In July 1821, Stephen F.  Austin set off from Louisiana for the Texas territory in the northeastern corner of Mexico.  The Spanish government had promised to give his father, Moses, a huge tract of Texas land if the elder Austin settled 300 American families there.  Moses died before he could fulfill his end of the deal.  On his deathbed, he asked Stephen to take his place in Texas.  Austin was favorably impressed with the region.  As he surveyed the land grant between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers, he noted its natural abundance:

“The Prairie comes bluff to the river ... and affords a most beautiful situation for a Town or settlement. ...  The country... is as good in every respect as man could wish for, Land all first rate, plenty of timber, fine water, beautifully rolling.”

Mexican Independence and the Borderlands

In 1821, after more than a decade of fighting, Mexico won its independence from Spain.  During the decades that followed, Mexico experienced great turmoil and political chaos.  The far northern territories of California, New Mexico, and Texas remained part of Mexico, although their great distance from the capital, Mexico City, allowed for considerable political independence.  As the young Mexican republic struggled to establish a stable national government, it neglected its northern borderlands.

Located more than 1,000 miles from Mexico City, this region was sparsely populated by Native Americans and Hispanic settlers.  Thus, the Mexican frontier was threatened on several fronts.  Settlements in Texas and New Mexico faced attacks by Apaches, Comanches, and other Native American groups.  In addition, the under-populated northern territories were threatened by the westward expansion of the United States and the southward expansion of Russian settlements along the Pacific Coast.  (Russia had begun colonizing Alaska in the 1780s.)

The Spanish had expanded the territory of New Spain by establishing missions on the northern frontier.  The purpose of the state-financed missions was to spread the Christian faith and Spanish culture to Native Americans.  Missions controlled vast tracts of land on which grazed cattle, sheep, and horses.  Native Americans tended to the livestock and did other work at the missions under conditions of near slavery.

By the early 1800s, the mission system was in decline.  By the time Mexico became independent, it had nearly collapsed, having received little financial support during the struggle for independence.  In 1821 California had only 36 Franciscan friars to run 21 missions.

Many Mexicans believed that maintaining state-supported religious institutions was not appropriate for a republic.  In 1834 the Mexican government secularized—or transferred from religious control to civil control—the missions and then transferred the land to private ownership.  Although the goal of reformers was to divide mission lands among Native Americans, most land ended up in the hands of cattle ranchers who then relied on Native Americans for labor.  The frontier presidios, or forts, established by the Spanish similarly became weak due to labor shortages and reduced funding.  This left frontier settlers vulnerable to attack.

In the borderlands, political chaos followed Mexican independence.  In 1837 a visitor described conditions in frontier California:
 

“The old monastic order is destroyed and nothing seems to have replaced it except anarchy.  The official power is weak and flutters irresolutely in the hands of its holders.  Doubtless a new political order will arise out of this chaos but while waiting for it the country is badly administered, society is without ties, without guarantees, and the people are wretched.”

In the 1810s and 1820s, most of the approximately 3,200 Hispanic Californians took no direct role in Mexico’s struggle for independence.  Secularization of the missions had a tremendous impact on life in California, because it freed up land for cattle ranching, which became the mainstay of the economy.

Rancheros, or ranchers, owned sprawling tracts of land.  These predominantly white “Spanish Dons” and their families constituted less than 10 percent of California’s population but dominated California society.

Beneath these elites was a class of mestizos (persons of mixed European and Native American ancestry).  Some of this middle class worked as vaqueros (cowboys), but many were skilled craftsmen.

At the bottom of society were Native Americans.  They had suffered high mortality rates under Spanish rule.  After Mexican independence, their situation improved little.  Although freed from the missions, they were often exploited by the new class of rancheros.  Many escaped to live among the independent Native Americans on the edges of the California frontier.

In the California territory, men played a powerful role in the family and only men could vote or hold elective office.  Yet women, especially upper-class women, had rights and privileges as well.  Unlike American women of the era, Hispanic women retained control over their own property after marriage and could seek legal redress in the courts.

