What Religious Change Did American Settlers Make To Obtain Texan Land?

Convention, Washington-On-Brazos, 1836

"Many a Cause, Many a Conflict: The Texas Revolution"

Introduction

Volumes sufficient to make full multiple warehouses have been written nearly the Texas Revolution of 1836 in the century and a one-half since it culminated in the seventeen minute Battle of San Jacinto. Few topics have inspired such polarized feelings. Many arraign Mexico'south loss of her northernmost regions on a conscious premeditated conspiracy of Anglo-Americans in the United States to steal Texas by whatever ways possible. This conspiracy, supported past the American government in Washington, D.C., first bore fruit in 1835-36 with the Texas Revolution and culminated ten years later with the Mexican State of war which resulted in the loss of the present-day states of New United mexican states, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California. At the other finish of the continuum are those who blame the Mexican people for the misrule of Texas and the ruthless dictatorship of Santa Anna for provoking a fully justified rebellion by Anglo-Americans and Tejanos. While such extreme positions are far too simplistic to explain the events of 1835-36, they continue to be voiced today - a century and a half later the fact.

In truth, there were a multiplicity of factors which led to the revolution.

The Expansionist History of the Us

Certainly one of the most important reasons for Mexico's loss of Texas was the historic expansionism of the United States, which had been growing by leaps and premises fifty-fifty prior to the American war of independence. British colonists had occupied and developed the Tidewater and Piedmont areas of the Atlantic Seaboard and were occupying the Appalachians when revolution broke out. Americans now, they conquered and peopled the Ohio River Valley, the Transmississippi West of Kentucky and Tennessee, and so Florida, and portions of the massive Louisiana Buy territory. Past the time Mexico gained its independence from Kingdom of spain, Americans were already on the border of the new nation - and in some cases were already over the border.

Whether it was because they wanted new virgin farmland, or they wanted to make the Us a transcontinental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or they wanted to fulfill what they saw as America's divine mission to bring Christianity and civilisation to all of North America - "they wanted" is the key phrase. Considering the United States had been expanding for its entire history, many Americans were determined to see that trend proceed - either through purchase, or negotiations, or militarily. They looked upon American acquisition of vast areas of Northern Mexico as an inevitability.

The policy of the American authorities for the sale of unoccupied land within its borders to settlers besides, unwittingly, encouraged many Americans to migrate to Mexican Texas after 1821. In the decade and a half earlier the revolution in Texas, the United States regime offered unoccupied land inside its borders to settlers at the toll of $1.25 an acre with an lxxx acre minimum tract purchase. This worked well as long every bit credit was readily available. However, a fiscal panic swept the U.s. first in 1819. This made money incredibly tight. The government sold country on a greenbacks-only footing and with coin now scarce, many Americans found the Republic of Mexico's giveaway of large tracts of state to settlers willing to becoming law-abiding citizens of the Republic an irresistable offering.

This however is a far cry from proving a premeditated conspiracy by American government officials to "steal" Texas from Mexico. While such allegations were made in both the United States and Mexico during and later on the revolution, such a conspiracy - much less that it was responsible for events in Texas - has never been proven.

Nonetheless, without a multitude of Anglo-Americans in Texas (who missed their old country, its governmental system and methods) a revolutionary state of war would not accept broken out in Texas in 1835.

The Special Circumstances of Post-Revolutionary United mexican states

Another irrefutable factor leading to Mexico'southward loss of Texas was her preoccupation with internal conflicts and disputes in the immediate backwash of her own struggle for independence. Texas drifted abroad between 1821 and 1835 while Mexican citizens were deciding how to solidify their newly-won independence and create a government that all of her citizens could live with.

