Texas Identity the Texas Revolution:

Texas Identity

The Texas Revolution: Remember the Alamo, Remember Santa Anna

Remember the Alamo!" Even people who have never visited Texas have uttered this phrase as a testimony to remembrance -- remembrance of determination, grit, and the quintessential 'Americanness' of those handful of brave men who died during the siege of the Alamo. During the 1950s, little boys all over the nation wore Davy Crockett 'coon caps' mimicking the popular Disney movie of the era that depicted the life of the Alamo hero. Why has Texas captured the popular imagination, despite -- or is it because -- of its curious relationship with America's legacy of slavery and American prejudice against Latino-Americans? And how can Texas be the most American of all states because of its independent attitude, yet also claim a kind of nationhood status apart from the rest of America? Texas has the unique status of being the only state that ever existed, albeit for only a brief period of nine years, as an independent nation recognized by foreign nations, although not by Mexico. It retains some of this national pride even today -- it is the only state to have fought its own war of independence.

Prior to 1824 Texas was a Spanish possession. When Mexico won its independence from Spain, therefore, Texas became part of Mexico. Americans began to settle in Texas beginning in 1821 when Spanish authorities allowed Americans to acquire land in the sparsely settled region. The territories were offered to the largely Protestant American, white settlers with few restrictions and even the enforcement of those restrictions and Mexican laws were lax. This initial American westward migration was not unwelcome as Mexico needed people to manage and farm the under-populated northern state. Mexico's only conditions were that the settlers take an oath of allegiance to Mexico and convert to Catholicism, the state religion. "Thousands of Americans took up the offer and moved, often with slaves, to the Mexican province of Texas" (Lee 2008).

However, when Mexico attempted to exercise more control over these territories, the settler's passions began inflamed. Mexico began to limit the numbers of new settlements, and place limits upon territorial acquisitions, which whites saw as a violation of their freedom. Even worse in the view of the settlers, "when Mexico adopted a new centralist constitution" it "abolished slavery, an institution upon which many Texas settlers depended" thus support for secession from Mexico mounted amongst whites. "Despite U.S. neutrality laws, the movement received considerable support from American citizens in the form of money, arms, and volunteers" ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008). America itself was torn between slave states and free states, and pro-slavery Southerners immediately rallied to Texas' aid in the name of what they saw as freedom -- the freedom to own slaves. The fact that Mexico was viewed as being governed by a dictator, Santa Anna, only sharpened America's sympathies to the Texan side.

The parallels between America's still freshly-won independence from the 'tyranny' King George III of Great Britain seemed palpable. And the non-white status of Mexico also intensified the support for Texan independence. America had been forged by wresting control of territories from non-white native peoples, and America was still, in the name of Manifest Destiny, eking out new homesteads in the territories and states out of the West -- often fighting Indians in the process. The acquisition of land out West had become an important source of economic, political, and social power for once-disenfranchised Americans, and even non-Texan frontiersmen and pioneers identified with the Texan's struggles.

The first shots of what would become known the Texas Revolution were heard in Goliad on October 9, 1835 "when local colonists captured the fort and town. On December 20, 1835 the first Declaration of Texas Independence was signed in Goliad and the first flag of Texas Independence was hoisted. By December the small Texas army had captured the important crossroads town of San Antonio de Bexar and seized the garrison known as the Alamo. Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna...recaptured the town on March 6, 1836, after a thirteen-day siege; the Mexican army suffered an estimated 600 casualties. Of the official list of 189 Texan defenders, all were killed ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008). The fact that such a small number of Texan patriots were able to withstand the onslaught of so many Mexicans seemed like a potent dramatization of a conflict between native vs. white, where whites 'proved' their superiority, and slave vs. free, where whites fighting to defend 'their' territories against a 'dictatorial' power.

Eventually, despite the loss of the Alamo, the Texans prevailed and the Mexican President Santa Anna was taken captive and forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco in 1836, which gave Texas its independence and designated the Rio Grande River as the border between the new Republic of Texas and Mexico. As Santa Anna was a prisoner of the Texans at the time the Mexican Congress refused to ratify the treaty, as Santa Anna had been compelled to sign the treaty illegally, under duress. The Mexican Congress also noted that the traditional Texas boundary had always been further north on parallel with the Nueces River ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008).

France and England hoped that the newly-declared Republic of Texas would remain independent, as a kind of balance of power to the United States in the region, which was then rapidly expanding under the principles of Manifest Destiny. Both countries quickly recognized the new nation. Americans all over the nation also cheered, for a different reason. The spirit of fierce, frontier independence that was embodied by the American Revolution, but had now been quashed in the more civilized east seemed to be revitalized in the West, and the Texas Revolution seemed to parallel America's war for independence of long ago ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008). However, independence only further inflamed tensions within the new republic between the Caucasian, slave, Mexican and native populations, as now both the border of Texas as well as its independence was in doubt. Mexico only recognized the Republic of Texas in 1845, convinced by the British government that it was the only way to forestall Texan incorporation into the United States.

Unsurprisingly, Mexico viewed the annexation of the breakaway state as a threat. As soon as independence was declared, the Republic of Texas and Mexico engaged "in border fights and many people in the United States openly sympathized with the U.S.-born Texans in this conflict. As a result of the savage frontier fighting, the American public developed a very negative stereotype against the Mexican people and government. Partly due to the continued hostilities with Mexico, Texas decided to join with the United States, and on July 4, 1845, the annexation gained approval from the U.S. Congress" (Lee 2008).