Mexican Texas - Mexican Independence

Mexican Independence

In 1821, the Mexican War for Independence severed the control that Spain had exercised on its North American territories, and the new country of Mexico was formed from much of the lands that had comprised New Spain, including Spanish Texas. The victorious rebels issued a provisional constitution, the Plan de Iguala. This plan reaffirmed many of the ideals of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and granted equal citizenship rights to all races. In the early days of the country, there was much disagreement over whether Mexico should be a federal republic or a constitutional monarchy. The first monarch, Agustin I, abdicated in March 1823. The following month the citizens of San Antonio de Bexar established a governing committee for the province of Texas. The committee contained seven representatives from San Antonio, one from La Bahia, and one from Nacogdoches. In July, the new national provisional government named Luciano Garcia as the political chief of Texas. On November 27, 1823, the people of Mexico elected congressional representatives and set out to create a new constitution. Texas was represented by Erasmo Seguin. The new Mexican constitution was adopted on October 4, 1824, making the country a federal republic with nineteen states and four territories. The constitution was based on the constitution of the United States of America, but the Mexican constitution made Roman Catholicism the official, and only, religion of the country.

Because it was sparsely populated, Texas was combined with Coahuila to create a new state, Coahuila y Tejas. Texas had originally asked to become a territory if its statehood claim was denied. After realizing that states controlled their own public lands, whereas territorial public land was controlled by the national government, Seguin chose not to request territorial status. The Congress did allow Texas the option of forming its own state "'as soon as it feels capable of doing so.'" The new state, the poorest in the Mexican federation, covered the boundaries of Spanish Texas but did not include the area around El Paso, which belonged to the state of Chihuahua and the area of Laredo, Texas, which became part of Tamaulipas. The capital of Texas moved from San Antonio to Monclova and then to Saltillo. Along with the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, Coahuila y Tejas was under a unified military organization. With the formation of a new state government, the Texas provincial governing committee was forced to disband. Many Tejanos were reluctant to give up their self-rule.

The new constitution dismantled the mission system, requiring missions more than ten years old to be converted into parishes, while newer missions would be given until 1842 to become secularized. Most of the Spanish missions in Texas had been secularized before the 1820s, and only Missions Refugio, Espiritu Santo and Rosario were not currently secularized. By 1830, these missions had been converted into parishes, and most of the mission Natives moved to other settlements in Texas. As the missions were secularized, the mission lands were distributed amongst the Natives, who would later be taxed on the profits.

The new Mexican government was bankrupt and had little money to devote to the military. Settlers were empowered to create their own militias to help control hostile Native American tribes. Texas faced raids from both the Apache and Comanche tribes, and with little military support the few settlers in the region needed help. In the hopes that an influx of settlers could control the Native raids, the government liberalized its immigration policies for the region for the first time, and settlers from the United States were permitted in the colonies for the first time.