisoner, the colonists, accustomed to the
Anglo-American tradition of the separation of
military and civilian law, and to trial by jury,
labeled Bradburn a despot.
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
10
Turtle Bayou Resolutions, 1832
In June of 1832, a party of Anglo Texas from
around Anahuac and the port town of Brazoria
marched on Bradburns garrison. A full-scale
battle seemed imminent, but while waiting for
reinforcements, the Anglos issued a document
known as the Turtle Bayou Resolutions on June 13,
1832, which cleverly argued that their actions at
Anahuac were not an uprising but a demand for
their constitutional rights as Mexican citizens,
adding that their cause was in sympathy to that
of the Federalist leader, Antonio López de Santa
Anna, then attempting to overthrow the Centrists,
the party to which Bradburn belonged. Higher
military officials avoided further bloodshed at
Anahuac by replacing Bradburn and releasing
Travis and other whom Bradburn had arrested.
Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, p. 64.
11
Anglos in Texas, 1821-1836

• POPULATION By 1834, it is estimated that the
  number of Anglo Americans and their slaves
  reached over 20,700. This figure might well have
  represented the doubling of the number of
  Americans in Texas just sine 1830, which
  highlights the extent to which the Law of April
  6, 1830 was disregarded, both by Anglos and
  sympathetic Spanish officials.
• LIFE Life in Texas was rough and rustic. Basic
  goods such as clothing, blankets, and footwear
  were not readily available. Many lived off the
  land, which involved hunting, fishing, planting
  small gardens and gathering nuts and berries.
• COTTON AND SLAVERY With slaves and imported
  technology, some Anglos planted and processed
  cotton for outside markets, and by 1834, Anglos
  farms may have shipped some 7,000 bales of cotton
  to New Orleans.
• BARTER AND SMUGGLING Due to a lack of currency,
  people bartered to obtain needed commodities and
  services. Anglos found numerous ways to earn an
  income, among them smuggling. The tariff laws
  that exempted Anglo products during the 1820s had
  not applied to all imports and generally excluded
  household goods and implements. Taking advantage
  of this loophole (even in cases where is was
  legally closed) Anglos brought merchandise
  illegally into Texas, and some even then shipped
  the products to more southern Mexican states or
  west to New Mexico.
• EDUCATION The foreigners established numerous
  schools in the 1820s and 1830s, patterning them
  after schools they had known in the southern
  United States.
• RELIGION Although Anglos had agreed to observe
  the Catholic religion in order to qualify as
  Mexican citizens, the Church neglected them
  because of, among other things, a shortage of
  priests. Hence, many Anglo settlers held illicit
  church services and religious camp meetings.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 69-70.)
12
THE TEXAS GAZETTE Godwin Brown Cotton
established the first successful press in 1829 in
Austins colony in Texas. The newspaper, named
the Texas Gazette, served Austin in his
determination to assure the host country of
Anglo-American loyalty and to remind the
colonists of the gratitude they owed Mexico. The
Gazette ceased publication in 1832, but other
papers continued to spread the new to Anglo
Texans.
(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)
13
Blacks in Texas, 1821-1836

• Using the guise of contract labor, Anglos had
  been able to perpetuate slavery despite Mexican
  disapproval. By 1836, the number of slaves in
  Texas numbered about 5,000. The institution of
  slavery arrived in Texas with all its southern
  trappings, for whites sought to recreate it just
  as it existed in the United States. As in the
  South, where society delineated strict roles for
  the different races, in Texas many Anglos
  considered blacks a racially inferior people
  suited to a life of strenuous labor and
  servitude.
• Anglos considered slaves legal property. Hence
  slaves could be
• bought and sold
• hired out
• counted as ones assets
• used as collateral
• Bequeathed
• To control the slave population, whites followed
  tried and tested policies, including the liberal
  use of the lash.
• Slaves attempted to run away when possible, often
  seeking refuge among the Indian tribes of East
  Texas or in the Mexican settlements of the
  nations interior.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 71-73.)
14
Tejanos, 1821-1836

