The conflict was short and bloody. After meeting reverses at Goliad and the Alamo,[2] the Texans won their independence by defeating the Mexican army at San Jacinto,[3] in 1836. General Samuel Houston, the Texan leader, was subsequently made president of the Republic of Texas, which then set up for itself upon the model of the United States.
In no long time Texas applied for admission to the Union. Too weak to maintain herself as an independent power, her interests were now at one with the South. Her soil, climate, and productions were much the same. Her population was largely derived from that source, and owned to like feelings and prejudices with their brethren of that section. The South, therefore, favored the admission of Texas, not only for these general reasons, but because it would add a slave State to the Union, as, since Missouri and Arkansas had come in, there was no more territory, except Florida, open to slavery under the interdicted line of 36° 30´.
THE ALAMO.
For this very reason the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North strongly opposed the admission of Texas. It was further opposed on the ground that as Mexico had not yet acknowledged the independence of Texas, so unfriendly an act toward Mexico would lead to war. Moreover, Texas was of such vast extent, compared with other States, that the bill for its admission allowed the making of four more new States out of it, so opening the door of the Union not to one, but several slave States in the future.
SAMUEL HOUSTON.
But the North and South did not separate themselves into two distinct political factions, or their citizens stand wholly together, on this Texas question. With many it was simply a question of national policy or expediency. It was championed by the Democratic party, which believed in the "manifest destiny" of the Union to control the whole continent, while the Whig party was conservative, and its opposition was based on the grounds already given, which many thought equivalent to national dishonor. Southern men were in both parties, and Northern men in both. Each party nominated a Southern man for President upon this issue. This question was carried to the people in the next national election (1844), when Clay, the Whig candidate, and opponent of annexation, was defeated, and Polk,[4] the Democratic candidate and its advocate, elected. The Congress therefore admitted Texas to the Union, Dec. 29, 1845.