3/10/2021 Print - Texas Revolution - Reference Articles

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Texas Revolution
Reference Articles
Throughout the 1820s, the Mexican government had welcomed U.S. settlers to its
province of Texas and encouraged farmers and ranchers to populate the region. By the
early 1830s, however, so many Americans had become established in the region (some
estimates as high as 25,000) that the Mexican government began to pass laws to limit
U.S. immigration and con ne the spread of African American slavery. O cials were
also alarmed at the Americans' unwillingness to assimilate into Mexican society. Many of the Americans who had
settled in Texas had done so in the hope that the region would one day become a part of the United States.

Santa Anna Fights to Retain Texas

Matters came to a crisis in early 1835, when General Antonio López de Santa Anna came to power in Mexico and
quickly showed himself a more autocratic ruler than his predecessors. As Santa Anna moved to crush liberalism
in northern Mexico, the Americans in Texas initiated a rebellion against Mexican control in the summer of 1835.
In November that year, a provisional government called for Texas to be made a state within Mexico in a federal
arrangement. That government collapsed within a few months, riven with its own internal divisions, and was
replaced by another provisional government that declared Texas an independent nation and called for the
creation of an army.

Texas Independence Granted

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Santa Anna quickly deployed his forces to the rebellious region and dealt the Texans several devastating defeats,
including the massacre at the Alamo in March 1836, which immediately became a part of American folklore after
all 187 Texans inside the fortress were killed (including renowned frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie).
However, the Texas Army, under the command of General Sam Houston, retaliated and captured Santa Anna
himself the following month at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21. Santa Anna was forced to surrender all
Mexican forces in the region and accept Texas' independence.

Annexation Follows

In October that same year, Houston was proclaimed the rst president of the Republic of Texas. Many Texans
immediately began to press for the republic's annexation by the United States because of their ties to the nation
and the ever-present threat that Mexico would attempt to seize the region again. Increased sectional tension
within the United States and the status of Texas as a potential slave state made annexation a major issue in U.S.
politics in the 1840s. On December 29, 1845, however, the Republic of Texas o cially joined the Union as the
28th state. The annexation of Texas, and a resulting border dispute, prompted the United States to declare war on
Mexico the following spring. Mexico's defeat in the Mexican-American War secured Texas' induction into the
United States.

ABC-CLIO

Further Reading

Barr, Alwyn. Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528–1995. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1996; Fehrenbach, T. R. Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans. New York, Macmillan, 1968; Fehrenbach,
T. R. Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000; New Handbook of Texas, 1996;
Reichstein, Andreas V. Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1989.

 
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