Table Of ContentContested Empire
Courtesy Special Collections Library, University of Texas at
Arlington
Number Forty-six
Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, published for the
University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press
A list of other titles in this series appears at the back of the book.
Contested Empire
Rethinking the Texas Revolution
EditEd by Sam W. HaynES and GErald d. Saxon
introduction by GrEGG cantr Ell
Contributors
Eric R. Schlereth
Sam W. Haynes
Miguel Soto
Will Fowler
Amy S. Greenberg
Published for the University of Texas at Arlington by
Texas A&M University Press
College Station
Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas at Arlington
All rights reserved
First edition
Manufactured in the United States of America
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contested empire : rethinking the Texas Revolution / edited by Sam W. Haynes and
Gerald D. Saxon ; introduction by Gregg Cantrell ; contributors: Eric Schlereth,
Sam W. Haynes, Miguel Soto, Will Fowler, Amy S. Greenberg.—First edition.
pages cm.—(Walter Prescott Webb memorial lectures ; number forty-six)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Published on occasion of the 48th Annual Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture,
held at the University of Texas at Arlington in March, 2013.
ISBN 978-1-62349-309-7 (book/cloth : alk. paper)—
ISBN 978-1-62349-310-3 (e-book)
1. Texas—History—Revolution, 1835–1836. 2. Texas—History—To 1846.
3. Texas—Relations—Mexico. 4. Mexico—Relations—Texas. 5. United States—
Politics and government—1815–1861. 6. Texas—Annexation to the United States.
7. Texas—Ethnic relations—Political aspects. 8. Irredentism. I. Haynes, Sam W.
(Sam Walter), 1956- editor. II. Saxon, Gerald D., editor. III. Schlereth, Eric R.,
author. IV. Schlereth, Eric R. Voluntary Mexicans. V. University of Texas at
Arlington, issuing body. VI. Series: Walter Prescott Webb memorial lectures ; 46.
F390.C77 2015
976.4'03—dc23
2015013394
contents
Preface vii
Introduction Gregg Cantrell 1
one Voluntary Mexicans: Allegiance and the Origins of the Texas
Revolution 11
Eric R. Schlereth
two “Imitating the Example of Our Forefathers”: The Texas Revolution
as Historical Reenactment 43
Sam W. Haynes
three Politics and Profits: Mexican Officials and Land Speculation
in Texas, 1824–1835 79
Miguel Soto
four The Texan Revolution of 1835–1836 and Early Mexican
Nationalism 97
Will Fowler
five “Time’s Noblest Empire Is the Last”: Texas Annexation
in the Presumed Course of American Empire 139
Amy S. Greenberg
ABOUT THE Contributors 165
Index 169
preface
Few events have occupied as prominent a place in the American his-
torical imagination as the Texas Revolution. Steeped in lore and shrouded
in myth, the story of Texas’s separation from Mexico has achieved iconic
status, the subject of hundreds of books, not to mention more than a few
Hollywood films. The events of 1835–36 have attracted more than their
fair share of scholarly analysis, too. Some historians have sought, with
varying degrees of success, to challenge popular notions of the rebellion,
while others have tried to explain the enduring appeal of its more cele-
brated moments (the Alamo siege, for example) in American cultural life.
Indeed, the story has been told and retold so many times that one might
well ask if there remains anything new to say about the Revolution at all.
In March 2013, five historians from three countries—the United
States, Mexico, and Scotland—met at the University of Texas at Arling-
ton to reexamine the Texas Revolution. Each delivered papers at the Wal-
ter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, held annually by the university’s
Department of History. The 2013 conference, organized and presented by
the department’s Center for Greater Southwestern Studies, was intended
to offer new perspectives of an event that has been studied by several gen-
erations of Texas historians, but that has rarely been the focus of historians
of the United States and Mexico. Although scholars of Texas history have
done much excellent work, a complete picture of the rebellion requires
an appreciation for the roles played by both countries. To that end, the
conference organizers sought to explore the causes and consequences of
the rebellion in a broader, continental context.
