0.4 Texas and u.s.-mexican conflict in the 1830s

Texas and u.s.-mexican conflict in the 1830s

The ‘Our Americas’ Archive Partnership , a collection of rare documents focused on a hemispheric approach to the study of the history and literature of the Americas, contains two letters by a man named James Cramp. The first Cramp letter is dated December 12, 1835 and the second letter is dated December 1835 . These letters, which are held at Rice University’s Woodson Research Center, detail Cramp’s unwitting involvement in the Tampico Expedition, an early conflict in the Texas War of Independence. Also termed the Texas Revolution, the war erupted in 1835 after the Mexican government overturned the 1824 constitution that had established a Mexican republic independent of Spain and installed a heavily revised constitution in its place. This new constitution gave far more power to the Mexican national government and weakened the influence of the numerous states that made up the young country. The Texas War of Independence, therefore, has been customarily viewed as a confrontation between “centralists” and “federalists,” between those who desired a strong central government and those who saw such a proposition as a violation of their freedoms.

According to his two letters, written in December of 1835, James Cramp had little to no investment in what had grown into a full-blown revolution. He boarded a ship in New Orleans that he assumed was bound for Texas, in hopes of discovering a new livelihood in an underdeveloped region. He professes surprise in his letters upon discovering that the ship is controlled by General José Antonio Mexía, an ardent federalist and a leader in Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico. Cramp details how he and several other men were conscripted against their will into Mexía’s company then spirited away to Tampico, Mexico in order to participate in an uprising there against Mexican national forces. In a tone of bitterness and resignation, he writes, “…dressed in the uniform of Mexía’s troops have received the sentence of death with 22 other young men whose lives have been made a sacrifice to villainy and deception” (December 12th, 1835 letter, pg. 2). Mexía’s forces were easily defeated; while he and the other leaders of the attack escaped unharmed, they left behind thirty-one men, all of whom were executed as “pirates.” Cramp wrote both of his letters on the eve of his execution, giving an intimate voice to this violent episode in the histories of Mexico and Texas. The tide would quickly turn in the Texas War of independence. Though the Mexican army would score a victory at the Battle of the Alamo in March of 1836, the Texas Army led by Sam Houston delivered a final defeat to Santa Anna and his men at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21. Helpful sources on the Texas Revolution and related histories include William C. Davis’s Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic and Paul D. Lack’s The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History 1835–1836 (bibliographical information provided at end of module).