Life on the California Frontier

“In the old days every one seemed to live out-doors.  There was much gaiety and social life, even though people were widely scattered.  We traveled as much as possible on horseback.  .  .  .  Young men would ride from one ranch to another for parties, and who-ever found his horse tired would let him go and catch another.  In 1806 there were so many horses in the valleys about San José that seven or eight thousand were killed.

Nearly as many were driven into the sea at Santa Barbara in 1807, and the same thing was done at Monterey in 1810.  Horses were given to the runaway sailors, and to trappers and hunters who came over the mountains, for common horses were plenty, but fast and beautiful horses were never more prized in any country than in California, and each young man had his favorites.”

The Spanish settlers who came to the American Southwest had two aims: to claim the land and to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism.  To achieve these aims, the Spaniards set up fortified religious settlements known as missions.

The missions reflected both the culture of Spain and the demands of life in an arid land.  By the late eighteenth century, the missions were thriving, self-contained communities.  Arranged in a quadrangle around a central courtyard, the complex was a bustling world of workshops, storage areas, gardens, and living quarters.  Its location was often determined by the availability of wood, water, and fields for raising crops and grazing the livestock that the Spanish brought to the Americas.  The form of the mission was dictated by the building materials available.  The thick walls of the one-story buildings were usually made of stone or sun-dried mud bricks known as adobe.

For security, most of the mission’s residences were connected, and all windows faced inward .The entrances were locked at night.  A covered arcade, or outdoor hallway, ran along the inner walls of the residences.  The complex was usually dominated by a large church.  Thousands of Native Americans were lured to the missions by gifts and by the prospect of finding safety and food.  They were instructed in Catholicism and Spanish and put to work.  Women wove cloth and cooked; men labored at handicrafts or in the fields.  In addition to the native beans and corn, the converts planted crops introduced by the Spaniards such as wheat, oats, oranges, olives, and grapes.

Some of the missions would not allow the Native Americans to leave without permission once they had entered the community.  Making this transition to a regimented life was difficult, and escapes were common.

To enforce order and hunt down runaways, many missions had a small detachment of soldiers.  The soldiers rode on horses, which the Spaniards brought to the Southwest.

The Spaniards also brought measles and smallpox—devastating diseases against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity.

Mission cemeteries often held the bones of thousands of Native Americans who died of these European diseases.

Years before the English unfurled their flag at Jamestown, Spanish missionaries and colonists from New Spain, as Mexico was known, were settling in the Southwest.  The map shows their major migration routes into present-day New Mexico, Texas, and California, as well as the location of their missions and presidios, or garrisoned forts.

The Spanish built the church of San José y San Miguel de Aguayo in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1720s.  Such churches were only part of much larger mission complexes.

New Mexico

As in California, Mexican independence brought little immediate change to New Mexico (which included present-day Arizona).  New Mexico remained largely rural.  Sheep ranching thrived in the region’s dry climate.  Large ranches were established south of Santa Fe.  North of Santa Fe, Hispanic settlers focused more on farming.

In the 1820s, when the Navajo and Apache launched a series of attacks on New Mexico, the Mexican government was unable to provide protection.  This fed a growing dissatisfaction with the national government.  Finally, in 1837, Pueblo people and Hispanic settlers north of Santa Fe launched a rebellion and killed the unpopular territorial governor and 16 other government officials.

Identify
What were the major social classes in California?
 

Americans Arrive in the Borderlands

After Mexican independence, American influence in the borderlands increased.  Americans had begun moving into California before Mexican independence, and immigration increased after 1821.  Trade with California rose significantly once Mexico was no longer part of Spain’s empire.  Traders from the United States, Russia, and other countries arrived in California ports to exchange manufactured goods for sea otter skins and hides and tallow derived from cattle.

In 1839, hoping to attract more settlers, Juan Bautista Alvarado, governor of California, granted 50,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley to John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant from Germany.  There, Sutter built a trading post and cattle ranch.  “Sutter’s Fort” was often the first stopping point for Americans reaching California.

