Matamoros and the Texas Revolution by Craig H. Roell (review)

Traditionally, students of the Texas revolution have dodged the 1836 Matamoros Expedition much as nineteenth-century travelers skirted quagmires—and for the same reason. The story of this ill-fated episode is so byzantine, labyrinthine, and arcane that previous scholars (this reviewer included) sidestepped it for fear that they might lose their narrative in a briar patch from which they could never retrieve it.

At last, Craig H. Roell, Professor of Economics, Business, and Cultural History at Georgia Southern University, has unraveled the Gordian Knot of Texas history. He was the first to appreciate that historians would not discover the key to the puzzle of the Matamoros Expedition in their state’s archives, but rather in those south of the Rio Grande. The solution to the mystery was Matamoros itself, and no person alive knows more about nineteenth-century Matamoros than Roell does. As he explains: “Cosmopolitan and international, Matamoros was economically strategic as a commercial center and port by the late 1820s, not just to the local and upriver ranching settlements and towns—the Villas del Norte—but to the larger northeastern regions of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and even beyond to Mexico’s national economy, thanks to ever-increasing trade revenue for goods brought from Europe and the United States, particularly New Orleans” (1).

Until now, the motives behind the expedition never made much sense. Once readers understand the city’s vital importance, Texian leaders who advocated its capture do not appear quite so muddleheaded. Nevertheless, recognizing the value of a military objective is far different than producing the means to secure it. As Roell makes clear, Texian rebels never possessed the resources, leadership, or political will for the quixotic excursion to ever have been more than a pipe dream.

Students of the Matamoros Expedition, the Texas Revolution, or South Texas history owe Professor Roell an immense debt. Although his study contains but 124 pages, it delivers more original research and interpretation than dozens of heftier volumes. Matamoros and the Texas Revolution is the most significant contribution to Texas Revolution studies since the publication of Gregg J. Dimmick’s Sea of Mud: The Retreat of the Mexican Army after San Jacinto, An Archeological Investigation (2004). Future scholars will ignore Roell’s book at their peril.

His friends and colleagues have frequently lamented that Dr. Roell, a native of Victoria, Texas, teaches at an institution so far removed from his home town; we would enjoy seeing him more often. Yet, laboring within state boundaries, it is doubtful that he could have decoded the enigma of the Matamoros Expedition. To see the larger picture, the historian sometimes has to acquire a little distance.