• Most Hispanic Texans (Tejanos) lived in the
  ranching areas of Central and South Texas. Many
  of them were the descendants of the first
  colonizers and presidial soldiers assigned to
  garrisons through the Spanish period.
• As was the case before Mexico gained
  independence, Mexican society in Texas continued
  to be a divided one, the emerging opportunities
  in commerce, ranching, and politics during the
  1820s and 1830s fueling the fragmentation.
  Government bureaucrats, successful merchants or
  rancheros, and others who came from prominent
  families made up a small elite. Among its
  members were Erasmo and Juan N. Seguín, José
  Antonio Navarro, Ramón Músquis, and retired
  soldiers such as José Francisco Ruiz and José
  María Balmaceda.
• The status of Hispanic women reflected both
  liberties and restrictions. Women sued for
  military survivors benefits and engaged in the
  sale of lands, from which some achieved financial
  standing equal to or surpassing that of some men.
  But women also suffered from serious
  disadvantages. Law and tradition barred them
  from voting or holding political office.
  Religion discouraged divorce, dooming many to
  endure unhappy marriages. There was also a
  double standard women adulteresses were
  ostracized while a blind eye was turned to the
  philandering of men.
• Hispanics supported education through
  fund-raising drives. Hispanics opened schools in
  the following communities
• Béxar
• Laredo (1825)
• Nacogdoches (1828)
• Militia units remained the primary form of
  defense, as had been common during the period
  before 1821.
• Catholicism remained the primary religion among
  the Mexican Texans.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)
15
Native Americans, 1821-1836

• Those tribes that the Spanish had targeted for
  conversion had by the 1820s either perished due
  to wars and (European) diseases, been displaced
  from their native lands and driving into the
  western regions, or had integrated successfully
  into Spanish/Mexican communities.
• Only vestiges of the Coahuiltecans remained by
  the 1830s 
• In 1824, setters from Austins colony launched
  hostilities against the Karankawas to drive them
  from their ancestral hunting lands. During the
  1830s, the Karankawas numbered less than 800
  persons, but desperately clung to survival by
  preying on Tejano-owned cattle, or, in the case
  of those who gradually drifted back to their
  previous homeland, by hiring out to Anglo
  settlers as casual laborers or domestic servants.
• The Plains Indians (Comanches, Apaches, and
  Norteños) remained faithful to their traditional
  lifestyles, relying on a combination of the hunt
  and small-scale farming. Women tended gardens,
  cultivating and harvesting corn, pumpkins, and
  beans, while the Plains warriors sabotaged
  settlements in an effort to halt the encroachment
  on their land and to take livestock, especially
  horses.
• The Caddos of East Texas contended with problems
  that threatened to unravel their civilization.
  Alcohol, provided to them by American traders,
  enfeebled many tribes people almost at the same
  time outsiders began penetrating long-held Caddo
  territory. Interlopers included other Native
  American peoples from the U.S. South as well as
  Anglo empresarios bearing contracts to establish
  colonies in Caddo land. By the late 1820s, the
  Caddos numbered no more than 300 families.
• In 1818-1819, a band of Cherokees, bowing to
  legal and extralegal pressure by Anglos to
  abandon their homelands in Georgia and Alabama,
  arrived in northeastern Texas near Caddo land.
  They tried to settle near present-day Dallas, but
  were forced to relocate by the hostile Plains
  Indians. They eventually settled in and around
  todays Van Zandt and Cherokee counties. The
  Cherokee actively sought to acquire legal title
  to their new homeland from the Mexican
  government, but never received anything but vague
  promises.

