El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  The fighting continued into late March, after Colonel James Walker Fannin and 350 men who had been captured in earlier battles were imprisoned at the presidio in Goliad. To Santa Anna, these “foreigners taken with arms in their hands, making war upon the nation” were little more than land pirates, and so should be executed.105 Their resulting deaths on March 27, known as the “Goliad massacre,” sparked public anger and rallied further support in Texas and the United States for the cause of independence.

  On April 15, Austin wrote a letter to President Andrew Jackson and Congress, explaining that Santa Anna “has succeeded in uniting the whole of the mexicans against Texas by making it a national war against heritics [sic].” He asked if the United States was really able to “turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of their and your country men and friends, who are massacred, butchered, outraged in Texas at your very doors?” Austin wanted reinforcements and called for the conflict to be a “national war,” utilizing the sympathy and support of the public for “a war in which every free american, who is not a fanatic abolitionist … is deeply, warmly, ardently interested.”106

  Some people in the United States were interested in the events in Texas and had been involved well before Austin wrote his letter asking for help. A letter from the Mexican chargé d’affaires, José María Ortiz Monasterio, complained that the “colonists of Texas have since obtained, and continue to obtain daily from New Orleans succours of every kind, in provisions, arms, ammunition, money and even in soldiers, who are openly enlisted in that city.”107 Companies like the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company and other speculators and profiteers were backing Texan independence, while around 200 initial volunteers arrived in the autumn of 1835 to join the Texians.108 Over the course of the rebellion, some 3,600 men fought for Texas, including 1,000 volunteers from the United States and 138 Tejanos.109

  President Jackson, however, had to stand in favor of supporting existing treaties with Mexico. He noted on the back of Austin’s letter that the “Texians before they took the step to declare themselves Independent, which has aroused and united all mexico against them ought to have pondered well, it was a rash and premature act, our neutrality must be faithfully maintained.”110

  Santa Anna rode into San Felipe de Austin on April 7, 1836, hunting Sam Houston. He believed the Texians would retreat if his troops crossed the Brazos, and as Santa Anna searched for a suitable crossing point, news reached the nearby town of Harrisburg, which the residents fled before setting it alight. Santa Anna kept on Houston’s trail, catching up to him on April 20, 1836, where the Buffalo Bayou and San Jacinto River converge. After the Alamo, Santa Anna had divided up his men into columns, leaving one in San Antonio and sending one to Goliad. By this point Santa Anna’s column had around 750 troops, with reinforcements consisting of 400 more arriving the following morning, while Houston had around 800. He set up camp near the bayou and waited, while his men tried to reinforce their position.111 Then on the afternoon of April 21 came the unexpected cries of “Remember the Alamo!” just as the Mexican troops had settled in for a rest.112 Houston and his men routed the Mexicans in a surprise attack at the Battle of San Jacinto. Around half of the Mexican troops were killed during this “Yorktown of Texas,” and the others were taken prisoner, including Santa Anna. He had managed to escape and spent one night in a barn, though he was later picked up by Texian troops who did not recognize him, taking him to Houston’s camp where the cries of “El presidente” from the other prisoners gave his identity away.113

  Santa Anna signed two treaties with the Texians, one public and one private. The public one promised an end to hostilities and the evacuation of troops south of the Río Grande, while the private deal involved a promise for the recognition of Texan independence, something that was not forthcoming. In exchange, Santa Anna was released some months later, though he was first taken to Washington, where he met President Jackson in January 1837. No official record remains of the conversation the men had over dinner, except for one attendee’s later report that Santa Anna had indicated that the issue of official recognition would have to be overseen by Mexico’s Congress.114

  The victory in San Jacinto was enthusiastically received across the United States. One Pennsylvania newspaper was breathless over the victory of the “gallant little army,” extolling the virtues of the troops while overlooking the contribution of Tejanos, saying the force was “composed of men from the United States, with probably a proportion from Great Britain—the Anglo-Saxon blood, which ever maintains its superiority, as well in the field as in the pursuits of a peaceful life,” concluding that “they well deserve the immortality they have achieved.”115

