The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 71
663 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Anglo-American Colonists Under Mexican Militia Laws 71
The Anglo-American added a fifth group to the already irrecon-
cilable differences in the Mexican population. What was the re-
sult of the new system on the colonists from the United States?
The national law gave the militia of the settlers official standing,
but initial command in the hands of the empresarios and the
peripheral location of the colonists minimized the effect of the
change in nations. Austin's original command apparently lasted
for almost two years before his authority was placed directly
under an agency in Texas. There seems to have been no drafting
of garrison militia from the colonists, and at the company and
battalion levels the commanders were from the same communities
as the troops, so that Mexican officers commanded at Bexar and
Nacogdoches while Anglo-American officers commanded the new
citizens. The volunteers who accompanied General Saucedo to
Nacogdoches are possibly the only colonists to serve directly under
Mexican command. These factors left the militia of the colonists
all but indistinguishable from that which they had known in the
United States. For all practical purposes, the colonies operated
a United States militia with Mexican sanction.
Another question naturally arises: did the existence of the
militia in Texas influence the beginning or the course of the
revolution? Here again the evidence is largely negative, suggest-
ing that neither the presence nor the condition of the militia
directly affected the revolution. Without some six hundred good
men the revolution would have been impossible, but whether
or not they were organized into companies and battalions was not
likely to have retarded the war party. On the other hand, the
fact that the national government found itself strong enough to
intervene directly and strongly in Texas, so that the Texans could
no longer claim their neutral position, made strife followed by
submission or independence inevitable.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962, periodical, 1962; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101195/m1/91/?rotate=270: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.