El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  Concerns lingered in the Anglo colonies and in October 1832 some residents organized a convention, held in San Felipe de Austin, to outline their grievances. They met again the following year, in April 1833, and among the delegates was the former Tennessee congressman and governor Sam Houston, who had become involved with land speculation in Texas after quitting the governorship of Tennessee in 1829. He had resurfaced in Nacogdoches in 1832, when he joined the heated discussions about Texas.

  These conventions made clear that Anglo farmers felt their needs were at odds with those of the rest of the state and the nation, especially concerning slavery. Talk turned to the idea of petitioning for Texas to split from Coahuila, a move that few Mexican leaders of any political persuasion were willing to countenance. Tejanos, who numbered only around four thousand, were not so eager for this separation, either, but the idea of statehood inspired the Anglos to envisage their own Texas constitution.55

  Santa Anna finally took the presidency in 1833 after launching a revolt against Bustamante the previous year, around the same time as the disturbances in Anahuac.56 His mission to restore the Federalist order complete, Santa Anna moved to his estate in Veracruz, leaving the business of governance in the hands of his vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías. In Santa Anna’s absence, Gómez Farías passed a number of liberal reforms aimed at the Church, the bureaucracy, and the military, successfully angering all of them.

  In the meantime, Stephen Austin had made his way to the capital to meet Santa Anna on November 5, 1833, to make the case for statehood. The government turned down the request but did once again permit him to allow the entry of U.S. immigrants.57 The local officials in Coahuila y Tejas were now on high alert. Although the state had an overall population of 86,887 in 1833, with the majority in Coahuila, many of the officials were concerned that the 30,000 Anglos in Tejas would try to leave anyway.58 A security report from January 1834 mentioned that “prohibited meetings” had taken place, and added that Austin’s “abnormalities should not go unpunished.”59 Indeed, he was apprehended in the state’s capital, Saltillo, on his way back to Texas that same January, after which he was returned to Mexico City and imprisoned on charges of inciting a revolt.60

  Elsewhere in the Mexican capital, the earlier reforms had left the Mexican Congress embroiled in a number of disputes, leading to the creation of the Plan of Cuernavaca in an effort to end the disagreements. Santa Anna was granted powers to enact the plan’s measures, but he took them a step further, shutting down Congress and dismissing the vice president, declaring that he was using emergency powers. After Mexico’s new Congress met in early 1835, he once again returned to Veracruz.61 By April he was in Zacatecas, suppressing a revolt against the now more centralist government, before going once again to his hacienda. That summer, politicians debated the future of the 1824 constitution: its federalism was causing too many problems. So in October 1835, it was abolished and a constituent congress called to draw up a new, more centralist constitution with a more powerful national government that, it was hoped, could hold the country together.62

  Texian anxiety was palpable. The 1824 constitution and the federal system it underpinned were no more. Lacking any faith that what might replace it would serve their interests, Anglos demanded its return.63 They were, however, increasingly isolated: not only were they alone in their stance on slavery; few of the newer settlers had learned Spanish or acculturated in other ways, and this made it all the more difficult for Anglos to understand the political machinations taking place or to build alliances with Tejanos.

  The summer of 1835 was marked by unrest and skirmishes. A handful of men attacked Anahuac in June, forcing the surrender of the Mexican troops. Although the Anglos agreed to withdraw to keep the peace, the Mexican authorities took this as a worrying sign. Writing from Matamoros, some five hundred miles south of Nacogdoches, General Martín Perfecto de Cos told officials that “the neglect that has been until now of the policing of Texas, has necessarily produced the introduction of many men who are without patriotism, morality, nor the means to survive, risking nothing in a continuous revolution in igniting discord.”64

  At the same time, the Anglo community was not yet strategically united. Some Anglos, like the military leader at San Antonio de Béxar, Francis W. Johnson, believed the constitution of 1824 should be defended but that this should not lead to a breakaway movement. Because of this, Johnson thought efforts should be made to include Tejanos and “all friends to freedom, of whatever name or nation.” Others wanted total independence, arguing that Mexicans and Anglos in Texas “can never be one and the same people.”65

