A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 1800s

This is Unit Eleven, part two, running from the first American colonies in Mexican Texas to the declaration of war in eighteen forty-six. Part one closed with Moses Austin asking Spain for land on condition that his settlers convert. This half is what those settlers did with it. Two corrections to carry. The first is about motive: Americans went to Texas because Mexico offered credit terms their own government did not, and reading the migration as a movement of liberty-seeking Americans inverts the causation. The second is an asymmetry. Polk campaigned on a northern boundary and gave it up without a shot against Britain, then fought a war for a southern one against a weaker neighbour. That contrast is the strongest evidence in the anchor about what the war was for. By the end you will be able to explain why Americans settled Texas. To say where the Rio Grande boundary came from. To explain the Oregon and Texas asymmetry. To state what the Spot Resolutions demanded. And to say what Texas became within ten years.

Three entries on why anyone went, and the middle one is the correction.

The land agents.

USH1 1525 The Empresarios

An empresario was someone who brought settlers to the region in exchange for generous grants of land, under Mexican colonisation laws that allowed buyers to pay in instalments with no minimum purchase required. United States land policy offered neither of those terms, which is the fact the next entry turns on.

Why settlers came.

USH1 1526 Why Settlers Came

The pull factor was credit, not liberty. Mexico allowed buyers to pay for land in instalments and required no minimum purchase, while United States policy required cash for a minimum acreage. The men taking those terms were men ruined by the Panic of eighteen nineteen, including Moses Austin himself. Later arrivals came after the depression of eighteen thirty-seven, some leaving notes on their houses reading only G T T, for Gone to Texas — a migration of the recently bankrupt, moving toward the only lender that would have them. Settlement of Texas was an economic migration before it was anything else. They went because Mexico offered terms, and they later revolted in part because Mexico changed the terms.

The legal system they disliked.

USH1 1527 The Alcalde

An alcalde was an administrator who often combined the duties of mayor, judge and law enforcement officer, with written records sent to a judge in Saltillo for final determination. Settlers accustomed to juries and local courts found the arrangement foreign, which is a grievance about procedure rather than principle.

Three entries on the break, and the first is the grievance that decided everything.

What Mexico did in 1829.

USH1 1528 Mexico Abolishes Slavery

The Mexican government abolished slavery in eighteen twenty-nine, and tried to accommodate the Texas settlers by maintaining the fiction that their enslaved workers were indentured servants — a legal pretence extended to keep American slaveholders in place. The slaveholders distrusted Mexican intentions and wanted Texas to become a new United States slave state.

How the quarrel escalated.

USH1 1529 From Petition to Revolt

In eighteen thirty-two fifty-five delegates demanded suspension of customs duties, resumed American immigration, land titles and separation from Coahuila, and Santa Anna agreed to all the demands except the call for statehood. The revised system gave jury trials and increased Texas representation, which means the settlers won most of what they had asked for.

What changed his mind.

USH1 1530 Santa Anna Centralises

In eighteen thirty-four Santa Anna dismissed the Mexican Congress and abolished all state governments, including that of Coahuila y Texas, and sent troops to Anahuac in January eighteen thirty-five to collect customs duties. The Texans had been granted concessions by a federal system, and then the federal system was abolished.

Three entries on the revolution, and the last matters far more than the two famous ones.

The siege everyone remembers.

USH1 1531 The Alamo

Santa Anna and an army of four thousand besieged San Antonio in February eighteen thirty-six, and the mission's two hundred defenders under Travis fought for ten days. Travis and James Bowie were among those killed, and a few survivors were executed. Women and children were allowed to leave, along with one enslaved survivor, who was then freed by Mexican forces.

The battle that decided it.

USH1 1532 San Jacinto

On April twenty-first, eighteen thirty-six, Sam Houston's seven hundred men attacked a sleeping force nearly twice their number with cries of Remember the Alamo, Houston telling his troops that victory is certain, and to trust in God and fear not. The battle was over in fifteen minutes, approximately half the Mexican troops were killed, and Santa Anna was captured.

The treaty he signed.

USH1 1533 The Treaty Mexico Would Not Honour

Santa Anna grudgingly signed a peace treaty as a prisoner, travelled to Washington, met President Jackson, and agreed to recognise an independent Texas with the Rio Grande as its south-western border. Once he was out of power, the Mexican Congress refused to be bound by his promises and went on claiming Texas — a border agreed by a captured general whose own government repudiated him. This is the direct cause of the war ten years later. The Rio Grande boundary exists only in that repudiated treaty. Everything President Polk later calls American soil rests on it, and Mexico had never at any point accepted it.

Four entries on the republic, and watch what it becomes in ten years.

The republic that resulted.

USH1 1534 The Lone Star Republic

The military hero Sam Houston was elected president of Texas in September eighteen thirty-six, and Texans voted for American annexation. France, Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands all recognised the new republic. The United States recognised it only in March eighteen thirty-seven, later than several European powers.

Why annexation waited.

