US History
Texas Revolution
1.Why did Mexico give Texas land
to Americans?
2. How did this decision affect the
future of Texas?
3. List three causes of tension
between Americans and Mexicans.
4. Use the text to number the
following events in chronological
order.
___ Texas gains indépendance from Mexico
___ Mexico wins indépendance from Spain
___ Texas declares independance
Instructions: Read the text. Rank each cause of the Texas Revolution as a group, as to which would
be the biggest cause to the smallest cause of the Texas Revolution. Number one would be the biggest
cause and number six being the smallest cause. EXPLAIN WHY. As a group come up with a list
together and prepare to present.
The Expansionist History of the United States
Certainly one of the most important reasons for Mexico's loss of Texas was the historic
expansionism of the United States, which had been growing by leaps and bounds even prior to the
American war of independence. British colonists had occupied and developed the Tidewater and
Piedmont areas of the Atlantic Seaboard and were occupying the Appalachians when revolution broke
out. Americans now, they conquered and peopled the Ohio River Valley, the Trans-Mississippi West of
Kentucky and Tennessee, then Florida, and portions of the massive Louisiana Purchase territory. By the
time Mexico gained its independence from Spain, Americans were already on the border of the new
nation - and in some cases were already over the border.
Whether it was because they wanted new virgin farmland, or they wanted to make the United
States a transcontinental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or they wanted to fulfill what
they saw as America's divine mission to bring Christianity and civilization to all of North America - "they
wanted" is the key phrase. Because the United States had been expanding for its entire history, many
Americans were determined to see that trend continue - either through purchase, or negotiations, or
militarily. They looked upon American acquisition of vast areas of Northern Mexico as an inevitability.
The policy of the American government for the sale of unoccupied land within its borders to settlers also,
unwittingly, encouraged many Americans to migrate to Mexican Texas after 1821. In the decade and a
half before the revolution in Texas, the United States government offered unoccupied land within its
borders to settlers at the price of $1.25 an acre with an 80 acre minimum tract purchase. This worked well
as long as credit was readily available. However, a financial panic swept the United States beginning in
1819. This made money incredibly tight. The government sold land on a cash-only basis and with money
now scarce, many Americans found the Republic of Mexico's giveaway of large tracts of land to settlers
willing to becoming law-abiding citizens of the Republic an irresistible offer.
This however is a far cry from proving a premeditated conspiracy by American government officials to
"steal" Texas from Mexico. While such allegations were made in both the United States and Mexico
during and after the revolution, such a conspiracy - much less that it was responsible for events in Texas has never been proven.
Nonetheless, without a multitude of Anglo-Americans in Texas (who missed their old country, its
governmental system and methods) a revolutionary war would not have broken out in Texas in 1835.
Racism
One of the factors that complicated and soured the relations between Mexican citizens and the
Anglo settlers they allowed to emigrate to Texas from the United States was racial prejudice. Both sides
of the relationship felt racially superior to the other. When the Mexican government took action that
angered Anglos or Anglo Texans got into conflict with an official of that government, American colonists
were likely to respond with such repulsive terms as "greaser" or "bean eater". When Anglos resisted
orders or decisions, Mexicans were just as likely to use the term "gringo".
Racial prejudice led both sides of this relationship to expect the worst of one another, to misread and
misinterpret the actions and attitudes of the other race, and to respond in a haughty manner. When both
sides of such a quarrel feel they are "God's Chosen People" (ethnocentrism), troubles are certain to
develop.
To overlook racism as a cause of the Texas Revolution is simply naive - but it was only one of
many causes, not the only cause.
Cultural Differences
Perhaps the most vexing factor in the Anglo-Mexican relationship was the cultural conflict
between these two very different peoples. When the Republic of Mexico authorized the “empressario"
program, it realized that its chances of success were not good - the Anglos from the United States would
have to make tremendous cultural changes if they were to fit in permanently in their new home. That the
Anglos did not make such dramatic changes in a short time period under such troubled circumstances was
not surprising.
Anglos, who had agreed to learn and use the Spanish language as part of the admittance
arrangement, groused about the use of Spanish for all official business in Texas once they had settled in.
Shortly they began pressing for an exception for Anglos Texans whereby the "official language" could be
dumped in favor of English.
