Secret War for Texas

9. Postscript

9 • Postscript for the united states the annexation of Texas paved the way for the final stages of the march to the Pacific Ocean. As William Kennedy noted: “in a letter written by General Andrew Jackson, and published some months before his death, he observed—(on behalf of the American people)—‘We want Texas because we want California.’—The Ex-President might have added,—‘And we want California because we desire to obtain Maritime ascendancy in the Pacific, with the advantages consequent on an easy and comparatively speedy communication with india and China.’”1 Just three months after the annexation Zachary Taylor’s men were at war with Mexico, and by the end of the hard-fought but ultimately one-sided conflict, Washington had gained the greatest prize of them all: California. in the meantime, on June 15, 1846, a separate but not entirely coincidental treaty was signed between Britain and the united States, settling the last remaining point of contention between the two countries—the Oregon question. Sold to the united States by France as part of the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon country was claimed by Britain for more than thirty years through right of occupation by its Hudson’s Bay Company. But now the issue was pragmatically settled by the concession of an international boundary running along the forty-ninth parallel and by withdrawal of American demands for a foothold on the southern tip of Vancouver island. At last the boundaries of the united States extended from sea to shining sea. in retrospect at least, this may seem to have been an inevitable process, but for twenty years and more it was an outcome that Britain and its agents, both authorized and unauthorized, had fought hard to prevent. The seeming inevitability of the process by which the united States first acquired Texas and then the other North American states of Mexico Postscript • 169 to gain that permanent foothold on the Pacific Coast, and that “American Road to india” so feared by Henry Ward and the East india Company people, casts a long shadow over James Grant’s “visionary” attempt to block the extension of power by forging a republic of northern Mexico.2 Yet had Fannin been able to move with Grant in late January or early February 1836, it is unlikely that urrea could have stopped the filibusters and their federalist allies with just one regiment of regular cavalry and a single battalion of untrained conscripts—or even wanted to do so. Grant might well have united with Fernández at Matamoros and so sparked that federalist uprising after all. in September 1839, Antonio Canales—El Zorro—and Grant’s old friend Colonel José María Gonzáles did in fact lead another federalist rebellion in the area and proclaimed the independent but short-lived Republic of Rio Grande. This was boldly intended to comprise those self-same states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Coahuila that were to have been the core of Grant’s proposed republic of northern Mexico. To help them win it, Canales and Gonzáles enlisted a whole regiment and more of Texan filibusters, with the tacit approval of the Texan government. They even fought under the Lone Star flag of Texas. But Canales was unable to capture Matamoros and eventually switched sides yet again, betraying his Texan allies in the process and ultimately becoming a brigadier general in the Mexican Army. Whether Grant could have done any better in 1836 is a moot point, but the prospect itself was clearly far from visionary. it is easy to overlook just how unstable the region was in the early part of the nineteenth century. The united States was itself not much more than half a century old when Grant rode south from San Patricio for the last time, and Mexico had been an independent country for just over a single turbulent decade. it was still an uncertain federation of disparate provinces, and there was no reason why some of them should not make common cause and form a breakaway new republic—or, perhaps, why a Scottish adventurer could not aspire to become its president. Even the level-headed Charles Elliot thought that such a buffer state might have been a feasible proposition. in a carefully considered memorandum on the possible future of Texas, written in November of 1842, he mused: Meditating on the situation and prospect of this Country [Texas], and other interests connected with it, I cannot help lamenting more [3.143...