It seems strange that an independent country would want to be annexed by another country*. I have read three reasons why Texas wanted to be annexed.
It was horribly in debt and traded sovereignty for having its debt paid. The lack of hard currency certainly hurt but annexation seems extreme to resolve a debt problem.
That Texas always intended to be a part of the United States. Then why was it a country for 10 years?
That Texas feared an invasion from Mexico. While the concerns were valid and the issues were not settled until 1848, two years after the annexation, couldn’t Texas have been protected by a mutual-defense treaty with the US?
*I don’t count Hawaii as “wanting” to be annexed by the United States but rather a result of voting laws favoring white land owners over natives, the Bayonet Constitution and deposing the Queen.
I’m a little fuzzy on exactly why Texas always intended to be a part of the U.S. All I know about that is that a majority of Texans favored annexation by the U.S. right from the moment that Texas declared itself independent from Mexico.
I can however answer why it remained a separate country for 10 years. The two major political parties in the mid 1830s were the Democrats and the Whigs (the Whigs would collapse in the 1850s), and both of these parties opposed the annexation of Texas into the U.S. Slavery was one of the issues. Texas was a large state and it was a slave state, and slavery had been becoming more and more of a contentious issue all through the 1800s. Neither party wanted to throw Texas into the middle of that turmoil.
The second issue was that Mexico initially refused to recognize the independence of Texas. Both the Democrats and the Whigs wanted to avoid a war with Mexico. As long as Texas was in a state of rebellion, the U.S. wasn’t directly involved. As soon as the U.S. said that Texas belonged to them, that would put the U.S. and Mexico directly into confrontation over the issue.
Starting around 1840-ish, Texas managed to drag the United Kingdom into the issue, having the U.K. act as a mediator between Texas and Mexico in an effort to get Mexico to formally recognize the independence of Texas.
Also, while most Texans wanted to be part of the U.S., there were some Texans that preferred independence, and while all of this other political turmoil was going on, these Texans who wanted independence managed to kick up enough of a stink to make some of those in favor of annexation think twice about the deal, which further delayed things.
The U.K.'s involvement, plus some political wrangling by John Tyler and others, finally got things going and led to the eventual annexation of Texas into the U.S. But the whole process was a bit chaotic, which is why it took so long.
As for the debt issue, the Texas economy really took a dump around 1840 or so. Debt wasn’t so much of an issue initially, but after 1840 or so it started to become a bigger issue, and added more pressure in favor of annexation as a way of dealing with the increasing debt problem.
Colonization of Texas by Americans started shortly after Mexican independence in 1821. Texas at the time was sparsely populated, and initially they were invited in by the local governments. By the time of the Texas War of Independence in 1836, conflicts over slavery (which had been prohibited by Mexico*) caused Mexico to outlaw further immigration. By that time, American colonists considerably outnumbered native Mexicans in the territory. They largely still felt loyalty to the US.
Immediately after the war the Anglo Texans were overwhelmingly for annexation and applied to the US. They were rejected largely because of political concerns that they might enter as several slave states and upset the balance between slave states and free states in the Senate. When the pro-slavery John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency in 1841, he began the process that eventually led to the annexation.
See above. Texas was a potential political liability for the US. In any case, why would the US have wanted to risk war with Mexico over a foreign state?
I find it ironic that although the Battle of the Alamo is often depicted as a fight for freedom, the only person actually freed by the battle was Joe, a slave owned by commander William Travis, who survived the battle and was liberated by the Mexicans. (A slave owned by Jim Bowie may also have been freed.)
Another thing to remember is that the Republic of Texas was a lot smaller than what would become the state of Texas, and Mexico never recognized Texas independence (Mexico felt the “republic” could be self-governing, but not fully independent.) The Texans wanted the area all the way west to the Rio Grande. There were additional battles between Mexico and Texas in 1842. Being a part of the U.S., with the U.S. Army protecting you, must have seemed like a good idea.
That situation was just a tad more nuanced than you’re letting on. While many people welcomed the Germans with open arms, many others, including those at the very highest levels of government, tried to obstruct or delay the annexation for as long as possible.
Mexico had outlawed slavery in 1829, and was starting to put pressure to enforce this the ‘Texas’ part of Mexico. But if they joined the US, they could do so as a slave state, keep their slaves, and count on the US military to protect them if Mexico tried to enforce the abolution of slavery.
Another case of two countries joining voluntarily is Guanacaste and Costa Rica. When Central America declared independence, its states were defined by the revolutionaries: two such states were Costa Rica and Guanacaste. Thing is, while the two areas were clearly distinct, they also both had tiny populations (combined current population is 5M): Guanacaste proposed joining forces, Costa Rica happily accepted. They kept the name of the larger one as the name for the state, with Guanacaste becoming one of its provinces.
And that, my children, is why Costa Rica’s coat of arms is so busy: it combines the previous two.
A similar thing happened between Panama and Colombia. Panama gained its independence from Spain in 1821 separately from Colombia in a bloodless revolt. (They basically bribed the Spanish troops to desert.) Being small, Panama asked to join the Republic of Gran Colombia (which also included what are now Venezuela and Ecuador) for protection from Spanish retaliation.
Possibly Tanzania as well, though it’s unclear whether Tanganyika annexed Zanzibar or the other way around. Come to think of it, how DID Zanzibar benefit from that union?
I was under the impression that some Confederates fled to Mexico after the Civil War with their slaves, and complied with their release several years afterwards.
There was an attempt to found Confederate colonies in Mexico after the war, under the French puppet emperor Maximilian. I don’t know if they actually brought slaves with them. In any event, it didn’t last long, since Maximilian fell to republican forces in 1867. The main place Confederates found refuge was Brazil, which still permitted slavery.
As the initial question seems to have been largely answered, may I hijack slightly? I have a related question that this thread has prompted.
For years I used to work with a bunch of Texans – and lovely folks they were as well. Idiosyncratic, though. Their attitude to nationality, encapsulated by one of the younger guys, was thus: I’m Texan.
I wasn’t going to argue, so that was that.
But there was also a very specific claim which he made about the relationship between Texas and the US, which was this: Texas is the only state which has the right to unilaterally withdraw from the Union at any time. At the time I had no particular reason to question the statement (Though I suppose it raises a few questions like what is stopping *any *state from unilaterally withdrawing from the Union at any time? and: So in what way is the position of Texas different?) – but this thread seems to strongly suggest that when Texas joined the US, it wasn’t negotiating from a position of strength. For me, that makes the claim that Texas has a unique “Walk-away” clause seem rather implausible. What gives? Was I simply being BS’d?
You seem to be ignoring the last part of the sentence. Texas had a population of 70,000 in 1840, while Mexico had a population of 7-8 million and the US a population of 17 million. After initial successes, Mexico lost the War of Texas Independence in large part due to bad generalship by Santa Anna and his capture by the Texan forces. If Mexico had gotten its act together, they most likely could have crushed the Texans. Mexico had successfully suppressed a rebellion in Yucatan just before the Texan revolt. Joining the US was the best way for Texas to defend itself against being re-incorporated into Mexico.