1833: A Critical Year In the March Toward the Texas Revolution (Jun 2, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
This week we continue with the series on the causes and coming of the Texas Revolution. This entry will look at the critical developments during 1833.
When the dust had cleared from the Battle of Nacogdoches in August 1832, Anglo Americans acting in the name of Santa Anna’s Federalist revolt had cleared all of Texas except for San Antonio and Goliad of Mexican troops. But their actions were more a result of local and personal grievances than of any genuine concept of independence. At this time, most Texians, especially the older, more established residents, saw revolution as a last resort at best. Such a stance certainly proved advantageous when a 400-man army led by Federalist José Antonio Mexía, sent by the state government in Saltillo to make sure Texas was not on the edge of revolt, arrived on the Brazos in July 1832. Stephen F. Austin had met and accompanied Mexía as he arrived in Texas and impressed upon the general that Texians had no desire to separate from Mexico but instead were just in agreement with the Federalists who wished to restore the Constitution of 1824. Mexía reported back to Mexico that all in Texas was well.
Texians now contented themselves with primarily pushing for reform within the framework of the Mexican Republic. A convention convened in San Felipe and approved a petition to send to Coahuila authorities in Saltillo to ask that Texas be exempt from customs duties for another three years and that the ban on immigration from the U.S. and the Law of April 6, 1830, be repealed. Most important, they requested that Texas be separated from Coahuila and become a Mexican state. Nothing much came from this convention, primarily because it had assembled illegally according to Mexican law. Stephen F. Austin, hoping to avoid undue trouble but also realizing that Texians were serious about the request, went to work to legally assemble legal documents and work within the state legislature in Saltillo
New developments in Mexico City clouded the picture. In January 1833, Santa Anna succeeded in his revolt to overthrow the Centralist government, and he took over. Three months later, the Mexican states elected him president of Mexico. Santa Anna instituted a Federalist government under the Constitution of 1824, and his ascension pleased most in Texas as they assumed he would support Texas’ goals. In that vein, Texians called for another convention. However, much had changed in Texas since the last meeting, and such transformation reflected the growing unrest in the province. Despite the immigration ban of the Law of April 6, 1830, Americans had continued to stream into Texas. These newcomers came into a region that had almost no Mexican influence, no desire to adopt Mexican social and cultural norms, and they also tended to look at Mexico, a nation full of non-whites, through the racial lens they brought with them from the United States, which meant they viewed the government and the people of the nation they had come to live in with disdain. Furthermore, because the vast majority of these new residents—people who had come to Texas since 1830—did not have secure land titles, they were much more open about not just becoming a separate state within the Mexican federation but also about potential independence. Sam Houston, who had come to Texas in late 1832, was a prime example of these newcomers.
The convention met at San Felipe on April 1, 1833, but Austin and the older moderates did not control this gathering; instead, it came under the power of the more recent arrivals, men such as William Wharton, who had been Austin’s chief rival at the 1832 convention. Sam Houston was the representative from Nacogdoches, despite the fact that he had been in that city less than three months. Houston was firmly on the side of the more radical elements like Wharton. Houston, who had risen quickly in Tennessee politics primarily because of his close relationship with Andrew Jackson, had become governor of that state in 1828 when he was only thirty-five, but scandal forced his resignation less than a year into his term. After three aimless years living among the Cherokee in Arkansas—where he earned the nickname of “Big Drunk” for his propensity for binge drinking—he crossed the Red River into Texas in late 1832 and was living in Nacogdoches by January 1833. At the 1833 Convention, the delegates again asked for a repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830, as well as separate statehood for Texas. But they also went beyond the 1832 declaration in that it drafted a proposed state constitution, patterning it on the constitutions of Tennessee and Louisiana. A key feature of those and Texas’ was that it made slavery legal, which contravened Mexican law. Austin, who had originally doubted the wisdom of the convention but changed his mind, agreed to take the document to Mexico City, where he hoped his influence and diplomatic skills could smooth over some of the political opposition he knew it would encounter. It would turn out to be the most transformational event in Austin’s life.
Once in the national capital, Austin found Mexico City, once again, in chaos. Santa Anna had left the operation of the government to his vice-president, the staunch Federalist Valentín Farías, and he had “retired” to his ranch in Jalisco. He was technically still president, but the wily Santa Anna, a man whose primary political skill was survival, which he would demonstrate time and again, left Farías to take the slings and arrows of the political tensions in the nation. Farías was open to many of the reforms the Texians asked for, although he was steadfastly opposed to Texas becoming a separate state. Still, the proposed Texas changes became bogged down in the divided Mexican Congress. Austin became frustrated, and then more so when he fell ill with cholera during an epidemic that was sweeping the city. The combination of exasperation and illness caused him to make an uncharacteristic mistake, one that would not only deepen the chasm between the Mexican government and Texas but also cost Austin his freedom.
Next Week: Stephen F. Austin languishes in jail as the situation in Texas deteriorates.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.