USH1 1535 Annexation Delayed

American politicians hesitated over annexation for a decade, because it would almost certainly mean war with Mexico, and because it raised the prospect of reopening the whole slavery fight settled by the Missouri Crisis. Texas would enter as a slave state, so the Senate arithmetic you learned in part one applied to it again.

How fast it filled.

USH1 1536 Texas Grows

The population of Texas nearly tripled in the ten years between eighteen thirty-six and eighteen forty-six, with nearly twelve thousand enslaved Africans brought to Texas by American slaveholders by eighteen forty. The territory in which Mexico had forbidden slavery became a slave society within a decade of independence.

Who paid for it.

USH1 1537 Tejanos Dispossessed

Americans in Texas generally treated both Tejano and Native American residents with utter contempt, eager to displace and dispossess them, with Anglo-American leaders seizing the lands of Tejano neighbours who had supported the rebellion. President Mirabeau Lamar instituted a programme of ethnic cleansing in eighteen thirty-nine aimed at pushing all Native tribes out of Texas.

Two entries on the idea that justified all of it, and the election it won.

The phrase.

USH1 1538 Manifest Destiny

The New York editor John O'Sullivan coined manifest destiny in eighteen forty-five, meaning the divine right and duty of White Americans to seize and settle the American West, with expansion presented as spreading Protestant, democratic values. The doctrine names its beneficiaries. It is a claim about who the continent is for, stated openly.

The election it won.

USH1 1539 The Election of 1844

Voters elected James K. Polk in eighteen forty-four specifically because he promised territorial expansion — a Tennessee slaveholder vowing to annex Texas as a new slave state and to take Oregon as well. His campaign slogan was fifty-four forty or fight, naming a latitude in the Pacific Northwest.

Two entries on Oregon, and keep the outcome in mind for the topic after this one.

What that latitude meant.

USH1 1540 Oregon and Fifty-Four Forty

Oregon Country ran from forty-two degrees latitude, the present California boundary, north to fifty-four degrees forty minutes, with an agreement of eighteen eighteen establishing joint British and American ownership of the whole. The eighteen twenty-seven Treaty of Joint Occupation had opened the territory to settlement by both nations.

How it was settled.

USH1 1541 The Forty-Ninth Parallel

Polk proposed division at the forty-ninth parallel and Britain refused, its foreign secretary declining even to forward the proposal to London. Queen Victoria's government then agreed to that same division in June eighteen forty-six. British doubts about defending Oregon militarily, and other imperial worries, changed the answer.

Three entries on the southern boundary, and the first is where the two halves of this lecture meet.

The boundary dispute.

USH1 1542 The Boundary Dispute

The United States had long argued that the Rio Grande was the border between Mexico and the United States. Mexico refused to be bound by Santa Anna's promises and insisted the border lay farther north, at the Nueces River. From Mexico's view, Polk's order sending troops into the disputed land was an invasion of sovereign territory. Setting the border at the Rio Grande would, in the anchor's words, allow the United States to control land it had never occupied. Now notice the asymmetry with Oregon. Polk campaigned on fifty-four forty or fight and settled at forty-nine without a fight, against a great power. He then went to war over a boundary in the south against a weaker one. That asymmetry is the strongest evidence that the war was about acquiring slave territory, and it is visible in the anchor's own numbers.

The incident that began the shooting.

USH1 1543 The Thornton Affair

In January eighteen forty-six a United States force ordered to the Rio Grande to build a fort encountered a Mexican cavalry patrol. Shots were exchanged, and sixteen United States soldiers were killed or wounded. Polk declared that Mexico had invaded American territory and shed American blood upon American soil.

The declaration.

USH1 1544 The Declaration of War

Congress declared war on May twelfth, eighteen forty-six, on the strength of Polk's account of the incident — a war declared over blood shed on soil whose ownership was the question in dispute. Volunteers came forward in droves from every part of the country except New England, the seat of abolitionist activity.

One entry to close, on the objection and the single question behind it.

Who objected.

USH1 1545 Opposition to the War

The small but vocal antislavery faction argued that Polk had deliberately provoked hostilities so that the United States could annex more slave territory. Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln and other members of Congress issued the Spot Resolutions, demanding to know the precise spot on United States soil where American blood had been spilled. Many Whigs also denounced the war, while Democrats supported Polk's decision. The Spot Resolutions are a procedural device doing constitutional work. If the spot was not American soil, the war's stated justification collapses, and Lincoln was asking the one question the administration could not answer.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why Americans settled Texas: Mexico let them pay in instalments with no minimum purchase and the United States demanded cash for a minimum acreage, so the men who went were men ruined by the Panic of eighteen nineteen. You can say where the Rio Grande boundary came from — a treaty signed by Santa Anna while he was a prisoner, which the Mexican Congress repudiated the moment he was out of power. You can explain the asymmetry: fifty-four forty or fight became forty-nine without a fight against Britain, and a disputed strip in the south became a war against Mexico. You can state what the Spot Resolutions demanded, which was the precise location where American blood had been shed on American soil. And you can say what Texas became: a territory where Mexico had forbidden slavery, holding nearly twelve thousand enslaved people by eighteen forty.