The Bexar Remonstrances
Although the opening shots of the Texas Revolution were not fired until October 1835, the origins of the revolution began about three years earlier. With the Anahuac Disturbances and the Turtle Bayou Resolutions of 1832, the Texan colonists had firmly cast their lot with Mexico’s federalist party. In the early years of the 1830s, however, Texans were reluctant to become involved in the national civil war between Mexico’s federalists and centralists, except as it related to Texas. Instead, Texans focused on their most pressing concerns, which were the resumption of immigration from the United States and statehood for Texas independent of Coahuila.
The passage of the Law of April 6, 1830 by centralist president Anastacio Bustamante had drastically changed Texas colonization policies. Among other things, the law prohibited foreign immigrants from nations bordering Mexico to settle in states or territory adjacent to their nation (in other words immigrants from the United States could not settle in Texas) and suspended any unfulfilled empresario contracts. Other objectionable articles of the law dealt with the appointment of commissioners to Texas to “supervise the introduction of new colonists and the fulfilling of their contract for settlement,” the prohibition of the importation of any new slaves into Texas (the law did not outlaw slavery in Texas altogether), and changes to taxes and tariffs on colonists.
The colonists’ support of Santa Anna and the federalist party in 1832 was based on the hope that the federalists would restore “rights” that had been revoked by the centralists. Texans and Tejanos also increasingly voiced their opinions that the political arrangement that tied Texas to Coahuila hampered progress in Texas. In October 1832, a convention met in San Felipe de Austin to discuss the issue of separate statehood. Béxar chose not to participate as they considered the convention illegal as it was not sanctioned by the political chiefs of Texas.
Instead, in December 1832, at the behest of Stephen F. Austin, the Bexar ayuntamiento (city council) appointed a committee to draft a document outlining the grievances of the residents of Texas. On December 19, their petition titled Representacion dirijida por el ilustre ayuntamiento e la Cuidad de Bexar — commonly referred to in English as the Bexar Remonstrances — was signed. The seven signers of the petition included members of some Texas’s most influential families, including José Angel Navarro, Juan Angel Seguin and José Antonio de la Garza.
The petition first notes the historic neglect of San Antonio in particular and Texas in general by the government, specifically the lack of a sufficient military presence to protect citizens from hostile Indians. Second, the petition argues in favor of the repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830 and the resumption of legal immigration from the United States to Texas. Next, the petition notes the problems with Texas being governed as a department of the State of Coahulia y Texas and the subsequent lack of representation of the needs of Texans in government and lack of judiciary institutions. The petition then complains about the military tyranny and arbitrary rule resulting from the Anahuac Disturbances, and calls for a return to the principles of the Constitution of 1824. The petition concludes with a list of articles that should be enacted to address the concerns of the people of Texas.
After the signing of the Bexar Remonstrance, the Bexar ayuntamiento circulated the petition to other Texas cities. The petition was also delivered to the legislature of the state of Coahulia y Texas. In 1833, representatives of the colonies again held a convention in San Felipe and this time elected Stephen F. Austin to present their grievances, as well as a draft constitution for the proposed State of Texas, to the Mexican government. It was while returning from this trip to Mexico that Austin was arrested and imprisoned in Mexico City for over a year and a half.
Throughout this period, political unrest in Texas was growing as the centralist party gained more power in the Mexican government. Texans were making plans for another meeting — the Consultation of 1835 — which was to be held on October 15, 1835, but shots were fired in Gonzales before delegates could assemble. When the Consultation finally convened in November 1835, much of the reasoning in their declaration of causes for taking up arms echoed concerns previously raised in the Bexar Remonstrances and the conventions of 1832.
SOURCES
John Henry Brown. History of Texas, from 1685 to 1892, Volume 1. (St. Louis, Becktold & Co., 1892).
Handbook of Texas Online, Curtis Bishop, “Law of April 6, 1830,” accessed December 19, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ngl01. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Modified on May 10, 2016. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
Handbook of Texas Online, Paul D. Lack, “Consultation,” accessed December 19, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mjc08. Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
Jesus F. de la Teja, ed. Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas.(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010).
