the Texas Revolution was largely the result of Americans desire and passion for brand new western territories and land and that passion and desire focused mostly on Texas which was an area that was rich in natural resources like fertile soil soil Prairie Grass Timber and Wildlife however the story of the Texas Revolution is not only a significant moment in my home state's history of Texas but it also is a critical moment uh in understanding this divisive period between the late 1830s and 1850. in many ways the Texas Revolution really starts the or reignites uh the ideas and Concepts and disagreements that were first debated and hashed out in the 1820 Missouri controversy so the way we'll approach the Texas Revolution is we'll talk about the background to it what caused this revolution in a province known as Tejas well then talk about some of the campaigns and battles of the Texas Revolution and then we'll finish by talking about the consequences of it or the significance of it the story however of the Texas Revolution begins in the year 1819. in the year 1819 the United States Secretary of State John Quincy Adams he was the Secretary of State for James Monroe in 1819 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams working with his counterpart in this in the Kingdom of Spain a gentleman by the name of Onis negotiated a treaty named the Adams onus treaty which established a common border between these Spanish possessions of North America and the United States possessions of North America and the red line you see on this map that was the result of this treaty the establishment of this common border before the ink was even dry on this treaty however you were going to see anglo-americans migrating from Southern States some coming from the Midwest as well across this border and beginning to settle in an area of New Spain known as Tejas now the reason they were going to settle here is that this was rich soil fertile soil in many ways the province of Tejas looked very much like the rest of the southern states especially the deep southern states like Louisiana Mississippi and Alabama so the obvious choice of if you're going to live somewhere in the Spanish possessions the province of Texas was the most likely landing spot now the Spanish didn't like this in fact most of the zanglo immigration into the province was uh done illegally and the Spanish while not not highly enthusiastic about this illegal immigration didn't have the ability to stop it the reason for that is that these were the far-flung northern regions of the Spanish Empire in North America and the Spanish had never really been able to properly settle this area there were some small towns and even some large cities like San Antonio but for the most part this was a very desolate area a very Lawless area and uh while it did have great Spanish influence the Spanish didn't have a firm control on this area and that was largely the result of a large Native American tribe that lived in the area known as the Comanche the Comanches made it very difficult for the Spanish to maintain control in this area of their empire in North America and so this is why the Spanish were in really no position to prevent American migration into these provinces in the North but all of that changed through Spain in 1821. in 1821 the end of a very violent and bloody Affair in Mexican history came to an end beginning in 1810 Mexican Nationalist who wanted Independence for themselves and their own independent nation of Mexico finally were victorious in 1821 when they were able to overthrow the Spanish Authority in Mexico and establish themselves as an independent nation uh by 1824 they had written a Constitution which we'll talk about here in a second but this problem of anglo-migration into the northern areas of New Spain was now the problem of Mexico and like Mexico the Mexican Government wasn't too enthused about all of this angle migration but like Spain was really in no position to stop it but let's talk first about this constitution established by Mexico because it's kind of important to understand the type of government created by this constitution in order to understand what was going to happen in a specific province in the north known as Texas the constitution of Mexico of 1824 created a federalist system of government in which there was a national government but there were also localized governments in all of the Mexican provinces and most Authority and most power was vested in the provincial uh governments now that's not to say that the national government of Mexico wasn't strong as a result of this constitution but it left local matters and and uh governing largely to the provincial territorial uh governments in many ways it reflected the United States Constitution where there was power vested in the national government but also sovereignty and power vested in the provinces and so this would be important to understanding uh the coming of this Texas Revolution because the province of Texas then was largely going to be able to govern itself and over time we're going to see the province is not going the province is going to largely become an American uh or Americanized province of Mexico so this map shows you the Mexican provinces uh that largely held their own territorial um Authority now the province of Texas is right there in the middle and that was where most anglo-americans were migrating to as they crossed the 1819 border um the Spanish had never given any official policy to this migration