Texas Republic and Annexation

Texas Republic and Annexation. The leaders of the Republic of Texas (1836–1845) steered it through a crisis‐filled decade before finally achieving their original goal of annexation to the United States. This sprawling nation of limited resources and boundless ambitions was born from rebellion against Mexico. The issues dividing Mexico and Texas, a department of the state of Coahuila, centered on Texas's resistance to firmer control by the central government, in contrast to the weak governance system established by the Constitution of 1824. Residents of Texas—mostly but not exclusively Anglo‐Americans—took up arms against the Mexican government in October 1835, fought for five months for the official goal of restoring the older federalist system, and then in March 1836 declared independence. The new nation's prospects appeared bleak as Mexico achieved a series of military successes beginning with the capture of the Alamo in San Antonio and the massacre of its defenders, on 6 March. The outlook brightened on 21 April, however, when Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Independent nationhood posed many problems for Texas. War and diplomacy were foremost because these matters placed heavy demands on the fledgling government's statesmanship and financial resources. Mexico never recognized Texas as independent and, indeed, viewed it as menacing. Disputes over the border proved a further irritant, worsened by Texas's ahistorical claim to the Rio Grande. In practice, Texas never governed any of the territory west or south of the Nueces River. Still, the boundary issue added to the tension, and relations between Mexico and Texas ran the gamut from full‐scale war to skirmishes, incursions, and belligerent exchanges. In reality, neither side had the resources to make good on the bluster.

Texas did win recognition from many important nations, led by the United States (March 1837), France (September 1839), and Great Britain (November 1840). European relations were significant as a tool of manipulations skillfully managed by Sam Houston, who served as president in 1836–1838 and again in 1841–1844. Between Houston's two terms, the more decidedly nationalistic and even imperialistic Mirabeau B. Lamar held the presidency. Lamar spurned Houston's diplomatic prudence, military restraint, and fiscal conservatism; his principal legacy was to increase Texas's debt and to found Austin, the future state capital, named for the pioneer settler Stephen F. Austin, in 1834. Lamar's expansionist designs on Santa Fe, New Mexico, ended in the embarrassing surrender of Texas forces on the plains southwest of Santa Fe in 1841. His covert support for rebellious factions in the Yucatan and Mexico's northeastern border states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas further exacerbated tensions. Responding to these aggressive moves, Mexico dispatched two expeditions that reached San Antonio in 1842, during Sam Houston's second term. Houston in turn authorized volunteers to move to the Rio Grande. These volunteers sacked one town (Laredo) and were imprisoned after a failed assault against another (Mier). All these expeditions and counter‐expeditions served primarily to stimulate mutual bitterness and a desire for revenge.

The Texas Republic also proved inept in its relations with Indians, adding to its insecurity. To the east, Lamar made war on and removed those Indians most amenable to a peaceful and sedentary life, Houston's beloved Cherokees. On the southwestern frontier, neither leader coped adequately with the intractable Comanches, although Houston's policy of negotiation and trade proved more successful than Lamar's focus on military force, retaliation, and destruction.

The greatest success of the Republic of Texas was in attracting emigrants: the population grew from about 40,000 in 1836 to 150,000 in 1845. Most of these newcomers were lured from the United States by liberal land policies; many others—in fact the fastest growing segment—came involuntarily as slaves. The commitment to slavery by the government and citizens of Texas presented the greatest obstacle to their goal of annexation, which the Free‐Soil party and other northern antislavery forces vigorously opposed. This opposition was overcome by the expansionist fever manifested in the election of 1844 in the United States, with President Houston shrewdly exploiting the strong Anglophobia of Texans who feared a British protectorate. In 1845, the people of Texas voted overwhelmingly in favor of annexation. The U.S. Congress concurred, and Texas entered the Union as the twenty‐eighth state, ending its brief existence as an independent nation. These developments, in turn, laid the groundwork for the Mexican War.
See also Alamo, Battle of the; Antebellum Era; Cotton Industry; Expansionism; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Manifest Destiny; Slavery: Development and Expansion of; Tyler, John.

Bibliography

William C. Binkley , The Texas Revolution, 1952.
David M. Pletcher , The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War, 1973.
Randolph B. Campbell , Sam Houston and the American Southwest, 1993.
John Hoyt Williams , Sam Houston, 1993.
Rupert N. Richardson et al. , Texas: The Lone Star State, 7th ed., 1997.

Paul D. Lack