 Hello, this is Dr. Gene Price. Today in this lecture we're going to look at Texas and I call this the wedge to the West because for Western history the independence movement in Texas and the annexation of Texas really opened up the doors for a lot of land that the United States acquired by 1848, but what we're going to look at today is about 1820 to about 1836 actually we're going to look at 1845, but let's focus on these dates in particular. In this lecture we want to look and understand the conditions that influence settlement in Texas to recognize the steps leading to the Texas Revolution and identify the concerns for and against the annexation of Texas. When we look at the revolution and the revolutionary timeline a lot of revolutions in at least the modern period and although 1776 hasn't seen that modern but it all dates from the American revolutions. This is the first time in modern history that a nation revolted against her mother country colonies revolted against their mother country and it led and inspired other revolutions which all trace their origins to the ideology of the American revolution and Texas's revolution in 1835 was no exception. Now we have to look at the Mexican independence movement first. Napoleon was in control of Spain by 1808, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte's brother was on the Spanish throne for a few years and in Mexico itself the viceroy José de Itoquerri was in control of what is now Mexico. In 1810 in September the 16th Father Miguel Hidalgo who this is his painting on the right issued the Grito de Dolores. This was a cry for independence and this is why we celebrate the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month on September the 15th because at this time many Latin American countries began calling for independence from Spain. Revolutionary activities continued now Hidalgo himself was executed but other revolutionaries continued the the the cause for the next several years including one in 1812 that happened in Texas happened out of Nacodotus and it moved all the way today what's Goliath Texas, La Bahia, the Gutierrez Magui expedition of 1812. All of these expeditions were put down but the revolutionary activity continued. In 1819 the United States bought Florida. Now what this meant was that Florida and this is the area with stripes of course so we recognize this Florida but it went all the way into what's today New Orleans and over by Louisiana. This is the area ceded by Spain to the United States. Now Andrew Jackson had invaded Florida he had killed a couple of British officers and so this was the precedent for a possible world war but the American Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was able to meet with Onis the Spanish Foreign Minister and negotiate a treaty and this treaty gave the United States Florida in exchange for money and then it set this boundary line that you see here that runs from the Sabine River up to the Red River up to the Arkansas River and then up to the 42nd parallel and this treaty line the Intercontinental Transcontinental or Adam's Onis Tree as it's sometimes called those three terms kind of made some Americans happy because they believed we shouldn't have stopped at the Sabine that Americans should have gotten more territory in what is today Texas but in 1819 there was also the first United States economic panic of depression. This was due to land speculation as a result of the Louisiana purchase now in this map they call the Missouri Territory that's what it was called but as more Americans wanted to move in here and had to buy land and we'll talk about this a little bit later land speculation developed and a lot of people went bankrupt and a lot of banks went bankrupt and it affected the second bank of the United States and had serious repercussions for the United States economy in 1819. A few years before that there was a development of the cotton gin this was in 1794 when the cotton gin this little box although very simple was a way of cleaning cotton and this was very important because cotton as it grew in the southern gulf area was not easily cleaned and so the cotton gin made that type of cotton much more profitable and if we look at how it affected the cotton market and the cotton economy this map looks at slavery and the expanse of cotton by 1820 as a result of the cotton gin and the expansion of cotton across the American south because the type of cotton that could grow in states from Louisiana to Georgia became more profitable by 1860 plantations slavery and cotton production had changed dramatically on the eve of the civil war so cotton was strategically important to the United States economy it became the dominant cash crop by 1860 it was actually one half of the gross national product of the United States but cotton production caused soil depletion and so you needed more and more land because some land had to lie fallow while it was replenishing itself in nutrients so this meant that cotton planners needed more and more land you also see that the price of slaves increased by 1808 with the end of the Atlantic slave trade so the slave labor system that was spreading across the south meant that only the wealthy really had access to slave labor slaves were very expensive and while the population is increases this just means that those with a lot of wealth are getting wealthier as a result of the panic of 1819 Spain was allowing foreigners to settle in the northwest province this is important because Spain couldn't get their own citizens to settle north of Mexico so Moses Austin a Missouri investor who had lost a lot of money during the panic of 1819 saw this as an opportunity he went down to San Antonio to the Spanish government there and agreed that he would bring in 300 settlers but he died the next year and so the contract passed to his son at that same time Mexico gained its independence from Spain when the king returned in Spain he was a tyrant and he made a lot of people upset the Spanish parliament passed a constitution in Mexico this led to further independence the independence movement actually began with the plan of Iguala and this gentleman here on the right Augustine Vita became the president and then he changed his name to emperor Augustine the first he was later on deposed but Mexico the