The Texas annexation was the incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States by joint resolution of Congress, culminating in its admission to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845.
The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico on March 2, 1836. It applied for annexation to the United States the same year, but was rejected by the United States secretary of state, John Forsyth, under President Andrew Jackson. At that time, the majority of the Texian population favored the annexation of the Republic by the United States. The leadership of both major U.S. political parties (the Democrats and the Whigs) opposed the introduction of Texasa vast slave-holding regioninto the volatile political climate of the pro- and anti-slavery sectional controversies in Congress. Moreover, they wished to avoid a war with Mexico, whose government had outlawed slavery and refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of its rebellious northern province. With Texas's economic fortunes declining by the early 1840s, the president of the Texas Republic, Sam Houston, arranged talks with Mexico to explore the possibility of securing official recognition of independence, with the United Kingdom mediating.
In 1843, U.S. president John Tyler, then unaligned with any political party, decided independently to pursue the annexation of Texas in a bid to gain a base of support for another four years in office. His official motivation was to outmaneuver suspected diplomatic efforts by the British government for the emancipation of slaves in Texas, which would undermine slavery in the United States. Through secret negotiations with the Houston administration, Tyler secured a treaty of annexation in April 1844. When the documents were submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification, the details of the terms of annexation became public and the question of acquiring Texas took center stage in the presidential election of 1844. Pro-Texas-annexation southern Democratic delegates denied their anti-annexation leader Martin Van Buren the nomination at their party's convention in May 1844. In alliance with pro-expansion northern Democratic colleagues, they secured the nomination of James K. Polk, who ran on a pro-Texas Manifest destiny platform.
In June 1844, the Senate, with its Whig majority, soundly rejected the Tyler–Texas treaty. Later that year, the pro-annexation Democrat Polk narrowly defeated anti-annexation Whig Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election. In December 1844, lame-duck President Tyler called on Congress to pass his treaty by simple majorities in each house. The Democratic-dominated House of Representatives complied with his request by passing an amended bill expanding on the pro-slavery provisions of the Tyler treaty. The Senate narrowly passed a compromise version of the House bill, designed to provide President-elect Polk the options of immediate annexation of Texas or new talks to revise the annexation terms of the House-amended bill.
On March 1, 1845, President Tyler signed the annexation bill, and on March 3 (his last full-day in office), he forwarded the House version to Texas, offering immediate annexation. When Polk took office at noon (EST) the next day, he encouraged Texas to accept Tyler's offer. Texas ratified the agreement with popular approval from Texans. The bill was signed by President Polk on December 29, 1845, accepting Texas as the 28th state of the Union. Texas formally joined the union on February 19, 1846, prompting the Mexican–American War in April of that year.
Background information U.S. territorial expansion and Texas
First mapped by Spain in 1519, for over 300 years Texas was part of the vast Spanish Empire seized by the Spanish conquistadores from its indigenous people.Meacham, 2008, p. 315 The US–Spain border along the northern frontier of Texas took shape in the 1817–1819 negotiations between Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Luis de Onís.Dangerfield, 1952, p. 129: "... Adams took up the [Louisiana] negotiations in December 1817." The boundaries of Texas were determined within the larger geostrategic struggle to demark the limits of the United States' extensive western lands and of Spain's vast possessions in North America.Merry, 2009, p. 70: "Spain and the United States found themselves in the dispute over Louisiana's western border and the extent to which Jefferson's purchase included the portion of Texas." And "[I]n 1819, the matter was incorporated into the two countries' efforts to settle the status of Florida."Dangerfield, 1952, pp. 128–129: "The cession of Florida was, of course, not the only bargaining point at the disposal of [Onis] in his attempt to prevent the United States from recognizing ... Spanish revolutionaries in South America. He was also ready to discuss the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase in their relation to the Empire of Spain. The Florida Purchase Treaty of February 22, 1819Crapol, 2006, p. 176: "... the Adams-Onis Treaty ... also known as the Florida treaty ..."Dangerfield, 1952, p. 152: "On February 22 , the great Transcontinental Treaty was signed and sealed." emerged as a compromise that excluded Spain from the lower Columbia River drainage basin, but established southern boundaries at the Sabine and Red Rivers, "legally extinguish[ing]" any American claims to Texas.Crapol, 2006, p. 176: "... the Sabine River ... today is the boundary between [the states of] Louisiana and Texas." p. 176: The US claim to Texas" was legally extinguished ..."Dangerfield, 1952, p. 156:"It was by no means a perfect Treaty – by excluding Texas [from US possession], it bequeathed to the United States a legacy of trouble and war – but was certainly a great Treaty." Nonetheless, Texas remained an object of fervent interest to American expansionists, among them Thomas Jefferson, who anticipated the eventual acquisition of its fertile lands.Crapol, 2006, p. 176: "Among diehard expansionists unwilling to give up hope of getting Texas at a future date was Thomas Jefferson. He assured his friend President James Monroe that, when acquired, Texas would become "the richest State of our Union, without any exception."Merry, 2009, p. 70: "[E]stablishing [Texas] west of the Sabine ... enraged many US expansionists" and "[a]nger over the treaty would linger for decades."
