Texan Participation
in the Federalist Wars: First Phase

THE FEDERALIST REVOLUTIONARY DISTURBANCES, which broke out in northern Mexico in December 1837, gained renewed vigor following the French blockade of the Mexican coast and the capture of Vera Cruz in November 1838 and soon involved a number of Texans. While the Mexican government through its agents and spies sought to harass the young republic to the north, the Texans, on the other hand, often afforded assistance, officially and unofficially, to the revolutionists of Yucatán and the northern states of San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Nuevo México, and the Californias in their struggle to overthrow the Centralist government of Anastasio Bustamante and Santa Anna.[1]  On both sides of the Río Grande there were persons who believed that Texas and some of the northern states of Mexico should be formed into a North Mexican Republic, and the Mexican Congress, becoming aware of this movement on its northern frontier, passed a law declaring any overt act in that direction to be high treason, punishable as such.[2]

The real interests of the people of the northern departments of Mexico had long been neglected by the central government of their homeland. Isolated by the character of the country and the distance from the seat of political authority, confronted constantly on the frontier with a serious Indian problem, and dominated by an economic system based on farming and ranching, the inhabitants of the frontier departments had developed those qualities which made "every citizen