Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest thing: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war is worse . . . A man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
JOHN STUART MILL
THE Texas Revolution in many ways resembled the revolt of the British colonies against King and Parliament in 1775–76. Both Texas and the colonies were remote from the central authority. Both during their early years were ignored by a government concerned with other matters. Both regions were permitted to exercise local self-government, defend themselves, and build viable social institutions on their own. Both grew increasingly prosperous. Trouble came in each case only when the central government began to insist upon taxation and collection of customs. Fights with customs officers and the quartering of troops at colonial expense aggravated the situation. The determination to enforce complete obedience, and the dispatch of an army, in 1775 and 1835, brought the colonials flocking to arms.
The Texas situation had three major differences: the Anglo-American settlers arrived in Mexican territory with certain constitutional principles already formed, and so took no time to forge them. They came into Texas cocked for crisis, when they entered a country with traditions and customs they did not approve of or understand. Potential trouble was given tremendous impetus by tensions between Mexico and its northern neighbor, the United States. Most difficult of all to assess was the deep ethnic hostility that pervaded both sides. This feeling made much of the legalistic arguments on each side meaningless. Some Mexican officials repressed Texans because they hated or feared the United States or detested Anglo-Saxons. Many Texans revolted simply because they refused to be ruled by people they despised.
As in 1775, there was both a War and a Peace party, with some colonists standing in between. Planters and men of property generally did not want war. Few of the Old Three Hundred desired independence. Newer immigrants, with fresher ties to the United States, pushed Texas independence, as a prelude to Union. But there were no political parties in colonial Texas, and no single dominant opinion. All the confusion, hesitation, and equivocation that marked the American war for independence scarred the Texas Revolution.
Right was not entirely on either side. The Anglo-Texans, like their forefathers of 1776, won both the propaganda war and the final military victory on the field. After that victory, they tended to forget their faults and frights, their crashing errors and their own atrocities, and accepted what happened as the will of Providence. This was an American trait even before the first English-speaking people crossed the Sabine. The triumph in Texas only reinforced it. It was perhaps this very characteristic that made later Americans look back on the triumph as inevitable and bought at little cost, and so, perhaps, to be despised. But the war that won the West was a near thing, and there was nothing inevitable about its outcome.
The motives, facts, and feelings of many of the principal figures of the Texas Revolution are unclear. It is significant for the art of history as a whole that Texan and Mexican accounts tell different tales. The results are clear, however. They can be measured on maps, and in populations and power. And that, aside from the fact that the world is ceaseless struggle, is probably the major story history has to tell.
In the summer of 1832, hotheads and some men with honest grievances precipitated an insurrection at Anáhuac. A Mexican garrison was attacked and captured, and several more driven out of Texas. This rebellion endangered the continued existence of the colony between the Colorado and the Brazos. Twenty thousand farmers were in no position to challenge Mexico's millions. Mexico was not a major power, but it was a very considerable one. As European observers pointed out, it was hardly inferior in population or resources to the United States. It possessed a vastly larger and more experienced army. The weaknesses of Mexican society, which North Americans scented rather than understood, were not easily seen. Retribution and disaster would have fallen on Texas after Velasco, except for the fact that those inner weaknesses were now in full play. Mexico was having another revolution of its own.
Of all the
caudillos
or military chieftains who rode across Mexico, none was more remarkable than Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón. No leader ever seems to have understood his people or his times so well, or gambled on his luck so heavily and won. Certainly, none ever did Mexico more intrinsic damage, and not only lived, but was honored for it. Even Santa Anna could not destroy sturdy, stubborn Mexico, but he presided over the end of its northern empire.
Santa Anna was born in Jalapa, in the mountains above Vera Cruz, in 1795. His father was Spanish, his mother a
criolla
of the pure race; he was apparently a member of the lower elite. At about sixteen, he entered a Royal Spanish regiment as an officer cadet. The revolt of 1810 soon broke out, and Santa Anna won his commission, and promotion, in the field. He was a superb soldier as a youth. He served in Texas under Arredondo as a full lieutenant, learning Arredondo's wily, flexible tactics and another lesson—brutality to the vanquished. Both of these lessons stood Santa Anna in good stead.