Such disruptions, turbulence, and internal preoccupation were not unique to Mexico in the period from 1821 to 1836. Consider if you will the severe difficulties faced by Americans nether the Articles of Confederation from 1776 to 1788 when the Constitution was adopted and put into effect. Land battled state in terms of trade. Currency transactions were almost impossible as each state circulated its ain form of coin. Americans couldn't get rid of lingering British troops even after the peace settlement. The economy was in shambles. Rumors of intrigue and possible counterrevolutions and insurrection d'etats were rife. Citizens squabbled over what kind of government they needed and what that government should do. Imagine what might have happened if Americans, having just won their own independence, would accept had to defend an exposed and vulnerable territory on its periphery from a powerful foe under these circumstances. Mexico had to do merely that.

The Mexican people were certainly preoccupied with internal matters in the aftermath of their revolutionary war of independence confronting Espana. It was one thing to concur on independence; it was quite another to agree upon what should replace Spanish rule. Monarchists who wanted a rex battled republicans who wanted elected representative leaders. They fought over what the proper roles of the military and the Roman Cosmic church should be. Centralists fought to vest all ability in a national government, federalists to distribute it evenly between state and national governments, and confederalists wanted all power at the country and local levels.

During this menstruation of internal preoccupation in Key Mexico with citizens struggling to settle these inevitable questions, Anglo-American Texans and Tejanos learned to proceed more or less independently of Mexico City. In short, Texans - so remote from Mexico City - got used to doing pretty much what they wanted to do whatsoever mode they wanted to do information technology. When United mexican states focused on Texas once again and clamped on restraints to control what it saw as a rapidly-deteriorating situation, Texans' resentment and resistance helped lead to revolution.

Racism

One of the factors that complicated and soured the relations between Mexican citizens and the Anglo settlers they allowed to emigrate to Texas from the United States was racial prejudice. Both sides of the relationship felt racially superior to the other. When the Mexican government took action that angered Anglos or Anglo Texans got into conflict with an official of that government, American colonists were likely to reply with such repulsive terms equally "greaser" or "bean eater". When Anglos resisted orders or decisions, Mexicans were only every bit likely to employ the term "gringo".

Racial prejudice led both sides of this relationship to expect the worst of one another, to misread and misinterpret the actions and attitudes of the other race, and to respond in a haughty manner. When both sides of such a quarrel feel they are "God'south Chosen People" (ethnocentrism), troubles are sure to develop.

To overlook racism as a crusade of the Texas Revolution is simply naive - but it was only one of many causes, not the only crusade.

Cultural Differences

Perhaps the nigh vexing factor in the Anglo-Mexican relationship was the cultural conflict betwixt these two very unlike peoples. When the Democracy of Mexico authorized the empressario plan, it realized that its chances of success were not proficient - the Anglos from the United states of america would have to make tremendous cultural changes if they were to fit in permanently in their new home. That the Anglos did not brand such dramatic changes in a brusk time period under such troubled circumstances was not surprising.

Anglos, who had agreed to learn and utilise the Spanish language as function of the admittance system, groused near the use of Spanish for all official business organisation in Texas once they had settled in. Soon they began pressing for an exception for Anglos Texans whereby the "official language" could exist dumped in favor of English language.

The Anglos had too agreed to become practicing Roman Catholics as the church was the officially recognized religion for all of the Democracy of Mexico. Even if near Anglos had made the promise in good faith fully intending to convert, they found it hard later arriving in Texas. Remember that most Anglos had come from the Deep South and, if affiliated with any church, were Southern Baptists or Methodists. Relations between such fundamentalist Protestant groups and Roman Catholicism were strained to say the very least - each idea the others were infidels. Therefore, many Anglos continued to practice their Protestant faiths long after they settled in Texas. Even those who did convert found it hard to practice their adopted religion given the scarcity in Texas of Catholic churches and priests.

Another complicating cultural departure involved judicial systems. Mexicans operated under the Napoleanic Code while Anglos from the United States had always functioned under a judicial system based upon English common police. The former presumed the guilt of an individual charged with an criminal offence until they could prove their innocence. The latter presumed an private innocent until proven guilty by the regime. Needless to say, biting disputes involving allegations of disloyalty and tyranny arose often in judicial proceedings.

