El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  12Brands, Lone Star Nation, pp. 20–21.

  13Ibid., p. 101.

  14Narrett, Adventurism and Empire, p. 265.

  15J. H. Young, “New Map of Texas: with the Contiguous American & Mexican States” (Philadelphia: S. Augustus Mitchell, 1835), Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/g4030.ct002350/ (accessed April 9, 2015).

  16Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, p. 72.

  17Ibid., p. 74.

  18Quoted ibid., p. 73; see also Eugene C. Barker, “Native Latin American Contribution to the Colonization and Independence of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1943): 328.

  19Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes in Texas, 1821–1900 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 6.

  20Joseph Smith, The United States and Latin America (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 27.

  21David Woodman Jr., Guide to Texas Emigrants (Boston: M. Hawes, 1835), p. 35.

  22Narrett, Adventurism and Empire, pp. 9, 51.

  23Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), pp. 9–10.

  24Bannon, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513–1821, pp. 227, 238; Starr, California: A History, p. 45.

  25Starr, California: A History, p. 46.

  26Ibid.

  27Monroy, “The Creation and Re-Creation of Californio Society,” p. 180.

  28Michael Gonzalez, “War and the Making of History: The Case of Mexican California, 1821–1846,” California History 86, no. 2 (2009): 18; Jackson and Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization, p. 77.

  29Starr, California: A History, p. 47.

  30Jackson and Castillo, Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization, p. 87.

  31Starr, California: A History, p. 49.

  32Ibid., pp. 46–47.

  33Ibid., p. 54.

  34Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840), pp. 53–56, Kindle.

  35Ibid., p. 54.

  36Ibid., p. 56.

  37Ibid., p. 60

  38Ibid., p. 123.

  39Ibid.

  40Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969) p. 46; Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, p. 80.

  41Torget, Seeds of Empire, pp. 75–76.

  42Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Michael M. Brescia (trans.), “War and Peace with the United States,” in Beezley and Meyer, The Oxford History of Mexico, p. 326.

  43Ibid., p. 321.

  44Ibid., p. 325.

  45Brands, Lone Star Nation, p. 108; Taylor, “Remaking Americans,” p. 222.

  46Eric R. Schlereth, “Voluntary Mexican: Allegiance and the Origins of the Texas Revolution,” in Sam Haynes and Gerald D. Saxon (eds.), Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015), p. 17.

  47Zoraida Vázquez, “War and Peace with the United States,” p. 327.

  48Torget, Seeds of Empire, p. 122.

  49“Memoria en que el gobernador del estado libre de Coahuila y Tejas … January 2, 1834,” University of Houston, Special Collections, Mexican Documents Collection, Box 1, Folder 32; Taylor, “Remaking Americans,” p. 223.

  50Quoted in Zoraida Vázquez, “War and Peace with the United States,” p. 328.

  51Taylor, “Remaking Americans,” p. 223.

  52Paul D. Lack, “Slavery and the Texas Revolution,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89, no. 2 (1985): 184.

  53Ibid.

  54Paul D. Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992), pp. 6–7; “Address to Colonel José Antonio Mexia,” June 13, 1832 (Turtle Bayou Resolutions), Texas State Library and Archives Commission, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/turtle/turtle-1.html (accessed June 29, 2017).

  55Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, pp. 7, 183.

  56Will Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), pp. 136–37.

  57Ibid., p. 145.

  58Smith, The United States and Latin America, p. 27; Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, p. 5.

  59“Memoria en que el gobernador del estado libre de Coahuila y Tejas.”

  60Brands, Lone Star Nation, p. 224.

  61Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 155–57.

  62Ibid., p. 161.

  63Torget, Seeds of Empire, p. 174.

  64Martín Perfecto de Cos to the Jefe Político del Departamiento de Nacogdoches, July 12, 1835, BANC MSS P-O 110, Alphonse Louis Pinart collection, Documents for the History of Texas, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 1.

  65Both quoted in Schlereth, “Voluntary Mexican,” p. 27.

  66“Proceedings of a Meeting of the Citizens of San Jacinto,” August 8, 1835, BANC MSS P-O 110, Alphonse Louis Pinart collection, Documents for the History of Texas, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 1.

  67Ibid., p. 6.

  68“Proceedings of a Meeting of the Citizens of Nacogdoches,” September 21, 1835, BANC MSS P-O 110, Alphonse Louis Pinart collection, Documents for the History of Texas, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 1.

  69Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, p. 17.

  70Ibid., p. 18.

  71Stephen Austin to Mrs. Mary Austin Holley, August 21, 1835, in Eugene Barker (ed.), The Austin Papers: October 1834–January 1837 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1926), pp. 101–2.

  72Stephen Austin to David G. Burnet, October 5, 1835, ibid., pp. 160–61.

  73Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, pp. 43–52.

  74Jose María Ortiz Monasterio to John Forsyth, October 28 and November 5, 1835, in Notes from the Mexican Legation in the U.S. to the Dept. of State, 1821–1906, NARA, Record Group 59, Microfilm 54, Roll 1, 1821–1835.