Santa Anna returned from the slaughter in Texas with a decoration for bravery under fire, and a love of hard campaigning he never lost. Fighting in the Royalist forces, he won a captaincy and two more medals by 1821. In that year, he was campaigning under Iturbide against Guerrero in the south. When the future Emperor and the old Republican warrior met to issue the Plan of Iguala, Santa Anna not only survived the leap to independence but emerged a brigadier. Here Santa Anna learned another lesson, one that was being absorbed all across the Hispanic world: the way to high office in times when legitimacy fled was not devotion to a soldier's duty but the choice of the proper side.
He accepted honors from Iturbide, then jumped to the Republicans when it became apparent Iturbide must fall. He backed the swing to Federalism in the Constitution of 1824—though he was arrested, and almost shot, because he jumped too soon. But Santa Anna, personally brave, with the Latin gambler's nerve and fatalism, could smell the wind. Through chaos and convolutions, he survived.
In 1828 the
criollo
Gómez Pedraza won the Presidency by election from his fellow
yorkino
, General Guerrero. This caused a fatal split in the temporarily dominant Republican faction, along personal and racial lines. Guerrero was
mestizo
. The election was not allowed to stand. Gómez was declared an enemy of the true revolution by many army officers; among these was Santa Anna, who had been marked for courts-martial by the President. When Vicente Guerrero agreed to armed intervention, Gómez Pedraza fled. Guerrero made Santa Anna a general of division.
In 1829, Spain made one last attempt to reconquer Mexico. Santa Anna commanded the patriot forces that defeated the Spanish landings at Tampico. The Hero of Tampico was now a national figure, much admired by the soldiers everywhere. By his stand with Guerrero, he was known as a staunch Republican.
Nine months later, Anastasio Bustamante, the Vice President, ousted Guerrero and seized control. Bustamante was reactionary, and a tyrant; it was a Mexican custom to couple presidents and vice presidents of different ideologies in the hope of gaining wider support, a custom not unknown in the United States. Sensing Guerrero was lost, Santa Anna sat this revolution out. He retired to the large hacienda he had acquired at Jalapa. He did not rebel, but neither did he accept offers or honors from the Bustamante regime. This course met with enormous popular approval; even American and British newspapers reported his integrity and unswerving liberalism. The Bustamante government sent General Mier y Terán and Captain Bradburn to Texas on the recommendations of another crony, Lúcas Alamán. Therefore, in Texas Santa Anna was looked upon as a hero, and a possible savior.
In January 1832, Santa Anna raised the
grito
of revolt in Vera Cruz. The steps of a Mexican revolution had already become as ritualistic as those of the bullring. First came the
grito
, "shout," which was a denouncement of the existing government. If the
grito
went unopposed after a short time, the
pronunciamento
was issued. This was a detailed list of grievances, with some suggestions for redress. With a
pronunciamento
the revolution was in full swing; it had gained momentum and attracted support. Then, invariably, was issued the plan, which set out the revolutionaries' proposals for a new government. It usually ended with a pledge by the signers to die in its behalf. Every major city in Mexico eventually had its
plan
, which was always named for the site of issue.
Santa Anna's plan called for the restoration of the Constitution of 1824, benefits for the common people, and justice for all races. This was the extreme liberal position at the time. Since the Constitution of 1824—more honored in the breach over past administrations—called for a federal system of government like that of the United States, with severely limited Presidential power, an autonomous Congress, and sovereign states, it was understandable that in Anglo-Texas, public opinion swung quickly to Santa Anna's revolt.