(Calvert, De Leon, Cantrell, pp. 73-74.)
16
THE QUIET SUFFERING AND MISERY OF WAR The Wars
for Independence left Mexico in disorder and
decay. Conditions were far worse in Mexico than
in Argentina or Brazil because the actual
fighting had been so much more widespread and
protracted in Mexico. The economy was in
shambles. Spaniards and taken their capital out
of the country. Of a population of seven million,
an estimated half a million died during the war
years. Devastation in the countryside and in the
cities left thousands unemployed. Disease,
banditry, and violence were rampant. (Skidmore
Smith, p. 254 Suchlicki, p. 61)
Agricultural production was at a standstill,
because many farms and haciendas had been
destroyed and abandoned. (Suchlicki, p. 61)
17
The textile industry had fallen on hard times.
The scars of battle were visible throughout the
country, especially in the central valley. As one
traveler recalled, there were ruins
everywherehere a viceroys place serving as a
tavern, where the mules stop to rest, and the
drivers to drink pulquethere, a whole village
crumbling to pieces roofless houses, broken down
walls and arches, and old churchthe remains of a
convent. (Skidmore Smith, p. 255.)
18
RESTLESS UNEMPLOYED SOLDIERS Economic disorder
meant there were very few jobs and much
unemployment. According to one estimate, about
300,000 men, most of whom had fought in the wars,
had no job or income when the battles came to an
end. This represented 15 to 30 percent of the
entire adult male population. They were eager,
often angry, and usually armed. They posed not
only an economic problem but a social threat as
well. (Skidmore Smith, p. 255.)
19
The two institutional bases of power in Mexico
after independence
The Church
The Military
20
President Guadalupe Victoria
Vice-President Nicolás Bravo

• Liberals wanted
• the state to guide the Church, instead of the
  other way around
• a decentralized, federal republic
• limited democracy (but more inclusive than any
  conservative wanted)
• individual property rights as opposed to communal
  property rights
• the abolition of fueros, or special privileges of
  corporate entities (i.e. the Church and the army)
• secular education

• Conservatives wanted
• a strong Church which would play an important
  role in guiding the nation
• a strong central government that guarded against
  the passions of the masses and the dominance of
  local interests
• to support corporate ownership in mining and
  industry
• protection for Church and military fueros
• Catholic education

21
The Presidential Election of 1828

1. Manuel Gómez Pedraza wins.
2. The liberals could not accept the outcome, and
   started a revolution with Santa Anna as their
   military leader.
3. The Revolution is successful, and the insurgents
   install their candidate, Vicente Guerrero, as
   president. Anastasio Bustamante, a compromise
   conservative, became vice-president.

22
The Spanish Invasion of 1829

1. The Spanish invade Mexico and take Tampico in
   July of 1829.
2. Santa Anna lays siege on their fort, and the
   Spaniards, plagued by yellow fever and lack of
   provisions, surrender by October.
3. Many Spanish merchants leave Mexico to escape
   reprisals by angry Mexican nationals.

General Santa Anna
23
A Parade of Coups d'état
1. Guerrero refused to relinquish the
extraordinary "emergency" powers that Congress
had given him to cope the threat posed by the
Spanish invasion. 2. In reaction against this,
Vice-President Bustamante posed as a champion of
constitutionalism and led an armed revolt against
Guerrero's government. For the second time in
Mexico's brief history a conservative
vice-president led an armed revolt against a
liberal president.   But where Nicolás Bravo had
failed, Bustamante, largely because of his
influence with the army, succeeded.  4.
Bustamanta captured President Guerrero, and had
him executed on January 14, 1831.  5. The
Repression of the Bustamante dictatorship
Bustamante soon became a rather crude dictator.
(suppression of the press, badgering the
legislature and judicial branches, political
corruption, repression against the Yorquinos
Liberal Free Masons).  6. Santa Anna
overthrows Bustamante. In response to his
General Santa Anna took up the liberal cause and
marshaled his forces to overthrow the Bustamante
government. Bustamanta's government soon fell to
Santa Anna, who then returned to Veracruz to
revel in his latest victory and await the outcome
of the 1833 presidential elections.
24
The following era, from roughly 1833 to 1855, can
be justifiably termed the era of Santa Anna. He
dominated Mexican politics for much of this
period, and left an indelible mark on Mexican
history. Born in Veracruz in 1794, the young
Santa Anna showed little interest in books.
Instead, at the age of sixteen he joined the army
and soon thereafter fought against pro-Hidalgo
rebels. For the next decade, the young Calvary
officer staunchly supported the crown's efforts
in New Spain.