  75Government circular, 1835, Archivo General de la Nación (AGN, Mexico), Administración Pública: 1821–1910; Archivo de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Secretaria de Guerra y Marina, Barker Transcripts, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

  76Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 164; for more on Mexican connections to New Orleans, see, for instance, Linda K. Salvucci and Richard J. Salvucci, “The Lizardi Brothers: A Mexican Family Business and the Expansion of New Orleans, 1825–1846,” Journal of Southern History 82, no. 4 (2016): 759–88.

  77Ray Suarez, Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation (New York: Celebra, 2013), loc. 549–77, ebook.

  78Schlereth, “Voluntary Mexican,” pp. 28–30.

  79Ibid., pp. 32, 35.

  80Sam W. Haynes, “‘Imitating the Example of Our Forefathers’: The Texas Revolution as Historical Reenactment,” in Haynes and Saxon, Contested Empire, p. 53; Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land, p. 105.

  81Quoted in Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, p. xiv.

  82Quoted ibid., p. 86

  83“Proclama de Santa Anna,” February 26, 1836, Mercurio del Puerto de Matamoros, accessed at Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, vol. 1, 2Q266.

  84Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 165.

  85For more about Tejanos who sided with the centralists, see chapter 9 in Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience.

  86Richard R. Flores, “Private Visions, Public Culture: The Making of the Alamo,” Cultural Anthropology 10, no. 1 (1995): 100.

  87Quoted in Brands, Lone Star Nation, p. 352.

  88Ibid., p. 359.

  89Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 165.

  90Quoted in Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land, p. 110.

  91Brands, Lone Star Nation, p. 367.

  92Ibid., p. 369.

  93Ibid., pp. 371–73.

  94Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 166.

  95Brands, Lone Star Nation, pp. 378–79.

  96Timothy M. Mat
ovina, The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), p. 4.

  97From the account of Francisco Antonio Ruiz, quoted ibid., pp. 43–44.

  98Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 166.

  99La lima de vulcano, March 22, 1836, quoted in Michael p. Costelo, “The Mexican Press of 1836 and the Battle of the Alamo,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 91, no. 4 (1988): 537.

  100La luna, March 29, 1836, quoted ibid., pp. 539–40.

  101Laws of the Republic of Texas, 2 vols. (Houston: Office of the Telegraph, 1838), vol. 1, pp. 9, 19.

  102“Public Meeting at Nashville,” Telegraph and Texas Register, February 20, 1836.

  103“Shall We Declare for Independence?” Telegraph and Texas Register, February 27, 1836.

  104“The Texas Declaration of Independence,” March 2, 1836, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/texdec.asp (accessed April 24, 2015).

  105Santa Anna to Colonel Nicolás de Portillo, quoted in Brands, Lone Star Nation, p. 399.

  106Stephen F. Austin to Andrew Jackson, April 15, 1836, in John Spencer Bassett (ed.), Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1926–35), http://www.loc.gov/resource/maj.01094_0049_0052 (accessed January 27, 2017).

  107Jose María Ortiz Monasterio to John Forsyth, November 19, 1835, Notes from the Mexican Legation in the U.S. to the Dept. of State, 1821–1906, NARA, Record Group 59, Microfilm 54, Roll 1, 1821–1835.

  108Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 174; Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, p. 114.

  109Schlereth, “Voluntary Mexican,” p. 27.

  110Stephen F. Austin to Andrew Jackson, April 15, 1836, in Bassett, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson.

  111Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 167–72.

  112Ibid., p. 172.

  113Ibid., pp. 173–75.

  114Ibid., pp. 176, 183.

  115“Army of San Jacinto,” Pennsylvanian, June 24, 1836, in University of Houston, Special Collections, Early Texas Document Collection, Box 1, Folder 201.

  116Columbia Telegraph and Register, April 4, 1837, quoted in Matovina, The Alamo Remembered, p. 2.

  117Torget, Seeds of Empire, p. 270.

  118Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza to unknown official, July 12, 1836, AGN (Mexico), Administración Pública: 1821–1910; Archivo de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, Secretaria de Guerra y Marina, Barker Transcripts, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

  119Alcalde Galán to Stephen Austin, quoted in Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience, p. 206.

  120Lorenzo de Zavala, John Michael Rivera (ed.), and Wallace Woolsey (trans.), Journey to the United States of North America (Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 2005), p. 6.

  121Ibid., p. 1.

  122Ibid., p. 79.

  123Ibid., p. 39.

  124Margaret Swett Henson, Lorenzo de Zavala: The Pragmatic Idealist (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), pp. xi–xii.

  125De Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, p. xxix.

  126Ibid., p. 195.

  127Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), p. 10.

  128Resolutions of the Legislature of Rhode Island, Against the Annexation of Texas to the United States, April 17, 1838, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., SD281, Rice University, Woodson Special Collection, Americas Collection, Series III: Mexico, 1821–1865, and Series IV, United States 1823–1893, Box 3, Folder 16.

