Texas History

Most Texans are prone to boast that their state was once a separate nation, but the Texans who achieved that distinction desired annexation to the United States, not nationhood. Here's a recap of how Texas moved from a Spanish colony to become its own nation and then a state.

Pre-European History

The task of defining Texas falls most heavily upon historians, yet many natural events and agricultural developments that continue to shape Texans' lives occurred well before the arrival of Europeans here. Nobody witnessed Texas rise from an uncharted spot of ocean floor, though that distant event was the basis of the state's 20th-century role as an oil producer. Herbalists, hunters, agriculturalists, and statesmen crossed and made use of this landscape long before Europeans arrived. When they did reach the area, more than 50 small American Indian tribes were living in Texas—but they were rapidly decimated by the diseases that explorers, colonists, and priests introduced.

Spanish Colonial Era

The Lone Star State's name tells part of its story. Texas is a latter-day spelling of the Spanish colonial term Tejas, a translation of the word taysha, used by some American Indians from the East Texas Caddo civilization to mean "friend."

The first attempts by the Spanish to Christianize the Indians and colonize the area were tepid at best. Scattered settlements arose in East, South, and Central Texas, but none was populous, wildly prosperous, or able to defend itself from outside hostility. The Apache wiped out dozens of them, crops failed when rain didn't come, hurricanes blew them away, and plagues brought down their populations. And unlike a few spots in equally forlorn northern Mexico, Texas had no important lodes of gold or silver, nothing to inspire feverish immigration.

By the end of the Spanish era, there were few missions left. One that was to play a key role after Mexico achieved independence from Spain was San Antonio de Valero, established by Franciscan priests in 1718 in temporary buildings. The first permanent chapel collapsed in 1744. Work on another—a building later known as the Alamo—began in the 1750s, but it was never completed, and the mission's small Indian population left the area.

Unrest and Rebellion

The Spanish lost what little control they had over Texas in 1821, when their empire lost Mexico. At the time, Mexico was too involved in central and southern intrigues to turn attention to its sparsely populated northern areas, including Texas. Had it not been for the land hunger of the neighboring United States, the 19th century in Texas might have faded away as unnoticed as it had opened. But in 1819 a gang of American freebooters, known to historians as the Long Expedition, captured the Spanish settlement at Nacogdoches, and declared the independence of Texas. The uprising failed, but it heralded a momentum that ultimately succeeded.

The American and British immigrants who began settling in Texas in 1821 favored Anglo-American jurisprudence, Protestantism, decentralism, and slavery—none of which the Spanish and Mexican governments allowed. Some settlers were content with the Mexican government, and others were opposed to the extension of slavery and converted to Catholicism in order to own land.

The Mexican constitution of 1824 was in tune with the political idealism sweeping the North American continent—a belief that more egalitarian and democratic societies would take root and European corruption and authoritarianism could be discarded. Yet the new Mexican president was soon overthrown. When the charismatic Antonio López de Santa Anna challenged him, Anglo colonists prepared a new state constitution for Texas, which Stephen F. Austin brought to Mexico City. Santa Anna approved it, but Austin was arrested as he traveled back toward Texas and was imprisoned in Mexico City for treasonous words found in an intercepted letter. While Austin was imprisoned, Texans went ahead with implementing their new state constitution, until Santa Anna declared one-man rule, suspended the 11-year-old Mexican constitution, and made himself the dictator of Mexico.

The Battle of the Alamo

The colony rebelled, and Santa Anna set out from Mexico City to reconquer it. When he arrived in San Antonio in February 1836, he found about 189 Texas revolutionaries holed up in a former Spanish mission complex, San Antonio de Valero, the one now better known as the Alamo.

Santa Anna demanded the mission's surrender. The Texans answered with a cannon shot. Santa Anna ran up the red flag—no quarter, no surrender, no mercy—from atop San Fernando Cathedral and laid siege in what would come to be called the Battle of the Alamo. On the list of defenders were Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis, who was the lieutenant colonel of the rebels. The revolutionaries fought from the walls and, when these were breached, hand to hand until, as legend has it, all were dead. (There is some evidence that a half-dozen men surrendered and were immediately executed.)

Simultaneously, in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas delegates signed their Declaration of Independence and named Sam Houston commander of the Texas army. On April 21 Houston and his men attacked Santa Anna at San Jacinto and defeated the Mexican army.

The Republic of Texas

Fearful of Santa Anna's pursuit to wipe out remaining Texas forces, Sam Houston led settlers in a retreat to Louisiana (known as the Runaway Scrape). But they met up with Santa Anna's troops on Vince's Bayou, near present-day Houston, and with the rallying cry "Remember the Alamo" the Texans charged ahead. In 18 minutes, the Mexicans were defeated.

After the victory at San Jacinto, Texas became a republic—not because its leaders or people favored the move, but largely because political arrangements in Washington precluded the admission of new slave-holding states. The nine-year history of the Republic of Texas was marked mainly by factional fights and penury, and most of the population was gratified when, in December 1945, Texas was allowed to join the United States. Its first capitol was in Houston.

The Republic of Texas and Mexico had never settled a boundary line, and as soon as Texas was admitted, American troops put the issue to a test, by crossing the Nueces River, the line Mexico honored, en route to the Rio Grande, the boundary claimed by Texas. The Mexican War ensued. In a few short months, the United States conquered its neighbor to the south, extracting nearly half of Mexico's land area (all of present-day California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming) as the price for peace—and setting the current borders for the State of Texas.