• General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

25

• General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

26
The era of Santa Anna An era of flamboyant
caudillaje and chronic instability
1821--he switched allegiance and joined
Iturbide's fight for Mexican Independence. 1823--h
e led republican forces against the empire and
was instrumental in overthrowing
Iturbide. 1827--he took the lead in suppressing
Vice-President Nicolás Bravo's (conservative)
revolt against President Victoria
(liberal). 1828--he saw to it that the defeated
liberal candidate, Vicente Guerrero, was
installed in office. 1829--he defeated the
Spanish invasion forces as Tampico to save the
infant republic. 1832--he overthrew the
Bustamante dictatorship after it had become
intolerable. But his illustrious career in a
chaotic Mexico was just getting started in 1833.
Indeed--if you can believe it--1833 marks the
beginning of an era that was even more chaotic
for Mexico. Between May 1833 and August 1855 the
presidency changed hands thirty-six times, the
average term being about 7½ months. Santa Anna
occupied the presidential chair on eleven
different occasions, and, without question, he
was the most powerful political figure in Mexico
during this time. Even when he was out of office
he was a powerful force to be reckoned with and a
constant danger to the incumbent regime and to
anyone aspiring to the succession.
27
Santa Anna wins the Presidency in 1833, then
leaves it to Gómez Farías
In 1833, Santa Anna won the presidency with the
largest majority in Mexican history. But, he
soon grew bored of the presidential day-to-day
work. Thus, he returned to his estate in Vera
Cruz and left the presidency to Vice-President
Valentín Gómez Farías.
28
The liberal reforms of Valentín Gómez Farías

• Military Reforms
• Reduce the size of the army
• He abolished military fueros (i.e. army officers
  would now have to stand trial in civil courts.)

29
B. Gómez Faríass Clerical Reforms

1. Clergymen throughout the country were advised
   that they should limit their directives and
   admonitions from the pulpit to matters of
   religion.
2. The secularization of education--including the
   University of Mexico.
3. All future clerical appointments would be made by
   the government rather than the papacy. 
4. The mandatory payment of the tithe was declared
   illegal. (The individual was asked to search his
   own conscience and respond as he would.)
5. Congress enacted legislation permitting nuns,
   priests, and lay brothers, who had taken oaths to
   spend their entire lives as brides and servants
   of Christ, to forswear their vows. (This was
   done in the name of individual freedom--a concept
   much in vogue with the nineteenth-century
   liberals.)
6. The Franciscan missions in California were
   secularized and their funds and property
   sequestered.

