THE ORIGIN OF THE "TEXAS HAND" STRATEGY TO ANNEX TERRITORIES

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The earliest Anglo-American colonization in imperial Mexican Texas under the Spanish crown took place in 1820, but just one year after Mexico gained its independence, halting negotiations between empresarios like Moses Austin, the father of the so-called "Father of Texas" Stephen S. Austin.  

After that, Anglo-Americans settlements under the new government took place between 1821 and 1835 despite Mexico's passing laws in 1830 to stop the flood of settlers that swarmed across the Sabine River without any authority and soon became a majority, bolstered by a slave population they brought with them.

Spain had been unable to persuade its own citizens to move to remote and sparsely populated Texas and there were only three settlements in the province of Texas in 1820: Nacogdoches, San Antonio de Béxar, and La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (later Goliad), small towns with outlying ranches.

 As early as the 1790s, Spain invited Anglo-Americans to settle in Upper Louisiana (Missouri) for the same reason. The foreigners were to be Catholic, industrious, and willing to become Spanish citizens in return for generous land grants. Mexico continued the Spanish colonization plan after its independence in 1821 by granting contracts to empresarios who would settle and supervise selected, qualified immigrants.

(A reader has pointed out, correctly, that the Mexican government altered some of its requirements to allow settlers of other faiths to continue their religious private worship and to own slaves under promise of manumission at a given period of time. The original 300 settlers who came with Austin were joined by two other groups to total near 1,000.)

Alarmed at the huge number of Anglo-Americans and slaves and the settlers' who professed to be Catholic but refused to convert and refusal to pledge loyalty to Mexico, the new government sent a fact-finding commission to investigate the situation, which was getting out of control with a rebellion in the offing. 

The settlers – with the encouragement of expansionists like Andrew Jackson and other national figures – then called for U.S. military intervention to protect their "rights.

Jackson, who was responsible for the removal of natives tribes in Florida despite the Supreme Court's ruling that the tribes owned the land, was responsible for the Trail of Tears. To this day, some Native Americans refuse to accept $20 bills bearing his image. 

Thus, the so-called "Texas Hand" strategy was born which called for the illegal settlement of Texas by southerners, a declaration of independence against the Mexican government for the "tyrannical" treatment of illegal white settlers, and the taking of their property (slaves), and calls for the U.S. to come to their aid. It was to serve the blueprint for the United States to eventually annex California and, later, northern California and Oregon from the British.

Jackson and supporters of the land grab of Mexican territories based their claim to the territory charging that Texas had been American territory all along and had been erroneously ceded to Spain with under the Onís-Adams Treaty of 1819 and ratified in 1821. Under the treaty, the United States and Spain defined the western limits of the Louisiana Purchase and Spain surrendered its claims to the Pacific Northwest. In return, the United States recognized Spanish sovereignty over Texas.

Alarmed at the flood of Anglo-American illegal migration, the Mexican government in 1827 named

General Manuel de Mier y Teran to lead a scientific and boundary expedition into Texas to observe the natural resources and the Indians, to discover the number and attitudes of the Americans living there, and to determine the United States-Mexico boundary between the Sabine and the Red rivers.

Mier y Teran was a member of the Comisión de Límites (Boundary Commission) when it left Mexico City on November 10, 1827, and reached San Antonio on March 1, 1828, San Felipe on April 27, and Nacogdoches on June 3. By that time he had been named Commander of the Army of the North, which encompassed Coahuila and Texas.

He traveled with commission members Rafael Chovell, a mineralogist and later military commander at Lavaca; Jean Louis Berlandier, a botanist, zoologist, and artist; and José María Sánchez y Tapía, cartographer and artist. All kept diaries that have been published in part. On  January 16, 1829, they started for Mexico City.

 In his report on the commission, Mier y Terán recommended that strong measures be taken to stop the United States from acquiring Texas. He suggested additional garrisons surrounding the settlements, closer trade ties with Mexico, and the encouragement of more Mexican and European settlers. His suggestions were incorporated into the Law of April 6, 1830, which also called for the prohibition of slavery and closed the borders of Texas to Americans.

In November, 1829 – seven years before Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 – he warned the Mexican government of the "Texas hand" strategy by Texas settlers to break away from Mexico using the tactics they had used against France and Spain to dispossess them of vast territories in their American colonies.

"The Texas Department is in contact with a nation which has shown itself to be rapacious for land," he wrote. "While the world has taken little notice, the norteamericanos have grabbed all land that has been within their reach and in less than half a century have become owners of extensive colonies that belonged to Spain and France and of vast distant regions belonging to an infinity of native tribes which have since disappeared from the face of the earth."

After Jackson's death, his successors openly proclaimed that the United States would utilize the "Texas hand" to acquire more western lands, Mier y Teran said there was no other more powerful nation like the norteamericanos which would travel silently through dark roads and make conquests of major importance throughout the world.

"They start by claiming feigned rights as in Texas which are impossible to sustain in a serious discussion, and base their ridiculous pretenses on historical acts that no one can prove...until they assert rights that are veiled under phrases of equality and freedom that result in a concession of territory by the targeted nation..."

"The sale of this department (Texas) reduces the territorial property and worth of the lands of all the rest of Mexico to half of what they are worth now. He who consents and does not oppose to the loss of Texas is a heinous traitor who should be punished with every kind of death."

In 1830, Mier y Terán was made commandant general of the Eastern Interior Provinces, a position in which he supervised both political and military affairs in Texas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

His headquarters were near the new port of Matamoros, which had just opened.

Mier y Terán continued to be concerned over the inability of incoming American settlers to assimilate into the Mexican culture. In 1832, he grew despondent over the problems of colonization in Texas and the continuing political problems on both the state and national levels and the increasing influx of Anglo-American settlers after abrogation of the Law of 1830, the general committed suicide by falling on his sword behind the church of San Antonio in Padilla, Tamaulipas.