The Missouri crisis of 1819–1821 sharpened commitments to expansionism among the country's slaveholding interests, when the so-called Thomas proviso established the 36°30' parallel, imposing free-soil and slave-soil futures in the Louisiana Purchase lands.Brown, 1966, p. 24: The "architects of Southern power [objected to] the so-called Thomas Proviso, amending the Missouri bill to draw the ill-fated 36°30' line across the Louisiana Purchase, prohibiting slavery in the territory to the north, giving up the lion's share to freedom." While a majority of southern congressmen acquiesced to the exclusion of slavery from the bulk of the Louisiana Purchase, a significant minority objected.Holt, 2004, p. 6: "In short, in 1820, a majority of southern congressmen accepted congressional prohibition of slavery from almost all of the western territories."Brown, 1966, pp. 25–26: "In fact, the vote on the [Thomas] Proviso illuminated an important division in Southern sentiment. Thirty-seven slave state congressmen opposed it, white thirty-nine voted for it ..." a harbinger that the opposition would "in due time rectify the Thomas Proviso." Virginian editor Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer predicted that with the proviso restrictions, the South would ultimately require Texas: "If we are cooped up on the north, we must have elbow room to the west."Brown, 1966, p. 25: "As the [Missouri] debates thundered to their climax, Ritchie in two separate editorials predicted the if the Proviso passed, the South must in due time have Texas".Freehling, 1991, p. 152: "The Thomas plan angered some Southerners. They denounced the unequal division of turf and constitutional precedent." Representative John Floyd of Virginia in 1824 accused Secretary of State Adams of conceding Texas to Spain in 1819 in the interests of Northern anti-slavery advocates, and so depriving the South of additional slave states.Brown, 1966, p. 28: "In 1823–1824 some Southerners suspected that an attempt by Secretary of State Adams to conclude a slave trade convention with Great Britain was an attempt to reap the benefit of Northern anti-slavery sentiments; and some, notably John Floyd of Virginia, sought to turn the tables on Adams by attacking him for allegedly ceding Texas to Spain in the Florida treaty, thus ceding what Floyd called "two slaveholding states" and costing "the Southern interest" four Senators." Then-representative John Tyler of Virginia invoked the Jeffersonian precepts of territorial and commercial growth as a national goal to counter the rise of sectional differences over slavery. His "diffusion" theory declared that with Missouri open to slavery, the new state would encourage the transfer of underutilized slaves westward, emptying the eastern states of bondsmen and making emancipation feasible in the old South.Crapol, 2006, pp. 37–38: Tyler "believed in a theory of 'diffusion' as a way to end slavery gradually and peacefully ... so as to "thin out and diffuse the slave population and, with fewer blacks in some of the older slave states of the upper South, it might become politically feasible to abolish slavery in states like Virginia" ... and "Tyler voted against proposals that restricted slavery in Missouri or any other portion of the remaining territory of the Louisiana Purchase." This doctrine would be revived during the Texas annexation controversy.Freehling, 1991, p. 151: "The Southerner [John Tyler] who best defended diffusion during the Missouri Crisis would become a key actor in the Texas [annexation] epic.", p. 195: "... the diffusion argument had emerged in the Missouri Controversy of the 1820s and would remain in the Texas Controversy of the 1840s."Crapol, 2006, p. 206: Pro-Texas arguments made by Senator Walker in 1843 were "remarkably similar to [Tyler's] diffusion theory he earlier had formulated at the time of the Missouri controversy."
When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821,Freehling, 1991, p. 365 the United States did not contest the new republic's claims to Texas, and both presidents John Quincy Adams (1825–1829) and Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) persistently sought, through official and unofficial channels, to procure all or portions of provincial Texas from the Mexican government, without success.Crapol, 2006, p. 176: "In fact, Mexican sovereignty [over Texas] was openly acknowledged" by the Adams and Jackson administrations, both of whom "tried to purchase all or part of Texas from the Mexicans." Merk, 1978, p. 270: "Mexican fears were ... aroused because of the persistence with which the United States government tried to buy Texas."Merry, 2009, p. "Jackson ... had sought to purchase the province from Mexico before Texas independence."
Texas settlement and independence
Spanish and indigenous immigrants, primarily from northeastern provinces of New Spain, began to settle Texas in the late 17th century. The Spanish constructed Catholic missions and presidios in what is today Louisiana, east Texas, and south Texas. The first missions were designed for the Tejas Indians, near Los Adaes. Soon thereafter, the San Antonio Missions were founded along the San Antonio River. The City of San Antonio, then known as San Fernando de Bexar, was founded in 1718. In the early 1760s, José de Escandón created five settlements along the Rio Grande River, including Laredo.