new united states of Mexico adopted a new constitution in 1824 now where does that leave the son of moses austin steven f austin well he was getting ready to bring his first settlers in and because this grant that they had received the impresario grant was not recognized by the new mexican government this was something his dad had negotiated with the spanish government steven f austin went to mexico to help write a new colonization law and this imperial colonization law of 1823 uh granted austin the colony so he was able to uh move forward with his plans of bringing people in to what is now texas why would americans take advantage of steven f austin's land offer well let's look at the difference between mexican land policy and the united states land policy of about 1821 2223 in the united states you had to buy at least 80 acres previously it had been 160 acres of land and you had to buy it for a dollar 25 an acre which was down from two dollars an acre this is a lot but in those days people just didn't have a lot of money and you had to pay that money up front but in mexico if you were the head of a household you could get at least a league of land that was 177 acres and if you were going to uh raise cattle and you were going to farm which a lot of americans were going to do you get a seto of land that was 4 000 acres and people like steven of austin and other impresarios people who were recruiting families could get up to 66 almost 67 000 acres of land for their efforts so mexico was giving away a lot of land for next to nothing well actually it was free if you would come in and make improvements uh impresarios hope to make money by surveying the land and helping the immigrants come into texas steven of austin however never made any money at all but there were a lot of people that took advantage of this land policy because it was a lot of land for almost no investment as opposed to the united states land so it was a very attractive deal and a lot of people who had lost money in 1819 saw this as a great opportunity in 1824 as i mentioned earlier mexico wrote its constitution and it was largely based upon the american constitution and it established a national colonization law in 1824 now this did restrict some foreign settlement but in 1825 the state of coia e tejas established a colonization law i said people could come in and settle uh they had to become catholic in exchange however they had to pay no taxes for seven years that was a great opportunity and so this just meant more people were eager to move into texas and so this impresario system that sprang up that steven of austin helped create a granted almost 30 grants to people from all over now the most successful of those were steven of austin martin de león and green de witt and you can see that those were along the coast uh in the region what we would today call san felipe was the headquarters in brazoria along the brazos river for steven of austin and he got three different adversarial contracts also uh martin de leon a little bit further south around where victoria is today and green de witt just a little bit north which was in gonzalez that was where the capital of that was located and so they brought in about nine thousand settlers now this however did cause some problems there was a uprising in necadoches called the fredonian rebellion steven of austin and some of the older settlers who saw this as a threat to what they had gotten from mexico and didn't want to challenge mexico helped put down this rebellion but then after mire itran a general who came out to explore the settlements and look at the boundary expedition of the transcontinental treaty line had said there's a lot of americans who are moving in here and they're not adopting uh the spanish language or not adopting the catholic religion and so the law of april 6 of 1830 puts some restrictions this caused a lot of outrage at fort anaheim just across trinity bay from houston there were some problems that arose uh and it led to some conventions and consultations and people were upset about what was going on with mexico the mexican government eventually tried to appease the settlers and lifted a lot of the restrictions of the law of april 6 of 1830 so by 1835 most people were pretty pleased with their mexican citizenship pleased with the relations in mexico but battle lines had been drawn in june of 1835 the william barrett travis takes control of fort anaheim uh mexican general cost arrives in capata bay near victoria and he moves to san antonio he orders the seizure of a canon that had been loaned to the town of gonzalez this caused a lot of upset and a flag was made to come and take it flag the mexican general who was sent the mexican commander who was sent to reclaim the canon was told to also avoid problems and so he was more than willing to uh when he saw that people were upset about this to leave the canon alone but he was fired upon he and his troopers were fired upon by the settlers who were itching for a fight americans in texas calling themselves texians had divided pretty much into a peace and a war party now those weren't hard and fast lines and sometimes people jumped from people who wanted peace with mexico wanted to remain mexican citizens and those who were calling for war it just depended on the activities following the battle of gonzalez some of the texians the americans living in texas moved on to behar this is the siege of behar siege of bear the siege of san antonio and so from october to december of 1835 the late siege and eventually captured san antonio from the mexicans at the same time a lot of texians who had settled there began moving east from their settlements fearing that general san anna was coming north from mexico and coming to san antonio and they didn't want to be caught in the gunfire i called the battle for the alamo the battle that shouldn't have been san houston had ordered the evacuation of san antonio after the siege and capture of san antonio he had sent david buoy in to evaluate and evacuate and to destroy the alamo but william barrett travis arrived and he said that they should stay buoy got very ill travis took command and then later on davie crocket and others arrived at the alamo and thought they could hold it when san anna arrived he came much earlier than they