  In August 1835, residents in San Jacinto, a settlement near where Buffalo Bayou runs into Galveston Bay, held a meeting to discuss the news that “the federal republican government of Mexico has been violently occupied” and that “the late President of the republic, General Santa Ana [sic], has been invested with extraordinary dictorial [sic] powers.” Even more worrying to them was the rumor that the militia had been disbanded and some Mexican states invaded, and that “a similar invasion is contemplated, and in preparation, to be made upon Texas.”66 The San Jacinto group decided it was within its rights to reject this government and call for an assembly of Anglo delegates within Texas to “confer on the state of public affairs: to devise and carry into execution such measures, as may be necessary, to preserve good order, and the due administration of the laws.”67 One group in Nacogdoches took a more conciliatory tone, resolving that “the Emigrants from the United States of the North now in Texas are indebted to the Mexican Republic and people our deepest sence [sic] of gratitude for there [sic] liberalities exercised toward us in giving us such excellent houses” and expressed instead a desire to be “at peace with all men.”68

  It was finally decided that a “consultation” on the matter would be held in mid-October. By this point, Austin was back in Texas, and he and the other Anglos were ready to take more unified action.69 The conflict over state power had come much closer to home as well, as there had been a revolt in Monclova, a city in Coahuila jostling with Saltillo to be the capital.70 While Mexican officials were distracted, Texian plots intensified. Austin, whose earlier sympathies with Mexico had all but drained away, wrote to his cousin in August that “the situation in Texas is daily becoming more and more interesting,” predicting that “the best interests of the United States require that Texas should be effectually, and fully, Americanized—that is—settled by a population that will harmonize with their neigbours on the East, in language, political principles, common origin, sympathy, and even interest.” One of those interests was slavery, and here Austin made his position clear: “Texas must be a slave country. It is no longer a matter of doubt.”71

  The acrimony worsened into the autumn: on October 2, 1835, a dispute over a cannon led Texian settlers in the town of Gonzalez to taunt Mexican troops with cries of “Come and take it.” A week later, on October 9, some of the settlers seized control of La Bahía presidio just outside Goliad, then one of the most populated towns in Texas. Soon afterward, Austin wrote to fellow Texian David G. Burnet, “I hope to see Texas forever free from Mexican domination of any kind. It is yet too soon to say this publically—but that is the point we shall aim at. … But we must arrive at it by steps.”72

  As October filled up with battles, the consultation was pushed back to November, when fifty-eight of a total of ninety-eight delegates were able to attend the two-week session in San Felipe. The delegates debated their options: fight to reinstate the 1824 constitution or make a break for independence. The result, for the moment, was a compromise of limited action and unclear direction, though they did manage to establish a provisional government.73

  As reports of these developments in Texas reached the East Coast cities of the United States, an enraged Mexican chargé d’affaires at the legation in Philadelphia, Joaquín María del Castillo y Lanzas, wrote to the U.S. secretary of state, John Forsyth. In his missive, he hit out at the Texians, arguing that it c
ame as no surprise “that mere adventurers, who have nothing to lose, that fugitives from justice, and others who may gain without risking any thing, that those who delight in revolutions, either from temperament, or from character, or from the desire of rendering themselves conspicuous, should promote political convulsions.”74 A government circular from 1835 lamented the “ungrateful Colonists of Texas [who] mock the laws of the Mexican nation despite the generous welcome she gave them.”75

  While the majority of the people who wanted to form a state were Anglo, some Mexicans supported them, even from farther afield. One of Santa Anna’s former brigadier-generals, José Antonio Mexía (also Mejía), who also spent time in the Mexican legation in the United States, set off from New Orleans with plans to attack the Gulf port city of Tampico in a show of support for the Texians, though he believed the Anglos were still fighting on the side of the Federalists rather than going after their own independence.76 He departed on November 6, 1835, but his ship ran aground near Tampico on November 14. Santa Anna’s troops easily defeated the attack the following day. Within Texas, some Tejanos were starting to side with the Anglos, including the provisional mayor of San Antonio de Béxar, Juan Nepomuceno Seguín, who signed up for Austin’s militia.77

