Mexican American War

Mexico in nineteenth-century faced many internal struggles that formed chaos in the new nation this greatly influenced the outcome of the Mexican-American War. After the colonization law of 1824, Mexico City had paid little attention to its northern provinces, finding plenty of issues much closer to central Mexico to stir their political passions and command their full attention. A series of events in Texas, however, soon converted the state into nothing less than a national obsession, and that obsession goes far toward explaining the course and failure of the Mexican-American War.

Mexico from the outset of settling Texas had fears regarding the intentions of the Anglo-Americans toward Texas. Their fears were confirmed at the of 1826 when a empresario named Haden Edwards had launched a rebellion aimed at detaching Texas from the Mexican Republic. Edwards, in alliance with Cherokee Indians who at least momentarily shared Edwards resentment of Mexican authorities, planned to call the new nation the Republic of the Red and White People or, alternatively, the Republic of Fredonia. The rebellion was soon put down when a detachment of Mexican soldiers arrived from San Antonio, supported by another contingent from Stephen F. Austin’s colony. Short-lived though it was, the Fredonian Revolt marked the beginnings of the problems with Texas.

This revolt led to the appropriation of funds in 1827 for a Boundary Commission to be sent to assess the problems in Texas. Chosen to lead this expedition was General Manuel de Mier y Teran. The Boundary Commission left Mexico City on November 10, 1827. They were to evaluate the number and kinds of troops needed to defend the region, and recommend measures that ensured Mexico’s continued possession ...

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... the tiny village of Padilla, a squalid ruin surrounded by ashen adobe walls.” “I am an unhappy man,” he wrote, “and unhappy people should not live on earth.”

Teran saddened by the state his people were in, later that day this letter was written, took his own life.

The two years following Teran’s suicide confirmed the general’s darkest forebodings. Mexico’s own political troubles continued unabated, while the Texas colonists grew steadily more resistive. A series of battles took place between 1835-1836, resulting in the creation of the Republic of Texas. The republic of Texas was never recognized by the government of Mexico, and during its brief existence, it teetered between collapse and invasion from Mexico. The United States of America annexed Texas in 1845, and it wasn’t until the end of the Mexican American War that Texas was saw as independent of Mexico.