anticipated they didn't have time to prepare and he laid siege to the alamo and grounds had they evacuated as they were told to you wouldn't have had the battle for the alamo lives would have been saved but maybe things would have turned out much differently in goliad james fannon came in and took the fort at labahia and this also led mexicans to take notice of these texians taking control of their force the texian government declared independence on march the 2nd 1836 in town called independence texas just outside of brenum although people in the alamo were sometimes credited with fighting for texas independence they never knew that texans had declared independence when the battle of the alamo took place on march the 6th 1836 and lasted just a few minutes the people defending the alamo were executed the survivors killed and the only people that were left alive were the women children and slaves who were in hiding they were allowed to leave and they took news of the defeat at the alamo to houston which was he received about march 11th fannon was marched upon in goliad and he surrendered he was caught unawares and surrendered 324 men were executed there a few survived if you escaped and so the battle cries remember the alamo remember goliad were in the minds of many who were fighting in the texas revolution the battles although probably unnecessary and could have been avoided but they did give houston time to train his troops they trained near himstead at gross's plantation and then they moved towards harrisburg which is now today in houston along buffalo bio near harris elementary school in southeast houston santa anna moved there he had heard the texan government was hiding at harrisburg and so he was going to go capture them he didn't find them there so he camped a little bit further north along the san jasino river he was hoping to track down the mexican government sam houston learned of the camps location on april the 18th and a few days later the battle of san jasinto took place houston attacked san anna's outpost the mexicans were caught unaware they were routed houston had only about 900 men san anna had 1500 but the end of the battle tells you something 630 mexican soldiers killed 208 wounded and 730 were taken prisoner san anna went into hiding but what had happened was that many of these mexican soldiers were killed trying to surrender now if you go to the battle site now you can see why they were captured because they were surrounded by water on three sides it was a poor place to set up camp and it proved to be they're undoing and the texians still with the words remember the deaths at the alamo remember the deaths of goliads on their lips killed a lot of the soldiers who surrendered although many of the officers tried to stop the executions and the killings of the mexican troops in the treaty of velasco signed almost a month later this was the agreement from san anna and texan governor david bernett it happened near freeport on the brazos river the mexican government however rejected this treaty because san anna the president of mexico was a prisoner of war and no government recognizes that as a person freely signing an agreement and so they never respected the independence of texas they never acknowledged the independence of texas until right before annexation in 1845 this led to a lot of problems so when the republic of texas was started the capital was established at houston just along buffalo bayou where huaido bayou runs into it at what is called allen's landing and a question occurred many of the texians wanted to be annexed to the united states but the issue of slavery texas had slaves it was a slave state and the slave issue was very controversial in the united states in the 1830s and there was also the question of a possibility of war with mexico the united states really couldn't annex a part of mexico without mexico's permission or this would threaten war with mexico and the united states didn't want to deal with the issue of slavery and it didn't want to deal with the possibility of war with mexico so they kept putting off annexation texas remained an independent republic and its presidents really there were only three presidents sam houston who served twice anson jones and maribo b lamar and houston during his term they only served two year terms each so it wasn't a lot of time presided over and tried to deal with the annexation issue maribo b lamar looked to make texas a western republic he moved the capital from houston to austin he sent out several expeditions to try to take the santa fe trail and santa fe territory uh from mexico and incorporated into the texas sphere he established a new impresario system to try to recruit more settlers to texas uh and when sam houston came in a couple of years later he faced a lot of debt he had to pay for things out of his own pocket because maribo lamar had racked up so much debt and houston also had to deal with a couple of invasions from mexico again mexico did not respect the independence of texas finally anson jones was president and anson jones was able to negotiate international recognition from england uh from mexico right before the annexation of texas which occurred on december 29th 1845 so as we look at what we've covered in this lecture we wanted to understand the conditions that influence settlement in texas and what i would say is that the is the inability of mexico to attract settlers the importance of slavery to the american economy and the opportunity for land in texas that drew people in to texas to settle there from the southern united states what led up to the texas revolution although mexico wanted to appease the texas they wanted to keep peace but it was the instability in mexico in mexican politics it was the dictatorship of santa anna and it was the ties of texas to the united states that led to calls for independence and finally war and what were the concerns for and against the annexation of texas well most texas wanted annexation but in the united states they wanted to both avoid a war with mexico and they wanted to avoid an issue in slavery and texas was a slave state and so this led to strong opposition with the u.s congress over whether or not texas should be annexed thank you very much for attending this lecture and we'll see you very soon