Texas, 1836. Santa Anna crushes the Texas rebellion and hangs Sam Houston, and closes the border to further immigration from the United States.
Would Texas have remained part of Mexico inevitably, indefinitely?
Would this have had an affect on the Mexican War, 10 years later? Would the US have still acquired California, Arizona and New Mexico?
What impact would the absence of Texas had on the Confederacy and the Civil War?
Would Texas cattle have still been driven north to Kansas? Or would they have gone south, to (say) Mexico City? How would this have impacted development of the US railroad industry? Would the US be an importer of Mexican vaquero culture, instead of an exporter of cowboy culture? Would we still have Hollywood westerns and John Wayne?
And Texas oil: how would it have impacted the 20th century economies of Mexico and the US?
I strongly suspect the US would’ve come up with a slightly different pre-text for the Mexican American War, and Texas would’ve ended up as a part of the US more or less at the same time as it did historically.
I guess its conceivable that an extra decade of Mexican rule in Texas could’ve ended slavery there, and that the new state would’ve been a free-state and then not joined the confederacy.
Well, assuming the Mexified Texas doesn’t supply men or horses to the Confederacy (since it is not a member), the Union wins the Civil War much more quickly, slavery persists, deepening the schism between the southern states and the expanded Mexico (and indeed between the southern states and the northern states), there is a max exodus of slaves fleeing north and south, forcing the southern states to become even more dictatorial and controlling, if not proto-totalitarian, toward their black population. The southern states militarize their bordders in an attempt to stop the exodus, and sooner or later they star shooting at “Texicans” who they feel are aiding the slaves. Mexico starts making noise about war, and President Horatio Seymour is slow to respond. When the U.S. finally does respond, it’s a slow, slogging war the ends with them in possession everything down to the Rio Grande, though at the cost of massive infrastructure damage to the southern states, comparable to what they suffered in the “real-history” civil war. A large campaign is staged to populate Texas with “good Anglo-Saxon stock”, since otherwise it is expected its Spanish-speaking majority-Catholic population will eventually secede.
And in 1915, after much religious and racial violence and under the leadership of Pancho Villa, they do.
Historical Texas had something like 5% of the CSAs population and spent a good chunk of the latter part of the Civil War cut off from the rest of the CSA by Union control of the Mississippi. The Union might have had a slighly easier time if Texas never joined the Confederate cause, but I don’t think it would’ve made a big difference.
Hah, alt history is fun. As it happens, there were almost no Mexicans actually in Teas, which was why they invite din lots of anglos to populate it. C’est la vie.
I have posted on this several times. BUt in general, Mexico’s control over Texas, California etc was at best tenuous. And Mexico was on the brink of bankruptcy when the USA bought California etc. Not to mention- already Central America had seceded (you didn’t know that most of Central America was briefly part of Mexico, eh?Well, sort of anyway, it was a chaotic period) and several other Mexican States had attempted to secede.
*General Antonio López de Santa Anna, a centralist and two-time dictator, approved the Siete Leyes in 1836, a radical amendment that institutionalized the centralized form of government. When he suspended the 1824 Constitution, civil war spread across the country, and three new governments declared independence: the Republic of Texas, the Republic of the Rio Grande and the Republic of Yucatán.
*
Thus, without the cash influx (at gunpoint, I agree!) from the “Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo”, Mexico would have very likely slid into bankruptcy and anarchy, most of the States would have split off anyway.
Nothing much. Americans would have kept migrating there, and wanting the land to become part of the US, with the Mexican control over it continuously weakening, just like had been happening for quite some time already. Any victory Santa Anna might have had against a gringo uprising would have been effective only very temporarily at best. Either it would have heated up again, with the numbers more in the gringos’ favor, or Santa Anna would have just sold it to the US like he sold the Gadsden Purchase. He’d have pocketed the cash, too, just like he did with the Gadsden money.
Of course, while no LBJ means (possibly, we can’t be sure) no Vietnam War, it might also have meant another few decades of segregation. LBJ did more for civil rights in a few weeks than JFK did in 3 years.
Okay, I’m sorry if this was supposed to be obvious, but what’s the connection between the Union winning the Civil War much more quickly, and slavery persisting. I mean, I do know that there was more to the Civil was than abolitionism and anti-abolitionism, (thank you Apu ) but is there a particular reason that the Union wouldn’t have freed the slaves once they kicked ass?
If Mexico had been strong enough to defeat the Texas Revolutionaries, the US would have had no pretext for starting the Mexican War. Also, Mexico would not have looked like such easy picking. Spain & Mexico had, indeed, encouraged settlers from Europe & the US. Most of the Europeans (Germans, etc.) had no interest in slavery; I don’t see that they would have stopped settling here.
The conflict over whether the vast new lands won from Mexico would be slave or free led to the Civil War. So–a smaller US would have continued half slave & free for some time.
I don’t know much about Northwest history. Wasn’t England interested? Perhaps Canada could have grown at the expense of the small area north of Mexican California.
So–a stronger Mexico & a stronger Canada. Good for the Western Native Americans; Mexico was less efficient than the US in wiping them from the map. Bad for the African-Americans, still enslaved in the South. The Northern US would have had less room for immigrants, so it could have remained a more securely WASP enclave, with a rabble of Irish on the bottom…
Between the idea of manifest destiny, the US’ desire to thwart English efforts in the west, and the south’s desire to add more slave states, the Mexican-American war seems almost inevitable, regardless of anything that happened in Texas. Texas’ rebellion wasn’t faught by the US military. Perchance we’d not have taken Texas in the treaty of Guadalupe, but I be we’d’ve done.
Had we not taken Texas, then we’d have shit-hole border towns between Luisiana (etc) and Texas, rather than shit-hole border towns between Nuevo Laredo (etc) and Texas.
Well, the war started in April 1861, but emancipation didn’t become a formal goal of the Union until September of 1862 (and wouldn’t take effect, even in Union states that had slavery) until after the war.
I’m very likely overstating Texas’s influence, but I figure if anything was to speed up the northern victory, such that the Confederacy was overrun before the summer of 1862 (my personal favourite scenario is Robert E. Lee accepting command of the Union army), readmitting the seceded states would take a far higher priority than freeing their slaves.
I figure Lincoln was forced to recast the war as a moral crusade against slavery only when it became apparent that it was going to be a long slog, and to discourage European nations from allying with the Confederacy. I also figure that if the South is conquered quickly without suffering the massive infrastructure damage, death and the imposed loss of their slaves, a second Civil War a generation later is quite likely.
Butterfly effect. If this changes there will be no JFK or LBJ. Heck there probably is no Civil War so soon without the Mexican-American War.
Anyways this means to-day large areas of Texas are overrun by American retirees while the rest resemble Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana in regards to crime rates and living conditions.
It’s not crazy speculation, but Texas was likely not important enough to end the war years earlier. But yes, you are right- the Emancipation Proclamation may not have been issued if the North had won an early, easy victory. REL being in command of the Union might well have done it, however.
No doubt that slavery would have been outlawed anyway, but it might have taken a while.
) but is there a particular reason that the Union wouldn’t have freed the slaves once they kicked ass?