  129Resolutions of the General Assembly of Tennessee, in Favor of the Annexation of Texas to the United States, April 17, 1838, 25th Cong., 2d Sess., SD384, ibid.

  130J. L. Worley, “Diplomatic Relations of England and the Republic of Texas,” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 9, no. 1 (1905): 12.

  131Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, p. 84.

  132Zoraida Vázquez, “War and Peace with the United States,” p. 336; Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 225.

  133Sam W. Haynes, Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somervell and Mier Expeditions (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 3–4.

  134For more details on the Mier expedition, see ibid.

  135Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 226–27.

  136Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 12.

  137Ibid.

  138“The Treaty of Annexation—Texas; April 12, 1844,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/texan05.asp (accessed July 14, 2017).

  139Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 236–37.

  140Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine, p. 91.

  141Quoted in Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 19; for more on the debates within Texas about slavery, see David E. Narrett, “A Choice of Destiny: Immigration Policy, Slavery, and the Annexation of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 100, no. 3 (1997): 271–302.

  142“Mr. Clay on the Texas Question,” National Intelligencer, April 27, 1884, p. 3; Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, p. 568.

  143“The Treaty of Annexation—Texas; April 12, 1844.”

  144James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 47; Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 59.

  145Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, pp. 575–76.

  146“Inaugural Address of James Knox Polk,” March 4, 1845, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/polk.asp#texas (accessed April 24, 2015).

  147Ibid.

  148“Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no. 1 (July/August 1845): 5–9; Schama, The American Future, p. 256.

  149Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, p. 89; Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 247.

  150Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, p. 582.

  151El tiempo (Mexico City), tomo 1, no. 12, AGI, Papeles de Cuba, Legajo 2265.

  152Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 248.

  153Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 102.

  154Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 8; Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 119.

  155“James K. Polk: Special Message to Congress on Mexican Relations,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=67907 (accessed July 23, 2017).

  156Quoted in Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 104.

  157Quoted in Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910 (New York: Penguin, 2016), p. 137, Kindle. The Free-Soil movement had enough momentum for former Democratic president Martin Van Buren to run for office again in 1848, but as a member of the Free-Soil Party. He received about 10 percent of the vote. For more on free soil, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labour, Free Men (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

  158Rodriguez, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, p. 91.

  159McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 53–54.

  160Laura E. Gómez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (New York: New York University Press, 2007), p. 20.

  161Rosemary King, “Border Crossings in the Mexican American War,” Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe 25, no. 1 (2000): 66.

  162Fabiola García Rubio, El daily Picayune de Nueva Orleans durante los años del conflicto entre Estados Unidos y México (1846–1848): su postura ante la guerra y su recepción en la prensa Mexicana (Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2004), pp. 63, 70.

  163Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, pp. 186–88.

  164Prescott was nearly blind when he wrote it, and he needed assistants to dictate the sources to him and he composed the book on a device called a noctograph. It was also later translated into Spanish and widely read in Mexico. See William H. Prescott and Felipe Fernández-Armesto (ed.), History of the Conquest of Mexico (London: Folio Society, 1994), p. xxiii; Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, pp. 30, 245. See also chapter 3 in Eric Werth
eimer, Imagined Empire: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771–1876 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  165Quoted in Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, p. 247. See also John E. Eipper, “The Canonizer De-Canonized: The Case of William H. Prescott,” Hispania 83, no. 3 (2000): 416–27.

  166McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 49–50.

  167For more on the uprising and trial, see chapter 1 in Gómez, Manifest Destinies.

  168Starr, California: A History, pp. 67–68.

  169Ibid., p. 68; Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, p. 134.

  170Hahn, A Nation Without Borders, p. 134.

  171“Proclamation to the People of California from Stephen W. Kearny,” March 1, 1847, Letters sent by the Governors and by the Secretary of State of California, 1847–1848, NARA, RG 94, Microfilm 94/07.

  172Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire, p. 127.

  173Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 254.

  174For more on these troops, including the debate about their composition, as well as anti-Catholicism, see John C. Pinheiro, “‘Religion Without Restriction’: Anti-Catholicism, All Mexico, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 1 (2003): 69–96; King, “Border Crossings in the Mexican American War.”

  175Suarez, Latino Americans, loc. 632–47; Jesús de la Teja (ed.), A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2002).

  176“Our Relations with Mexico,” American Review: A Whig Journal, July 1846, pp. 3, 14.

  177Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 111.

  178Ibid., p. 160.

  179Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, p. 263.

  180Quoted ibid., p. 255.

  181Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, p. 155; Greenberg, A Wicked War, p. 170.

  182“Proclamation Translated into Spanish from Winfield Scott in Veracruz,” March 22, 1847, University of Houston, Special Collections, Mexican Documents Collection, Box 1, Folder 94.

  183Ibid.

  184Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 263–64.

  185Manuel Balbontín, La Invasion Americana, 1846 a 1848: Apuntes del subteniente de artillería Manuel Balbontín (Mexico: Tip de Gonzalo A. Esteva, 1883), p. 52.

  186Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico, pp. 275–76.