but the Mexican government decided that if they couldn't prevent it from happening they were going to then try to control it and regulate it and the way this would be done is the provenance was going to be divided up into land grants and agents would be hired by The Mexican government to go to the United States and find willing settlers for these land grants to find families or individuals that would be willing to move to these land grants and the Agents that would be hired by The Mexican government uh would then need to fulfill the terms of a contract say largely stipulating that you need to find families or individuals that agree to our terms of settlement such as you need to speak Spanish you need to convert to the Catholicism uh you must be good upstanding citizens uh and the contracts would stipulate how many people could be brought into these land grants so see Mexico decided to just give official policy to this immigration by trying to control it and regulate it through the use of Agents how hired by The Mexican government and these agents were known as impresarios and the impresarios were numerous but one of the most famous was a gentleman by the name of Stephen Fuller Austin now Stephen off Austin was not the original holder of a land grant and was not the original impresario his father Moses had actually been granted the contract by Mexico but before his father could fulfill the contract he died and the contract was then taken up by his son Stephen F Austin now Austin along with dozens of other impresarios had the job of finding Americans of American families and settling them on their tracks of land granted to them by the Mexican Government under this official policy now most of the anglo-americans that came to Texas came largely from the southern states and it makes sense when you know that or when you know that the province of Texas largely looked Territorial and geographically like the rest of the Deep South it was fertile land perfect for growing cotton and as Southerners made their way into Texas whether it was illegally before or now officially under this impresario system a lot of them brought with them their institutions and their culture and they brought with them slavery uh slaves were brought into the count or brought into the province by some of the original settlers under the impresario system others were bought by settlers already here in Texas and slavery became very quickly a central institution in the province of Texas so Central in fact about 1835 it was clear to Stephen F Austin that slavery was going to be Central uh that Texas needed to be a slave country in order to align it with its neighbors to the east that the province needed to become Americanized in this way now I'm going to give you some numbers to show you how quickly the population in Texas grew as well as the slave population by 1830 Coastal Texas had more Amer anglo-americans than tejanos and tejanos are Spanish-speaking Texans it also had more American anglo-americans than Native Americans uh by 1830 there were roughly 20 000 white settlers uh in the coastal Texas as well as a thousand enslaved uh blacks and by 1835 just five years later there were 35 000 uh texians uh that was what they called the anglo-texans and there were 3 000 African-American slaves as well as the establishment of a booming cotton economy now the flood of all these Americans into Texas was going to lead to a lot of clashes between uh not only Native Americans but Mexican officials uh to the point that a lot of Mexican congressmen uh started to have doubts about this official policy of the impresario so wherever we stand so far well we've talked about the establishment of this common border and this instigation of illegal immigration under Spanish control we then talked about how the problem of this immigration became the problem of Mexico and they dealt with it through this impresario system but by allowing this official immigration into Texas by 1835 I just gave you those numbers it was clear that the province of Texas had become an American Province it had become a largely uh uh Americanized and anglo-americanized uh Province uh they outnumbered anglo-americans were going to outnumber uh tejanos in Texas ten to one by 1835. so what happens next well in 1834 Mexico held a presidential election and one of the candidates in that election who actually ended up winning that election was a gentleman a former General during the war of independence a gentleman by the name of Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana now upon becoming president he had everyone fooled he actually ended up suspending the National Congress of Mexico and assuming all the power and authority of the country to himself and he established himself as a dictator nicknaming himself in Napoleon of the West now this was a terrifying turn of events for Texans because Antonio Lopez the Santa Ana began to um let it be known that he was going to start cracking down on a lot of the provincial Authority most notably that of Texas on account that the province had become so Americanized he announced decrees uh in which he was going to Halt all immigration coming from the United States to the province and he began to intimate that he was planning to abolish slavery inside the territory and all of this was then enough uh to create a lot of fear among Texans that Santa and a quote uh plan to free our slaves and make slaves of us all of this caused Stephen F Austin to need to travel to Mexico City