30
Santa Anna switches sides
Understandably, many of those who had vested
interests in the Church or the military hated
Gómez Farías reforms. To the rallying cry of
Religión y Fueros the church, the army, and other
conservative groupings banded together and called
for the overthrow of the government. Santa Anna
joins the conservatives cause and overthrows the
government of his former Vice-President, Gómez
Farías Again thirsting for public acclaim the
retired President Santa Anna jumped at the new
opportunity for action and agreed to lead the
movement against his former vice-president, Gómez
Farías. Not embarrassed by lack of consistency,
the embattled champion of all liberal causes
since 1821 suddenly began denouncing anticlerical
atheists, naive federalists, subversive
anarchists, Gómez Farías, and his liberal
cohorts.
31
The Constitution of 1824
32
The Texas Revolt
A. Permission to settle  Starting in 1821,
Spain and then an Independent Mexico had granted
permission to Catholic (North) Americans to
settle the sparsely populated territory of
Texas.  B. Incentives for settlement Soon there
was a great influx of Americans settlers into
Texas. The land was practically free--only 10
an acre as opposed to 1.25 an acre for inferior
land in the U.S. Each male colonists over
twenty-one years of age was allowed to purchase
640 acres for himself, 320 acres for his wife,
160 acres for each child and, significantly, an
additional 80 acres for each slaves that he
brought with him. The numerical dominance of the
American settlers 1827 By 1827 there were some
12,000 United States citizens living in Texas,
while there were only 7,000 Mexicans. 1835 By
1835 the immigrant population had reached 30,000,
while the Mexican population had barely passed
7,800
33
The Mexican response to the influx of Americans
1. Slavery was abolished The first important
piece of legislation designed to prevent a
further weakening of Mexican control was
President Guerrero's emancipation proclamation of
1829. Because slavery was not important anywhere
else in the republic, the measure was clearly
directed at Texas. Although manumission was not
immediately enforced, it was hoped that the
decree itself would make Mexico less attractive
to colonists from the U.S. South and would thus
arrest immigration.   2. Forbiddance of further
immigration The colonization law of 1830
explicitly forbade all future immigration into
Texas from the United States and called for the
strengthening of Mexican garrisons, the
improvement of economic ties between Texas and
the remainder of Mexico by the establishment of a
new coastal trade, and the encouragement of
increased Mexican colonization.
34
October 2, 1835The Battle of Gonzales. The first
battle of the Texas Revolution begins when Santa
Anna sends a detachment of Mexican Calvary to
retrieve a cannon. Texans drive them back using
the cannon. The battle flag used by the Texans
features a picture of a cannon and the written
dare "come and take it."
35
The Texans Response
The Texans considered these measures repressive.
The last straw, as far as the Texans were
concerned, was the news from Mexico City that
Santa Anna had arbitrarily annulled the federal
Constitution of 1824. The centralist tendencies
of the new regime meant that, instead of having a
greater voice in the management of local affairs,
the Texans were to have no voice at all.  The
Lone Stare Republic is declared. The Texans had
decided on independence and subsequently chose
David Burnet as president of the Lone Star
Republic and Zavala as vice-president.
36
1835 Santa Anna moves north at the head of
some 6,000 troops.
In 1836 a Mexican force of about 4000 men
commanded by Santa Anna reached San Antonio. The
San Antonio garrison187 men under the command of
Colonel William Barrett Traviswithdrew to the
Alamo. About 15 civilians were with the men
inside the Alamo. Santa Anna attacked the Alamo,
eventually breaching the mission walls. Only the
civilians survived.
San Antonio de Béxar
37
(No Transcript)
38
The Goliad Affair Mexican forces executed 365
Texan prisoners who had surrendered. Several
weeks after the surrender of the Alamo, Genaral
José Urrea engaged a force of Texans under the
command of Colonel James W. Fannin at the small
town of Goliad. Surrounded and outnumbered,
Fannin surrendered in the belief that he and his
men would be afforded the recognized rights of
prisoners of war. Realizing that the tenor of
the war had been set at the Alamo, General Urrea
wrote to Santa Anna urging clemency for Fannin
and the other prisoners. Urrea then moved on to
another engagement and left the Texas prisoners
in the charge of Lieutenant Colonel Nicolás de la
Portilla. Santa Anna, however, ordered Nicolás
de la Portilla to execute the prisoners, which he
promptly did despite some moral misgiving. All
365 prisoners were executed.
39
The Houston administration also passed
legislation to encourage immigration and raise
revenue for this it turned to land, the
governments most tangible resource. The ad
interim government had provided headrights
(grants of land that obliged grantees to comply
with certain conditions, such as improving the
land) in order to entice volunteers into the
Texas army. (p. 90.)
Texas Forever!! New Orleans? 1836. Broadside,
CN 00834, Broadside Collection. This is the only
known copy of an inflammatory circular issued in
New Orleans that demonized the Mexican army and
offered substantial inducements of land to all
who would come to aid the Texan cause. The
broadside contains a brief account of the Alamo
siege, the outcome of which was still unknown at
the time this circular was issued.
40
Battle of San Jacinto
41
Santa Anna is defeated and captured at the Battle
of San Jacinto The excesses committed by Santa
Anna's troops at the Alamo and Goliad
crystallized opposition to Mexico both among
Texans and in the United States. Supplies and
men began to pour into Texas, and by the third
week in April Houston felt strong enough to make
a stand. He chose his own ground and, in the
middle of the afternoon on April 21, caught Santa
Anna's troops of guard near San Jacinto River.
Within half an hour the Mexican arm was routed,
and Santa Anna himself fled for safety. Two days
later he was captured by one of Houston's
patrols.
42
In this popular print the victorious General
Houston, dressed in colorful Indian garb, vents
his moral wrath on the defeated Mexican
commanders. The contemporary lithograph suggests
how deeply the events of the Texas Revolution
resonated in the United States.
43
Mexico Territorial Divisions, 1820s
44
(No Transcript)
45
The loss of Texas and the war with the United
States contributed more to Mexicos
impoverishment, its apparent sterility, its
xenophobia, its lack of self-esteem, and its
general demoralization than any other event of
the nineteenth century. (Meyer, Sherman and
Deeds, p. 317)