The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 57, July 1953 - April, 1954 Page: 37

Jacksonian Liberalism and Spanish Law in Early Texas 37
behind them, could have regarded the dictatorship of Antonio
L6pez de Santa Anna as a permanent state of affairs.
No doubt the movement for complete independence was
strengthened by the influx of newcomers-largely adventurers-
who had come from the United States soon after the first disorders
and who had no feeling of obligation toward Mexico. Although
these newcomers were of a more turbulent character than the
original settlers brought in by the empresarios, their objectives
were essentially the same, and it is probable that their presence
accelerated the revolutionary process without materially changing
its course.
When independence had been achieved, the security of the
colonists still depended upon the maintenance of the rights they
had acquired under the Spanish-Mexican laws. Hence, they set
about establishing a new code which would confirm the existing
rights and would secure for the future the peculiar advantages
of both the Anglo-American and the Spanish legal systems
strengthened with improvements derived from the advanced
thinking of the time. A study of the laws adopted in early Texas
provides a comman denominator, a key to the motives of the
people of Texas from the day when Moses Austin first walked
across the plaza in San Antonio, through the early difficulties of
the empresarios, the Texas Revolution, the organization of the
Republic of Texas, annexation, secession, and many otherwise
unrelated events in the history of the state.