The Hispanic culture also accustomed a very agile office by the military, far more than agile than anything Anglos had ever seen or were willing to accept. The war machine in Mexican Texas, for instance, was used on occasion to collect both taxes and the tithe to the church building. This was foreign to Anglos from the Usa. Think that the American revolution of independence had begun when British military forces attempted to collect and forcefulness the payment of tariff duties and taxes.

Perchance no other factor surpassed these cultural conflicts in straining relations 24-hour interval in and day out between these ii very different peoples which would culminate in the revolution.

Governmental Differences

The most immediate cause of the Texas Revolution was the refusal of many Texas, both Anglo and Mexican, to accept the governmental changes mandated by "Siete Leyes" which placed near total ability in the hands of the Mexican national government and Santa Anna.

About of the Anglos who moved to Texas came from the Deep S. During the 1820s and 1830s, this region was swept by Jacksonian Republic - a governmental philosophy that held that all government was bad, the best authorities was the least government, government grew more tyrannical the fewer people held power, the executive branch was the most unsafe and the 1 to exist given the least power, etc. Perhaps nearly importantly, Jacksonian Democrats and the vast majority of Anglos who emigrated to Mexican Texas felt that governmental power should be vested primarily in local and land governments which, being closer to the people, were more representative and more easily controlled.

Many Mexicans felt exactly the same way. Remember that 1 of the internal disputes in post-revolutionary Mexico involved the all-time mode to distribute power between local, state, and national levels of regime. Centralists, who wished to allot the overwhelming majority of ability to the primal/national government in Mexico City, were fought molar and nail past those all beyond United mexican states who felt this would amount to an uncontrollable and tyrannical dictatorship.

Until 1835 these groups fought 1 another for control. In October, 1835 the centralists and Santa Anna won out with the enactment of "Siete Leyes". This move: (one) did abroad with the federalist Constitution of 1824, (2) abolished all country legislatures including that of Coahuila y Tejas, and (3) replaced states with "departments" headed upwards by governors and appointed councils selected past and serving at the pleasure of Santa Anna.

The reaction in many sections of Mexico, including Texas, was military machine resistance to the cosmos of what many citizens saw as an all-powerful regime in the easily of a tyrannical Santa Anna. In Texas, war was originally waged in an attempt to restore the Constitution of 1824 and federalism. Merely later would it become a state of war of independence.

Slavery

When Anglo settlers were originally admitted to Mexican Texas, they were permitted to bring their black slaves from the Deep South with them. Indeed, had Mexican Texas been closed to slavery from the beginning, far fewer Southerners would have emigrated either because they could not bring their expensive property and manpower source with them or considering of their political/racial views.

Over the years, Mexico took repeated steps to limit or abolish slavery in Texas. Each step prompted a vociferous reaction from Anglos followed by a Mexican retreat in which the threatening alter was repealed. Given the corporeality of capital many Anglos had invested in black slaves, United mexican states's mercurial deportment with respect to slavery were at the very to the lowest degree threatening. There were those by 1836 who felt an independent Republic of Texas in which slavery was firmly and for all time recognized and respected was preferable to Mexico with an uncertain future for slavery. Two and one half decades later Texans still felt and then strongly nearly black slavery and fastened to it for both economical and social reasons that they would secede from the United States and wage a ceremonious war rather than run into the establishment imperiled.

The Concrete Isolation of Texas

The Texas Revolution was also the production of the physical isolation of Texas from both the American and Mexican governments. The state of affairs in Texas, in which Anglo colonists became increasingly estranged from their host nation with the passage of time, developed in part because Mexico City was so far away. Even without its post-revolutionary struggles and inner focus, United mexican states (like Spain before information technology) would have had tremendous difficulty trying to station plenty troops and officials so far from Mexico Urban center to control the situation. Similarly, the Us (had information technology had the desire to do so) would accept found in every bit impossible to control Anglo-Americans who had moved to Texas or Southerners who were preparing to motion. Anglo-Texans got used to doing whatever they wanted in part because neither government could effectively control the isolated region.