  In December, some members of the consultation went on a mission to the United States to raise money, stopping in New Orleans, Louisville, Nashville, and Cincinnati. They drummed up support for their troops but faced a significant obstacle in enlisting volunteers. The United States and Mexico were at peace, and a law of 1818 made it illegal for U.S. citizens to organize or support an attack on a peaceful nation from the United States.78 Mexico and the United States tacitly agreed that the Texians in any case had forfeited their allegiance to the United States and were Mexican citizens, rendering the conflict a civil war, meaning that a volunteer on the side of Tejas also had to, in theory, expatriate himself, which many of them did.79

  By early 1836 loyalty to Mexico was increasingly hard to find among the Anglos, and slogans such as “Liberty or death” were being used by some of the Texians, evoking the earlier American Revolution. Alongside this, municipal committees of safety and correspondence, similar to the ones used during the Revolutionary War, had been organized into militias.80 One February 1836 broadside declared that the “sons of the brave patriots of ’76 are invincible in the cause of freedom and the rights of man.”81 Alongside these sentiments were more racialized ones, with Sam Houston proclaiming in January 1836 that the “vigor of the descendants of the north [will never] mix with the phlegm of the indolent Mexicans.”82

  Santa Anna decided that he would have to deal with the insurgents himself. He issued a proclamation calling for Mexicans to “combat with that mob of ungrateful adventurers.”83 He began his march north, picking up troops along the way in San Luis Potosí before arriving in San Antonio de Béxar in the afternoon of February 23, 1836, with around six thousand soldiers.84 Although the Texians’ numbers were shored up by U.S. recruits, there were too few of them to protect the gains they had made in San Antonio de Béxar, which they had taken in early December 1835, after forcing a surrender from the garrison there. The town was now under Anglo militia occupation, but many of the Texan Bexareños did not want to join the Anglos or the centralists.85

  Though the Texians knew Santa Anna was on his way, the Mexican leader’s entrance into San Antonio de Béxar caught the town off guard. Texian scouts managed to spot Santa Anna before he could lead an attack, giving the militia time to retreat to the Alamo, a garrison housed in the former Spanish mission San Antonio de Valero.

  Nothing about the Alamo itself would indicate the outsize place that it would later occupy in U.S. history. At that time it was a small fortification, of a size and bearing that reflected its position in the frontier. Its purpose had fluctuated over the preceding decades; it was abandoned for the first time in 1793 and brought back to use in 1802 when a Spanish cavalry unit moved in. The troops were members of La Segunda Compañía Volante de San Carlos de Alamo de Parras, and soon the mission-turned-presidio was nicknamed the Alamo in honor of their hometown, Alamo de Parras, Coahuila.86 It was left vacant once again around 1810 and remained so until Mexican troops made it a fort in 1821. Its condition reflected this periodic use, and parts of it had crumbled away or were in need of reinforcements—there was not even a roof over the chapel. It was all the Texians had, however, and they had earlier set to work making it stronger after taking control of San Antonio, reinforcing the walls, digging trenches, and repositioning cannons, now put to use shooting at Mexican troops.

  After Santa Anna’s arrival, the Texian colonel William Barret Travis sent for reinforcements, writing to the garrison at Goliad on February 23, “We have one hundred and forty-six men, who are determined never to retreat.”87 In the end, only thirty-two extra men arrived.88 Santa Anna, for his part, had little interest in a battle in San Antonio; his true aim was to reach the Sabine River area and Houston’s troops.89 However, the following day, the Mexicans set up a makeshift battery, and in the week that followed, 15 of their troops and the 146 Texians exchanged fire. The Texians remained barricaded in the Alamo, and by March 4, Santa Anna felt forced to take more drastic action. He called a meeting that night to draw up plans for an assault that would wipe out the rebels.

