Texas Revolution

The Texas Revolution was a rebellion from October 1835 to April 1836 by settlers in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas against the centralist government of Mexico. The rebels included both Anglo-American immigrants, known as Texians, and Mexican-born Tejanos. After the defeats at the Alamo and Goliad, their victory at San Jacinto led to the creation of the Republic of Texas, which the United States annexed in 1845.

After the Mexican War of Independence, Texas was joined with Coahuila into a single state under the federal Constitution of 1824. To populate the sparsely settled frontier, the Mexican government encouraged immigration, and settlers from the southern United States, many of them slaveholders, soon far outnumbered the Tejanos; by 1834 there were an estimated 30,000 Anglos against 7,800 Mexican-born residents. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and in 1830 banned further immigration from the United States, but the laws were widely evaded.

In 1834 and 1835 Antonio López de Santa Anna turned against the federal system, overturning the 1824 constitution and dissolving state legislatures. Federalists elsewhere in Mexico rose in revolt, and after crushing a rising in Zacatecas, Santa Anna's troops sacked the city. In Texas, opinion was divided on whether to fight for the restoration of the 1824 constitution or for full independence.

Fighting began on 2 October 1835 at Gonzales, when settlers refused to return a cannon to Mexican troops and drove off a detachment sent to collect it. Volunteers gathered, and after a siege of San Antonio de Béxar the Mexican commander, Martín Perfecto de Cos, surrendered in December and withdrew south. With no organised Mexican garrison left, many Texians believed the war was won and went home, while the provisional government became paralysed by quarrels.

Santa Anna led an army into Texas in February 1836. From 23 February his troops besieged the old Alamo mission in Béxar, and on 6 March they stormed it. Almost all of the defenders, estimated at between 182 and 257 men, were killed, and a few who surrendered were executed on Santa Anna's orders. On 2 March, meanwhile, a convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos had declared independence; its constitution, adopted on 17 March, explicitly legalised slavery.

Along the coast, General José de Urrea defeated the Texian forces in his path. James Fannin's men surrendered near Coleto Creek on 20 March, and on 27 March about 342 of the prisoners were marched out of the presidio at Goliad and shot. Earlier, the Mexican Congress had passed the Tornel Decree, declaring that foreigners fighting against Mexican troops would be treated as pirates.

Sam Houston, the new commander, retreated east as frightened civilians fled ahead of the Mexican advance. On the afternoon of 21 April 1836 his roughly 900 men surprised Santa Anna's camp beside the San Jacinto River. The fighting lasted only minutes, but the killing of fleeing soldiers went on for hours; about 650 Mexican soldiers died and some 300 were captured, against eleven Texians killed. Santa Anna was taken prisoner and ordered his remaining troops to withdraw beyond the Rio Grande, and he was made to sign the Treaty of Velasco recognising Texan independence.

Mexico refused to recognise the Republic of Texas, and sporadic clashes continued into the 1840s. When the United States annexed Texas in 1845, the move brought on the Mexican–American War. Although slavery is not named in the declaration of independence, the right to hold enslaved people mattered greatly to many settlers, and by late 1835 nearly 5,000 enslaved people were held in Texas.

Our 1815 map shows Texas as part of New Spain, and our 1878 map shows it as a state of the United States, following annexation and the war with Mexico.