and meet with Antonio Lopez to figure out whether or not he meant any of them and upon traveling to Mexico City uh Santa Ana actually had him imprisoned for inciting rebelliousness among uh the citizens of Texas um it's at this point that American settlers decided that uh either Santa Anna needed to go or they needed to go now after being released from prison Austin returned to Texas and was quoted as saying that war was the only recourse there was no other remedy and he began urging everyone in the state to support the independence of Texas uh as a slave territory that would eventually hopefully be annexed to the United States okay so how did it all happen uh maybe you haven't got a sense of it yet but the causes of the Texas Revolution came down to cultural disparities between the majority population of Texas uh with that of Spain and then later on Mexico but it's clear that the biggest issue that convinces Texans that they need to resist Santa Ana that they need to rebel against his uh centralizing authorities was the issue of slavery uh for years historians just didn't want to recognize this uh entire generations of historians largely argued that it was a matter of cultural differences in language and religion and things like that but it's clear now that the Texas Revolution and the causes of it uh uh are largely the same as what will happen in 1861 with the American Civil War that Texans feared Antonio Lopez was going to subvert the slavery system established in the in the province and slavery was increasingly becoming if not already was the foundation of society economics political structure power everything in Texas and Santa Ana threatened and rather than uh rather than be vulnerable uh to it Texans decided to rebel and so let's turn our attention now to some of the battles and some of the campaigns of the war of independence for Texas um but I I do want to mention that when the war first begins it's not actually a war for independence um it's more of a it is a rebellion but it's a rebellion to restore the constitution of 1824. to depose uh and get rid of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and reinstall the old government that had been there under the 1824 constitution of Mexico that granted most Authority to uh Texas so it's more of a return uh to a previous way of doing things so in many ways the Revolution begins as a conservative movement so let's talk about uh what's going to happen here um after Austin returns to Texas you begin to see a frenzy of military actions to small-scale actions taking place between Texans who were armed uh and uh against uh Mexican soldiers and Mexican officials uh you even had a hundreds of armed volunteers pour in from Southern States to help assist um the Texans resist uh Santa Ana's uh military and um it started as sporadic fighting and because of this Antonio Lopez then issued a decree saying that all Texans needed to disarm um all Americans were going to be expelled from The Province and the leaders of this uh Rebellion were going to be arrested and would be executed as quote Pirates so uh this all caused Stephen F Austin to Proclaim that the sword is drawn the way Santa Ana was going to do this the way he was going to expel Americans and disarm them from the province was he was going to March a fairly sizable Army of over 3 000 men into Texas his goal is to eliminate any armed resistance here and to essentially essentially return the province of Texas's rule uh to Mexico and to eliminate this increasingly Americanized Province and return it more to a Tejano uh province now as his army marches into uh Texas his first Target became the city of San Antonio and at San Antonio uh the town was defended by only 200 or so Army volunteers for the Texas Military as well as some uh adventurers and frontiersmen led by Jim Bowie you even had Davy Crockett here but Santa Ana's 3 000 man army moved into San Antonio which was a Target that was not strategically important it was only defended by 200 Texans or or uh Rebels and it's a it's a Target Santa Ana probably should have just bypassed but because San Antonio was a symbolic Target it was one of the largest if not the largest towns in Texas he decided that it would send quite a statement to eliminate this small Garrison in San Antonio and to quote unquote Liberate the city from this texian Rule and that's what caused then first a Siege of the 200 garrisoned soldiers at San Antonio and then eventually on March 6 1836 the climactic battle took place the Battle of the Alamo as it became known was fought at predawn on March 6 1836 when Santa Anna's men attacked the Garrison uh that was defending a fort built up around a Spanish mission known as the Alamo uh attacked it from all sides and the twice they were forced back by these over 200 Defenders but on the third try they eventually broke through one of the uh battered and destroyed walls and uh by the end of the morning uh they over 200 Defenders were either killed or captured now the Battle of the Alamo is one of these moments in Texas history and you know I was born and raised in this state so you you just get inundated with this stuff over time and as a little boy you know you grow up listening to the to the legend of the Battle of the Alamo and the heroes you know the heroic nature of people like Jim Bowie and uh uh uh Davy Crockett and William Travis um but the reason I'm telling you about the Battle of the Alamo is because from a strategic standpoint this was a complete blunder uh