The Anglos had also agreed to become practicing Roman Catholics as the church was the
officially recognized religion for all of the Republic of Mexico. Even if most Anglos had made the
promise in good faith fully intending to convert, they found it difficult after arriving in Texas. Remember
that most Anglos had come from the Deep South and, if affiliated with any church, were Southern
Baptists or Methodists. Relations between such fundamentalist Protestant groups and Roman Catholicism
were strained to say the very least - each thought the others were infidels. Therefore, many Anglos
continued to practice their Protestant faiths long after they settled in Texas. Even those who did convert
found it difficult to practice their adopted faith given the scarcity in Texas of Catholic churches and
priests.
Another complicating cultural difference involved judicial systems. Mexicans operated under the
Napoleanic Code while Anglos from the United States had always functioned under a judicial system
based upon English common law. The former presumed the guilt of an individual charged with an offense
until they could prove their innocence. The latter presumed an individual innocent until proven guilty by
the government. Needless to say, bitter disputes involving allegations of disloyalty and tyranny arose
often in judicial proceedings.
The Hispanic culture also accepted a very active role by the military, far more active than
anything Anglos had ever seen or were willing to accept. The military in Mexican Texas, for instance, was
used on occasion to collect both taxes and the tithe to the church. This was foreign to Anglos from the
United States. Remember that the American revolution of independence had begun when British military
forces attempted to collect and force the payment of tariff duties and taxes.
Perhaps no other factor surpassed these cultural conflicts in straining relations day in and day out
between these two very different peoples which would culminate in the revolution.
Governmental Differences
The most immediate cause of the Texas Revolution was the refusal of many Texas, both Anglo
and Mexican, to accept the governmental changes mandated by "Siete Leyes" which placed almost total
power in the hands of the Mexican national government and Santa Anna.
Most of the Anglos who moved to Texas came from the Deep South. During the 1820s and 1830s, this
region was swept by Jacksonian Democracy - a governmental philosophy that held that all government
was bad, the best government was the least government, government grew more tyrannical the fewer
people held power, the executive branch was the most dangerous and the one to be given the least power,
etc. Perhaps most importantly, Jacksonian Democrats and the vast majority of Anglos who emigrated to
Mexican Texas felt that governmental power should be vested primarily in local and state governments
which, being closer to the people, were more representative and more easily controlled.
Many Mexicans felt exactly the same way. Remember that one of the internal disputes in postrevolutionary Mexico involved the best way to distribute power between local, state, and national levels
of government. Centralists, who wished to allot the overwhelming majority of power to the central/
national government in Mexico City, were fought tooth and nail by those all across Mexico who felt this
would amount to an uncontrollable and tyrannical dictatorship.
Until 1835 these groups fought one another for control. In October, 1835 the centralists and Santa Anna
won out with the enactment of "Siete Leyes". This move: (1) did away with the federalist Constitution of
1824, (2) abolished all state legislatures including that of Coahuila y Tejas, and (3) replaced states with
"departments" headed up by governors and appointed councils selected by and serving at the pleasure of
Santa Anna.
The reaction in many sections of Mexico, including Texas, was military resistance to the creation
of what many citizens saw as an all-powerful government in the hands of a tyrannical Santa Anna. In
Texas, war was originally waged in an attempt to restore the Constitution of 1824 and federalism. Only
later would it become a war of independence.
Slavery
When Anglo settlers were originally admitted to Mexican Texas, they were permitted to bring
their black slaves from the Deep South with them. Indeed, had Mexican Texas been closed to slavery
from the beginning, far fewer Southerners would have emigrated either because they could not bring their
expensive property and manpower source with them or because of their political/racial views.
Over the years, Mexico took repeated steps to limit or abolish slavery in Texas. Each step prompted a
vociferous reaction from Anglos followed by a Mexican retreat in which the threatening change was
repealed. Given the amount of capital many Anglos had invested in black slaves, Mexico's mercurial
actions with respect to slavery were at the very least threatening. There were those by 1836 who felt an
independent Republic of Texas in which slavery was firmly and for all time recognized and respected was
preferable to Mexico with an uncertain future for slavery. Two and one half decades later Texans still felt
so strongly about black slavery and attached to it for both economic and social reasons that they would
secede from the United States and wage a civil war rather than see the institution imperiled.
