Hippocampus United States History: The Annexation of Texas

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When Mexico gained its independence from Spain, Texas was a sparsely settled frontier province bordering the United States. Texas, explored by the Spanish as early as the 1500s, was largely neglected in the centuries that followed. Only a few thousand Mexicans—known as Tejanos—lived in the province by the early 1820s, most of them clustered around the mission at San Antonio. The Mexican government encouraged Americans to emigrate to Texas in an effort to create a military buffer between marauding Indians and the more southern provinces. The Americans were required to give up their citizenship, convert to Roman Catholicism, and become Mexican citizens. In return, they were granted huge tracts of land in the region bordering Louisiana, along the Sabine, Colorado, and Brazos Rivers.

The first American empresario was Moses Austin, a former New Englander who had traded with the Spanish for decades. Austin was granted 18,000 square miles, with the understanding that he would settle 300 American families on his lands. His son, Stephen F. Austin, had the grant confirmed by Mexican authorities after his father’s death, and by the mid-1830s there were about 30,000 Americans ranching and growing cotton with the aid of several thousand black slaves. Despite the fact that the Mexican government had abolished slavery, Americans continued to emigrate with their “lifetime indentured servants.” The Americans in Texas greatly outnumbered the native Mexicans, and they sought full statehood for the province in order to gain home rule.

The American-born Texans supported Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna for the presidency of Mexico in 1833, because they believed he would support statehood. But after his election, Santa Anna proclaimed a unified central government that eliminated states’ rights. The Texans, with some Tejano allies, revolted against Santa Anna’s dictatorship. The revolutionaries declared their independence on March 2, 1836, and adopted a constitution legalizing slavery. David G. Burnet, a native of New Jersey who had lived with the Comanches for two years, was chosen president of the new republic. Sam Houston, a former Tennessee congressman and governor who fought under Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, was selected as Commander-in-Chief of the army.

The Mexican government responded swiftly to put down the Texas rebellion. Santa Anna raised a force of about 6,000 troops, and marched north to besiege the nearly 200 rebels under the command of Colonel William B. Travis at the Alamo, the abandoned mission at San Antonio. The final assault was made on March 6, and the entire garrison was annihilated, including the wounded. Among the dead were frontier legends Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. A few weeks later at Goliad, Santa Anna ordered the slaughter of 300 Texas rebels after they surrendered.

The Texas Revolution struck a sympathetic chord in America. Hundreds of southwestern adventurers responded to the romanticized heroism of the Alamo and promises of bounty lands. Ignoring American neutrality laws, they rushed to join the Texas army. With fewer than 900 men—about half the size of Santa Anna’s force—General Houston surprised the Mexicans at the San Jacinto River, near the site of the city that bears his name. “Remember the Alamo!” and “Goliad!” were the rallying cries of the Texans as they overwhelmed the veteran Mexican army.

Santa Anna was captured after the Battle of San Jacinto and forced to sign a treaty recognizing Texas as an independent republic, with the Rio Grande River as its southwestern boundary. Upon his return to Mexico City, Santa Anna repudiated the peace treaty. The Mexican Congress likewise refused to acknowledge the independence of Texas, and continued to claim the Nueces River as the boundary of its “rebellious province.” Mexico warned of war should the United States attempt to annex Texas.

Following the revolution, Sam Houston was elected president of Texas, and diplomatic envoys were sent to Washington seeking admission to the Union. President Andrew Jackson, concerned that the annexation of Texas might mean war with Mexico and knowing it would upset the sectional balance between free and slave states, merely extended diplomatic recognition to the new republic on March 3, 1837. His immediate successor in the White House, Martin Van Buren, also managed to sidestep the question of annexation.

President Van Buren was defeated for re-election by William Henry Harrison in the famous “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” campaign of 1840. Tyler was a former Democratic senator from Virginia who resigned his seat rather than vote to expunge a resolution of censure directed against Jackson. This made him an attractive running-mate for Harrison, but it did not make him a Whig in principle. Harrison became the first president to die in office (only a month after his inauguration) and President Tyler soon broke with the Whigs over two key issues—the constitutionality of a national bank and the annexation of Texas.

Tyler selected South Carolinian John C. Calhoun as secretary of state, and instructed him to negotiate a treaty of annexation with the Texas envoys in Washington. Expansionists feared that an independent Texas would blunt America’s march into the southwest. Calhoun subsequently submitted a treaty to the Senate, but also made public his correspondence with the British minister, Richard Pakenham. In his letter, Calhoun chastised British officials for pressuring the Texans to abolish slavery in return for Mexican recognition of their independence. The Republic of Texas had established close diplomatic ties with several European nations, including Britain and France, in an effort to protect itself from Mexico. After defending slavery as a benign institution, Calhoun claimed that the preservation of the Union required the annexation of Texas. By linking the expansion of slavery with the admission of Texas, Calhoun doomed the annexation treaty.

The annexation of Texas and the Oregon boundary dispute were major issues during the election of 1844. While President Tyler was plotting to annex Texas, the leading contenders for the presidential nominations of the Democratic and Whig Parties did their best to defuse the explosive controversy. Former president Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay published letters expressing their opposition to the immediate annexation of Texas. Their anti-expansionist views cost Van Buren the Democratic nomination, and Clay the presidency.

Manifest Destiny was so strong among northwestern and southern Democrats, that the party’s national convention nominated James Knox Polk of Tennessee for president. “Young Hickory” ran on a platform calling for the “re-annexation of Texas” and the “re-occupation of Oregon.” Clay received the Whig nomination by acclamation, but westerners remembered his Texas letter and some northeasterners refused to support a slaveholder. James G. Birney, the candidate of the Liberty Party, polled enough Whig support in New York to swing that state’s electoral vote to Polk, who was elected president.

President Tyler viewed the Democratic victory as a mandate to annex Texas. Recognizing the difficulty of securing the two-thirds Senate vote necessary to ratify a treaty, Tyler hit upon an ingenious ploy. He sought a joint resolution of annexation from Congress that required a simple majority in each house. This was accomplished shortly before Tyler left office. After a state convention agreed to annexation on the Fourth of July, Texas was formally admitted to the Union in December 1845. President Polk, meanwhile, ordered General Zachary Taylor and about half of the United States army—some 3,500 men—to take up a defensive position on the Nueces River.