by Santa Anna he should never have devoted any time or effort to this Garrison there were only 200 Defenders there and even though this was an overwhelming victory in terms of you eliminated those 200 Defenders the battle resulted in over 600 Mexican soldiers dying in about twice that wounded The Defenders of the Alamo really poured it on now when the battle was over Santa Ana proclaimed that this was a glorious Victory but one of his close aides wrote in his diary that one more such glorious Victory and the Mexicans are finished what that Aid of Santa Ana was referring to is that this is a victory that caused Santa Ana too much and for the remainder of the war he's hampered he's hindered now this battle did not seal his fate in the Texas Revolution but it made his chances of winning it and defeating the Texans that much more difficult now the other reason the Battle of the Alamo is important is the fighting that took place the Alamo turned what was just a rebellion against Santa Anna into a war for Texan Independence because on March 2nd 1836 as the Defenders of the of the Alamo are besieged we began to see 59 delegates arrive in Washington on the Brazos and their job was to forge an independent nation by declaring independence from Mexico Texas is Declaration of Independence came on March 2nd 1836 but the meeting of 59 delegates chosen from every single town and Tiny Village uh in Texas uh met well before the outcome of the Alamo was known the fighting that was taking place the Alamo before the climactic battle had the effect of convincing the delegates to this meeting in Washington on the Brazos that any hoax of Simply deposing Antonio Lopez de Santa and and returning to the Declaration or to the constitution of 1824 was was Folly and that it was clear the time for that had passed and the time had now arrived to decide whether or not to declare for Independence so it was right there in a Tiny Village called Washington on the Brazos some 150 miles Northeast of San Antonio at 59 delegates crammed into this tiny little house this is a reproduction in Washington on the Brazos later called Independence Hall very Barren room if you ever go here there's nothing in it but a table and chairs very crude very rural uh not the place you would think that a a nation would be born would occur but right there at Washington on the Brazos uh these 59 delegates ended up signing a declaration of the there's a copy of it right there this was done on March 2nd 1836 um once they had signed this declaration of independence they appointed a uh commander of a very disorganized but a very growing military and his name was Sam Houston now Sam was a recently arrived immigrant to Texas he was not there long before the fighting took place but uh he was a Virginia native but had come to Texas via Tennessee and he had a long history in the military he had served with General Andrew Jackson during the creek War and the war of 1812. he had a fairly good military record he had the most military experience and so it would fall to Sam to win Texas Independence on the battlefield against a very formidable enemy that was had him outnumbered in many ways outclassed but what Sam lacked in numbers he more than will make up with in strategy so we're going to turn now to our military aspects of the Revolution and pick up with the fighting that took place after the Battle of the Alamo okay so after learning about the um Mexican victory at the Battle of the Alamo Houston was now forced to lead his ragtag army at this point and outnumbered Army on a very long and strategic Retreat hoping that Santa Ana would pursue him and hopefully make a mistake essentially what Sam did in this war was he adopted the same strategy that George Washington had adapt or had adopted during the American war of independence and that strategy was one of evading your enemy and out maneuvering your enemy and frustrating your enemy to the point that your enemy makes a mistake and then when your enemy makes a mistake you hit him uh Sam was a student of History he understood this strategy well this was the strategy he would employ as we will see uh employed to victory in the America or in the Texas war of independence now go back to this map as Houston began his Retreat from Central Texas back towards the coast he is pursued hotly by Santa and his army and finally on April 21st in 1836 uh Santa Ana made the mistake that Sam Houston was waiting for uh Houston's Army which only had about 900 or so uh soldiers was able to catch Santa Ana's uh 1600 Soldier Army literally napping uh near the San Jacinto river which was a 25 miles or so southeast of the modern day City of Houston and Sam's Army was able to get within 10 to 15 yards of the Mexican military before they knew they were there the Mexican soldiers were most most of them were resting taking a midday Siesta that's why I meant literally napping and what unfolded over the next 18 minutes was 18 minutes of Glory for the Texans and 18 minutes of utter chaos and Terror for the Mexican Army uh in less than 18 minutes Houston soldiers uh were able to completely scatter the Mexican Army and while the battle only lasted 18 minutes over the next two hours of the Texas army engaged in some very nasty uh uh massacres and Slaughters of Mexican soldiers that were uh fleeing for their lives and at the end of the day some 650 Mexican soldiers were killed and over 300 captured the Texas army lost only 11 men and Santa Anna had tried to escape but was actually captured