Anglo-American Colonization in Mexican Tejas

• Mexico courted foreign immigrants to help populate the frontier province of Tejas

  • generous land grants that were much cheaper than the United States

  • attractive, especially after the Panic of 1819

• 1821-35, 30000 immigrated from the United States

  • legally and illegally

  • mostly from the slave states

  • peaking 1830-35 (cotton boom years)

  • brought slavery and cotton with them

    • about 5000 were enslaved Black people

• Anglo-Texans saw slavery and cotton as the key to Texas’s future, but…

  • Mexico was abolishing slavery

    • compromises/loopholes were carved out for Texas

    • tensions still rose

The Texas Rebellion and Republic

• 1835, centralizing reforms to Mexico’s constitution led to a rebellion in Texas

  • rebels feared a stronger government would force Texas to end slavery

• rebels appealed to the United States for support

  • President Jackson refused

  • private United States money and manpower poured in

  • Declaration of Independence, March 1836

  • unlikely rebel victory, April 1836

• annexing Texas to the United States as another slave state was too controversial to pass in Congress

  • so, Texas stayed independent

  • Mexico refused to recognize independence

• United States immigration continues, 1836-45:

  • anglo population in Texas rises by 400%

  • the enslaved population in Texas rises 800%