  In later explaining his decisions, Santa Anna—who was somewhat prone to exaggeration—wrote, “Before undertaking the assault … I still wanted to try a generous measure, characteristic of Mexican kindness, and I offered life to the defendants who would surrender their arms.” The Texians refused any offer.90 At the same time, the men inside the Alamo were struggling, and some wanted to surrender, as food and ammunition were running low.91

  In the cool, dark hours of the morning of March 6, the Mexican troops crept from their camp across the Medina River to the Alamo, and four columns of troops surrounded it.92 With cries of “¡Viva Mexico!” the battle began at around five a.m. The Texians fired cannons at the oncoming Mexicans, but they managed to reach the walls and, using ladders, climb over. The fighting moved into closer—and bloodier—quarters inside the Alamo. Some of the Texians retreated into the chapel, the door to which the Mexican troops then broke down, leaving the men cornered. Other Texians tried to surrender or flee, but in the end there was no escape.93 Almost everyone inside—including Travis, Bowie, and Davy Crockett—died in the space of a few hours.94 There were, however, some survivors. A handful of Anglo and Tejano women and children hiding in the Alamo were discovered, as were some slaves. Santa Anna later released them all.95

  Another survivor was Juan Seguín, whose life had been spared when he was sent out earlier as a courier with a message. He returned on March 6 to find the fort fallen.96 In the days that followed, Santa Anna ordered the dead Anglos to be burned and the Mexicans buried, though owing to a shortage of graveyard spaces, their bodies were dumped in the river.97 Most of the Tejanos in San Antonio fled the city or stayed out of the conflict, but a handful—between five and ten; no exact number is known—died fighting the Mexicans in the Alamo.

  Santa Anna lost at least seventy men—though some estimates go far higher, to more than one thousand—and another three hundred were injured.98 The Mexican press had a mixed reaction to what happened at the Alamo, depending on whether a newspaper supported Santa Anna or not. The Mexico City paper La Lima de Volcano praised the country’s “invincible liberator,” believing that “Mexico has been vindicated.”99 Many of the newspapers thought this would bring the insurrection in Texas to an end, though the more critical press began to question the necessity of the battle in the first place. La Luna, a newspaper in Toluca, argued that the Alamo “has not been a real gain, a true triumph of the nation.”100

  While the siege of the Alamo was taking place, a group of Texians and Tejanos who had gathered on March 1 in Washington-on-the-Brazos, a small town upriver from San Felipe de Austin, adopted a declaration of independence on March 2, followed by the promulgation of a Constitution of the Republic of Texas
on March 17. This document outlined a government not dissimilar from the United States’ in structure, with a separate legislature, executive, and judiciary. Slavery was protected, with a provision that “congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from bringing their slaves into the republic with them … nor shall congress have the power to emancipate slaves,” and no free person of color “either in whole or part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the republic, without the consent of congress.”

  Regarding Tejanos, the constitution stipulated that all persons—with the exception of “Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians”—should be considered citizens of the republic and entitled to all the privileges of such.101 The equality outlined on paper would not match the reality, as the conflict had brought to the fore much discussion of Anglo-Tejano differences, an example of which was found in an earlier address made by George Childress, Texian supporter and one of the authors of the republic’s constitution. Speaking at a public meeting in Nashville, which was reported that February in the Telegraph and Texas Register, he asked his audience to “contemplate the national character of the Mexicans,” whom he described as “a cowardly, treacherous, semi-civilized people, without enterprize [sic], workmanship or discipline.” The Anglos, to Childress, were the opposite, being “brave, hardy, enterprising.”102 A front-page article in the following week’s edition of the newspaper painted Mexicans as “a people one half of whom are the most depraved of different races of Indians, different in color, pursuits and character; and all of whom are divided by the insurmountable barrier which nature and refined taste have thrown between us—a people whose inert and idle habits, general ignorance and superstition, prevents the possibility of our ever mingling in the same harmonious family.”103 Despite such a hostile rhetorical climate, the prominent Tejano Lorenzo de Zavala, who would later be named vice president of the republic, and José Francisco Ruíz ended up being signatories to the declaration of independence and constitution.104