  By the end of 1836, Houston was installed as president of the republic and Austin had died. In April 1837 the ashes of the soldiers who were killed at the Alamo received an interment, presided over by Juan Seguín. In his speech, he praised the men and the “remains which we have the honor of carrying on our shoulders,” before telling the assembled crowd: “I invite you to declare to the entire world, ‘Texas shall be free and independent or we shall perish in glorious combat.’”116 Seguín was also honored for his actions in 1838 when the settlement of Walnut Springs, around forty miles east of San Antonio de Béxar, renamed itself Seguin. Santa Anna, meanwhile, languished during these years in defeat and humiliation, and General Anastasio Bustamante became president again.

  The next hurdle for Texas was annexation to the United States, which, after the problems of the Missouri Compromise, would take almost a decade. Texas was unwavering on the issue of slavery. Following independence from Mexico, the slave population within Texas, now unencumbered by any prohibition, rose from around 3,700 in 1837 to 24,400 by 1845.117

  The years that followed Texas’s independence were difficult for the Tejanos, many of whom had been reluctant to join the Texians’ fight. Even for those like Juan Seguín who had aided the Anglos, the future was far from certain. Some Mexicans could see what lay ahead. One diplomat, Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza, wrote from Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1836 that “the primary object of the plot, is to take possession of the entire coast of Texas, unite it with the United States, to make from Texas four or five States with slavery.”118 Tejanos would lose some of their land as this goal was achieved; Anglo claims to their property and threats of personal violence in the aftermath of independence drove many Tejanos to live elsewhere in Mexico.119

  WITHIN THE UNITED States, the 1820s and 1830s had also been a time of great political change, as embodied in the rise of Andrew Jackson. He symbolized the direction the United States was turning: westward. Jackson, born into a poor family on the western edges of the Carolina territory in 1767, was created by the frontier, and in many ways would be defined by it. He became a wealthy lawyer, land speculator, and slave owner in Tennessee. Admiration for Jackson was not limited to the United States. In 1830, Lorenzo de Zavala—who five years later would become embroiled in the Texian struggle—left Mexico for New Orleans to embark on a tour of the United States. His political life, like his travels, took him to points far and wide. He had been one of the main architects of the 1824 Mexican constitution and served in various government posts, though he was forced out by the centralists, and that led him to his arrival in New Orleans. From there he went through Louisiana and up the Mississippi River to Louisville and Cincinnati, then spent time in New York, New England, and Canada.120

  His 1830 book detailing his time in the United States remains one of the earliest known accounts of U.S.-Mexican relations, written to “give a more useful lesson in politics to my fellow citizens than the knowledge of the manners, customs, habits, and government of the United States, whose institutions they have copied so servilely.”121 Zavala remained impressed with the country throughout his journey, giving extensive descriptions of the national political and economic situation.122* He was also an admirer of President Jackson. He arrived in Cincinnati in time to see the crowds cheer the president during a visit, not
ing the freedom from pomp and ceremony and describing “a numerous crowd of people running along the banks of the river to receive and see their first citizen … there was music with banners, flags, shouts and cries of joy. Everything was natural and spontaneous.” The next day the two men had a meeting in what struck Zavala as a “modestly furnished house” with around thirty men, who “by their dress seemed to be workmen or craftsmen,” causing him to write in admiration of “the simplest court in the world.”123

  With the return of Federalists in Mexico, Zavala was able to resume his political career and in 1833 he was sent to Paris as Mexico’s first minister to France. The news of Santa Anna’s centralist reforms alarmed him. He resigned from his post and moved to Texas, where he owned land.124 From there he entered the complicated world of Anglo Texian politics, transforming himself from a Mexican Federalist to a supporter of Texan independence, helping to draft the constitution at Washington-on-the-Brazos, ensuring it was in both English and Spanish. He was then appointed the Republic of Texas’s first vice president, but he resigned after a month, tired of Anglo suspicions of his alleged intentions to return Texas to Mexican rule. Soon afterward, he contracted pneumonia and died in November 1836 in Texas.125

  In the conclusion to his book, Zavala lavished lyrical praise on U.S. democracy, while bemoaning the military and ecclesiastical culture he believed held Mexico back, making a final prognostication in the last line that “the American system will obtain a complete though bloody victory” in his homeland.126 He lived long enough to see the first signs of this, in Texas, but died before he could watch his prediction come true.

