328 



ORIGIN OF WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES. 



by congress, and foreigners were invited to the new domain by a 

 special state colonization law of Coahuila and Texas. 



Under these local laws and constitutional guaranties, large num- 

 bers of foreigners flocked to this portion of Mexico, opened farms, 

 founded towns and villages, re-occupied old Spanish settlements, 

 introduced improvements in agriculture and manufactures, drove off 

 the Indians, and formed, in fact, the nucleus of an enterprizing 

 and progressive population. But there were jealousies between the 

 race that invited the colonists, and the colonists who accepted the 

 invitation. The central power in the distant capital did not esti- 

 mate, at their just value, the independence of the remote pioneers, 

 or the state-right sovereignty to which they had been accustomed 

 at their former home in the United States. Mexico was convulsed 

 by revolutions, but the lonely residents of Texas paid no attention 

 to the turmoils of the factionists. At length, however, direct acts 

 of interference upon the part of the national government, not only 

 by its ministerial agents, but by its legislature, excited the min- 

 gled alarm and indignation of the colonists, who imagined that in 

 sheltering themselves under a republic they were protected as amply 

 as they would have been under the constitution of the North Ameri- 

 can Union. In this they were disappointed ; for, in 1830, an arbi- 

 trary enactment — based no doubt upon a jealous dread of the 

 growing value and size of a colony which formed a link between 

 the United States and Mexico by resting against Tamaulipas and 

 Louisiana, on the north and south, — prohibited entirely the future 

 immigration of American settlers into Coahuila and Texas. To 

 enforce this decree and to watch the loyalty of the actual inhabitants, 

 military posts, composed of rude and ignorant Mexican soldiers, 

 were sprinkled over the country. And, at last, the people of Texas 

 found themselves entirely under military control. 



This suited neither the principles nor tastes of the colonists, who, 

 in 1832, took arms against this warlike interference with their 

 municipal liberty, and after capturing the fort at Velasco, reduced 

 to submission the garrisons at Anahuac and Nacogdoches. The 

 separate state constitution which had been promised Texas in 1824, 

 was never sanctioned by the Mexican Congress, though the colo- 

 nists prepared the charter and were duly qualified for admission. 

 But the crisis arrived when the centralists of 1835, overthrew the 

 federal constitution of 1824. Several Mexican states rose inde- 

 pendently against the despotic act. Zacatecas fought bravely for 

 her rights, and saw her people basely slain by the myrmidons of 

 Santa Anna. The legislature of Coahuila and Texas was dispersed 



