13.3 The Republic of Texas, Statehood, Civil War & Reconstruction

Overview & Exam Relevance

This section continues Competency 002 (History). It covers Texas from independence in 1836 through Reconstruction and the closing of the frontier:

• the Republic of Texas and the contrasting policies of Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar;
• annexation and the U.S.-Mexican War;
• secession, the Civil War, Juneteenth, and Reconstruction; and
• the railroads, ranching, and technology that transformed the late-1800s frontier.

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The Republic of Texas: Sam Houston vs. Mirabeau B. Lamar

From 1836 to 1845, Texas existed as an independent sovereign republic. The politics of the Republic were defined by the contrasting visions, foreign policies, and administrative philosophies of its first two elected presidents:

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Annexation, Statehood & The Mexican-American War

• Annexation (1845): Annexation had been delayed for nearly a decade due to divisive congressional debates over slavery and fear of war with Mexico. In 1844, expansionist Democrat James K. Polk won the U.S. presidency on a platform of "Manifest Destiny." In February 1845, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution offering statehood. Texas voters overwhelmingly accepted, and Texas officially entered the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845. Under the unique terms of the joint resolution, Texas retained ownership of its unappropriated public lands (unlike other western states whose lands became federal public domain) and retained its accumulated public debts.
• The Mexican-American War (1846-1848): Mexico severed diplomatic relations following annexation. The two nations disputed the southern boundary: Texas and the United States claimed the Rio Grande, whereas Mexico maintained the historical provincial border was the Nueces River (roughly 150 miles north). President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to march troops across the Nueces into the disputed strip (Thornton Affair). In April 1846, Mexican forces engaged Taylor's troops north of the Rio Grande. Polk proclaimed that Mexico had "invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil," and Congress declared war.
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848): The American military captured Mexico City in September 1847. The resulting Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, established profound territorial changes:
  • Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the permanent southern border of Texas.
  • Mexico ceded the vast Mexican Cession to the United States—over 525,000 square miles encompassing modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
  • In return, the United States paid Mexico $15 million and assumed $3.25 million of Mexican debt owed to American citizens.
• The Compromise of 1850 & Texas Boundaries: Following the war, Texas claimed territory stretching through modern New Mexico all the way to Santa Fe and northward into Colorado and Wyoming. Through the Compromise of 1850, negotiated by Henry Clay, Texas agreed to cede its western and northern territorial claims, creating the present-day boundaries of Texas. In exchange, the federal government transferred $10 million in U.S. bonds to Texas, which allowed the state to extinguish its entire public debt inherited from the Republic era. The Compromise also admitted California as a free state, organized Utah and New Mexico territories under popular sovereignty, and enacted a stronger federal Fugitive Slave Act.

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Civil War & Reconstruction in Texas

Secession and Internal Division (1861)

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, Southern states began seceding. In February 1861, a Texas Secession Convention drafted the Texas Ordinance of Secession, which was overwhelmingly ratified by voters (46,153 to 14,747). Secession was vehemently opposed in the German immigrant enclaves of the Texas Hill Country and several northern Red River counties.

Governor Sam Houston fiercely opposed secession, delivering prophetic speeches warning that secession would bring catastrophe, economic devastation, and the military defeat of the South: "Let me tell you what is coming... Your fathers and your husbands, your sons and your brothers, will be herded like sheep and cattle at the point of the bayonet... and after the sacrifice of countless billions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win your southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it." When Houston refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America in March 1861, the convention declared the governorship vacant and forcibly deposed him from office.

Major Civil War Engagements in Texas

Texas served primarily as a supply conduit for the Confederacy, exporting cotton across the Mexican border through Matamoros to bypass the Union naval blockade:

1. Battle of Galveston (January 1, 1863): Union forces captured Galveston Island in October 1862. On New Year's Day 1863, Confederate Major General John B. Magruder launched a coordinated land-sea assault using two converted river steamboats fortified with cotton bales ("cottonclads"). The Confederates recaptured Galveston, re-opening the port for the remainder of the war.
2. Battle of Sabine Pass (September 8, 1863): A Union armada carrying 5,000 invasion troops steamed into the Sabine River pass intending to invade interior Texas. Lieutenant Richard W. Dowling and 47 men of the Davis Guards held Fort Griffin, operating six small cannons. Dowling's men fired with extraordinary accuracy, disabling two Union gunboats, capturing 350 prisoners, and driving the entire federal fleet into retreat without losing a single Confederate soldier.
3. Battle of Palmito Ranch (May 12-13, 1865): Fought near Brownsville along the Rio Grande, this engagement took place more than a month after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Confederate troops under Colonel John Salmon "Rip" Ford repulsed a Union attack. Palmito Ranch is historically recognized as the final land battle of the American Civil War (ironically a Confederate tactical victory).

Juneteenth and Reconstruction

• Juneteenth (June 19, 1865): Because of its geographic isolation and minimal Union military presence, slavery persisted in Texas after the collapse of the Confederacy. On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston with federal troops. Granger issued General Order No. 3, declaring to the citizens of Texas: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves." The anniversary of this announcement has been celebrated across Texas as Juneteenth, recognized as an official Texas state holiday in 1980 and a federal holiday in 2021.
• Reconstruction Era (1865-1874): Texas underwent Presidential Reconstruction and subsequent Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction, during which the former Confederacy was divided into military districts under General Philip Sheridan. The Freedmen's Bureau established schools and legal assistance for newly freed African Americans. In 1869, Republican Edmund J. Davis was elected governor, centralizing state police authority, expanding public school funding, and raising property taxes.
• The Texas Constitution of 1876: When conservative Democrats ("Redeemers") regained political control, they dismantled Davis's centralized policies. In 1876, delegates drafted a new state constitution designed specifically to curtail executive authority:
  • Created a plural executive branch, dividing executive power among independently elected officials (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller, Attorney General, Land Commissioner).
  • Mandated biennial legislative sessions (the Legislature meets in regular session once every two years; the current 140-day limit on regular sessions was added by a later constitutional amendment).
  • Imposed strict constitutional caps on state debt and taxation.
  • This document, amended hundreds of times, remains the governing Constitution of the State of Texas today.

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Texas After Reconstruction: Railroads, Ranching, and New Technology

• Railroads: Rail lines expanded rapidly across Texas in the 1870s and 1880s. Towns that the railroad reached grew, while bypassed towns often declined. Railroads carried cattle, cotton, and lumber to national markets and later ended the need for long cattle drives. (The cattle drives of 1866–1885 are covered in the economic history section.)
• Barbed Wire: Joseph F. Glidden patented barbed wire in 1874. It gave ranchers and farmers an inexpensive way to fence the treeless plains and brought a rapid end to the open range. Conflicts over fencing led to the Fence-Cutting Wars of 1883–1884, which ended when the Texas Legislature made fence cutting a felony.
• Windmills: Windmills pumped groundwater from underground aquifers, such as the Ogallala Aquifer under the High Plains, so ranches and farms could be established far from rivers and streams.
• Conflict on the Plains: The near-extermination of the bison by commercial hunters and the U.S. Army's Red River War (1874–1875) ended Comanche and Kiowa control of the Southern Plains. The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon in 1874 forced the remaining bands onto reservations in Indian Territory.
• The Buffalo Soldiers: African American cavalry and infantry regiments served at frontier forts in West Texas after the Civil War.