Mexican Federalists
Seek Support in Texas

IT WAS ONLY NATURAL that any movement in behalf of republicanism in Mexico should attract attention in Texas whose citizens less than two years before had themselves revolted against the centralizing tendencies of Santa Anna. Many of the active participants in the liberal movement in the north in the late 1830's were the same men who had shown some willingness to cooperate with the Texans in 1835-1836 until they became convinced that the objective of the Anglo-Texans was the complete separation from Mexico rather than a movement to restore the principles of the constitution of 1824. With this realization of the true objective of the "rebelled colonists," most of the liberal Mexican leaders -- men like José María González, Antonio Canales, Juan Nepomuceno Molano, Pedro Lemus, José Lemus, and Julian Miracle, whom we have already noted -- lost interest in the Texan revolutionary movement for they had no desire to assist in the dismemberment of their homeland, Mexico. They were at heart, first, Mexicans, interested in the preservation of the territorial integrity of the nation; and, second, believers in the principles of republicanism. This same love of country doomed their efforts in 1838-1840 to restore the republicanism of 1824 when they appealed to outsiders for help.

The reader must understand that the Federalist movement of 1838-1840 was neither the first nor the last in the first hundred years of Mexico's national history. No effort is made here to trace the history of Mexican federalism. Neither does the scope of this work justify going into all the ramifications of the Federalist disturbances of 1838-1839. This narrative is restricted to the developments occurring in the northern departments as they affected Texas-Mexican frontier relations, and is intended to show that the revolutionary movements of the Federalists were one of the causes which secured for Texas a long interval of peace after the failure of the Mexican campaign in Texas in the spring of 1836.