the next day so this was an overwhelming victory for the Texas army and for Sam Houston on April 21st 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto after Santa Ana was captured the next day uh he met with General Houston this famous painting depicts this moment Houston is the gentleman laying on the ground underneath the tree that is known as the Liberty Tree here in Texas uh Santa Ana is the gentleman there in the white pants and the formal surrender here of Santa Anna was a symbolic moment but a significant moment because with hindsight this is where Texas won its independence now the agreements that were made here between Sam Houston and Santa Anna were later put down on paper in the form of a public as well as a secret treaty known as the Treaty of Alaska and the agreement that was made here between this new nation of Texas and uh the dictator of Santa Ana was in public uh the treaty stipulated that Texas was an independent nation but in secret what was really going to happen was Santa Ana would be released uh in exchange for removing all Mexican military soldiers from this from this nation of Texas and Santa Anna would be secretly released to return to Mexico where he had promised to work with the newly foreign Mexican government uh to officially recognize Texas Independence now more on that in future lectures but the Treaty of Alaska which was agreed to here on May 14 1836 brought an official end where I use the word official in quotations brought an official in to the Texas war of independence and for the time being appeared to have uh cemented Texas as an independent nation so that's uh some of the major campaigns and some of the major battles of the Texas Revolution but let's finish by talking about the consequences or the significance of the Texas Revolution uh the Texas Revolution had been launched and accomplished in only seven weeks and when it was over a brand new nation had emerged known as The Lone Star Republic or the Republic of Texas this nation had legalized slavery it had banned free blacks and it elected Sam Houston the major general of the army as its first president it then voted overwhelmingly in support of annexation to the United States but as we're going to see that was not gonna happen from 1836 until 1845 Texas was forced to remain as an independent nation now a lot of Texans today like to wear that as a badge of honor and some even make the claim that that's what Texas wanted all along but that's not true at all as I just mentioned uh upon winning its independence and upon establishing the Republic of Texas then they uh the um uh the legislature of the Republic voted overwhelmingly in support of annexation so the idea that Texas wanted to remain an independent republic is not supported by any shred of evidence so why did it well it had to it was forced to because the consequences of the Texas Revolution was that the statehood of Texas became a political football in the United States and it erupted into a sectional dispute over slavery the northern free states over the next nine years routinely defeated any design or any attempt to Annex the United States or Annex Texas to the United States what you see on the screen is simply one of the hundreds of protests that were submitted to the U.S Congress that were anti-texas they were making arguments as to why the Congress should not vote in favor of annexation now this is simply one of these protests dozens of these protests were sent to the U.S Congress every month hundreds of them every year coming from small towns coming from private individuals and coming from even entire States and all of them had a common theme to them the theme was that the North or the free states of the north the non-slaveholding states were opposed to Texas's annexation on the grounds that the Texas Revolution had simply been a conspiracy to forcibly seize Texas from Mexico in order to add to the union a slave state thus allowing slavery to expand and this particular protest defined it as indefinitely extending the slave representation meaning adding Texas to the union would be allowing slavery to expand and would go against the very ideas established by the free States during the Missouri controversy the extension of slavery Beyond where it presently was would mean that slave states using the Three-Fifths Compromise would gain more control in the Congress more control in the house more control in the Senate and as we learned in the 1820 Missouri controversy this is something the north wanted to prevent because they believe that on a long enough time when if you allow this to happen you would have an over balance of the free states or an overbalance of the slave states so why did Texas remain an independent republic because it got wrapped up in this sectional debate about slavery's expansion meaning for the first time since 1820 in the Missouri controversy the question of slavery's expansion has now come up again and that was a direct result of the Texas Revolution across the north universally the annexation of Texas was frowned upon and opposed at every turn by Northern congressmen and so for nine years Texas settler as an independent republic it would not be until 1845 that the question of Texas's annexation would be decided so the significance of the Texas Revolution are the consequences of the Texas Revolution is that it once again reignites this Central principle issue that divided north and south to the point of the Civil War that issue being the expansion of slavery