AboutTom Schott Expertise Civil War, Reconstruction, military and political, Southern politics, slavery, civil war causation, general American history. Prefer 18th/19th century, but can handle all.
Experience Ph.D. in American history. College level teacher. Published author.
Question I recently went to Washington, TX, which was the location of the signing of Texas' declaration of independence from Mexico. We're curious now why the Texians had the mentality of being Texans first and of wanting their independence from Mexico instead of thinking of themselves as Mexicans and working with other Mexicans to overthrow Santa Anna.
I asked this there and got two different answers that didn't really address the question. The first was that there were some Texians who were not wanting war (though some of those wanted independence) and that either Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone (it seems like, I don't recall) had been in the peace camp until getting imprisoned in Mexico for treason after a letter was intercepted in which he said their current plans weren't working and they needed to get together to determine the next step, and after his imprisonment he joined the "war party" in saying the only solution was independence.
The other answer was that there were plenty of Mexicans who opposed Santa Anna and several of them came up to help the Texians fight for their independence.
Neither answer really addresses why the Texians didn't put their fire power to work to overthrow the Mexican dictator along with other Mexicans, but decided to just break away from him. I wondered if it was because there were so many Anglos in Texas who had moved in from the US and so didn't identify as being Mexicans, but that idea was shot down with the second response (that Mexicans supported Texas' independence, too.) Do you have any explanations you can give us? We'd be very interested to find out!
Answer Cathy,
The information that there were a lot of Mexicans who wanted independence from Texas is erroneous. The leaders of the Texas Revolution were Anglos, immigrants from the U.S. and U.S. territory. They simply wanted independence from Mexican control, which wasn't all that onerous, really. With the idea of joining the American union when possible. Texas annexation ended up being a complicated matter because of the slavery question. The idea was never to overthrow Santa Anna, but to break away from his control.