As more Americans arrived, the differences between California and southern Mexico increased.  This fueled political tensions between frontier leaders and the Mexican national government.  The American population, however, was still small.  Only about 700 Americans lived in California in 1845.

During the Spanish colonial period, New Mexicans received most manufactured goods from traders who came north from the state of Chihuahua.  This began to change in 1821, the year of Mexican independence, when an American trader named William Becknell arrived in Santa Fe.  He opened the Santa Fe Trail, which became a major trade route connecting Santa Fe with Independence, Missouri.  Caravan wagons brought American manufactured goods to New Mexico and exchanged them for silver, mules, and furs.  As trade increased, a small American population settled in Santa Fe.

East of New Mexico, Texas had long served as a buffer territory between the United States and the rest of Mexico.  Texas was a sparsely populated region where settlers faced recurring raids by the Comanche and Apache.  Most of the 2,500 Spanish-speaking Tejanos were concentrated in the towns of San Antonio and Goliad (then called La Bahía).  Just before Mexican independence, Spain began allowing foreigners to settle in Texas.  Mexico continued this policy, and Americans soon began to flood into that territory.

The decision to invite Americans to settle led, ultimately, to a revolt against Mexican rule and independence for Texas.  California and New Mexico remained Mexican territory for 25 years after Mexican independence.  Texas—where Americans soon vastly outnumbered Tejanos—broke away after fifteen years.

Summarize:
In what ways did Americans have an influence in the Mexican borderlands?
 

Opening Texas to Americans

When Austin settled in Texas, it was not a wild and empty land.  Long a part of Spain’s Mexican colony, the area was under Mexican control after the country achieved independence from Spain in 1821.  The Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the area, called Tejanos, had established such settlements as San Antonio de Bexar and Hidalgo in the southern portion of the region.  Few Tejanos lived north of these settlements.  That area was the territory of the Apache, Comanche, and other Native American groups.

Unable to persuade its own citizens to move closer to the Native American groups, Mexico decided to continue Spanish policy and invite Americans and other foreigners to settle there.  Between 1823 and 1825 Mexico passed three colonization laws, which offered cheap land to nearly anyone willing to come.  The last law granted new immigrants a 10-year exemption from paying taxes but required that they become Mexican citizens, live under Mexican law, and convert to Roman Catholicism.

Empresarios and Settlers

Although some American emigrants headed to Texas on their own, most came at the encouragement of empresarios, a Spanish word meaning “agents” or “contractors.” Under the National Colonization Act, Mexico gave 26 empresarios large grants of Texas land.  In exchange, the empresarios promised to fill it with a certain number of settlers.  The empresarios assigned a plot to each family and governed the colonies they established.  Stephen Austin was not only the first but also by far the most successful empresario.

He founded the town of Washington-on-the-Brazos and, by the mid-1830s, had persuaded some 1,500 American families to immigrate.

Americanizing Texas

The Americans who emigrated to Texas initially accepted Mexican citizenship as required.  The government assumed they would also adopt Mexican customs and come to see Mexico as their own country, but for various reasons few did.  The Spanish Catholic Church was alien to the traditions of most American settlers, and only a few bothered to learn Spanish.

Many Mexicans, in turn, distrusted the new settlers because of their American lifestyle and dismissal of Mexican ways.  The Mexicans’ unease increased in 1826, when empresario Haden Edwards’s brother Benjamin led a rebellion against Mexican authority.  Angry over disagreements about whether the Mexican government or the empresario controlled the region, Edwards declared that the settlements of Americans in Texas now constituted the independent nation of Fredonia.

He gained few followers, however, and Stephen Austin led a contingent of troops that helped Mexico crush the revolt.

Although nearly all of the settlers ignored Edwards’s call for revolution, the Mexican government feared that it signaled an American plot to acquire Texas.  In 1830 Mexico closed its borders to further immigration by Americans and banned the import of enslaved labor as well.  Mexico also placed taxes on goods imported from foreign countries, hoping to discourage trade with the United States.