The Physical Isolation of Texas
The Texas Revolution was also the product of the physical isolation of Texas from both the
American and Mexican governments. The situation in Texas, in which Anglo colonists became
increasingly estranged from their host nation with the passage of time, developed in part because Mexico
City was so far away. Even without its post-revolutionary struggles and inner focus, Mexico (like Spain
before it) would have had tremendous difficulty trying to station enough troops and officials so far from
Mexico City to control the situation. Similarly, the United States (had it had the desire to do so) would
have found in equally impossible to control Anglo-Americans who had moved to Texas or Southerners
who were preparing to move. Anglo-Texans got used to doing whatever they wanted in part because
neither government could effectively control the isolated region.
Causes of the Revolution- Rankings
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Background Questions
1. In what year did Mexico win its independence from Spain?
2. In what year did California separate from Mexico and become part of the United States?
3. In what year was gold is covered in California?
4. What were three of the reasons that made it difficult to decide to go to California?
5. What were the two sea routes from a port like New York City to California?
6. How many gold-seekers left the States in 1849 and traveled overland to California?
7. What are the steps of the journaling task of this document based activity.
8. Define these terms
Californiospocketful of rockspersonabuffalo chipknapsack-
1. What was William Swain’s home state?
2. How long did it take William to travel by steamboat from western New York to Chicago?
3. Today a person can fly from New York to California in 6 hours. How long did it take Swain to make the
same trip?
4. Just from looking at this map, what part of William’s journey would you guess was the most difficult?
5. List some details you may want to include in your journal.
1. Where is Old Boone when he writes this letter? What is the date?
2. What fuel did Old Boone use to cook his buffalo?
3. How many wagons and men were traveling together in Boone’s company?
4. How many miles a day was the company averaging?
5. Why does Boone think they did not see many Indians?
6. What is the greatest difficulty described by Old Boone in this letter?
1. Where is Goldborough Bruff when he records these grave markers in his journal?
2. How did P.W. Title and William Colly die?
3. How did Jno. (Jonathan) Campbell die? How old was he?
4. Were these fresh grave sites (within the last four weeks)? What is your evidence?
5. Do you think the 49ers faced a good chance of dying on the Oregon Trail based on this document?
1. List what you think are the four most important items James Heron carried on his back when he hiked
off to the diggings. Explain.
2. In the first months of the gold rush, most of the gold rushers used the hole-digging technique described
James Heron. The key was to dig in places where water had once flowed. In your own words, how did
prospectors like Heron find gold?
1. What is the date and location of the photograph?
2. What do you suppose is the relationship between the two men shoveling dirt into the long tom. Cite
evidence from the photo to support your idea.
3. The long tom has riffles along the bottom like an old fashioned washboard. How would this help
miners get gold?
4. Would your persona have enjoyed working at Spanish Flat with this group of miners? Why or Why
not?
1. What year and at what age did Alfred Doten write this diary entry?
2. How many ounces of gold did Alfred Doten pay for his horse? How much was that in dollars?
3. What is a reasonable estimate of Doten’s daily earnings in the diggings? Explain.
4. Based on the document, did miners get rich during the gold rush?
5. In 1851, was there law and order in the California gold fields? What evidence do you have?
1. Who wrote this document and to who it was written?
2. How many months had it been since Willian had left Youngstown? (See Doc A)
3. What feelings and worries does Sabrina have?
4. Who is saying the words on the bottom line -“Poor pa, See Pa…”?
5. Had you been William Swain would you have gone to California? Had you been Sabrina Swain would
you have encouraged William to go? Explain.
1. How is William getting home from California?
2. Is William returning with a “pocketful of rocks”?
3. How does William feel about gold seeking?
From Thesis to Journal
Journal Outline
Directions: List at least three details from each category of text that will go into your journal entry. Give
location and date for each entry.
Journal Entry #1____________________________________________(Place where entry was written)
_________________________________________________________( Time of day, month, day, year)
1. Detail one:
2.
Detail two:
3.
Detail three:
Journal Entry #2____________________________________________(Place where entry was written)
_________________________________________________________( Time of day, month, day, year)
1. Detail one:
2.
Detail two:
3.
Detail three:
Journal Entry #3____________________________________________(Place where entry was written)
_________________________________________________________( Time of day, month, day, year)
1. Detail one:
2.
Detail two:
3.
Detail three:
Journal
1.
2.
3.