Texas Identity the Texas Revolution: Essay

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The fact that such a small number of Texan patriots were able to withstand the onslaught of so many Mexicans seemed like a potent dramatization of a conflict between native vs. white, where whites 'proved' their superiority, and slave vs. free, where whites fighting to defend 'their' territories against a 'dictatorial' power.

Eventually, despite the loss of the Alamo, the Texans prevailed and the Mexican President Santa Anna was taken captive and forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco in 1836, which gave Texas its independence and designated the Rio Grande River as the border between the new Republic of Texas and Mexico. As Santa Anna was a prisoner of the Texans at the time the Mexican Congress refused to ratify the treaty, as Santa Anna had been compelled to sign the treaty illegally, under duress. The Mexican Congress also noted that the traditional Texas boundary had always been further north on parallel with the Nueces River ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008).

France and England hoped that the newly-declared Republic of Texas would remain independent, as a kind of balance of power to the United States in the region, which was then rapidly expanding under the principles of Manifest Destiny. Both countries quickly recognized the new nation. Americans all over the nation also cheered, for a different reason. The spirit of fierce, frontier independence that was embodied by the American Revolution, but had now been quashed in the more civilized east seemed to be revitalized in the West, and the Texas Revolution seemed to parallel America's war for independence of long ago ("Texas Revolution," Global Security, 2008). However, independence only further inflamed tensions within the new republic between the Caucasian, slave, Mexican and native populations, as now both the border of Texas as well as its independence was in doubt. Mexico only recognized the Republic of Texas in 1845, convinced by the British government that it was the only way to forestall Texan incorporation into the United States.

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Unsurprisingly, Mexico viewed the annexation of the breakaway state as a threat. As soon as independence was declared, the Republic of Texas and Mexico engaged "in border fights and many people in the United States openly sympathized with the U.S.-born Texans in this conflict. As a result of the savage frontier fighting, the American public developed a very negative stereotype against the Mexican people and government. Partly due to the continued hostilities with Mexico, Texas decided to join with the United States, and on July 4, 1845, the annexation gained approval from the U.S. Congress" (Lee 2008).

The Mexican-American War began in 1846 and was only finally resolved on February 2, 1848 in the form of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. This treaty was later ratified by both the U.S. And Mexican Congresses. The Mexican army could not withstand the superior military strategy and technology of However, the legitimacy of the United States' quest for territorial expansion even then was called into question -- New England transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau protested the Mexican War as a war of expansion as a war of slavery. Today, as Texas still retains its complex Mexican-American identity, even historians of the region, in deference to the heritage of many Texans, have begun to present the Mexican as well as the American side. Some have even gone so far as to say that the United States 'stole' Texas, given that the war was waged on behalf of settlers initially welcomed into the state who refused to abide by the Mexican government's terms. The view of Texan national identity has thus undergone a profound shift, and stands as a kind of a cultural Rorschach test of how an individual views America's place in the world -- as unique, special, and unfettered by the laws or respect for other nations, or as in need of paying homage to the legacy of American excesses of the past.

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