In keeping with the transnational theme of the conference, the first two
essays, written by US historians who study the early national period, seek
to provide some insight into the mindset of Anglo-American colonists in
viii Preface
Texas. Eric Schlereth, of the University of Texas at Dallas, examines the
concept of “voluntary allegiance” in order to better understand exactly what
Mexican citizenship may have meant to the thousands of Anglo-Americans
who abandoned their country of origin and settled west of the Sabine River
in the 1820s and 1830s. As Schlereth notes, Americans regarded their alle-
giance as easily transferable from one country to another; it was such think-
ing that made Anglo colonization of northern Mexico possible. But they
could just as easily withdraw their allegiance, and as tensions mounted in
1835, Anglo colonists ceased to view themselves as voluntary Mexicans and
became voluntary Texans instead, thus giving the rebellion—in their own
minds, at least—the stamp of legitimacy. Sam W. Haynes, of the Univer-
sity of Texas at Arlington, focuses on how Anglo-Americans’s memory of
the American Revolution informed their thoughts and actions during the
war for Texas independence. Although a common commitment to federal-
ist principles seemed to unite Anglo-American settlers and Tejanos at the
outset of the conflict, the American Revolution provided a cultural frame of
reference and a blueprint for armed resistance for the former citizens of the
United States that Mexican-Texans did not share.
The next two essays examine the rebellion from a Mexican perspective.
Will Fowler, of the University of St Andrews, challenges the widely held
assumption that a Mexican national identity had its roots in the trauma of
the 1846–48 conflict with the United States. Instead, he argues that Mexi-
can intellectuals were already beginning to develop a sense of Mexicanidad
by the time of the Texas Revolution, an identity formed partly as a result
of an emerging anti-Americanism. While Mexican liberals like Lorenzo de
Zavala may have admired the United States, conservatives such as Manuel
de Mier y Teran, Lucas Alamán, and José Maria Tornel increasingly viewed
Anglo-Americans with feelings of contempt—as an alien “other”—that
enabled Mexicans to develop a clearer sense of who they were as a people
and as a nation. Miguel Soto, of the Universidad Autónoma de Mexico,
examines the role of prominent Mexicans in the land speculation schemes
that accompanied the government’s efforts to colonize Texas. Much like
their Anglo-American counterparts, Mexican entrepreneurs who engaged
in speculative activities in Texas sought to encourage Anglo-American set-
tlement in the region. In so doing, they helped create the conditions that
would lead to rebellion, prompting Soto to suggest that Texas may have
been lost to Mexico well before the conflict began.
Preface ix
The final essay by Amy Greenberg, who delivered the conference’s
keynote address, provides a fitting postscript to these essays. A historian
of nineteenth-century United States at Penn State University, Greenberg
examines the consequences of the Revolution for the United States, as
Americans wrestled with the prospect of incorporating Mexico’s former
province into the Union. Whereas scholars have traditionally cited North-
ern opposition to the acquisition of new slave territory to explain the
failure of Texas’s initial annexation bid in the late 1830s, Greenberg calls
attention to a deeper sense of anxiety among American anti-expansionists.
Drawing upon Thomas Cole’s allegorical Course of Empire paintings
depicting the rise and fall of ancient Rome, Greenberg argues that many
Americans saw in the Roman experience a cautionary tale for the young
American republic. If Americans balked at the prospect of annexing Tex-
as, it was because they harbored misgivings about unbridled territorial
growth, sensing, as Cole did, that conquest and empire would lead inexo-
rably to decay and collapse.
A great many people helped to make the forty-eighth annual Walter
Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures possible. The published Webb volumes
are supported by a generous endowment from C.B. Smith Sr., a former
student of Walter Prescott Webb, and supplemented by the Rudolph Her-
manns Endowment for the Liberal Arts. We would also like to thank
Marvin Dulaney, chair of the University of Texas at Arlington History
Department, for providing additional financial assistance. Organizing any
academic conference, and particularly one involving speakers from three
countries, requires a keen attention to logistical detail. We were therefore
fortunate indeed to be able to rely on conference coordinator Jennifer
Lawrence and graduate student Karen Beazley, both of whom made sure
that the conference went smoothly. We are grateful for the support of
the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies staff, administrative assis-
tant Elizabeth York and student assistant Rachel Makutuya. Alan Olson,
director of Collections and Exhibits at the Dallas Historical Society, gra-
ciously loaned the Center its collection of Texas flag reproductions, some
of which serve as illustrations in this volume. Introductions for the fea-
tured speakers at the conference were delivered by Chris Morris (Depart-
ment of History, University of Texas at Arlington), Christopher Conway
(Department of Modern Languages, University of Texas at Arlington),
Sonia Kania (Department of Modern Languages, University of Texas at
