The Texas Revolution

In the 1820s Mexico, newly independent from Spain, invited American settlers into its sparsely populated northern province of Texas, offering cheap land in exchange for loyalty and conversion to Catholicism. The newcomers, called Texians, soon outnumbered Mexican residents many times over and chafed under a central government in Mexico City that they found distant and, after 1834, increasingly authoritarian under President Antonio López de Santa Anna. Slavery sharpened the conflict: Mexico had moved to abolish it, while many Anglo settlers had come precisely to grow cotton with enslaved labor.

Open revolt began in October 1835. The early fighting went the rebels' way, but Santa Anna marched north with a large army to crush the rebellion personally. In February and March 1836 his forces besieged and overran the Alamo mission in San Antonio, killing its defenders, and weeks later executed several hundred surrendered prisoners at Goliad. The brutality backfired, turning "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember Goliad" into rallying cries that swelled the Texian ranks.

The decisive blow came on April 21, 1836, at San Jacinto, where Sam Houston's army surprised Santa Anna's camp during the afternoon and won in less than twenty minutes. Santa Anna was captured and signed treaties recognizing Texan independence — agreements the Mexican government promptly repudiated, leaving the new Republic of Texas's status disputed.

For nearly a decade Texas existed as an independent republic before the United States annexed it in 1845. That annexation, and the unsettled border that came with it, helped ignite the Mexican-American War the following year — a conflict that would strip Mexico of nearly half its territory and push the United States to the Pacific.