These new laws infuriated the settlers.  Without immigration their settlements could not grow.  The import tax meant higher prices for goods they were accustomed to purchasing from the United States.  Perhaps worst of all, the Mexican government was telling them what they could and could not do.  They saw no reason to follow the orders of a government they hardly considered their own.

Examine:
What did Mexico’s colonization laws offer people willing to settle in northern Texas, and what did the laws require of these settlers?
 

Texas Goes to War

With tensions simmering, settlers met at two conventions in the Texas town of San Felipe in 1832 and 1833.  They chose Stephen Austin as president of the first convention.  The convention asked Mexico to reopen Texas to American immigrants and to loosen the taxes on imports.  The second convention in 1833 was more aggressive.  At that time, Texas was part of the Mexican state of Coahuila.  The convention recommended separating Texas from Coahuila and creating a new Mexican state.  The convention also created a constitution for the new state and designated Austin to travel to Mexico City to negotiate with the Mexican government.  In the fall of 1833, the negotiations stalled, and an irritated Austin sent a letter to Tejano leaders in San Antonio that suggested Texas should start peacefully organizing its own state government.  Mexican officials intercepted the letter.

After sending the letter, Austin managed to persuade President Antonio López de Santa Anna to agree to several demands, including lifting the hated immigration ban.  On January 3, 1834, as Austin was returning home, officials arrested him for treason on the basis of the intercepted letter.  The Mexican officials took Austin back to Mexico City and threw him in jail, where he languished without trial until he was released in July 1835.

Shortly after Austin was imprisoned, in April 1834, President Santa Anna abruptly denounced Mexico’s Constitution of 1824 and made himself dictator.  Even Austin, finally released from prison, now saw that negotiation with Santa Anna was impossible.  In September 1835, he concluded that war was inevitable.  He urged Texans to organize an army, which they quickly did.

The Early Battles

The Texan army faced a Mexican army with serious problems.  Continuing political instability in Mexico City had denied the army sound leadership, training, and support.  Against this handicapped force the Texan army enjoyed its first taste of victory at the military post of Gonzales, about 75 miles east of San Antonio.  There, Mexican soldiers ordered the Texans to surrender their arms.  In response, the rebels pointed a cannon at the Mexican force and held up a cloth sign painted with the taunt, “Come and Take It.” Having no orders to attack, the Mexicans retreated to San Antonio, and the Texans followed them.  The rebels, numbering only about 350, drove the much larger Mexican force out of San Antonio in December 1835.

Despite these early successes, the Texans faced tremendous difficulties of their own.  Few of the men had any military training, and no one could agree at first on who should lead them.  Finally a former governor of Tennessee and proven military leader named Sam Houston took command.  In the meantime, Santa Anna organized a force of about 6,000 troops to put down the rebellion.

The Alamo

When Santa Anna’s forces arrived at San Antonio in February 1836, they found over 180 rebels holed up in an abandoned Spanish Catholic mission called the Alamo.  Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William B.  Travis, the small force sought to delay Santa Anna and give Houston’s army more time to prepare.  From within the mission Travis dispatched a courier through Mexican lines with a plea to fellow Texans and U.S.  citizens for help:
 

“I call on you, in the name of liberty, of patriotism, and everything dear to American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. ...  Though this call may be neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible, and die like a soldier. ...  Victory or death!”

Lorenzo de Zavala
1788–1836

Lorenzo de Zavala demonstrated his fierce support of democratic principles both in his native Mexico and as a citizen of the Republic of Texas.

Born in the Yucatán peninsula, Zavala was jailed in his youth for advocating Mexican independence from Spain.  Soon after Mexico gained independence in 1821, Zavala was elected to the new national congress.  Battles for political power in early Mexico were intense.  Zavala was forced into exile but granted a huge tract of land in southeastern Texas.

Politics in Texas proved no less intense than in Mexico.  Most Mexicans in Texas were loyal to Mexico, but Zavala’s disapproval of Santa Anna’s policies led him to support Texan independence.

As a speaker of both Spanish and English, he helped draft the new republic’s constitution and design its flag.  He also served as vice president of the Republic-in-Arms until ill health forced him to resign.
 

