The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 36
585 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
explains both the loyalty of the Texans to Mexico for fifteen years
and the final break in 1836.
"The general cause of the revolt," says Eugene C. Barker, "was
the same [as in the American Revolution] -a sudden effort to
extend imperial authority at the expense of local privilege."95
The historian, of course, is here speaking of the immediate cause
of the outbreak. In both the American and the Texan situations
there were traditions of long growth which explained why the
people rose in protest when they were threatened with the loss
of rights or privileges which they had learned to expect. In the
case of Texas, the general American tradition of democracy had
been transplanted to Texas soil after taking on the characteristic
coloration of the Jacksonian age. What was added under Mexican
rule was the reality of free land and the expectation of personal
independence to be gained therefrom under stable laws. Only
when this personal independence was threatened by the recentral-
ization of the Mexican government and other abuses, did the
Texas colonists strike out for a change in sovereignty.
Thus is seen the double paradox in which a free-spirited people,
who had found greater freedom under the laws developed by a
despotic monarchy than under the democratic government of
their own country, were then driven to rebellion by the semi-
anarchy of contending revolutionary leaders in the Mexican re-
public which had taken over the functions of the monarchy. The
Americans of 1776, on the other hand, had been driven to revolt
by the actions of the same government under which most of them
had been born. The Texans had no stable government against
which to revolt. They merely moved aside from the confusion of
contemporary Mexican politics. It hardly seems probable that
the Texans, with the experience of more than a decade of change
95Barker, Mexico and Texas, 147. For additional judicial decisions concerning the
application of Spanish-Mexican law in Texas, see Lucas v. Strother in Peters (ed.),
Report of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States,
XII, 411; U. S. v. -, ibid., X, 306; State v. Sais, Texas Reports, XLVII, 307; State
v. Cardinas, ibid., 250; State v. Cuellar, ibid., 395; State v. Bustamente, ibid., 320;
State v. Sarnes, ibid., 323; State v. Vela, ibid., 325; Villareal v. State, ibid., 319; Johns
v. Schutz, ibid., 578; Texas-Mexican Railway Company v. Locke, et al., ibid., LXXIV,
370. Many other references to court decisions are given in the notes of Davenport
and Canales, Texas Law of Flowing Waters. Other information of this type can be
found in J. H. Davenport, History of the Supreme Court of Texas: With Biographies
of the Chief and Associate Justices (Austin, 1917).
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954, periodical, 1954; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101152/m1/54/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.