  TEXANS VOTED IN 1836 in favor of becoming a state, and the following year a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate. President Jackson had a long history with Sam Houston and no doubt he favored Texas’s joining the union, but he was able only to grant diplomatic recognition. Jackson knew it was too dangerous to offer annexation because Texas would enter as a slave state, unsettling the slave-free balance and angering abolitionists at home and abroad, especially in Britain.127 This did not cause him to lose interest in the issue, and he continued to wield his influence in favor of Texas’s annexation on his successors.

  Opinion on Texas was divided. The Rhode Island legislature, for instance, believed that the inclusion of Texas “would load the nation with debt and taxes” and, even worse, propagate “slavery, and promot[e] the raising of slaves within its own bosom—the very bosom of freedom—to be exported and sold in those unhallowed regions.”128 In Tennessee, sentiments were markedly different. Its legislators said they “believe[d] that the gallant and chivalrous bravery of Texans in their struggle for liberty and free Government, is an assurance of their worth, and sufficient evidence of their qualification to entitle them to brotherhood and citizenship with us.”129

  The question of Texas’s future was not just a domestic one. The British, who had signed antislavery treaties with Mexico, were concerned about this new republic, yet at the same time they were eager to buy its cotton. Houston began a campaign in 1837 for Britain to grant official recognition to Texas, but as part of the deal the British wanted Texas to sign an anti–slave trade agreement, which included the right of British ships to search for illicit slaves on Texan vessels, a proposal that met with little enthusiasm.130 While these negotiations were being conducted, some enslaved people in Texas continually tried to take advantage of their proximity to Mexico, running away to freedom when they could. They were sometimes aided by Tejanos, to the annoyance of Anglo owners, though other Tejanos were slave owners themselves.131

  Throughout this period, Mexico never granted Texas official recognition. The republic continued to receive more arrivals, while the Tejanos were pushed toward the margins of this now Anglo-dominated place. When Santa Anna returned to power in October 1841, he began to harbor ambitions to recapture Texas.132 Mexican troops raided Texas at intervals throughout 1842, and in September San Antonio was briefly taken twice, though both times the Mexicans retreated. This caused the Texans to organize a punitive expedition into Mexico that autumn, including one mission of 320 men to Santa Fe, which ended in their immediate surrender and imprisonment.133 Another mission culminated with a group of some 300 men, in defiance of their orders, crossing the Río Grande and attacking Mexican troops in the town of Mier. This also ended in defeat, and the men were sent to prison or executed, with 76 released a couple of years later.134

  Santa Anna eventually gave up his fight, realizing that any further hostilities toward Texas might result in provoking the United States.135 The official mood in Washington about annexation of Texas was changing, and it looked as if an end to its political limbo might be in sight. John Tyler, a Whig who had come to the presidency following the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841, after one month in office, had few allies and saw annexation as a possible vote-winner.136 In March 1844, Tyler tapped John C. Calhoun, a former vice president, to be secretary of state. Calhoun’s predecessor, Abel Upshur, had been working on secret negotiations with Texas before his death in an accident on the USS Princeton.137 The result was a Treaty of Annexation, signed between the United States and the Republic of Texas on April 12, 1844, which—if ratified—would allow Texas to be “incorporated into the Union of the United States.”138 In Mexico, Santa Anna tried to win congressional approval that summer for a thirty-thousand-strong army to launch a decisive attack to take back Texas, but his demands were repeatedly denied by a Mexican legislature on the verge of an internal political crisis.139

