Texas Revolution: War between Texans and Mexico, 1835-1836, resulting in the independent Republic of Texas

In the 1820s, landowning empresarios led immigrants, mostly from the United States, to Texas, which was part of Mexico, for cheap land. At first, the Mexican government was happy to fill the land, which had only Native Americans, but most Texans were soon from the US. Mexico began to worry about losing Texas to the United States and so decided to stop all immigration from there.

To make things worse, Mexico had a new president, Antonio López de Santa Anna, who got rid of the Mexican Constitution and made himself president for life. People in several places, especially in northeastern Mexico, joined together to fight him and the Mexican Army and to secede from Mexico.

Most Texans wanted independence, and one reason was that they refused to accept a new Mexican law that banned slavery and was declared on April 8th 1830. Many immigrants were from the Southern United States and saw slavery as a way of life. They brought enslaved African Americans to work as field hands to produce cotton, corn, and sugar.

The war in Texas started when Mexican soldiers tried to take a cannon from the city of Gonzales on October 5, 1835. A famous battle in the war was the Battle of the Alamo in which about 200 Texans were killed, and hardly any of them survived the Mexican victory.

Texas lost because many Mexicans did not want to fight for their government, and Texas got many US volunteers.The war ended on April 21, 1836 with the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas was declared an independent country and called itself the Republic of Texas.

Texas remained an independent country for ten years since most of the Northern United States did not want another slave state and feared war with Mexico. In 1845, the United States Congress voted to admit Texas as a slave state, which made it the country's 28th state. Mexico opposed that and so the Mexican–American War began, which the US won.