Bustamante was still favored by the Mexican elite, but Santa Anna was the darling of the army. Revolt sputtered throughout Mexico, with Bustamante daily losing strength. By midsummer, most of the army garrisons in Texas had declared for Santa Anna. This revolt against Bustamante saved Texas from retribution for John Austin's boldness at Velasco, because Stephen Austin and other prominent men were able to pass the disturbances off as demonstrations for Santa Anna.
The assault on Velasco had aroused considerable antagonism among the more conservative planters, but everyone saw that it was essential for Texans to stand together, since they would all suffer under Mexican punishment.
Matamoros, just south of the Bravo, was captured by Santanista forces under Colonel José Antonio Mexía in July 1832. Here Mexía heard of the insurrection up the Texas coast. Immediately he proposed a truce with his ministerial or Bustamante opponent in the area, Colonel Guerra. Mexía argued that despite the internal quarrel, patriotic Mexicans must save Texas for the nation. Guerra agreed, and the Bustamante and Santanista troops were pooled. With four hundred men, Mexía marched north toward the Colorado.
What would have happened if Stephen Austin, who had been in Saltillo, had not rushed over to Matamoros to join Mexía can only be conjecture, but it seems certain that Austin prevented bloodshed. He wrote the Mexican authorities long letters of explanation, and he argued forcefully with Mexía that the events at Velasco and Anáhuac in no way were a rebellion against the Mexican nation, but only an uprising against Bradburn and his superiors, Mier y Terán and Bustamante. Since it was the official Santanista position that Bustamante was a tyrant, this was an effective gambit. Austin's statement, "There is no insurrection of the Colonists against the Constitution and Government, neither do they entertain ideas endangering even remotely the integrity of the territory," was accepted, particularly since Stephen Austin sent word ahead to prepare a lavish reception for the invading Mexican army.
Mexía was greeted at the mouth of the Brazos with a cannon salute, and reception committee after committee assured the Colonel of Texas's loyalty. John Austin entertained him in his home; a huge ball was thrown at Brazoria, which was described as "large, cheerful, and convivial." Mexía had his suspicions, but he was convinced that the Texans were loyal to the Constitution of 1824, and to Santa Anna, if not to the Mexican nation, come what may. It was impossible to make war on colonists who treated him like a hero. Meanwhile, the Bustamante party in Texas collapsed. Mier y Terán committed suicide, and the loss of this distinguished general was a blow to Bustamante. Mexía gathered up the remaining Mexican garrisons in Texas, and, assured that the province was safe, took these troops back to the wars below the Rio Grande.
In this assumption Colonel Mexía was absolutely correct: the province was safe so long as his leader ascribed to the Constitution of 1824, which gave Texas the hope of eventual sovereign statehood within a Mexican confederation.
In Mexico, there was no real bloodshed between Bustamante and Santa Anna. Bustamante continued to lose power, and in the fall proposed a truce. Santa Anna accepted. Under this convention, Gómez Pedraza was recalled and placed in the President's chair, because his constitutional term under the election of 1828 ran till April 1833. This making peace with the tyrant he had denounced, and placing the aristocrat, Gómez Pedraza, back in office, astounded some of Santa Anna's followers. But it brought him even greater acclaim—here seemed to be an officer who put principle before personality or even personal gain. It was overlooked that Gómez had no real power, and that Santa Anna had led the revolt that turned him out of office in the first place. General Santa Anna controlled the army, which meant he was the ruler of the nation.
Santa Anna consented to stand for the office of President. He chose a liberal of impeccable reputation, Valentín Gómez Farías, as his running mate. The ticket was overwhelmingly elected, and probably honestly, though it was already noticeable that the faction controlling the polls on election day invariably won. Then, instead of assuming the Presidential office, Santa Anna turned the executive power and duties over to Gómez Farías and returned to his estates. Again he was praised as a Republican of Roman virtue, but instead Santa Anna was once more sniffing the wind. He had his doubts about the future of liberalism in Mexico. Although none of his contemporaries saw this, he was letting Gómez Farías send up the trial balloons, by demanding and inaugurating a broad spectrum of reforms.