Secession as an International Phenomenon: From America?s Civil War to Contemporary Separatist Movements

“Texas and the Spread of That Troublesome Secessionist Spirit through the Gulf of Mexico Basin”

ANDRÉS RESÉNDEZ Texas and the Spread of That Troublesome Secessionist Spirit through the Gulf of Mexico Basin The Texas Republic is one of the most celebrated cases of secessionism in the Americas. Texas remained viable and independent for nine full years, between 1836 and 1845, fending off repeated attempts by Mexico to reconquer it. During its existence Texas had all the attributes of a proper state: a functioning government, a constitution, effective control over its territory, and a very active international diplomacy. Even today Texans take pride in being heirs to a real nation (not a mere state) and are still moved by a national saga that starts with the settlement of American families in Mexican Texas and ends with the dramatic events of the Alamo and San Jacinto. Yet this retelling of the Lone Star story that emphasizes its peculiar pantheon glosses over the fact that by the time of the Texas Revolution, secessionism was already a well-established type of political movement in the Gulf of Mexico basin. Ever since the 1780s and 1790s groups of Tennesseans and Kentuckians had been conspiring to wrest Louisiana away from Spain. During the tumultuous 1810s East and West Florida seceded—a recent book refers to West Florida after its 1810 secession as “the original Lone Star Republic.” As early as 1824, Yucatán was vowing to break away from Mexico to protect its commerce with Cuba. Texas itself weathered secessionist plots for thirty years before breaking off completely: in 1805–6 the province became a principal target of the Aaron Burr conspiracy; in 1812–13 a combined army of Mexican patriots and American filibusters declared Texas free of Spanish domination and separate from the rest of New Spain; the 1819 filibustering expedition of James Long in 1819 declared the independence of Texas yet again; and in 1826 a coalition of American colo- [194] Andrés Reséndez nists and Cherokee Indians established the so-called Fredonia Republic, which spanned much of the territory of Texas. These various secessionist schemes may have been short lived, self-interested, and destined to failure, but nonetheless they naturalized the idea of a breakaway republic and gave rise to an international cast of adventurers and politicians willing to undertake secessionist projects long before the Texas Republic came into being. In turn, the unprecedented success of the Texas Republic gave added impetus to various movements throughout the region at a time when European empires in the Americas were being replaced by independent republics. This chapter is a very preliminary sketch of the secessionist impulse that washed over the Gulf of Mexico seascape from the 1780s to the 1840s. Few historians conceive of the Gulf of Mexico as a unit of analysis, because it contains discrete portions of the United States, Mexico, and the Spanish Empire. Yet in the nineteenth century this smallish sea and its coastal lands and cities were intimately connected by sailing ships, trade ties, and a human geography that favored the dissemination of political ideologies, harebrained ideas, arms, and alternative national and imperial visions. Owing to the large scope and interpretive nature of my argument, I don’t address specific cases as much as I attend to the mechanisms and human connections that facilitated secessionism. This machinery of secession, so to speak, included an international cadre of leaders with firsthand experience in launching such movements, the emergence of New Orleans as a preeminent recruitment and outfitting center, and a language and method of secession. EARLY SEPARATIST ATTEMPTS: CRASS EXPANSIONISM OR LEGITIMATE ANTICOLONIAL MOVEMENTS? The Gulf of Mexico basin was originally an “interior sea” completely under Spanish control. It became a site of imperial rivalry as early as the seventeenth century when the “French thorn,” as Robert S. Weddle styles it, first became lodged in the northern gulf coast. But the first recognizably secessionist movements— as opposed to imperial colonization and countercolonization schemes—were organized in the period from the 1780s through the 1810s. These early separatist movements, all clustered on the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico coast, conformed to a particular pattern. The impetus invari- Secessionist Spirit through the Gulf [195] ably originated farther north, among residents of the landlocked western states of the Union who promoted the independence of the Spanish possessions along the northern rim of the gulf coast—Louisiana and the Floridas—in order to secure an outlet into the Gulf of Mexico. Time and...