  As a South Carolina slaveholder, Calhoun saw the advantages of adding Texas to the union, tipping the balance in favor of slave states; he and other southerners were also eager to curb British antislavery pressure on Texas, and he denounced such pressure in his infamous “Pakenham letter.”140 Britain’s minister to Mexico, Richard Pakenham, promoted abolition, and Calhoun wrote to him around the time the treaty was signed, demanding not only that Texas be annexed to the United States to protect the South but also that the extension of slavery was “essential to the peace, safety, and prosperity of states in the union in which it exists.”141 The letter found its way into the press, and debate about Texas became more fevered. Fellow southerner Henry Clay came out in opposition, in a letter that also saw publication, arguing that “if the Government of the United States were to acquire Texas, it would acquire along with it all the encumbrances which Texas is under, and among them the actual or suspended war between Mexico and Texas. Of that consequence there cannot be a doubt. Annexation and war with Mexico are identical.”142 The annexation debate continued into the election year 1844, after the Senate failed to ratify the treaty in June, with a vote of 16 for and 35 against.143

  In the 1844 presidential election, James Knox Polk, a protégé of Jackson’s with a low profile, won through a combination of the Democratic Party machine and a resonant message. The Texas question had grown into a national preoccupation, and now chained to this territory was the idea of westward expansion. Bringing in Texas would benefit the whole nation and keep the South happy. Polk had faced fierce competition for his office from Henry Clay, by this point one of the most famous statesmen in the nation. Clay—who had tried to win the presidency twice before—held firm to his anti-annexation stance, despite being a slaveholder. Polk, bolstered by southern support, won with 170 electoral college votes to Clay’s 105, although he had only a tiny lead of 38,000 in the popular vote.144

  Texas had not been the only issue: Polk’s gaze reached all the way to the Pacific. Also taking place was a long-running diplomatic squabble with Britain over a square of territory between Canada and California. Many people wanted the U.S. boundary to be farther north at N 54°40″, a designation so important that one of Polk’s most effective slogans was “Fifty-four forty or fight!”* Before tackling the northern dispute, the focus returned to resolving the Texas question. On February 27, 1845, a few days before Polk took office, a joint resolution, which needed only a majority and not a two-thirds vote, was p
ushed through both houses of Congress to admit Texas, and it received its formal statehood ten months later.145 In his March 1845 inaugural address, Polk dived headlong into the incorporation of Texas, echoing incorrect prior claims that it had been part of the Louisiana territory, and saying that “Texas was once a part of our country—was unwisely ceded away to a foreign power—is now independent” before explaining that it now had “an undoubted right … to merge [its] sovereignty as a separate and independent state in ours.”146

  He went on to outline a future of U.S. expansion. “Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government. Our Union is a confederation of independent States, whose policy is peace with each other and all the world,” he told the assembled audience. “To enlarge its limits is to extend the dominions of peace over additional territories and increasing millions. The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.”147 A few months later, the journalist John Louis O’Sullivan, in an unsigned article in the July/August 1845 issue of United States Democratic Review, coined the term “manifest destiny,” explaining how the United States had permission “to overspread the continent allotted by Providence,” and expand to the west. He was writing in relation to the annexation of Texas, which he supported, as well as the long-running Oregon question, but he also included in his western future California, where the “Anglo-Saxon foot is already on its borders.”148

  This “overspread” came one step closer in 1845. General Zachary Taylor had been ordered in late spring to station four thousand troops in Corpus Christi, Texas, near the Nueces River. On the diplomatic front, Polk dispatched John Slidell, a Louisiana politician, to negotiate with Mexico over the ongoing issue of U.S. citizens’ claims for compensation arising from Mexican raids, hoping to get in exchange a recognition that the long-disputed Texas boundary was the Río Grande and not the Nueces River. In addition there had been claims that the Texas territory included Santa Fe—claims also angrily contested by Mexico. Slidell was given additional instructions to offer up to $25 million for New Mexico and California.149 Mexico refused to consider it, and, with frustrations rising, Clay’s 1844 warning—that the annexation of Texas would lead to war with Mexico—seemed prophetic.150