Matamoros And The Texas Revolution

The traditional story of the Texas Revolution remembers the Alamo and Goliad but has forgotten Matamoros, the strategic Mexican port city on the turbulent lower Rio Grande. In this provocative book, Craig Roell restores the centrality of Matamoros by showing the genuine economic, geographic, social, and military value of the city to Mexican and Texas history. Given that Matamoros served the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Texas, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, and Durango, the city’s strategic location and considerable trade revenues were crucial. Roell provides a refreshing reinterpretation of the revolutionary conflict in Texas from a Mexican point of view, essentially turning the traditional story on its head. Readers will learn how Matamoros figured in the Mexican government's grand designs not only for national prosperity, but also to preserve Texas from threatened American encroachment. Ironically, Matamoros became closely linked to the United States through trade, and foreign intriguers who sought to detach Texas from Mexico found a home in the city. Roell’s account culminates in the controversial Texan Matamoros expedition, which was composed mostly of American volunteers and paralyzed the Texas provisional government, divided military leaders, and helped lead to the tragic defeats at the Alamo, San Patricio, Agua Dulce Creek, Refugio, and Coleto (Goliad). Indeed, Sam Houston denounced the expedition as “the author of all our misfortunes.” In stark contrast, the brilliant and triumphant Matamoros campaign of Mexican General José de Urrea united his countrymen, defeated these revolutionaries, and occupied the coastal plain from Matamoros to Brazoria. Urrea's victory ensured that Matamoros would remain a part of Mexico, but Matamorenses also fought to preserve their own freedom from the centralizing policies of Mexican President Santa Anna, showing the streak of independence that characterizes Mexico's northern borderlands to this day.

This narrative history describes the events preceding, and the prosecution of, the Texas Revolution and the U.S.-Mexican War. It begins with the introduction of the empresario system in Mexico in 1823, a system of land distribution to American farmers and ranchers in an attempt to strengthen the postwar economy following Mexico's independence from Spain. Once welcomed as fellow countrymen, the new settlers, homesteading on land destined to be called Texas, were viewed as enemies when in 1835 they revolted against the government's harsh Centralist rulings. Winning independence from Mexico and recognition from the United States as the independent Republic of Texas only intensified the Mexican refusal to accept their loss of Texas as legitimate. The final straw for both sides came when Texas was granted U.S. statehood and 11 American soldiers were ambushed and murdered. As a result, Congress declared war on Mexico, a bloody conflict that resulted in the U.S. gain of 525,000 square miles.

"Author Edward L. Miller has delved into previously unused or overlooked papers housed in New Orleans to reconstruct a chain of events that set the Crescent City, in many ways, at the center of the Texian fight for independence. Not only did Now Orleans business interests send money and men to Texas in exchange for promises of land, but they also provided newspaper coverage that set the scene for later American annexation of the young republic."--BOOK JACKET.

Discusses the controversy over the authenticity of Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña's account of the Battle of the Alamo, first translated and published in English in 1975, and considers the impact of a newly discovered week of diary entries on the debate.

The starting place for research on the fledgling Texas republic. It prints several thousand important letters and documents that were printed during the revolutionary era that have never been published before in any form. Includes all letters and documents published between January 1, 1835 up to the inaugual address of Sam Houston as President of the Republic of Texas on October 22, 1836