Mexican territory

While developing campaigns to exterminate the Indians, the thirteen original colonies multiplied their territorial extension tenfold in less than a century, through a process of dispossession, blackmail and State Terrorism.

Since 1809, annexationist claims have been observed by the United States. The Viceroy of New Spain (Mexico was not yet independent) at that time began negotiations with the government of Washington to specify limits between the northern border of New Spain and the United States. The efforts of the already fragile Spanish vice-royal government conclude with the signing of the Adams-Onís Treaty, by which Spain cedes Florida, already occupied by US troops; in return, the United States agrees to make no more territorial demands (France had also sold Louisiana in 1803).

In 1823 the US government recognized Mexico as an independent nation and sent Joel Robert Poinsett as its representative to sign a treaty of friendship and commerce. A boundary treaty is signed, but the United States government tries to annex Texas in 1825 by offering a million dollars for the state purchase. The proposal was raised to five million two years later, but in both cases it was rejected by Mexico.

Between the 1820s and 1830s, after the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine of territorial expansion into the Pacific, thousands of American settlers settled in the Anglo-Saxon communities of Texas (then Mexican territory). The Spanish colonial government granted Moisés Austin, free of charge, some 200,000 acres of high-quality land so that three hundred Anglo families could reside, an agreement that Mexico later respected, and increased. Although Moses died at six months, his son Stephen continued, and surpassed, his father’s work and, within a few years, tens of thousands of Anglos had settled in Texas, receiving at no cost another hundreds of thousands of acres of land. Mexican land.

In 1824, the Mexican Congress prohibited the entry of slaves into the country, that is, it put an end to the trade, and declared that, from that moment on, every child of a slave was born free. The 15 of September of 1829, Congress ended slavery throughout the country, which at that time came from Oregon to Guatemala. This measure affected the thousands of American slaveholders who had settled in Texas, abbreviated as TX by ABBREVIATIONFINDER.

In 1834 80% of the people of Texas were Americans. There were fewer than 7,000 Mexicans, the vast majority of whom were peaceful peasants who cultivated their land and sold their products. This contributed to the fact that some armed gangs of Anglos came to the homes of Mexicans and murdered entire families, men, women, the elderly and children. Fleeing this ethnic terrorism, thousands of families abandoned their lands and took refuge in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and Coahuila.

After the end of slavery in Mexico, mercenary adventurers Sam Houston, William Travis, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and others, from various states of the Union, especially Tennessee, began to create separatist conflicts with the approval and support of the United States government. The North American government tries to annex Texas in 1825 offering a million dollars for the purchase of the state. The proposal was raised to five million two years later, but in both cases it was rejected by Mexico. His answer was clear: ” the homeland is not a commodity.”

One of the main objectives to take over Texas was to dedicate its extensive fertile plains to the cultivation of cotton, in great demand in Europe, especially in the richest countries, then, of the world: England, France, Holland and the many states that some years later they would unite to form Germany and Italy. This large agricultural enterprise needed slave labor. Entrepreneurs calculated that in the territory of Texas alone, which was almost twice that of present-day Texas, more cotton could be grown than in the entire original country of the thirteen colonies.

Government of Santa Ana

In 1833, General Antonio López de Santa Ana came to power in Mexico with the aim of uniting the country and achieving a strong government. Many of his compatriots did not see him that way and accused him, a year later, of establishing a dictatorship. The country began to divide between two large groups, the centralists, who wanted strong national power, and the federalists, who aspired to an association of semi-autonomous states. The Seven Laws of the new Constitution of 1834, which gave almost omnimous powers to Santa Ana, created the conditions for several States to confront the central power: San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Jalisco, Zacatecas and Yucatán. This weakened the national government and favored the Texas annexationists.

• CountryAAH: Offers a full list of cities and towns in Texas, together with postal codes for each of them, and including capital city of Texas.

Santa Ana was able to form, in January 1836, an army of 6,000 soldiers that began its march north to subdue the Texan rebels. Before leaving, Santa Ana told the British ambassador at the Military College, located in the Castillo de Chapultepec: If the Yankees interfere when the rebellion wins, I will annihilate them and put the flag of Mexico in Washington.

President Andrew Jackson ordered General Edmund Pendleton Gaines to settle in the town of Nacogdoches, on the Louisiana-Texas border, leading thousands of soldiers, to “protect Louisiana and the other states of the Union” from troops. Mexican women who were advancing north under the command of Marshal Santa Ana. The cause of the slave-owning rebels in Texas had, at all times, the active support of Washington.

After the assault on Fort El Álamo , March 6, 1836 in which hundreds of Mexican soldiers perished and all its North American defenders, of whom some say there were 187 and others up to 250, die, Santa Ana manages to escape, but is taken prisoner the next day. Later he signed the Velasco Treaties, a private one, in which he promised to return to Mexico to get the government to recognize the independence of Texas; and another audience, in which, while still president, he not only recognized Texas independence but also that the border between Mexico and Texas was the Rio Bravo del Norte –Grande–, despite the fact that it had always been the Nueces River. The Americans violated the private part of the treaty and held him prisoner for several months. Santa Ana was removed from office and the new government rejected the Velasco accords. Upon returning to his country, he retired to his plantation in Manga de Clavo.