Sam Houston
1793 –1863

Standing over six feet tall, Sam Houston seemed larger than life.

A military hero in the Creek wars, he had a brief political career in Tennessee before heading to Texas in 1832.  He soon revived his military career and led the army of the Republic of Texas to victory over Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto.  Texans elected him president of the Republic and later, when Texas joined the Union, Houston served as a U.S.  senator.

Despite being a slaveholder himself, Houston voted with the antislavery faction because he believed a compromise was necessary to save the Union.  When the Civil War broke out, Houston refused to take an oath of loyalty to the new Southern government, and he was removed from office.  In his farewell address, he declared, “Oh my fellow countrymen, the fearful conflict will fill our land with untold suffering, misfortune, and disaster.” He died in July 1863 at the height of the Civil War.

The call for reinforcements went almost unanswered.  Only 32 settlers from Gonzales, deciding on their own to join the fight, made it into the Alamo.  Running low on ammunition and gunpowder, the Texans held off Santa Anna’s besieging army for 13 days.  During the standoff the new Texas government met at Washington-on-the-Brazos and formally declared independence from Mexico.

On March 6, 1836, Santa Anna’s army stormed the Alamo.  The Texans fought off the attackers for six hours, killing or wounding about 600 before being overrun.  Although the defenders of the Alamo had been defeated, they had bought Houston’s army nearly two extra weeks to organize.
 

Goliad

Two weeks later the Mexican army overwhelmed Texan troops led by James W.  Fannin at Goliad, a town southeast of San Antonio near the Gulf Coast.  Fannin and his men surrendered, hoping the Mexicans would disarm them and expel them from Texas.  Though the Mexican field general at Goliad wrote to Santa Anna requesting clemency, Santa Anna demanded execution.  At dawn on March 27, a firing squad executed more than 300 men.  The losses at the Alamo and Goliad devastated Texans but also united them behind their new country.

TURNING POINT
The Battle of San Jacinto

With the Texan army in disarray, Sam Houston desperately needed time to recruit fresh volunteers and to train the soldiers who remained.  Rather than fight, he chose to retreat, heading east toward Louisiana.

Houston was biding his time.  Up against a larger, more disciplined army, he decided to wait for Santa Anna to make a mistake.  Such a mistake occurred on April 21, when both armies were encamped along the San Jacinto River near what is now the city of Houston.  Santa Anna no longer saw Houston’s army as a threat, so he allowed his men to sleep in the afternoon, confident that Houston would wait until the next day to launch an attack.

Eager for a fight, Houston’s soldiers convinced the officers to launch an afternoon assault.  Shielded from sight by a hill, Houston’s troops crept up on Santa Anna’s sleeping soldiers and charged.  The surprise attack threw the Mexicans into a panic.

The Battle of San Jacinto lasted less than 20 minutes, but the killing continued for hours.  Yelling “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Goliad,” Houston’s men attacked the Mexican troops with guns, knives, and clubs.  In addition to hundreds killed, over 700 members of Santa Anna’s force were taken captive.  The Texans suffered only 9 killed and 34 wounded.

Among the captured troops was Santa Anna himself.  Houston forced Santa Anna to order his army out of Texas and sign a treaty recognizing independence for the Republic of Texas.  The Mexican Congress refused to accept the treaty, but it was unwilling to launch another military campaign.  Texas had won the war.

The Republic of Texas

In September 1836 the newly independent republic called its citizens to the polls.  They elected Sam Houston as their first president and voted 3,277 to 91 in favor of annexation, or becoming part of the United States.

Given that Americans had enthusiastically supported the war, most Texans assumed the United States would want to annex the republic.  Many Northern members of Congress, however, opposed admitting Texas as a slave state.

President Andrew Jackson did not want to increase North-South tensions or risk a costly war with Mexico, which continued to claim ownership of Texas.  Jackson made no move toward annexation, though on his last day in office he did sign a resolution officially recognizing Texas as an independent nation.

Summarize:
What difficulties did the Texans face in their war against Mexico?
 

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